𝙋𝙧𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙛𝙪𝙡
____________
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG before Wei Wuxian discovered that he might have made mistake this spotted donkey that he’d stolen away with was way too hard to
please.
It was a mere donkey, but all it would eat was fresh, tender grass that dripped with dew, and it would refuse to eat if the tip of the grass had yellowed even a little bit. When they passed by a farmhouse, Wei Wuxian stole a bit of straw to feed it after only chewing a couple of bites, it spat it out in disgust, and the sound of it was louder and clearer than when a human spat. If it didn’t eat well, then it would refuse to walk, throw tantrums, and kick its legs.
Wei Wuxian himself was nearly walloped many times. On top of that, its braying cry was remarkably horrible.
As a steed or as a beloved pet, it was utterly useless!
Wei Wuxian couldn’t help but miss his sword, which was most likely now hanging on some major clan leader’s wall as a trophy.
Pulling and dragging the donkey for all he was worth, he traveled down the rambling road.
He finally came to pass the large paddy field of a village. The sun was scorching. Next to the field ridge was a large locust tree, and the area beneath the tree was thick with green shade. There was also an old well, and the villagers had placed a bucket and a scoop next to it to provide relief to the thirst of passersby.
When the spotted donkey reached this place, it refused to walk a step farther. Wei Wuxian hopped down and patted its esteemed derriere.
“Well, aren’t you a pampered and noble little steed? And even harder to please than I am.”
The donkey snorted at him.
As they mucked around, a group approached from the crisscrossing paths in the distance.Those people carried handwoven bamboo baskets and wore cloth shirts and
straw shoes. They exuded the rustic air of the country from head to toe. There
was a round-faced young girl among them, somewhat delicately beautiful, but hardly notably so.
Perhaps they had also trekked for too long under the scorching sun, as they also wanted to come over for a drink of water and to stand under the shade. However, when they saw a kicking and screaming
spotted donkey tied to the tree,
accompanied by a disheveled, loose-haired
lunatic smeared with rouge and white powder, they didn’t dare come over.
Wei Wuxian had always considered himself a man who cherished beauty, so when he noticed their hesitation, he moved from his spot to give them space and went to bother the spotted donkey.
When that group saw he was harmless, they relaxed and walked over. Each of them was drenched in sweat and red in the face, fanning themselves and drawing water as they needed.
The girl sat by the well, and, seeming to know that Wei Wuxian had purposely yielded space, she smiled softly at him.
One of the men was holding a compass in his hands, and he gazed far into the
distance before looking back down, confused.
“How come the needle still won’t move,
even though we’re almost at the foot
of Mount Dafan?”
The carvings on that compass and its needle were both quite peculiar. It was
no ordinary compass: a Compass of Ill Winds wasn’t used to pathfind but rather to point out the whereabouts of nearby nefarious creatures.
Wei Wuxian knew that this meant he had come across one of the small, downtrodden clans of the countryside. Outside of the elite, affluent clans, there were also quite a number of these small, independent clans. Wei Wuxian thought perhaps that they had traveled here from the countryside to seek refuge with a large clan with which they had some familial relation. Or maybe they were out here to go on a Night Hunt.
The middle-aged man who was the group’s leader told the other man to go for his drink and commented,
“Is that compass of yours broken? I’ll give you a new one later. Mount Dafan is less than five kilometers away, so we can’t rest for too long. We’ve traveled all this way. It won’t be worth it if we slack off now and fall behind the others.”
It was a Night Hunt, as expected. Many cultivation clans, in their appreciation for refined elegance, called the act of traveling the world to exorcise evil
“hunting expeditions.” And because said evils often appeared at night, such activities were thus called Night Hunts.
There were numerous cultivation clans that had come and gone, and only a handful that had been able to make a name for themselves.
If an ordinary clan—one without generations of accumulated reputation to stand on—wanted to join the higher ranks and become famous, wanted to gain prestige and respect among the cultivation world, then they had to show tangible achievements.
