Volume 5, Chapter 61 – Direction

Maozhou, Zhennan.

Yu Daoyong was resting in a teahouse, taking the chance to savor this rare tranquility, when he suddenly saw a blur before his eyes. A black-clad young man with a cold, severe air sat down across from him with a sword on his back, then very naturally poured himself a cup of tea as well.

Unlike Yu Daoyong, who sipped slowly and savored every mouthful, he treated tea as nothing more than a way to quench his thirst. After draining the cup, he even added a malicious review. “Not as good as the tea leaves you used to have.”

“No matter how fine the tea leaves are, giving them to you is still a criminal waste.” Yu Daoyong shook his head, feeling that Li Huiran was the very picture of “extreme pragmatism.”

He still looked like the same youth he had been back then, wearing a Daoist robe with his hair tied up. He had an otherworldly bearing, yet somehow made it natural for other people to overlook him.

“You sent her back?”

After the opening pleasantries, Yu Daoyong smoothly turned to the main topic. “I told you before, didn’t I? Sending her back is sending her to her death.”

“She insisted on going.” Li Huiran narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t have been able to stop her.”

“Someone could have.” Yu Daoyong pulled a long smoking pipe from his sleeve and pointed its tip toward a particular direction outside the shop. “It’s not even that far away. Did it never occur to you to ask Di Xiang for help?”

“Zhu Qingluo doesn’t want to see Di Xiang.” Li Huiran shook his head again. “If she senses even the slightest sign that you want to ask Di Xiang for help, she definitely won’t see you again.”

“A knot in the heart, huh.” Yu Daoyong raised his brows. “That really is the sort of thing only the person themselves can untie.”

After drinking tea for a while, Yu Daoyong asked again, “Then what are you thinking?”

If he remembered right, he had once said that after the Sacred Lord returned, he would definitely no longer be the same as before, and that going back to the Sacred Court might not be a good idea. It would be better to slip away and live freely and at ease. Li Huiran had dismissed that whole line of thought with utter disdain at the time.

Yu Daoyong had thought he would go suffer right alongside Zhu Qingluo. Yet unexpectedly, he had come back instead.

Why? Yu Daoyong was curious.

“Of course it’s for the Path of Qi.” A gleam flashed through Li Huiran’s eyes. “I believe qi methods are the true future.”

Here he goes again.

Yu Daoyong pointed a finger at him across the table, not even knowing what to say anymore.

This junior of his, in modern terms, could not be described by “extreme pragmatism” alone. He also carried labels like “eliminationism” and “evolutionism.” He belonged to the type that believed, “Whatever is right is right, and as long as it can prove it is right, then I will believe in it.”

Back then, he thought Dao-Void Methods were the future, so he joined the Sacred Court without the slightest hesitation.

Now he thought the Path of Qi and qi methods were the future, so he had turned his back on the Sacred Court without the slightest hesitation.

His motives were so simple that they became hard to judge.

“What exactly are you thinking?” Yu Daoyong still did not understand. “The Sacred Lord said his disappearance back then was because he had been trapped in the ‘Void Years.’ If that’s true, then he must have gained some new insight in there. Aren’t you curious what it was?”

“Judging by the result of Di Xiang’s northern campaign, Fang Yang lost and Di Xiang won.” Li Huiran sneered at that sort of praise. “The loser has no right to flaunt any psychological superiority before a saint. That clash is enough to prove the excellence of qi methods.”

Yu Daoyong frowned. “Has it ever occurred to you that the one who is excellent is Di Xiang, not qi methods? If it were you cultivating them instead, you wouldn’t be able to reach that level.”

“But they are certainly better than the road we are on now.” Li Huiran shook his head again, thoroughly impervious to reason.

“And the Blood Lord?” Yu Daoyong asked.

Rеаԁ оո KatRеaԁіոɡСаfе

Li Huiran still shook his head. “Still not the equal of Di Xiang.”

