novelraw Chapter 28 : Chapter 28
Chapter 28 : Chapter 28
Chapter 28
“The Blood-Rust Blade?” Jianrong frowned within Wan Yao Cave.
She had already dragged Chu Shanzhen back—now obedient as a great housecat—and was asking him what had happened lately.
Jianrong had not happened to come out of seclusion at that exact moment by chance.
She had been startled awake.
She sensed damage within Wan Yao Cave and came out to inspect it. But when Jianrong arrived, she found Li Tong sweating profusely as he fiddled with Wan Yao Cave’s restrictions.
At first, Li Tong had not taken the opening Blood River Old Ancestor cut into the restrictions seriously. But after letting Chu Shanzhen and the others out, when Li Tong tried to close the restrictions again, he discovered that no matter what he did, he could not seal the slit Blood River Old Ancestor had opened. A terrifying killing intent clung to the crack. Since he could not remove that killing intent, he could not close the restrictions.
Jianrong dealt with the killing intent, but she had never seen this kind of killing intent before. She wanted to know where it had come from.
At the time, Chu Shanzhen had vaguely seen something shaped like a long blade inside the blood-light, which made him think of the rumors that had been spreading wildly these past months.
So he explained the matter to Jianrong from beginning to end.
Jianrong frowned and shook her head. “That is a baleful thing. How could it possibly contain the unsurpassed Dao Canon?”
The killing intent attached to the restrictions was vicious and evil. As the Lord of Weapons, she also understood the path of slaughter. Ordinary people could not discern it, but she could clearly feel that the killing intent left by the Blood-Rust Blade was absolutely not of the righteous path. It contained a kind of madness that disregarded everything.
Chu Shanzhen did not understand it either.
After thinking about it for a moment, Jianrong put the matter aside. It was obvious that the Sword Sovereign was watching the Blood-Rust Blade, so there was nothing to worry about.
Thinking of this, Jianrong asked Chu Shanzhen, “Why did you go provoke Master Shuang for no reason?”
Was that not just asking to be beaten?
Chu Shanzhen looked aggrieved. “You were always praising him in front of me before, so I…”
Jianrong said, “Li Jiao’er is always praising Li Tong in front of her husband too.”
Chu Shanzhen said, “How is that the same? Li Tong is her actual father.”
Jianrong said, “Master Shuang is my lifesaver and half-teacher.”
“I’ve seen those mortal storybooks write things like ‘I have no way to repay a life-saving grace except by devoting myself to you,’ and all those romances between master and disciple…” Chu Shanzhen muttered under his breath.
Jianrong could not help laughing. “What are you thinking about? When Master Shuang saved me, I had only just been weaned.”
She grabbed Chu Shanzhen by the ear and pulled him closer, then leaned in and kissed him on the face. “I like you.”
Chu Shanzhen’s eyes lit up at once. He became so dizzy with happiness that he no longer knew east from west.
Then Jianrong pressed him down and made him handle a whole night’s worth of official documents that had piled up in Wan Yao Cave.
…
Cai Suhong and Lang Qingyun had already changed locations and had even opened up a small Mystic Realm to hide in.
The two sat facing each other, with the Blood-Rust Blade placed between them, both staring blankly at it.
It was as though heaven were playing a joke on them. When they had been desperately searching for the Blood-Rust Blade in hopes of solving the problems on their bodies, they had never been able to find it. But now, just as they were about to return to a peaceful life, this Blood-Rust Blade had suddenly fallen into their hands as if from the sky.
What were they supposed to do?
Keep it, or give it up?
Shuang Wenlü knew how they would choose.
They would keep the Blood-Rust Blade.
Lang Qingyun wanted to keep it because he hoped to find a way within it to solve the problem of the Dao Seed. Cai Suhong wanted to keep it because she too wanted to see the unsurpassed Dao Canon.
No cultivator could refuse those four words: unsurpassed Dao Canon.
This was not greed.
Cultivators cultivated, tempered themselves, and did everything they did for the sake of attaining the Great Dao. When that very goal appeared right before their eyes, how could they resist it?
