novelraw Chapter 6: Tidings of the Sect Leader’s Death
Chapter 6: Tidings of the Sect Leader’s Death
Seventy second-tier stones.
After the three-percent house cut, sixty-eight exactly. Enough. Barely.
The moment the hammer fell, Qi Xiu’s legs went numb. He didn’t wait for the next lot—a pill meant for Foundation Establishment cultivators that sent the boxes into a bidding frenzy. While every eye locked on the stage, he slipped out like a shadow.
Collected his stones, hurried back to the inn, and slept without dreams.
Dawn saw him at the pill chamber. One hundred five second-tier stones and change for the reserved Foundation Establishment Pill. The rest—two hundred odd first-tier stones—rattled loosely in the now nearly empty storage bag.
He left Clear River Market the way a fox leaves a henhouse: first down the main road as if heading home, then a sharp about-face back into the market, a detour along the riverbank, and finally boarding a mortal passenger barge at a sleepy ferry dock. Rough cloth robes, wide scholar’s hat—suddenly he was just another minor gentry son returning from business. Farmers and peddlers scrambled to offer him the best seat.
Two hours downstream, a small city. Hired the finest carriage money could buy, crawled inside, and didn’t emerge for three days.
In the swaying darkness he kept one hand pressed to the tiny jade bottle inside his robes, fingers tracing the intact sealing talisman again and again.
A single Foundation Establishment Pill—technically a peak first-tier elixir, yet no Qi Refining alchemist could dream of refining it. Priced like a mid second-tier artifact. Flying swords were flashier, but this unassuming bottle held a man’s remaining lifespan.
“Twenty days away… hope Master hasn’t worried too much.”
Verdant early-summer plains rolled past the window. Qi Cloud Sect’s marquisate was rich, peaceful land—Daoist “non-interference” meant thriving farms, fat chickens, and villages that never knew their true overlords wore robes instead of armor.
Qi Xiu tried to compose a poem about contented ants and hungry wolves. The third line went sideways; by the fourth he gave up.
“Leave poetry to the sour Confucians.”
He shut the curtains and slept.
On the third evening the carriage rolled into Chu-Qin Town. Qi Xiu’s original plan: ditch the carriage, slip in through back trails disguised as a mortal herb gatherer.
One casual inquiry in the tea house shattered that.
“They’ve pitched camps right outside the mountain gate! Foundation Establishment seniors from three sects are already inside picking over the bones!”
No back trail, no secret array tunnel—every route watched.
Qi Xiu stood in the street a long moment. Then he laughed once, short and bitter, changed back into his sect’s vermilion robes, climbed aboard the carriage, and ordered the driver straight up the main road.
Dead horse, treat it as if it still breathed.
“Halt!”
Half a li from the gate, four cultivators blocked the road. Different robes—Flowing Cloud Sect, Lotus Temple, Huang-Zuo Clan alliance.
Qi Xiu stepped down slowly.
Three pairs of spiritual senses swept over him like cold wind. All higher cultivation than his own.
He ignored them, paid the driver, sent him on his way, then turned and cupped his fists with perfect calm.
“This poor Daoist is Qi Xiu of the Chu-Qin Sect, returning to the mountain. May I ask why fellow Daoists bar the path?”
A teenage nun in snow-white robes embroidered with lotuses burst out laughing. Round cheeks, bright eyes, figure already promising—she radiated sunshine.
“Are you actually clueless, or just pretending?”
Qi Xiu widened his eyes in what he hoped was innocent confusion. At twenty-nine it came off as cartoonish.
The oldest, a grim middle-aged man with a horsetail whisk, had no patience for theater. The whisk snapped out, silk threads turning into a python of light that bound Qi Xiu hand and foot and dumped him in the dirt.
“Still playing idiot at your age? Speak! Why head to the sect now?”
Qi Xiu hit the ground hard, trussed like a dumpling. He tasted dust and blood.
“I am a Chu-Qin disciple returning home. Perfectly justified! But you lot assault a fellow Daoist in broad daylight—are you planning murder and robbery?”
The sharp-tongued second woman, green robes and a temper like chili oil, spat.
“Take a look in the mirror, see if you look worth robbing!”
She kicked him for good measure.
“Listen up, trash. Flowing Cloud, Lotus Temple, and the Huang-Zuo Clan have agreed: today your little sect dies. Want to keep your pitiful life? Start talking.”
Humiliation burned hotter than any spell. Qi Xiu swallowed the rage, clamped his mouth shut, and glared at the sky.
A weak sect cannot protect its disciples; useless disciples cannot raise the sect. Today’s shame is well earned.
The middle-aged man opened his mouth to threaten further—when three shrill whistles exploded from the mountain peak.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Signal arrows. Three in rapid succession.
The spicy nun whooped. “Three blasts—the old bastard’s finally dead!”
Round-face clapped. “Freedom! No more playing jailer on this stupid mountain!”
The man recalled his whisk with a flick. “To the main hall—move!”
He leapt onto a shuttle artifact and shot away.
The women summoned their own rides—a giant lotus leaf, a fluffy white cloud—and followed without a backward glance.
The binding threads dissolved. Qi Xiu lay in the dirt, staring at blue sky.
“The old bastard’s dead… the old bastard’s dead…”
The words circled like vultures.
Minutes or hours—he neither knew nor cared. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth; he had bitten clean through his lip.
Suddenly his body jerked. Eyes rolled. A single name tore from his throat, raw as a blade:
“MASTER!!!”
He scrambled upright and ran.
He knew every stone on Chu-Qin Peak. Blindfolded he could find the summit. Legs pumping, lungs on fire, he flew past abandoned spirit fields, past broken wards, past the drifting, unguarded mist of third-tier spiritual qi that should have been hidden behind grand arrays.
The main peak’s illusion formation was gone. The mountain-protecting grand array was dark.
Shouts and the clang of artifacts echoed from the back mountain.
Qi Xiu crested the peak plaza. Bodies of furniture, shattered talismans, and hurried feet everywhere. Invaders and a few ashamed Chu-Qin disciples darted in and out of halls, looting openly.
No one spared a glance for one more vermilion-robed Qi Refining nobody.
He grabbed a familiar junior brother by the sleeve. “Where is Master?!”
The boy flinched, eyes red. “Qi… Senior Brother Qi… the west side hall… I’m sorry…”
Qi Xiu ran.
He burst through the doors of the west side hall and skidded to a halt.
On the cold stone floor lay a body in sect leader’s robes.
A single sheet of yellow talisman paper covered the face.
All life—gone.
【Terminology Updates – Chapter 6】
- Flowing Cloud Sect (流云宗), Lotus Temple (荷花观), Huang-Zuo Clan (湟左詹家): the three allied sects moving in for the kill
- Three signal arrows (三声响箭): pre-arranged code meaning “the sect leader has died”
- West Side Hall (西偏殿): traditional place to lay out the dead before burial rites