novelraw Chapter 35 : Chapter 35
Chapter 35 : Chapter 35
Chapter 35
He had left that gray mouse there because he still felt unwilling to give up and wanted to see whether any further clues might turn up. He had not expected to overhear such a round of mockery instead.
They had traveled together for so long, and he did not think he had done anything to wrong them. That whole pack of snobs were all rotten to the core. And Zheng Chengjie! All along the way, he had barked orders at him and called him around, then waited until everyone else had finished belittling him before pretending to say a few token words in his defense.
But whose fault was it that he lacked strength?
Without strength, people looked down on you and made a fool of you. One day... one day... he would...
Wang Yu gnashed his teeth for a long while, but in the end he could only let out a dispirited sigh. His sect’s cultivation method was inferior to theirs, and his natural talent was inferior too. On what grounds could he surpass them? A month of bitter cultivation for him could not compare to three days of cultivation for them on the spirit veins of their sect.
If he did not know full well that the gap was too vast, who would willingly bow and scrape?
Wang Yu’s expression was still shifting when he suddenly heard movement beside him and remembered that rabbit yao from earlier. The effects of the Bewitching Incense had already worn off, and the little yao had awakened. He was now trembling and weeping.
The moment Wang Yu saw him, revulsion rose in his heart. If this little yao had not known absolutely nothing, Zheng Chengjie would never have found an excuse to drive him away.
It was only a little yao, after all...
Wang Yu let out a cold snort and summoned a vicious spirit beast shaped like a giant wolf. Tilting his chin, he signaled, “Eat.”
The little rabbit yao stared in terror, eyes wide, as a crimson maw full of jagged teeth came down over his head.
Blood splashed across the ground.
...
Wild bamboo parted the blue mountain mist, and flying springs hung from emerald peaks.
Shuang Wenlü, draped in cloud-mist, strolled leisurely along the cliff face.
He remembered this place as having once been a mountain valley.
Then again, the Suizhou in his memory was an old almanac from who knew how many years ago.
Not far away, a white deer halted on the mountainside and looked at him curiously.
Smiling, Shuang Wenlü beckoned to it. The white deer hesitated for a moment, then turned and ran down the slope. Before long, it appeared among the cliffs where Shuang Wenlü stood. With a light leap of its four hooves, it stopped a zhang away from him, its dark, liquid eyes bright with both curiosity and caution.
This was a deer that had awakened spiritual intelligence.
“Do you know where the source of this waterfall is?” Shuang Wenlü asked, making no move to approach.
Beside him, a narrow cascade dropped between the peaks, no more than a person’s width across. It looked like a length of gauze draped among the mountains, spreading downward to nourish the forest below. Yet if one traced it upward, its source could not be found, as though the water were seeping straight from the cliff wall.
The white deer paused there to think for a while, as though deciding whether or not to trust the man before it. It studied Shuang Wenlü for some time, and in the end decided that the aura around him felt comfortable. So it gave two soft cries and began leaping among the cliffs.
Shuang Wenlü smiled and followed behind it.
The farther they went, the farther they seemed to get from the waterfall itself. Led by the white deer, Shuang Wenlü crossed a split gorge, passed through two caves, and climbed over three cliff faces before finally arriving at a hidden valley. A channel of clear spring water flowed gently out of the valley, and in the end became that beautiful waterfall hanging like a ribbon between the peaks.
After bringing him there, the white deer lightly leaped up onto a boulder and watched him, wanting to see what he intended to do.
Looking at the limpid, spirited spring, Shuang Wenlü let his smile fade and grew solemn. He reached out and made a plucking motion with his fingers, drawing from the springhead a round bead of gold and silver light. A crack ran across its surface, and mist seeped out from it, turning into flowing spring water the instant it touched the ground.
The white deer’s eyes widened. It had drunk from this spring for a long time and had never known that such a thing lay hidden within it.
As soon as that little bead was removed, the flow of the valley spring began to lessen, and it somehow seemed to grow dimmer. The water itself remained clear, but a layer of spiritual energy had gone missing.
The white deer keenly sensed that change and began crying out uneasily.
Shuang Wenlü looked at it, then smiled again. “Come.”
The white deer hesitated for a long time before jumping down from the rock and stopping three zhang away from him.