Only when they hunted down ruthless
monsters or disaster-bringing malicious fiends did their words gain any weight.
These Night Hunts had originally been Wei Wuxian’s expertise, but he had been constantly on the move the past few days and had only managed to hunt down a handful of little devils from the few graves he’d broken into. He was in need of a band of tyrannical ghost generals to do his bidding, so he, too, decided to head to that “Rice Mountain” to try his luck. If there was one that proved useful, he’d capture it for his own use.
That group had finished their break and was ready to be on their way as well.
Before they left, the round-faced girl took out a half-green, barely red apple from the basket on her back and handed it to Wei Wuxian.
“For you.”
Wei Wuxian extended his hand to receive it with a happy grin, but the spotted donkey raised its head and bared its teeth to bite for it, so Wei Wuxian quickly snatched it up instead. Seeing how the donkey drooled for the little apple, an idea came to him. Upon finding a long branch and some fishing thread, he dangled the apple in front of the donkey. The spotted donkey smelled the sweet fragrance of the apple and craved it. With its head raised, it chased after that apple that dangled just barely out of reach. It ended up becoming faster
than all the renowned steeds Wei Wuxian had seen before, leaving them all in
the dust!
The donkey ran without stopping, and Wei Wuxian arrived at Mount Dafan before dark. It was only when he reached the foot of the mountain that he learned the “fan” in “Dafan” did not mean “rice” but instead “Brahma.” Seen from a distance, the shape of the mountain resembled that of a short, carefree,and content Buddha, hence its name. There was a small town at the foot of the mountain, and so it was called Fojiao Town, meaning “Buddha’s Foot.”
There were more cultivators gathered here than he imagined. It was an assembly of all sorts, a confusion of colors caused by the different uniforms of various clans and sects walking down the streets. For some reason, everyone appeared tense. Even at the sight of his wacky looks, no one seemed like they could spare a moment to mock him.
At the center of the long street, there were a bunch of cultivators gathered in
a serious discussion. It sounded like they were having quite a difference of opinions
Wei Wuxian could hear them far down the street. It was all right at first, but it somehow grew more and more heated.
“…I do not believe there are soul-eating beasts or fiends at all. There was clearly no activity on any azimuth of the Compass of Ill Winds.”
“If there aren’t, then how did seven townspeople lose their souls? They couldn’t possibly have all contracted the same disease? I’ve never heard of such an illness before!”
“Just because the Compass of Ill Winds doesn’t show something doesn’t mean
it’s not there! The most it can do is point in a general direction anyway. It’s not accurate enough to be fully trusted. Maybe there’s something nearby that’s
obstructing the needle?”
“Why don’t you think about who invented the Compass of Ill Winds? I’ve
never heard of anything that can interfere with the needle.”
“What are you trying to say, huh? What are you implying? Of course I know
the Compass of Ill Winds was created by Wei Ying, but it’s not like his creations
are perfect, so why are you stopping people from questioning it?”
“I didn’t say you can’t, and I didn’t say his creations are perfect either! No need to slander!”
And so their argument swerved in a different direction. Wei Wuxian giggled
and laughed as he rode past on his donkey. He wouldn’t have thought that, after so many years, he still stood strong and unfailing as a topic in cultivators’ verbal battles. He had a Wei of starting conflict, you might say. If there was evera vote on who had the most enduring popularity amongst all the clans, then he was the sure winner.
In all fairness, that cultivator wasn’t wrong. The Compass of Ill Winds that was in common use now was only an early version, so it was indeed not accurate
enough. He had started on refining it, but it wasn’t his fault that his good ol’ lair
had been toppled before that was done, so everyone would just have to deal
with it and continue using the fallible first edition.