But even if they had obtained the Blood-Rust Blade, would they be able to recognize the unsurpassed Dao Canon within it?
The Blood-Rust Blade had already passed through countless hands, yet not one person had found the unsurpassed Dao Canon in it. They had fought over the Blood-Rust Blade through theft and slaughter, and their hearts had already set foot upon such a path. So when they saw the Blood-Rust Blade, they mistook the baleful evil sealed inside it for the unsurpassed Dao Canon.
When people who have already stepped onto the wrong road encounter the correct guidance, their reaction is often not sudden enlightenment, but ridicule and contempt.
“We… should we keep it for now?” Cai Suhong stared at the Blood-Rust Blade as she spoke, sounding as though she were trying to justify herself. “Anyway, no one knows the Blood-Rust Blade is in our hands right now. We can study it first, and if we get discovered and trouble starts, then we can throw it away.”
But she was also worried that Lang Qingyun might not want to keep it. She knew how badly he wanted to go home.
“Right now, almost no cultivators are trying to divine the Blood-Rust Blade’s whereabouts anymore. Ever since it appeared in the Demon Prefecture, that stopped,” Cai Suhong murmured again.
Calculating the heavenly secrets of the Blood-Rust Blade had always been difficult, and the heavenly secrets of the Demon Prefecture were far more chaotic besides. On top of that, circumstances in the Demon Prefecture shifted too unpredictably. The person who held the Blood-Rust Blade one moment might be dead the next, and the blade changed hands constantly. Even if someone divined a result, it was useless. Why waste the effort?
“No one knows the Blood-Rust Blade has already returned to Suizhou,” Cai Suhong added.
They could keep it for a while.
Lang Qingyun silently nodded.
To begin with, he had not cared about the unsurpassed Dao Canon. He was not cultivating in pursuit of the Dao at all. He cultivated so that his family could live.
But the Dao Seed did not want his family to keep living.
“I want to see whether the Blood-Rust Blade can solve my problem,” Lang Qingyun said.
He did not state it plainly, but he knew Cai Suhong would understand.
As long as she understood, then if she found some method in the Blood-Rust Blade that could resolve the Dao Seed, she would not hide it from him.
Once they had made the decision, both of them relaxed considerably.
Lang Qingyun stared at the exposed three-inch blade edge of the Blood-Rust Blade and said, “Do you think it looks like the sword we saw in the Mystic Realm?”
One side was straight-edged, the other curved. Even the hilt looked very similar.
Cai Suhong had noticed it too. But she had no idea what was going on, so she went to threaten the Mystic Realm System for answers.
The Mystic Realm System could no longer carry the blame and started shamelessly pretending to be dead. No matter what Cai Suhong said, it stubbornly insisted that it did not know.
Cai Suhong had no choice but to tell Lang Qingyun that she did not know. Lang Qingyun silently accepted the answer and did not press further.
Shuang Wenlü withdrew his gaze.
In the mortal world, with its countless worldly entanglements, perception was the thing most easily deceived. But if a person held fast to righteous intent, then even if their understanding were misled, their heart would not be deceived.
Each person had to walk their own Dao.
Suddenly, Shuang Wenlü’s identity jade token changed. He took it out and looked.
The merit from the task he had casually accepted last time had been settled.
Everyone knew he had no use for such merit, but the steward of Merit Hall had still carefully completed the task summary and verification, and distributed the full amount without deducting a single point.
Shuang Wenlü gave a small laugh, looked through the tasks in Merit Hall, and casually accepted another one.
At Merit Hall on Jiuhuan Peak.
After Luan Huan finished the task summary and handled everything that had to be issued and recorded, he slowly let out a breath.
A colleague beside him saw his expression and laughed. “Finally finished that troublesome task?”
“Yes…” Luan Huan said slowly.
The task involving Suizhou’s earth qi had implicated too many things. It was not just a problem of Demonic Cultivators; it also involved many other sects, which made it very difficult to investigate and calculate, so it had dragged on until now.
But that alone was not enough to leave him so mentally exhausted. The main reason he had found it difficult was that the task had been accepted by the Sword Sovereign…
It felt as though the Grand Patriarch had suddenly come to inspect his work.