Seeing how wary it still was, Shuang Wenlü did not press it. He lowered his eyes to the bead in his hand and brushed a finger across the crack. The bead stopped seeping mist.
“This was a Treasured Artifact belonging to a friend of mine,” he said. “She died, and her magic treasure was left behind here. At the time, none of us were in very good shape, and we had no spare strength to retrieve her remains.”
The white deer stood quietly where it was, its clear black eyes resting on him in silence.
“Later, it remained here so long that it created this spirit spring,” Shuang Wenlü said. “Leaving it here was fine too, but now I need to take it and use it for a while.”
“You brought me here, so I can’t make things difficult for you.” He smiled again, and with that smile, the earlier solemnity vanished, replaced by open, living brightness.
He reached out and tapped the springhead with one finger. Suddenly, vigorous life and spiritual energy surged up from within it, then swiftly dissolved into the spring water. At once, the spring became lively and beautiful again. With that single tap, Shuang Wenlü had created a small spirit vein beneath the springhead.
The white deer did not understand how rare such an act was. It only felt that the spring water had returned to the way it had been before, now with an added current of pure vitality, and so it grew happy. Crying out joyfully a few times, it walked up to Shuang Wenlü and rubbed against him.
A watery, mirror-like phantom suddenly condensed in front of Shuang Wenlü. He glanced at it, patted the white deer on the head, and said with a smile, “I’m off.”
With that, he drifted away, taking the phantom with him.
The white deer remained bewildered. It only felt that after being patted on the head just now, it suddenly knew a great many things. That knowledge seemed to be something called a cultivation technique.
...
Shuang Wenlü found a quiet place, examined the Heavenly Secrets, located the node connected to Tiangong Tower, and casually tossed out the Guiyuan Pearl.
The Guiyuan Pearl was the magic treasure of Granny Tiangong, Yin Kaitian. She had fallen three thousand years ago, and the Guiyuan Pearl had been damaged beyond use as well, but within it was the revelation of her Dao.
The younger generation of Tiangong Tower were clearly drifting farther and farther off course. Tossing the Guiyuan Pearl to them could at least be counted as repaying some measure of the old bond he had shared with Yin Kaitian. As for whether they could comprehend anything from it, that depended on them.
Shuang Wenlü turned to the watery mirror phantom before him.
This was Hua Kongxie’s messaging art. She had finally captured the thing hidden within the disturbances.
Shuang Wenlü tapped the water mirror. The murky traces within it solidified from illusion into substance. With a flick of his fingers, he trapped them within his sword intent.
“So foul,” Shuang Wenlü said, frowning.
“A force like this can actually become a world?” On Sitting-Forgetting Island, Ning Xianmian held up that murky power on his palm.
Ordinarily, worlds were governed by order. Rules themselves represented order. No matter how chaotic the surface might appear, at the foundation of every world there were rules. That was the basis for a world’s birth. Chaos could not give rise to rules, so how could it grow into a world?
And yet the power of the world before them was formed entirely from condensed chaos. There was no order in it at all, only confusion, contamination, blind stupidity...
“The extreme chaos produced in the absence of all rules has itself become a kind of ‘rule,’” Hua Kongxie said. “For now, I’ve named it Taishui. Its erosion is very sensitive to flaws in rules.”
“You want to use it to search for the missing parts in Qiankun?” Shuang Wenlü lifted a brow.
“Yes,” Hua Kongxie said. That was why she had called all these old friends awake.
Qiankun was now only one final, tiny flaw away from completion. Like the faint crack in fine porcelain, it was difficult to perceive. If they could not find all the missing pieces, then Qiankun’s ascension would be delayed for an unknown span of time. But the power of this strange chaotic world could help Qiankun swiftly complete that final step.
“If it can be controlled, I have no objection,” Shuang Wenlü said.
The sword intent at his fingertips shifted slightly, extinguishing the filthy power of Taishui before him.
Ning Xianmian closed his hand, and within his palm the stars seemed to appear. The power of Taishui was fixed there, unable to contaminate its surroundings. Most of Qiankun’s rules were stable, and if they used only a minute amount of Taishui’s power to seek out flaws, then even if they left it unchecked, it would still take who knew how many years for it to damage Qiankun’s rules.
“I think it’s feasible.”
The others had no objections either.