Anyway, creatures that consumed flesh were mostly low-level—walking corpses, for example. Only refined, high-level monsters or spirits could consume and digest souls. Seven souls had been eaten in one go too, so it was no wonder many clans had assembled here. Since this Night Hunt’s prey was hardly insignificant in strength, it couldn’t be helped that the Compass of Ill Winds would run into issues.
Wei Wuxian pulled on the reins and hopped off the donkey, then grabbed the apple that had been dangling in front of it this entire way and tugged it down to its mouth.
“One bite. Only one bite… Bah! Are you trying to eat my entire hand in one
bite?!”
He took a couple of bites from the other side of the apple, then stuffed it back
into the spotted donkey’s mouth. As he was reflecting on how he’d fallen so low
as to share a single apple with a donkey, someone suddenly bumped into his back. He turned his head and saw it was a girl.
While she was the one who had bumped into him, she took no notice of him at all. Her eyes were unfocused as she gazed, fixated, in a certain direction with a smile on her face.
Wei Wuxian followed the azimuth of her gaze. In that direction was a dense
mountaintop. It was Mount Dafan.
All of a sudden, without warning, the girl started dancing in front of him.
This dance was feral and threatening, her arms flailing.
Wei Wuxian was taking great pleasure in watching the show, but just then, a woman came dashing over with her skirt lifted. She wailed as she hugged the girl.
“A-Yan, let’s go back, let’s go!”A-Yan fought her off.
The smile on her face, never having faded, carried a hair-raising sense of maternal affection, and she danced and pranced while that woman continued to chase after her around the streets, weeping as she went.
A street vendor on the side commented, “What a sin. A-Yan from Blacksmith
Zheng’s house escaped again.”
“It’s truly sad for her mom. A-Yan, A-Yan’s husband, and her own husband as
well… It’s not right at all.”
Wei Wuxian sauntered about, and from snatches of overheard conversation
on the streets, sorted out the strange affair that had happened here.
There was an old graveyard on Mount Dafan, and most of the ancestral graves of Fojiao Town’s people were located there. Sometimes, they also dug graves and placed wooden markers for unnamed corpses. Many months ago, there had been a stormy night where lightning crashed and thunder drummed, and after a night of being battered by torrential rain, a piece of land from the mountain slid and collapsed. This piece of land, more specifically, was the
graveyard.
Many of the old graves were destroyed, and several coffins were expelled from the earth. Then lightning struck, sending the coffin lids flying and charring black both the corpses and their coffins.
The people of Fojiao Town felt very uneasy at all this. They prayed for good
fortune and rebuilt the old graverrd in the hopes that would settle things.
Despite their efforts, since then, cases of people losing their souls began to frequently crop up in Fojiao Town.
The first one was a deadbeat.
This man was a penniless good-for-nothing,
spending his days in idleness. But since he always loved catching birds up on the
mountain, it just so happened that he got trapped on Mount Dafan the night of the landslide. He was scared half to death, but at least he was still alive.
The curious thing was that it didn’t take long after his return for him to suddenly get married. The wedding was conducted with great fanfare, and he declared his intent to do good from that day onward, to accumulate good fortune, and to live the rest of his life in peace.On his wedding night, he got blackout drunk and never got up after lying down in bed. The bride called to him, but he wouldn’t respond. It was only after pushing him that she discovered the groom had an empty stare, his body cold.
Aside from his breathing, he was no different than the dead. He lay like this,
neither eating nor drinking, for many days, then was finally buried in peace.
Pitiful was the bride who had only just been married, to be turned into a widow.
The second one was A-Yan from Blacksmith Zheng’s family. The girl had just gotten engaged when, the very next day, her future husband was killed by a jackal while hunting on the mountain. After learning of this, she was struck by the same affliction as had descended upon that deadbeat. Fortunately, she recovered from the soulless disease on her own after some time. However, it also caused her to become deranged, giggling as she danced outside in front of others.
The third one was A-Yan’s father,
Blacksmith Zheng. To date, there had now
been seven people who had fallen victim consecutively.
