Volume 4, Chapter 178 – Clamor

That night, the wild wind gathered up the noise of high summer and blew the heat and racket of the streets so high that even the tops of the outlying hills could hear it.

On the summit of one of those hills, Senior Sister Qin, that is, Qin Yuchen, stood there with a sword case on her back, staring at the lights below the mountain, her body as motionless as a statue.

After standing in the wind for a while, she turned and headed farther up the mountain. Following a narrow path for some distance, she soon found an ancient, unadorned temple before her.

This mountain was called Heshen Mountain.

This somewhat dilapidated temple was a mountain god temple.

It was said to have been built seven or eight hundred years ago. The deity enshrined within was a newly ascended minor god of the wilds and hills, manifested from a tiger demon.

The ancients had worshiped mountain gods with great sincerity. Inside the temple was not only a clay idol of the mountain god with a tiger’s head and human body, but also a neatly arranged row of altar tables beside it, with bronze burners used for sacrificial rites still resting on them.

Senior Sister Qin had not known any of this beforehand. The reason she knew so much now was because a stone stele at the temple entrance bore an inscription that briefly explained its history.

But Great Yu had already entered “modern society.” People still retained some awe toward strange powers and spirits, yet they no longer needed a mountain god’s protection to ensure good hunting. So the temple had gradually declined. By now, it no longer even had a caretaker, and only beggars and drifters occasionally stayed there for the night.

Senior Sister Qin stepped into the temple, passed by the clay idol, and entered the rear hall, where she saw a gaunt old man in a white robe sitting upright.

The old man had white hair and beard, relaxed brows, and a sheathed longsword laid across his knees. In both hands he held a mobile phone, carefully reading the text on its screen.

Looking at the old man, Senior Sister Qin’s gaze wavered slightly.

She removed the sword case from her back and took out a roast chicken and a jug of wine from one of its compartments. She cut up the chicken, arranged it neatly on a washed clay dish, and set it properly in front of the old man.

The old man did not move his face at all. He merely freed one hand to take a piece of roast chicken, ate a single bite, and did not touch it again.

“Jia’s Roast Chicken… a specialty delicacy of Tongyun Circuit.”

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“Eating it again today, the taste really is quite different from the one in my memory.”

But at that moment, Senior Sister Qin said, “That’s because you trained the emotions out of yourself with the sword. The state of mind you have today is no longer what it was back then. Without even that state of mind, how could the experience possibly still be the same?”

“Heh heh…” The old man gave a dry laugh.

Even his smile was extremely strange. He was clearly making the motion of smiling, yet his eyes still looked cold and emotionless, enough to make one break out in gooseflesh.

“I know you resent me.” He tapped the clay dish with a fingernail. “You can eat these too.”

“After all, you have neither been tempered by the Dao-Void lightning tribulation nor cultivated to the Core Realm on the Path of Qi. You still cannot go without the grains of the mortal world.”

“Mixing pills with more meat will help you build more strength.”

“And one more thing.” He looked at the small jug of wine set to the side.

“Don’t bring me this again in the future.”

He would have been better off not saying it. The moment he did, Senior Sister Qin’s eyes immediately reddened.

Yet she said nothing. She merely wiped her face and ran out in a rush.

“Stubborn mule.” The old man shook his head, and the false smile on his face gradually disappeared.

“You’ve already stepped onto the path of cultivation, and yet you still think all day about human warmth and coldness. That’s a serious flaw of temperament…”

“But that’s just as well.” He drew back his gaze.

“It is precisely because that flaw is so great that once understanding comes, your progress will be faster too.”

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On careful thought, the other him, Qin Wuyang, had accepted Senior Sister Qin as a disciple not only because her talent truly was exceptional, but also because her background was simply too tragic.

Her family had fallen into ruin. Her father was a gambler. Forced by her mother, she was sold into slavery.

Four short phrases were not enough to describe even a tenth of her suffering.

She was a child who had suffered betrayal after betrayal, yet still refused to completely cast off emotion and numb herself. Qin Wuyang had probably felt that she resembled his former self, and that was what moved him to take her as his disciple.