After some discussion, they settled the matter. Hua Kongxie then went off to experiment with how to use Taishui’s power.
...
Lang Qingyun hid in desolate places far from people. He knew that he himself was now trouble, so he had always avoided places where people gathered.
He held the Blood-Rust Blade not by its hilt, but by the rust-covered section, lifting the exposed part of the blade before his eyes. Reflected in the bright, gleaming metal was a pair of eyes laced densely with blood vessels. The killing aura they carried was terrifying.
The rust on the Blood-Rust Blade was growing shorter and shorter. It truly was far more useful than the short sword Lang Qingyun had once carried. In his dreams, even tempered divine weapons were not its equal in a single exchange. And in reality, the cultivators’ Treasured Artifacts could not withstand its edge either. Even formations, restrictions, and spell arts... Lang Qingyun had yet to encounter anything capable of blocking it.
Too many cultivators had come hunting him for the Blood-Rust Blade. He had no choice but to use it. But the more he used it, the more rust fell away, and the greater its influence over him became.
Lang Qingyun closed his eyes and set the Blood-Rust Blade to one side.
The Dao Seed in his chest was very quiet. It seemed to be devoting most of its energy to resisting the Blood-Rust Blade’s influence. Now that Lang Qingyun was alone, the Dao Seed was all but at rest as far as he was concerned. He no longer had to suppress his cultivation out of fear of its influence, while the Blood-Rust Blade’s influence was almost entirely offset by the Dao Seed. That gave Lang Qingyun a long-lost sense of ease.
He almost thought that if things continued like this, he might actually recover—if not for the fact that he had seen his own eyes.
The Dao Seed and the Blood-Rust Blade were like two violent horses. If he rode either one alone, it would drag him into the abyss. Now those two horses were running madly in opposite directions, and the balance of their struggle had relieved his plight. But as the cart caught between them, how long could he avoid being torn apart by the increasing force of both sides?
Now he had begun to doubt whether a Blood-Rust Blade like this truly contained an unsurpassed Dao Canon.
...
Outside Chonghe City in Suizhou.
Cai Suhong was constructing a small Mystic Realm. There was nothing in it. It was only large enough for a single person to lie down and turn over once.
After building the Mystic Realm, she threw a bottle of wound medicine inside.
Both she and the Mystic Realm System knew perfectly well that this was a meaningless act. By the laws of probability, Lang Qingyun might not encounter a single one of these tiny Mystic Realms for the rest of his life. But the Mystic Realm System did not stop her.
“Thank you,” Cai Suhong said softly.
The Mystic Realm System was unconcerned. “It doesn’t cost you much time anyway.” Besides, the Guardian of the Dao was still in Suizhou. It also wanted to find another chance to cling to a powerful ally.
Cai Suhong laughed. “True enough. I don’t have much of a nest egg left anyway.”
After building this little Mystic Realm, she no longer had the strength to keep making more.
Not long after separating from Lang Qingyun, she had come up with another suspicion: if someone truly wanted to kill a person, they should not warn them beforehand.
Of course, it was also possible that Lang Qingyun had already lost clarity of mind at that time and had been unable to control his killing intent and emotions, which was why they had been exposed.
But life-and-death moments revealed a person’s true character most clearly, and she and Lang Qingyun had already passed through more than one such moment together.
“Just don’t go looking for him and get yourself killed,” the Mystic Realm System said.
“I know,” Cai Suhong replied.
Even after forming that suspicion, she had not gone back to find him. That was better for both of them. But she could not do nothing either.
“Let’s go.” Cai Suhong clapped her hands. “Let’s go take a look at this year’s autumn harvest.”
...
This year’s autumn harvest was very good, but it could not make Qiu Shufeng happy.
Aside from the harvest, there was also the long chain of troubles caused by the cultivators for him to deal with.
The cultivators drawn here by the Blood-Rust Blade were a mixed crowd of all sorts. To say nothing else, the amount of good farmland they had destroyed in battle was impossible to count.
As an ordinary mortal, there were many messes Qiu Shufeng had no way to handle, so he had no choice but to seek help from the cultivators supported by the Zhao Kingdom, along with some resident cultivators from Suizhou’s orthodox sects. But that was also precisely where his difficulty lay. Would those cultivators not also desire the Blood-Rust Blade, with its hidden unsurpassed Dao Canon? If forced to choose between two bad outcomes, would they choose to seize the Blood-Rust Blade, or preserve mortal lives?