Wei Wuxian mulled this over. This was most likely a soul-eating fiend, not a
soul-eating beast.
Even though the difference was but one word, they were completely distinct
creatures. Fiends belonged to the ghost category, while beasts were of the
monster category. In his opinion, all this might be the fault of the old graveyard
that had collapsed from the tremors of the landslide. Once lightning struck
open the coffins, any ancient fiends that were resting within would be unleashed.
He’d be able to determine if this was really the case once he took a look at what the coffins were made of—and there were any remnants of seal talismans. However, the people of Fojiao Town must surely have reburied the charred coffins a long time ago, and also reburied the corpses anew, so there definitely wouldn’t be much evidence left.
He would have to take the trail that started from Fojiao Town in order to
properly scale the mountain, so Wei Wuxian leisurely treaded up the hill on his donkey.
After a while, he ran into a few people descending the mountain with gloomy
expressions. Some of them carried injuries on their faces, and they were talkingall at once. They all jumped in surprise when they ran into this donkey-rider with a face caked in hanged ghost makeup under the darkening skies, and they cursed as they went around him to hurry down the hill.
Wei Wuxian turned his head and wondered Could it be that the prey was too difficult to handle, and they were going back empty-handed? He slapped the donkey’s hip after a moment’s thought and trotted up the mountain.
That group groused and complained after his departure:
“I’ve never met anyone so unreasonable!”
“Why would the clan leader of such a big clan come here just to fight us over
a soul-eating fiend? He already killed plenty of those when he was younger, I’m
sure!”
“What can you do? He’s the sect leader. Of all the clans to offend, you don’t
offend the Jiang Clan, and of all the people to offend, you never offend Jiang
Cheng. Let’s just write it off as our bad luck, pack up, and get outta here.”
A torch would be necessary to continue into the mountain forest if the sky got
any darker. Wei Wuxian walked for a while and was quite surprised to not run
into many cultivators. Of all the clans that came, could it really be that half are
arguing theory in Fojiao Town, while the other half are like that group from
earlier? Trying, failing, and going back empty-handed?
Suddenly, a cry for help came from ahead.
“SOMEBODY!”
“HELP!”
There were both male and female voices, their cries full of panic and helplessness. It didn’t sound fake—even though nine times out of ten, cries for help in the wild were evil spirits out causing mischief, luring the ignorant into a trap.
Wei Wuxian, however, was thrilled.
The eviler the better! It had better be evil enough!
He urged the donkey to run toward where the voices were coming from, but when he arrived, there was nothing in sight. When he looked up, rather than any evil spirits or monsters, he saw the independent countryside clan he hadrun into previously by the field ridge. They were hanging from a tree, caught in a massive, shimmering gold net.
That middle-aged man had led the group to patrol and scout the forest area at first, but they hadn’t run into the prey they were hoping for. Instead, they stepped into the net trap some rich folk had set up and ended up hanging from the tree as they cried their grievances. They perked up when they saw someone had come but were immediately greatly disappointed to realize it was the lunatic. While the threads of this immortal-binding net were thin, the material was of the highest grade, durable and indestructible. Once caught, it didn’t matter if you were a human or a god, a ghost or spirit—you’d be trapped a
good while.
Unless, that is, the net was cut with an immortal device of an even higher grade. It’d be pointless to expect this lunatic to help them down. He probably didn’t even know what the net was.
Just as they were going to try to ask him to find help, there came the sound of
agile steps crinkling leaves, approaching swiftly. From within the pitch-black
woods there emerged a youth dressed in a light-colored jacket.
There was a vermillion mark dotted between the brows of this little young
master, and his features were so fine they were almost harsh. He was extremely
young—around the same age as Lan Sizhui, a mere adolescent. On his back, he
carried a quiver of arrows and a longsword shimmering with gold, and in his hand, there was a longbow. The embroidery on his robes was indisputably exquisite, swirling together into extraordinary white peonies.
The golden threads twinkled delicately in the night.