Luan Huan had gone back and forth over it several times before finally deciding on the result and settling the task through the merit plaque. After checking it over so many times, even if it could not be called excellent, at least it should not contain any mistakes.
He stretched lazily. But just as he was finally beginning to relax, his divine sense suddenly swept over a newly accepted merit task. Looking at the name attached to it, the smile slowly vanished from his face.
“What’s wrong?” his colleague asked in confusion.
“Nothing.” Luan Huan forced out a smile.
Grand Patriarch, have you not had enough yet?
Shuang Wenlü drifted lightly down into Zhanrong City.
Within Qiankun, it was not only cultivators who wanted the Blood-Rust Blade. The demons wanted it too.
Anyone familiar with Shuang Wenlü knew that although this Sword Sovereign’s martial strength was peerless, he was not bloodthirsty by nature. Only the demons within Qiankun were things he would eliminate the instant he saw them.
He never stopped people from rushing to their deaths, but he would always eradicate Heart-Eroding Grass.
He had already gone to warn Luo Mi. Luo Mi did not dare let demons carrying Rule Fragments pass through, but entering Qiankun was not possible only through the Red Sand Sea.
The task Shuang Wenlü had accepted was exactly this sort of demon-extermination task with no specific requirements.
Zhanrong City was famous for its roses, and its name came from the flower itself: “Do not say that flowers cannot remain red for a hundred days; this one enjoys spring’s glory month after month.”
In the countryside outside Zhanrong City there were many estates planted with roses. Roses bloomed for a long time, and in the gentle dusk, the flower fields shone with delicate colors and carried a fine, sweet fragrance.
Shuang Wenlü stopped in front of a wild rose.
The rose petals were delicate, but the plant itself was tenacious. A branch cut from the plant might happen to fall in the wild, and there it would put down roots on the spot.
This was a double-petaled rose, pale white at the center and vivid red on the outer petals. Its slender branches swayed lightly in the wind, and its fragrance was faint.
Shuang Wenlü lowered his head to look at the flower.
Not far away, a woman with her right hand wrapped in white cloth suddenly emerged from a small slope and came over smiling to strike up a conversation.
“This flower is pretty, isn’t it?” the woman asked.
Shuang Wenlü glanced at the cloth wrapped around her right hand, then moved his gaze back to the flower. “Very pretty.”
“Yes, it is so pretty…” The woman’s voice suddenly turned eerie and drifting, raising a gust of cold wind in the evening dusk. “…all because my bones are buried underneath it.”
The gentle evening breeze suddenly spun into a whirl, sweeping up dirt and fallen leaves in a circling vortex around them. The temperature dropped sharply, the sky darkened further, thin finger bones poked out from the center of the rose, and the vivid red outer petals began dripping blood.
The woman’s smiling face looked increasingly sinister. “Tell me—isn’t it so? Why are—you—not talking?”
“So that’s how it is.” Shuang Wenlü was still looking at the flower as he said leisurely, “Then I’ll dig this flower up and take a look. If your bones are really underneath, I’ll give you a proper burial.”
The female ghost froze for a moment at his calm reaction and could not help asking, “And what if they aren’t?”
“If they aren’t,” Shuang Wenlü lifted his head and looked at her with a half-smile, “then I’ll plant all of you in the ground instead.”
The ghost who had been trying to frighten him immediately sensed that something was wrong and tried to run, only to discover that she could no longer move at all.
The cold wind stopped. The swirling vortex died away. The darkened sky brightened again. The rose returned to normal.
One ghost after another was forced to reveal itself: one stood behind Shuang Wenlü blowing cold air on his neck; one was spinning around while running in circles nearby; one was holding a tattered piece of clothing and shaking it constantly toward the sky; and one was squatting by the rose with a finger held stiffly over the blossom…
This was just a bunch of lonely wandering ghosts with no cultivation at all. Even putting together a simple ghostly maze and ghostly blinding trick had been this difficult for them.