Then let this final thread of feeling be severed by my own hand.

Ten minutes later, Senior Sister Qin returned. She saw that neither the wine jug nor the food had been touched, but the old man himself had already vanished.

She curled her lip and walked over on her own, but rather than immediately clearing the food away, she simply sat cross-legged on the empty rush mat opposite him and began eating meat and drinking wine in the moonlight.

What she did not know was that at that very moment, on the mountain behind the temple, the old man stood proudly atop a peak with his back turned to an uninvited guest.

“You’ve grown thinner and frailer than I remember.”

Wu Mengzi stepped forward a few paces, his figure appearing in the moonlight as he looked at the person ahead of him and spoke in a calm voice.

Receiving no reply, he was not surprised. He merely spoke with faint reminiscence. “Compared to that warm and open-hearted Qin Wuyang, this version of you is the one I find more memorable.”

The white-browed old man spoke plainly. “If you’ve come to plead the Emperor’s case, then you can leave right now.”

“I was thinking the same thing myself,” Wu Mengzi admitted frankly. Then he walked up beside him and stood shoulder to shoulder, both of them looking out over the sea of clouds below.

“Of the three major divisions, aside from Tongyun Division, where Qingping and Shenming have risen, our Yaoyu Dao lineages in the other two divisions were utterly routed.”

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“Suzhen Dao intends to withdraw from the tournament,” Wu Mengzi said.

“His Majesty’s meaning is this: to knowingly do what cannot be done is neither wisdom nor courage.”

“The court has probably uncovered some intelligence and intends, at the very moment the martial meet ends, to formally let go and allow the contradictions within the Demon Court to erupt.”

“Well, Brother Chu?” He looked again at the ‘fellow cultivator’ beside him.

“Rather than walking a road with no future all the way to its end, why not preserve a useful body for the time being and wait for the winds and clouds to shift before seeking another opportunity?”

The white-browed old man said expressionlessly, “That is your opportunity, not mine.”

Hm?

Wu Mengzi froze for a moment, his brows drawing tight, not quite understanding the deeper meaning of the words.

The white-browed old man added, “My opportunity is right here.”

“…It is now.”

“I did expect that would be your answer.” Wu Mengzi shook his head. “But hearing it for real still leaves me feeling a bit regretful.”

“Then I wish you great fortune in war.”

He cupped his hands toward the white-browed old man in salute.

“If you can kill Bai Zhixing before the final road closes, then you will not have failed… His Majesty’s many years of careful cultivation!”

With that, Wu Mengzi vanished with a gust of night wind, leaving the white-browed old man alone before the sea of clouds.

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…

Wu Mengzi left Tongyun Circuit directly.

He flew some distance through the night when all at once he felt the heavens flare bright. Blazing sunlight pierced through the darkness and shone down, turning the vast mountains and rivers below into a sight out of myth.

One moment earlier, Wu Mengzi had still been relaxing his brows, his heart caught by that beautiful scenery. The next moment, his expression changed in shock, and he dropped swiftly downward.

Almost the instant his figure vanished, a tear suddenly split open in the radiant sky, in the midst of that light and shadow. A dragon-like demonic beast, its body horribly rotted in many places, poked its snout through and emerged. It howled as it circled the area, refusing to leave no matter what.

Seeing the demonic dragon about to descend, Wu Mengzi grew even more tense.

And just then, the air was ripped open with a crashing sound by immense force, revealing an irregular black hole a hundred meters across.

Whoosh!

From inside the black hole sprang a gigantic pitch-black hand with eight fingers. It seized the demonic dragon like a loach between fingers and instantly dragged it into the hole.

Only after quite some time had passed, after the opening and crack in the void had both been repaired by the primary order, did Wu Mengzi finally reveal himself again, trembling slightly.

“The influence of Loss of Order has grown worse again.” He frowned.

“I didn’t understand back then why that one made such a decision, but now it seems her judgment was the correct one.”

The tribulation struggle truly was too dangerous.

At the very least, for the first great war that was destined to begin, Yaoyu had no qualification to take part.