Yellow Skinned Taoist Master

Chapter 56: Huang Er, What Do You See?

At that moment, staring into Chen Huangpi's face full of killing intent, Song Qiuyue was seized by a deep, consuming regret.

She was barely eighteen or nineteen, and already a Nascent Soul cultivator. Her life had only just begun — nearly eight hundred years of it still stretched out before her.

And now she had discovered that Chen Huangpi could practice Ancient Methods. More than ever, she had to find a way to keep breathing.

She was terrified of dying. She did not want to die.

If she had known it would come to this, she would have swallowed her pride and kept Zhao Hai and the others in the room — then at least she wouldn't have had to let them see her begging and fawning like this.

If they were here now, maybe everyone pleading together might have been enough to move Chen Huangpi.

As for fighting back — she didn't even dare think about it.

Because she did not want to die.

Song Qiuyue crumpled to the ground and grabbed at Chen Huangpi's trouser leg, pleading: "Young master, you want money and I want my life — why must there be killing?"

"You have nerve," Chen Huangpi said flatly, and kicked her loose. "You owe a debt and refuse to pay. Why shouldn't I kill you?"Song Qiuyue half-sprawled on the ground, tears streaming down her face. "The Song family of Qinghe has wealth to rival a nation! Just in Xu Province alone, the copper coins we could pile up — higher than your Mount Yuqiong — could fill flat every inch of ground for a hundred kilometers around."

"Let me live, and all of that is yours!"

"Even I am yours."

Song Qiuyue begged with everything she had, her beautiful face traced with fresh tears.

She was already stunning — and dressed today in simple, pale clothes, there was a fragile, heartbreaking quality to her that under ordinary circumstances would have melted most men where they stood.

Fortunately, she was dealing with Chen Huangpi.

He had only two hearts.

One was his conscience — half-soft, half-hard. It stirred a little when he was doing something good, and could be pressed back down with the slightest effort.

The other was his killing intent — hard as steel. Once roused, it would see blood.

Chen Huangpi looked at Song Qiuyue's display and shook his head inwardly.

He was not an unreasonable person.

The agreement had been written down in black and white, clear as day.

No money — pay with your life.

If she couldn't produce the money now and didn't want to die, she should have proposed an alternative form of compensation from the very beginning.

Though — he had already shown that kind of leniency once, with Granny Tang and the remnants.

If he went soft too often, his goodwill would lose all its value.

With that thought, Chen Huangpi shook his head and said: "You're not worth much. What use would I have for you?"

"Chen Huangpi, you're still young."

"You don't understand what a woman is worth."

"Let me live, and you can do with me whatever you please."

Song Qiuyue said words that made her want to sink through the floor in shame. Steeling herself, she reached up with slender fingers to the thin silk ribbon tied at her chest.

She had dressed with a certain design in mind.

One gentle tug on that ribbon, and everything would be revealed.

"You're very strange," Chen Huangpi said, genuinely puzzled. He turned to the brass oil lamp and asked: "Huang Er, what do you see?"

"I'm looking!"

The brass oil lamp's eyes went wide, determined not to miss a single detail.

Song Qiuyue saw this.

She let out a bitter laugh, abandoned all pretense, took hold of the ribbon at her chest — and pulled down sharply.

Just at that moment, Chen Huangpi abruptly frowned and turned to look toward the outer gates of the temple.

The Pure Immortal Temple was not large — nothing like the vast Old Temple that emerged at night — but it held a main hall, a side hall, guest quarters, an alchemy chamber, a kitchen, several storerooms lined with Daoist scriptures, and a front hall with an entrance gate. By any ordinary measure, it was many times larger than a typical temple.

At this moment, several dozen cultivators dressed in the same manner as Zhao Hai came rushing in — as if fleeing for their lives.

They soared through the air.

So fast the naked eye could barely track them.

Like wind, like lightning.

In the blink of an eye they were inside the temple gates, immediately channeling their energy to call out:

"Miss, are you inside this temple?"

"Miss, miss…"

"I'm here! I'm here!"

Song Qiuyue's expression blazed with sudden hope — surely her uncle had received the deities' plea for help and sent people to rescue her.

And for now, that strange Daoist priest seemed to be absent.

Perhaps there was a real chance of escape.

But in the next breath, as those several dozen cultivators came into full view, the elation drained from Song Qiuyue's face like cold water poured over her head, and she felt no joy at all.

"Miss, we finally found you."

"The Hundred Thousand Mountains — it was terrifying. The white mist — the white mist was terrifying."

"Something was inside the mist. Something horrible. Horrible!"

The several dozen cultivators were trembling, knees shaking.

Every last one of them had had the living daylights scared out of them.

The matter of the migrants was of the gravest importance — there could be no carelessness. By rights, they should have arrived here at first light. But the white mist they had walked into the night before had been something beyond imagination.

It swallowed everything. Nothing was spared.

Before the deities could even act, a voice had risen from within the mist — a voice that made every hair on every person's body stand on end.

"Human qi — human qi!"

The voice was absolutely frenzied.

And then everyone saw him.

An old Daoist priest stepped out of the mist. He wore white robes embroidered with scattered red plum blossoms, hemmed in black at the edges.

The moment he appeared, he drew in a vast, single breath aimed at every deity present.

The incense power of forty deities condensed into one great column of smoke and poured directly into that terrifying old priest's mouth.