Wei Wuxian marveled inwardly. Rich!
This had to be a young master belonging to the Jin Clan of Lanling. Only this clan used the white peony as their insignia. By comparing themselves to the king of flowers, they implied they were kings among immortals. Dotting one’s forehead with cinnabar symbolized the conviction to open the doors to wisdom, allowing the vermillion light of eternity to shine upon the world.
This little young master had been about to shoot, but when he saw the immortal-binding net had only captured humans, disappointment flashed on his face, and he lost his patience.
“It’s you stupid idiots every time. Over four hundred immortal-binding nets, but it’s always the same: before they manage to catch any prey, dozens of them get wrecked by you lot!”
The same thought was still foremost in Wei Wuxian’s mind: Rich!
An immortal-binding net was already considerably expensive, and he’d still set up over four hundred of them in one go. As expected of the Jin Clan of Lanling—an even slightly smaller clan would have been reduced to poverty and ruin. However, to abuse the immortal-binding net like this to hunt indiscriminately was not a Night Hunt. This was clearly an act of driving others out in order to hoard the spoils. It appeared that the cultivators who retreated previously hadn’t done so because the prey was difficult but because these prestigious sects weren’t ones to be offended.
During the days he’d spent strolling along, and on account of his ravenous eavesdropping earlier in Fojiao Town,
Wei Wuxian had heard plenty of gossip
about the rises and falls within the cultivation world. As the final victor of the tangled war between cultivation clans that had spanned over a hundred years,
the Jin Clan of Lanling now led the clans and sects; the head of their clan was
even respectfully addressed as “Cultivation Chief.”
The Jin clan had always been haughty and enjoyed extravagance. In the span of years spent presiding high above the others, the clan had prospered and grown powerful, and their disciples were raised to dominate others without scruple. Inferior clans, no
matter how much they were humiliated, had no choice but to swallow it down.
Such a small cultivation house from the countryside could afford even less to offend them. This was why, although the boy’s words were harsh and the people hanging in the net turned red in the face at the abuse, they still didn’t dare argue back.
The middle-aged man said subserviently,
“Will the young master grant us the
favor of lowering us down?”
The youth was frustrated that his prey still hadn’t shown itself, so this country bumpkin was a perfect secondary target for venting his anger. He crossed his arms.
“Stay hanging there so you don’t wander around and hinder me again! Once Icatch the soul-eating beast, I’ll let you guys go, if I remember.”
If they really hung from that tree the entire night, unable to move, there
would be nothing they could do but have their souls sucked out if the thing
wandering Mount Dafan came upon them.
The round-faced girl who had given
Wei Wuxian an apple was terrified and wept out loud. Wei Wuxian was sitting cross-legged on the back of the spotted donkey, but when the donkey heard
her crying, its long ears twitched.
Suddenly, it leapt forth. It even let out a long bray when it did, and if not for that uniquely horrible sound, it would’ve appeared irresistibly heroic. It wouldn’t be idle flattery to call it a mighty young colt. Caught off guard, Wei Wuxian was thrown off its back and nearly broke his skull from the fall.
The spotted donkey’s broad head charged toward the youth, apparently convinced
that it could send the boy flying with a headbutt. The youth’s arrow was still
nocked in his bow, so he was ready to shoot it down.
Wei Wuxian didn’t want to go find a new ride so soon, so he pulled at the reins with all his might.
That youth took a glance at him and briefly appeared stunned before his
expression immediately turned into scorn. He pursed his lips.
“So, it’s you.”
That tone was two parts surprise and eight parts revulsion, making Wei Wuxian blink in confusion.
“What, you went crazy after getting kicked back to your old home? Look at
that ghastly painted face, I can’t believe they let you out!”
What was this incredible thing he’d just heard?!
Could it be…? Wei Wuxian slapped his own thigh. Could it be that Mo Xuanyu’s father was not some random small-time clan leader but the infamous
Jin Guangshan?!