“Immortal Master Huo...” Qiu Shufeng said.
Beside him, Huo Xiao, who had been holding his sword, opened his eyes. “Your heart is in turmoil.”
Qiu Shufeng sighed. “I don’t understand. Why is it that these cultivators can treat mortal lives as though they do not matter? Does cultivating to the end really mean seeing the countless lives of the mortal world as no more than dust and grass?”
He felt that cultivation should make a person better and better, yet the situation in Suizhou made it impossible for him not to grow anxious. His heart was unsettled, and his thoughts had followed themselves into a dead end.
Huo Xiao said, “You regard them as immortals who possess marvelous arts and strange powers, so it is only natural that you feel at a loss. Cultivators are only people walking the path of cultivation. Before that cultivation is complete, their hearts and natures are naturally flawed, no different from mortals. Think of them as you think of the officials and wealthy men you are familiar with. It’s the same.”
Qiu Shufeng suddenly understood.
That was true. Cultivators, who possessed extraordinary abilities, were no different from how officials and powerful rich men, who possessed power and wealth, stood in relation to ordinary commoners. Just as common people lost their composure when facing officials and magnates, he too had lost his composure when facing the problems caused by cultivators.
With that, the matter returned all at once to a realm he understood. Qiu Shufeng’s heart calmed, and though he still could not guarantee the outcome, he now knew what he should do.
In this world, there were cultivators who wanted the Blood-Rust Blade, and cultivators who did not. There were people consumed by greed, and people capable of clearly weighing benefit and harm.
Once Qiu Shufeng understood that, he truly did manage to stabilize the situation in Suizhou.
Of course, the most important factor among all of this was that the Blood-Rust Blade never once appeared in a place where mortals gathered.
...
The weather grew colder and colder. After a single night, the edges of the small leaves on the trees were suddenly rimed with white frost in the morning, and through all its stumbles and setbacks, Suizhou finally welcomed winter.
An old maple tree blazing red had shed most of its leaves overnight, exposing angular branches with only a few leaves still hanging on. Beneath the pile of red leaves under the tree, a person lay curled up asleep.
Lang Qingyun was dreaming again.
The Blood-Rust Blade could not be destroyed. Not only could the young man in the dream not do it, neither could Lang Qingyun. He too had thought of and tried many methods, but unfortunately, he could not control the Blood-Rust Blade, just as he could not control the Dao Seed.
Lang Qingyun’s dreams had always revolved around that young man holding the Blood-Rust Blade, watching him become entangled in endless trouble because of it. Though they were separated by who knew how many ages, the similarity of their circumstances made Lang Qingyun feel an involuntary closeness to the young man in the dream, as if he were an unseen friend who could still understand him.
At first, Lang Qingyun’s dreams were only dreams. While dreaming, he remained hazy and unaware, and only upon waking could he realize that he had dreamed at all. But as the dreams came more and more often, it gradually became as though he remained clear-headed even within the dream itself. Though he still could not affect what happened in the dream, he could at least recognize that he was dreaming. And whenever he dreamed, the Dao Seed’s influence and the Blood-Rust Blade’s temptation withdrew far away from him, allowing him to gain rare peace and calm.
Every dream felt like a reunion with an old friend.
This time, the reunion began in the mountains and forests.
The young man in the dream was heading deeper into the wilderness, farther and farther away from human habitation. He had already realized that no matter what he did, he could not destroy the Blood-Rust Blade. He had also fought many people who came to seize it. He had always been the victor, but that only made his condition worse and worse. The more lives that sword killed, the greater its influence over people became, and in the young man’s eyes, too, more and more bloodshot threads had begun to appear.
If he was fated never to destroy the Blood-Rust Blade, what would he do next?
Worried, Lang Qingyun followed behind him.
The young man kept going deeper into the mountains and forests. He did not seem to have any specific destination. He was simply pressing onward toward more and more remote and perilous terrain, beyond where human effort could easily reach. Suddenly, Lang Qingyun understood. Since he could not destroy the Blood-Rust Blade, he wanted to hide it somewhere no one would ever be able to find it. So long as no one could find it, then it would be no different from having destroyed it.