Shuang Wenlü lifted a foot and kicked away the wild ghost plastered behind him. Then he flicked his sleeve and said unhurriedly, “Go on, tell me. What are you trying to do? Once you’re done talking, I’ll plant all of you in the ground.”
The ghost he had kicked away wailed miserably, “We were wrong! We won’t dare do it again!”
Shuang Wenlü casually pressed him into the soil beneath the rose, then tilted his chin toward the one who had been spinning in circles. “You tell me.”
This ghost did not look very bright. “Hero, spare my life! Hero, spare my life! I-I-I… I just got carried away! I won’t dare do it again, sob sob sob…”
Shuang Wenlü planted this one in the ground too, then looked toward the one shaking the clothes.
The moment that ghost managed to open his mouth, he began howling, “Help—!”
Shuang Wenlü picked him up and stuffed him beneath the rose as well. Then he looked at the ghost squatting under the flower, who stared back at him in terror. Too lazy to ask any more questions, Shuang Wenlü tapped him with the scabbard and planted him in the soil too.
Then his gaze shifted to the female ghost who had first tried to trick him.
The female ghost knelt down very decisively. She no longer dragged out her words in that spooky tone. Instead, she rattled off everything in one breath like a rapid-fire list of dishes.
“We just wanted to trick a little incense offering to eat we’ve never harmed anyone before we’ve only been cheated out of worship a few times our graves were dug up we have nowhere to go and no home left so we had no choice we won’t dare do it again Immortal Master spare us—”
Shuang Wenlü looked at her and said with a smile, “Explain it in detail. Slowly.”
The female ghost inexplicably felt a little flattered by the treatment. She was fairly clever, and very quickly made the whole matter clear.
Originally, the few of them had been lonely ghosts living in several wild graves outside Zhanrong City. Though they no longer had incense offerings, at least they still had a place to stay. But some days ago, someone had leveled all their graves, built an estate there, and planted roses.
Having lost their dwelling place, their wandering existence outside had become unbearable. So they began setting up little tricks nearby, scaring unlucky mortals passing by in hopes of cheating a few incense offerings and sacrificial rites out of them.
The female ghost cried, “We really have never harmed anyone, and we’ve barely tricked anyone for offerings either. We’re miserable… We were living peacefully enough, and then our graves were forcibly dug up. We truly had no choice…”
“If that’s so, why not simply send a dream to the owner of the estate?” Shuang Wenlü said.
That made the female ghost want to cry even more.
Ordinarily, that was indeed how such matters were resolved. Mortals usually did not want extra trouble. They would relocate the graves and perform some offerings, and that would be the end of it. But…
“We don’t dare go into the estate. There’s something strange there. The last time some of our companions went in, they vanished.”
“You mean the estate is strange, yet the owner is still living there just fine?” Shuang Wenlü said.
The female ghost nodded and said angrily, “We asked around. That fellow is called Zou Sui, and he grows roses. He bought the estate for that reason too. Ever since he moved in, he’s never come out again, and he doesn’t let anyone else in either. Only one old servant brings him things. We all suspect there’s something wrong with him. Old Zhao went in before and never came back out. It might well have been his doing!”
Watching Shuang Wenlü’s expression, she volunteered eagerly, “His father comes by sometimes. We secretly followed and listened before. His father seems to think there’s something wrong with Zou Sui’s mind and was planning to hire someone to help. If you want to go take a look, I can find a way to make his father bring you in.”
“Alright,” Shuang Wenlü said.
The female ghost stole a glance at the four ghost heads sticking out from under the wild rose and carefully asked, “Then what about those four…”
The four ghost heads looked over with eager expectation.
Shuang Wenlü cast them a light glance. The four ghosts immediately shrank their heads back down, and the female ghost no longer dared mention them. She thumped her chest and promised she would absolutely complete the task, then vanished without a trace.
The female ghost ran a long way in one breath. Only once she could no longer see Shuang Wenlü’s figure did she finally relax.
That glance from him earlier had truly been terrifying.
It had scared her so badly that she had not dared look back even once while fleeing.