Jin Guangshan had been the previous head of the Jin Clan of Lanling and had
long since passed on. This was a character with a long story. He’d had a fiercely
strict madam wife from an illustrious family and been notoriously afraid of her, but scared as he might’ve been, he still incessantly played around with other women. No matter how strict Madam Jin was, she couldn’t follow him aroundtwenty-four hours a day. He was relentless in his affairs, bedding women from distinguished ladies above to wild prostitutes below. And, while he loved womanizing and had a great number of illegitimate children, he was extremely fickle in love.
Once he grew tired of a woman, she’d be cast from his mind without any thought to responsibility. Of his many illegitimate children, only one had been outstanding enough to be recognized and taken back, and that was the current family head of the Jin Clan of Lanling, Jin Guangyao.
Furthermore, even the way Jin Guangshan died was an embarrassment. Old, but fully confident he was still robust, he’d fooled around with a bunch of women at once in order to challenge himself. However, he unfortunately overestimated his vitality and died during the orgy. This was simply too
embarrassing to speak of, so the Jin Clan of Lanling unanimously declared that the old sect leader had passed due to overexertion, and the rest of the clans, in
tacit understanding, all pretended not to know the full truth of the statement.
In any case, that was the real reason for his infamy.
Back during the Siege of the Burial Mound, Jin Guangshan’s contributions to the effort had come second only to Jiang Cheng’s. Now that Wei Wuxian had overtaken his illegitimate son’s body, he really didn’t know how this score should be settled.
The youth saw him zone out and grew annoyed.
“Get outta here! Just seeing
your face disgusts me. Damn cut-sleeve.”
In terms of seniority, Mo Xuanyu might have been this boy’s uncle or some
other elder. And yet he had to suffer such humiliation from a junior. Even if it
wasn’t for himself, as he was currently in Mo Xuanyu’s body, Wei Wuxian felt
he had a responsibility to humiliate the boy back.
So, he countered, “Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?”
Raging flames of fury flashed in the youth’s eyes. He pulled the longsword
from his back and glowered.
“What…did you say?”
The sword shimmered gold. It was clearly a rare, high-quality weapon that
would be out of many clans’ reach even if they hustled their entire lives.
Wei Wuxian studied it, fixated, and felt the sword appeared rather familiar. But he’dseen plenty of high-quality swords that glowed golden, so he didn’t think too deeply on it. He only twirled a small pouch in his hand.
This was a spirit-trapping pouch that he’d thrown together haphazardly a few days ago, using scraps of fabric he found.
The youth lunged at him, brandishing
his sword, and Wei Wuxian took a small piece of paper cut in the shape of a
human from the pouch. He dodged the attack, then slapped the paper onto the
other’s back.
The youth was already swift, but Wei Wuxian had plenty of experience in
tripping people and slapping talismans onto them, so he was faster. The youth felt his back go numb and heavy, then fell forward onto the ground involuntarily. The sword dropped to his side with a clang. He couldn’t get up, no matter how hard he tried; it was as if Mount Tai was sitting on top of him. More specifically, it was a ghost that had died of gluttony that clung to his back, crushing the breath out of him. While the little ghost was weak, it could easily take care of a brat like this.
Wei Wuxian picked up that sword, weighed it in his hand, and then swung at the immortal-binding net, snapping it.
The cultivation family dropped to the ground in sorry confusion, then ran away in a hurry without a word.
The round-faced girl seemed to want to
express thanks, but her elder dragged her away, afraid that the young master Jin would hold an even deeper grudge should she say one more word.
The youth on the ground yelled angrily,
“Damn cut-sleeve! Lookit you, going down the demonic path just because your spiritual power is too weak to cultivate into anything worthwhile. You watch yourself! Do you know who’s here today?! I’m gonna…”
Wei Wuxian clutched his heart insincerely. “Ah! I’m so scared!”