But that method would not work for Lang Qingyun. The cultivators who wanted the Blood-Rust Blade had ways of locating it, and the era he lived in was already different from the era of the young man. Even so, Lang Qingyun could not help being drawn in by what the young man was doing.
Would he be safe? Could he succeed?
Karst caves, swamps, poisoned pools...
Lang Qingyun watched him cross one dangerous place after another, until at last he found a steep cliff.
The cliff jutted outward at an angle so severe that it was almost impossible to climb. Halfway down, clouds and mist shrouded everything, making the bottom impossible to see. The young man pushed a great stone over the edge and stared down for a long time, but heard no sound of it landing.
If he threw the sword down there, would no one ever be able to find it again?
Lang Qingyun watched him. He thought that this must be the place the young man had chosen. He should throw the sword down below.
But after standing there for a while, the young man turned and left instead.
Was this not the place he had chosen after all? Then again, compared to the swampland from before, the bottom of a cliff did not seem quite as dangerous.
Lang Qingyun followed after him and watched him gather many tough vines, then begin weaving them into rope.
He actually wanted to climb down and take a look himself?!
Lang Qingyun stared in astonishment. Across all these dreams, he had already confirmed that the young man was an ordinary person. Though he knew martial arts, he had no cultivation. Faced with a cliff like this, how did he intend to climb it?
And yet the young man seemed wholly unaware of how dangerous it was. He wove a rope long enough, tested each section by tugging on it to make sure it was sturdy, found a relatively climbable spot, tied one end to a tree and the other around his waist, and started climbing down the cliff just like that.
He climbed clumsily and with great difficulty. Part of it was because the terrain was dangerous and unfamiliar, and part of it was because of his right hand. His right hand had healed, but it still was not very nimble. Yet he showed no sign of giving up.
After who knew how long, the young man’s head finally appeared above the cliff again. He hauled himself up onto the ledge and collapsed flat on the ground, too exhausted to care that he was covered in dirt.
The rope was not long enough.
And so the young man settled down on the cliffside. Lang Qingyun watched him weave rope every day and climb down to scout the way. Did doing this really have any meaning? His stubbornness was terrifying. Every so often, the young man would go hunting in the forest, and each time he used that sword.
Lang Qingyun fell silent. This was a bloodthirsty weapon. If it was not fed enough, it would begin to go mad. Appropriate killing could soothe its will, but for the one holding the sword, that was nothing more than drinking poison to quench thirst.
Time in dreams was always vague. After some unknown number of sunrises and moonsets, the young man came to the edge of the cliff once more. His expression looked different from before. Lang Qingyun immediately realized that he had finished his preparations.
He had prepared enough rope, explored a route, found many ledges where he could stop and rest, and carved out many hollows to use as handholds and footholds. Then, step by step, he descended to the bottom of the cliff.
The bottom of the cliff was not as terrifying as it had looked from above. Many animals lived there too, such as mountain goats leaping across the rock walls and black fish swimming in the pools.
Down below, the young man found a place where he could live, built a little hut to shelter him from wind and rain, then dug a deep pit and buried the sword inside.
From then on, the young man lived at the bottom of the cliff. Lang Qingyun did not understand. Was he planning to stay here and guard that sword? What was the point of that? Or had he actually already begun to find it hard to part with the sword, and that was why he had done all these baffling things?
Lang Qingyun watched him live down there. Every morning, he used a tree branch as a sword and practiced, never missing a single day. His left-hand sword grew better and better, and in the course of such days, it gradually separated itself from the swordsmanship he had once learned from the Blood-Rust Blade. The bloodshot threads in his eyes also faded day by day.
Watching the young man’s bearing grow more and more steady, Lang Qingyun could not help feeling joy of his own. The Blood-Rust Blade’s influence could be dispelled!
And yet every day, the young man would still go to the place where the sword was buried and check on it. Lang Qingyun felt as though he were waiting for something, as though there were still a knot in his heart.
What was he waiting for?
After some unknown number of days passed, movement suddenly came from the place where the sword was buried. The young man’s eyes flew open, and with several leaps he rushed over.
Lang Qingyun followed after him, and at last he understood what the young man had been waiting for.
That sword, buried in a pit two zhang deep and hidden from the light of day, had somehow already been dug back out.