Originally, she had planned to confuse Zou Sui’s father, Zou Liye, and make him believe that Shuang Wenlü was the person he had hired so he would bring him into the estate. But after she had truly run off, a thought suddenly surfaced:
It looked as though she had escaped that terrifying sword cultivator. What if she just ran away now?
She had not actually told Shuang Wenlü everything.
Among this group of ghosts, she was the cleverest one.
If a living being died and did not reincarnate, but instead became a ghost, it was because some obsession remained in the heart. But once obsession took root, the mind no longer worked properly. It was like the way mortals described getting trapped in a dead end of thought. And besides, they no longer even had brains now.
The flesh body was one kind of restraint, but also one kind of protection. Once the body was gone, emotions could affect thought even more strongly.
She herself had forgotten what her obsession was, which was why she was clearer-headed than the others. In that patch of lonely wild graves, all of them had been wandering ghosts. Because she was the least affected by obsession and also somewhat stronger, the others had gradually begun following her lead.
After the estate swallowed Old Zhao, the female ghost had forbidden the others from going near it again. But she herself had secretly approached the estate once at night.
That time… that time, in the courtyard of the residence, among the rose bushes under the moonlight, she had seen Zou Sui, and another figure…
That figure—she had only vaguely seen a shape, and yet at the same time it had seemed like many shapes. For some reason, she had almost lost control then and there. When she became clear-headed again, she found that she had already fled back. All that remained in her heart was enormous sorrow and fear.
But she could no longer remember how she had run back.
She could not even clearly remember what she had seen in the estate.
The female ghost had not told any of the other ghosts about this, and she had never gone back.
She thought that the thing there was far more terrifying than they had imagined. She did not want to go near it again. The sword cultivator who had appeared beneath the wild rose was also terrifying. She did not want to get mixed up in such dangerous matters at all. She only wanted to hide as far away as possible.
But she could flee on her own now, while those four ghosts were still pressed beneath the rose.
After living together for so many years, if she simply ran off like this, what would that sword cultivator do to them?
It had not yet come to the point where she absolutely had to flee, the female ghost thought. She only had to trick Zou Sui’s father into coming. If they truly ran into danger she could not resist, then she would decide what to do then.
After working out the next steps in her plan, she ran toward the outskirts of Zhanrong City to carry it out.
Shuang Wenlü sat cross-legged beside the wild rose, his gaze far away, as though he were looking toward Zhanrong City. But not long after, he withdrew his gaze and half-closed his eyes.
The four foolish ghosts remained buried beneath the rose with only their heads sticking out. After enough time passed, they gradually stopped being so afraid. Other than being unable to leave, there was nothing uncomfortable about being down there. In fact, even the night wind no longer seemed to trouble them.
It was hard being a ghost. People always said that night, with its heavy yin energy, belonged to ghosts and monsters. But that only applied to powerful ghosts. Little ghosts like them suffered under both the sun, which was like fire, and the night wind, which was like blades. Excessive yin or yang energy both harmed the soul body. It was rather like a cultivator’s primordial spirit leaving the body. Before one’s cultivation was sufficient, proper protection had to be prepared, otherwise sunlight and night wind would both damage the primordial spirit.
For little ghosts like them, neither day nor night was easy to endure, so they had to hide inside graves. Even without graves, they had to find some support to cling to. Only at dawn and dusk, when yin and yang were at their gentlest, could they move about freely.
The four ghost heads whispered among themselves.
“When is Boss coming back?”
“No idea. Boss isn’t just going to abandon us, right?”
“Actually, I think it’s pretty nice here. It’s more comfortable than staying in a grave.”
“Idiot! Are you planning to stay planted here forever? What if a stray dog comes and pees on you? Will you be able to dodge?”
The ghost heads were still chatting when they suddenly noticed that Shuang Wenlü, whose eyes had been half closed, had opened them and was looking at them.
All the ghosts shivered, then instinctively began grinning foolishly.
Boss had said that smiling at people usually meant you would not get beaten.
“What’s your boss called?” Shuang Wenlü asked.
The four ghosts all started talking at once.
“We don’t know either.”
“Boss' brain is broken. She can’t remember things from before.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s called either.”