“The remnants of Blood Soul Heaven have put together some mysterious thing. According to the testimony of those demon kings, it is called the ‘Demon Lord,’ and it is suspected to have reached the ‘ultimate limit of wisdom.’” Yu Daoyong tapped the empty air outside with his pipe. “What about that, then?”

Li Huiran smiled contemptuously. “Trash not worth even half of Di Xiang.”

Well.

Yu Daoyong surrendered.

He felt that his former colleague had completely become a Xia Emperor stan.

His arrogance was as sharp as ever, but now there was one exception to it: Di Xiang.

“Let’s go.” Li Huiran rose to his feet, ready to leave.

“Hey, hey?” Yu Daoyong was caught flat-footed, and only followed after paying the bill.

“No, wait, where are you going?”

“To seek the Dao from Di Xiang.”

“That directly?”

Li Huiran stopped, turned back, and sized the youth up with a strange look.

“You knew I would definitely do this.” He spoke each word separately and clearly to the youth. “Otherwise, you would not have been waiting for me here.”

After saying that, he ignored Yu Daoyong completely. His figure flashed, and he vanished.

“Your reactions are quicker than before, at least…” Yu Daoyong smiled.

“Ah, but I actually wanted to spend a little more time looking at these high-rises and towers…”

He lifted his head and swept his gaze over half of Zhennan’s streetscape. Then his own figure blurred, and he too went off in pursuit of his former colleague.

At the same time.

Pilgrimage Mountain.

This mountain stood in the farthest north, hanging right on the edge of civilization. Its elevation definitely exceeded ten thousand meters, though no one had ever precisely measured by how much.

It had existed even before the first year of Zhengyuan, and had long been the highest snow mountain in the region. The local indigenous people called it “Yachijili,” meaning “the holy place that connects heaven and earth.” Every year they came to worship at the sacred mountain, and they once developed a distinctive civilization around it.

Unfortunately, when the Void Tribulation descended and the tides rampaged, those indigenous people failed to withstand the first shock. The old villages and hunters at the foot of the mountain had vanished without a trace. Later arrivals built a city here instead, making the surrounding area more and more prosperous.

At the summit, past mountain paths buried under snow and sealed in ice, there stood a palace at the peak of a solitary, aloof ice spire, built from mountain rock quarried and stacked on the spot.

The palace was not large, and its interior decoration was exceedingly austere. It did, however, carry something of the flavor of Daoist purity and bitter cultivation.

Fang Yang sat alone in the rear courtyard of the palace. Behind him was a pavilion; before him, a sheer cliff and great rolling banks of snow mist.

Read оո КαtRеаⅾіոgCαfe

“Master!”

A faint call suddenly came through the wind and snow.

As the newcomer pushed out of the storm, the figure of a young Daoist boy emerged. It was Qingjiang, Fang Yang’s favorite disciple.

Qingjiang first looked worriedly over his master’s condition. Once he judged it acceptable, he asked, “Master, Zhu Qingluo, the former Hall Master of Rebirth Hall, has returned. Do you want to go see her?”

“Zhu Qingluo…”

Fang Yang slowly opened his eyes, a thoughtful look appearing on his face.

“White-Ginseng Spirit Fox… so that is it. She is a descendant of Zhu Feng.”

“I won’t go.” Fang Yang glanced at Qingjiang’s neck.

A string of Buddhist beads hung there.

“There is no meaning in it.”

“She should have already left by now.”

“Huh?” Qingjiang froze.

“She indirectly saved your life once.” Fang Yang closed his eyes again.

“I will not kill her.”

“Tell the others they do not need to pursue her. Let her go.”

This…

Qingjiang was utterly baffled.

News about Hall Master Zhu had already spread all through the Sacred Court. More or less everyone knew that she had devoured and possessed her own original body.

The choice she and the other Hall Masters had made during the Void Tribulation was difficult to judge. Pang Tiandao’s actions had certainly been hateful, but the two Heavenly Stem Precious Jades he gathered and used had also played a crucial role in helping Master escape his confinement.