What followed looked like a fit of convulsions.

His white robes suddenly shifted to purple.

Then he swept a sleeve toward the nearly ten thousand common folk surrounding them — and every single one of them vanished on the spot.

"Second, I won't let you eat your fill!"

But even as those words left his mouth, the robes went white again.

"First, you're terrible!"

The old priest bellowed in a frenzy: "I want to eat people — I want to eat! You won't let me eat because you're afraid I'll grow more powerful, and then you'd have to bow and scrape in front of me. You just can't stand to lose."

The next instant, the robes switched back to purple.

"You're the terrible one! Don't think I don't know what you're after. If you ate your fill, you'd definitely try to snatch little Huangpi the moment I let my guard down. I am a good master — I absolutely will not allow it!"

The old priest seemed to contain two warring wills, alternating with maddening speed. The robes kept flicking between white and purple.

Until finally, one side turned white and the other stayed purple — half and half.

Then the old priest's head tilted sideways, and from his neck a second head grew — identical to the first.

One head looked furious. The other looked deranged.

The deranged head said: "I'm the good one — you want to refine him into a pill, you're the worst!"

The furious head said: "I haven't managed to do it yet — I'm not bad right now. But you want to eat little Huangpi every single day. You've always been bad!"

"You're talking nonsense — I love little Huangpi deeply. I am his good master!"

"Lies. You only make porridge, and I make offerings. I am the good master!"

Suddenly both heads turned at the same time to look at the assembled cultivators and deities.

"You — tell us. Who is little Huangpi's good master?"

The cultivators all cried out in unison: "It's you — it's First Master! You are little Huangpi's good master!"

The deities all cried out in unison: "Nonsense! There is only one good master for little Huangpi, and that's Second Master!"

And so the two heads, each controlling their own faction, went back and forth, accusing one another, shouting insults, dragging each other's names through the mud.

It went on all through the night.

Only when dawn broke did the cultivators and deities regain their freedom.

And then they had fled, as fast as their feet would carry them, until they found Song Qiuyue.

Except.

Song Qiuyue was not their savior.

They were hers.

"Do any of you have money?"

"Money?"

The cultivators exchanged glances and shook their heads in unison.

"Then why did you come?"

Song Qiuyue exploded in fury: "Get out — all of you, get out! This lady is half dead already — you might as well die too! Die! Every last one of you just die!"

"Miss, why would you say something like that?"

The cultivators reflexively looked up — then immediately dropped their heads back down, faces stricken with alarm.

What had they seen?

They had seen Song Qiuyue half-undressed, tears running down her face, as if she had been assaulted and humiliated.

This was a daughter of a great noble house. A person of the highest standing.

She had Zhao Hai and the other cultivators to guard her, and sixty deities escorting her — who in the world would dare? Were they not afraid to die?

"You shouldn't have come!"

Song Qiuyue shut her eyes in despair.

She had thought these were the rescue party sent by her teacher. Instead, it turned out to be the migrant escort that had left before her, nearly at the same time.

The migrants themselves — she could not care less about them now.

But the forty deities with the escort had been drained so thoroughly that their incense power was barely detectable.

Not that even full incense power would have mattered against that bizarre old Daoist priest — it would have been ash in a single breath. But something was still better than nothing.

Seeing Song Qiuyue speak of nothing but money with every word, one of the cultivators couldn't help himself: "Miss, money is for common folk. We are all Nascent Soul cultivators — if we want something, an ordinary person will offer it gladly. We have no use for that kind of crude material thing."

"Crude material thing?"

Song Qiuyue burst into laughter that verged on madness. "The thing that could buy this lady's life is what you call a crude material thing?"

"Without money I die. With money I live!"

At those words, Chen Huangpi nodded in agreement: "Correct. If you can't produce the money, not only will your miss die — every cultivator in the guest quarters dies too."

"How dare you!"

One of the cultivators surged with fury, on the verge of shouting at him.

But before he could get the words out, Song Qiuyue slapped him across the face from across the room with a burst of qi.

"Shut your mouth!"

The cultivator pressed his cheek in stunned disbelief, lowering his head at once.

"This subordinate deserves to die ten thousand deaths!"

"Your dying does nothing for me."

Song Qiuyue's breathing came in short, sharp bursts. She said with desperate fury: "Money. What this lady needs is money. Enough to pile up into two great mountains!"

"Copper coins!"

"Yes, copper coins."

Song Qiuyue stepped in front of the cultivators and begged without any trace of dignity: "Think of something — can you get me that many copper coins? This lady will ask her uncle to give you official posts. To make you deities. Whatever you want!"

She had gone somewhat frantic.

Like someone who had fallen headfirst into an obsession with money.

The cultivators looked at each other helplessly.

None of them understood what on earth had happened.

Then one of them spoke up: "Miss — now that I think of it, I remember back when I was still in the Qi Refining stage, I used to carry some copper coins on me."

He patted the seed bag hanging at his waist.

A string of copper coins flew out.

Song Qiuyue grabbed them with both hands, trembling with excitement, and held them out to Chen Huangpi: "I'll repay part of the money first. May I have a little more time for the rest?"

Before the words had even fully left her mouth, a blade of sword qi slashed toward her outstretched hands.

Blood sprayed.

Two slender, pale hands dropped to the ground.