“She’s remembered seven or eight different names already. One minute she thinks her surname is Zhang-something, then the next minute she thinks it’s Liu-something. So we all just call her Boss.”
“She doesn’t remember her own name, or where she came from?” Shuang Wenlü asked.
“She remembers none of it,” the four ghosts replied.
Shuang Wenlü asked no more.
That female ghost had a solid ghost body. In life, she had been a cultivator. The cloth strips wrapped around her hand were something beginner sword practitioners used while practicing day and night, because sweat on the palms could make the grip slip. But once one had cultivation, there was no need to wrap cloth around the hand anymore.
The female ghost was highly efficient. Though it was already close to nightfall, when mortals should no longer be leaving the city, she had somehow managed to bring Zou Liye over anyway. At present, Zou Liye’s mind was confused. The moment he saw Shuang Wenlü, he firmly believed him to be the physician he had hired to treat Zou Sui’s mind.
Zou Liye looked Shuang Wenlü up and down. His consciousness was clouded, and he simply felt that this man seemed reliable in every possible way. Naturally, he led him toward the estate.
Shuang Wenlü said to the female ghost, “You’re coming with me.”
The female ghost’s expression changed drastically. Forcing a smile, she said, “I-I don’t think that’s necessary… You see, I wouldn’t be of any help anyway…”
Shuang Wenlü shifted his gaze toward the four ghost heads under the wild rose. “Then the four of you are coming with me.”
The four ghosts had finally been freed from the soil, but they clung to each other and trembled. “We don’t want to go…”
The female ghost’s expression changed several times before she finally gritted her teeth. “I’ll go with you. Let them go.”
After all, she had secretly approached the estate once before and returned intact. This sword cultivator did not look simple either. There might not even be any danger this time. And if danger really did arise, then she could always run later.
But the four ghosts suddenly protested as well. “Boss, we’re going with you!” “Wherever you go, we’re going too!” “We want to go too!”
The female ghost looked at these four idiots and snapped angrily, “If you’re all going, then why would I go at all?! You all go instead. I’m not going!”
The four ghosts immediately backtracked. “Then we’re not going either!” “Not going, not going!”
“Then all of you can go together,” Shuang Wenlü said.
Without allowing any argument, he forced this whole string of ghosts to follow behind him.
Zou Liye noticed nothing unusual. As he led the way, he complained bitterly to Shuang Wenlü, “My son! Sigh! My son… He likes roses. Fine, let him grow them. Plenty of people in Zhanrong City like roses. But lately, he… he’s completely obsessed!”
Everyone in Zhanrong City knew that the Zou family’s son had become more and more unhinged recently.
In the past, Zou Sui had invited friends who were equally skilled in growing roses to appreciate the flowers together and exchange knowledge. But later he had become almost crazed, refusing to let anyone look at the roses he was growing. Once, one of his friends went to visit him and wandered into the courtyard. Zou Sui had gotten into a huge fight with him, and the friend had been so furious that he never returned.
“And not only that—he won’t even stay in a proper house anymore. He spends all day in that little pavilion beside the rose garden and cares about nothing else!” Zou Liye said angrily.
As they spoke, they reached the estate.
The four ghosts trailed along behind in dejection. All the way there, their boss had been knocking them repeatedly in frustration at their hopelessness.
The old servant in the estate opened the gate. A short while later, Zou Sui hurried over.
He was a thin young man. The moment he saw Shuang Wenlü, he became displeased. “Father, why did you bring an outsider here? Didn’t I tell you not to let outsiders come? Out, out!” As he spoke, he tried to drive Shuang Wenlü away.
Zou Liye was so angry that he glared at him. “You still remember I’m your father! This is someone I invited—”
“Ah,” Shuang Wenlü interrupted him with a smile. “Although roses bloom for long seasons, in the winter month they still cannot avoid fading flowers and falling leaves. The bitter cold wind is hard on them. I have a way to make roses suffer less in winter. Your honored father invited me here. Would it not be worth letting me come in so we can talk?”
Zou Sui hesitated for a moment, then stopped trying to drive him away. “Come in.”