Volume 4, Chapter 156 – Court Deliberations

Li Huiran was indeed very displeased.

Spending the day tracking information from the three major divisions, on top of wrangling with that old hag Xin Yao, had already been vexing enough. Yet once night fell, he was still being bothered by this wretched business.

He immediately returned to the guest room the Buddhist temple had arranged for him, shut the door, slapped on a sealing strip, took out a Black Venerable Card rimmed in silver, and logged directly into the Venerable Net from there.

Li Huiran was one of the Demon Court’s Heaven-Patrol. That status meant he did not need to use the same channels as ordinary users of the Venerable Net, but could instead contact the people in charge directly through the Black Venerable Card.

After waiting for a while, his soul and consciousness felt a tugging sensation, as though the Black Venerable Card and the Venerable Net had pulled him into a long, narrow passage. He traveled through it for a time that felt either brief or endless, and at last poked his head out from the other end.

This was a misty immortal hall.

Cloud and fog covered the ground, the sort of decorative effect mortals liked to contrive in their palaces.

But Li Huiran knew these sights were not artificially made. They were natural. If an ordinary mortal could inhale even a breath of this cloud qi condensed from Baize Immortal Dew, it was hard to say whether their allotted lifespan would be extended, but all their chronic illnesses would certainly be driven out, and their body would immediately recover to health.

“Well, if it isn’t Great Patrol Warden Li.” A lazy voice rang out in the hall. “If I remember right, weren’t you sent off to oversee tournament order? What wind blew you here?”

“And you still have the nerve to ask me that!” Li Huiran snorted coldly, stepping out of the clouds and glaring with his hands clasped behind his back at the Daoist in front of him.

The Daoist was extremely short, looking no more than twelve or thirteen. He wore a Daoist robe patterned in black and orange blocks, embroidered with golden Dao-script, and cloud-flow dark shoes on his feet. His face was that of an oversized child, and he was grinning at the visitor.

Still grinning!

At the sight, Li Huiran’s expression darkened even further.

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You shameless lot. All the face I’ve fought to win for the Sacred Court out there will be squandered by you in no time at all!

“Brother Li, don’t be angry.” Seeing he was about to explode, the youthful Daoist finally switched to a gentler tone. “Getting angry causes wrinkles… ah, what I mean is, you might lose your candidacy one more time.”

“You think I care about that sort of thing?” Li Huiran said in a sinister voice. “One damned test takes decades. They talk about accumulating strength, but I’ve got no interest in the position of Hall Master! Whoever wants to sit in that seat can go right ahead!”

“But Brother Li,” the youthful Daoist said seriously, “it’s precisely because too many people think the same way you do that our faction keeps being pushed into a passive position.”

“You know it as well as I do, don’t you? We’ve got so many treasure halls sitting empty, waiting to be filled. The more seats a side competes for, the greater its voice. Brother Li can’t possibly fail to understand that, can he~”

“What you mean is…” Li Huiran frowned. “This is Yuanxu Hall stirring up trouble again!”

The way he said it made it a statement rather than a question. He had plainly already decided who the culprit was.

“Exactly.” The youthful Daoist nodded vigorously. “Yuanxu Hall, Qianjie Hall, Guangze Hall, Luochen Hall… you know perfectly well who the people involved are. In truth, it’s nothing more than the old story playing out again.”

Li Huiran fell silent for a moment, then said, “I had thought they would at least care a little about appearances…”

“That was before,” the youthful Daoist cut in.

“When the Void Tribulation was still far from the primary world, they had the patience to put on a show.”

“But now the Void Tribulation is at most only a few years away from the primary world. There’s no need for them to keep pretending. Naturally, they’re scrambling with all their strength for opportunities and supporting the lineages they favor.”

“Is one Holy Law really not enough for them to study?” Li Huiran demanded. “The Holy Law is so obscure, so profound, that even the power of a Venerable Saint cannot fully exhaust it. How could anyone neglect the root to chase the branches?”

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“That isn’t neglecting the root for the branches. It’s adding flowers to brocade,” the youthful Daoist said, sounding almost as if he were defending their enemies. “Brother Li understands this too. The Holy Law is simply… too abstruse and too powerful.”

That was true enough.

Li Huiran said nothing.

Precisely because the Holy Law was so powerful, even the current Transmission Hall could only be said to be “temporarily occupying the pool-seat” and “transmitting the Law on the Saint’s behalf.”

If one really spoke of qualifications, that person fell far short.

After thinking it over, Li Huiran asked, “There is still no news of the Holy Lord?”

“None.” The youthful Daoist shook his head. “I’ve been searching all along, but I’ve found nothing.”

“And Han Feng? What has he been doing lately?”

“He’s trying to work out how to add new restrictions to the Black Venerable Cards.” The youthful Daoist laughed. “There are always people who bypass his ‘attachment’ and act on their own, so he’s unhappy about that too. Come to think of it, he’s probably gone to gather herbs in the mortal fields.”

By the time they had talked this far, most of Li Huiran’s anger had dissipated.

His present form looked hazy and blurred, half-transparent, clearly not his true body in person. That meant the time he had for questioning was precious.

So he turned back to the main issue. “For the dispute to spill outside the Court like this, they must be determined to defend the sacred weapon methods to the death.”

“That is understandable.” The youthful Daoist stroked his smooth bare chin as though it ought to have had a long beard there for him to stroke.

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“After all, with the Holy Lord missing, no matter how good the Holy Law is, if you can’t fully comprehend it, it doesn’t compare to working out a new method yourself.”

“As an adjunct?”

“Of course as an adjunct. The reason they’ve won so much support is precisely because sacred weapon methods can never threaten the position of the Holy Law.” The youthful Daoist shook his head as he spoke. “It’s a ready-made fruition. Who could fail to be tempted?”

“And you?” Li Huiran narrowed his eyes. “Why haven’t you gone over to their side?”

“I’m too old… old enough to resist new things.”

The youthful Daoist sighed wistfully.

“I’d rather just hug the Holy Law and keep studying it. Sacred weapons or not, making your weapon come alive and talk… that sort of thing… I, for one, do not want my Heaven-Monitoring Treasure Mirror to know what I use it to look at every day.”

Li Huiran frowned. He was beginning to regret having gone on with this conversation for so long.

“If you lot have disputes, settle them however you please.”

With a sharp flick of his sleeve, he turned and strode away.

“Just make sure you never again issue contradictory edicts like this!”

“Fight among yourselves if you must, but do not make the whole world laugh at us!”

His figure faded and vanished, clearly returning whence it had come, withdrawing all of his qi from the hall.

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“A joke, is it?”

The youthful Daoist raised his brows.

“But I think if something like this is suppressed and handled quietly, it’ll explode even harder later on.”

That Li Huiran—such excellent natural gifts, yet no interest at all in Hall Master inheritance. Always saying he could carve out his own path and did not want to be shackled here by the thought patterns of those who came before.

Still young, in the end.

That kind of spirit was youth itself.

Unlike an old fellow like me—my whole specialty is eating for free and waiting for death.

“Ah? I forgot to ask him how that little girl who created the qi methods is doing now.”

The youthful Daoist took out a large jade token and fiddled with it. Suddenly his eyes widened as he spotted a changing Dao pattern.

“There’s actually a message from Luochen Hall too?”

“My, my, after all these years, they’re still going to the Douyun Sea to look for that person…”