But setting aside the merits and faults on that side of things, “possessing one’s original body” was a supreme taboo.

That was a rule acknowledged in every land of cultivation.

For a split body to awaken independent consciousness was a supreme taboo.

For it to awaken independently and then turn around and devour its master was an even greater taboo.

No matter how one looked at it, she ought to have been captured and executed. Yet she was just being let go?

And to be honest, Qingjiang had not understood the earlier part either.

What did he mean, “She should have already left”?

Rеаd оn KatRеαԁіոɡСαfe

And what did he mean, “She saved me once”?

I have never met her before.

“She only came to see what my attitude would be.” Fang Yang revealed a faint smile. “You could say she came with the resolve to die. That at least deserves to be called admirable courage.”

“To be frank, for the things she has done, I absolutely should execute her.”

“But a karmic entanglement is involved here.”

“If I kill her, then face Di Xiang afterward, my heart will crack.”

Qingjiang still did not quite understand what he meant.

But Qingjiang had one good trait: even when he did not understand, he did not ask too many questions.

Whatever Fang Yang said, he did.

“When you go down the mountain, besides stopping those people and telling them not to pursue her, place a call to the West for me.”

Fang Yang instructed him.

“Tell them I have an important matter to ask about, and that I hope for a reply as soon as possible.”

Such grave wording?

Then it was probably to discuss how to deal with the Xia Emperor.

Qingjiang frowned, aware that the matter was of great importance. He bowed to Fang Yang, accepted the order, and immediately went down the mountain.

“Cough, cough, cough…”

Only after Qingjiang disappeared did Fang Yang finally cough, as if he had been suppressing it all along. His aura seemed somewhat weak.

“Qi-power… Qi-Origin… sword-qi divine force.”

“She has truly stepped into this realm.”

“I know, Yuan Qi.”

“We cannot give her any more time…”

…

Elsewhere, in Snow City at the foot of the mountain.

Zhu Qingluo stood alone in the small square outside the Sacred Court hall gates, holding a white fox in her arms.

As time passed, she opened her eyes beneath the nervous stares of the Sacred Court disciples around her, then suddenly turned and strode away.

“Stop!”

Reаԁ οո КαtRеaԁіոɡСаfe

One of the disciples finally dared to speak.

“Wicked fiend… are you trying to run?”

They all knew that the Zhu Qingluo before them was in fact the split body of the true Hall Master of Rebirth Hall, and they were deeply afraid of her existence.

A split body possessing the original body. What a horrifying story.

None of them dared get close. What if she possessed them too?

“This is right before your own gates, and yet no one dares block my path.”

Zhu Qingluo smiled.

“So the Sacred Court of old has fallen this far.”

“Monster! You’re talking nonsense!”

The disciple, indignant, shouted again, “Since the Sacred Lord returned and established the Saint Mountain Dojo, my Sacred Court has flourished more and more! Just the newly appointed Hall Masters and Patrol Wardens alone number more than fifty! What right does an old-school fiend like you have to speak recklessly about us!”

Zhu Qingluo could not be bothered to waste words on him. A green blur rose behind her, as if some long object had swept out. It slashed through the air and struck at him with a sword blow.

“You’re asking to die!”

The disciple flew into a rage. He drew a gorgeous longsword, exquisite in workmanship and inlaid with cold jade, and raised it directly against the green blur.

Bang-clang!

“Ah!”

After the crisp impact, he screamed and was sent flying in an arc by a single sword strike.

“An ignorant fool.”

Zhu Qingluo withdrew her sidelong glance and swept her eyes across the whole square.

This time, there were barely any left who dared bark at her.

“He won’t kill me… because he doesn’t dare.”

“He is afraid… He can feel fear too?”

“Ah…”

With a sigh, she turned around and continued on her journey back.

Her kin were not here.

The root of the White Ginseng could not be left in a place like this.