The cultivation method he’d employed in the past was denounced by the public. It harmed the cultivator’s constitution after prolonged practice, but it allowed for speedy success and was unrestricted by one’s innate spiritual prowess and natural talent, which was why it was an extremely tempting path.
There was never a shortage of people who craved shortcuts in their training, and so this youth also thought Mo Xuanyu had strayed from the right path afterbeing driven out of the Jin Clan of Lanling. It was a perfectly logical suspicion, and it saved Wei Wuxian from further unnecessary trouble.
The youth tried to push off the ground but still couldn’t get up after several
attempts. His face was flushed, and he clenched his teeth.
“If you don’t remove this thing, I’ll tell my uncle, and you’ll be dead!”
Wei Wuxian asked curiously, “Why is it your uncle and not your dad? Who’s your uncle?”
There was suddenly a voice behind him, grave and intensely frigid.
“I am his uncle. Do you have any last words?”
At the sound of that voice, every drop of blood in Wei Wuxian’s body seemed to surge to his head but then immediately drained away again. Thankfully, his face was already a mess of ghastly white, so it didn’t look strange when he went a little paler.
A man in purple attire strode over. He was dressed in a narrow-sleeved light robe, with his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. A silver bell dangled from his waist, yet there was no sound when he walked.
This young man had fine brows and almond eyes, with a chiseled handsomeness to his features. His eyes were deep and intense with a hint of aggression, his gaze like two streaks of cold lightning. He stopped and stood three meters away from Wei Wuxian. His expression was like that of a nocked
arrow on a bow, ready to shoot, and even his composure was suffused with arrogant pride.
He furrowed his brows. “Jin Ling, why have you dawdled for so long? Do I need to come and invite you back? Look at the terrible state you’re in. Get the hell up.”
After the initial numbness in his brain had passed, Wei Wuxian quickly snapped out of it. He beckoned with his fingers inside his sleeve, withdrawing the paper doll. Jin Ling felt the weight disappear off his back and immediately scrambled up, grabbing his sword back and scurrying to Jiang Cheng’s side.
He pointed at Wei Wuxian and yelled, “I’LL BREAK YOUR LEGS!”When the two stood together, there was a vague resemblance in their looks, much like a pair of brothers.
Jiang Cheng moved his finger, and the paper doll swiftly slipped from Wei Wuxian’s fingers and flew into his hand. He took a
glance at it, and a wave of resentment flared in his eyes. He clenched his fingers
and the paper was set ablaze, the ghost shrieking as it was burned to ashes.
Jiang Cheng said darkly, “Break his legs? Haven’t I told you that when you run
into heretics, you should kill them outright and feed them to your dog?!”
Wei Wuxian hastily backed away, leaving the donkey behind too. No matter how much Jiang Cheng hated him, he had thought the feeling would’ve dispersed somewhat after so many years. Who would’ve thought it wasn’t that easy? Not only was the hate still there, but it had thickened with time, like a jug of aged wine. And that rage was taken out on every cultivator who imitated
him!
There were people behind them standing guard, and this time, Jin Ling attacked with greater ferocity. Wei Wuxian slipped two fingers into the spirit- trapping pouch, but just as he was about to move, a streak of blue flashed.
It was the glare of a sword clashing with Jin Ling’s sword, and it shattered the
golden shimmer of this high-quality blade in an instant.
It wasn’t that the other sword was superior but rather that the difference in ability between the two wielders was too great.
Wei Wuxian had had the timing figured out at first, but the radiance of this incoming sword disrupted his steps, and he stumbled, falling flat on the ground before a pair of snow-white boots.
He froze for a moment, then slowly looked up.
The first thing that entered his vision was a long and slender blade, as crystalline as ice.
This sword was famous in the cultivation world, and Wei Wuxian had had the honor of experiencing its power directly on multiple occasions, both fighting alongside and against it. The hilt was forged from pure silver that was refined by a secret method, and the blade was extremely thin, clear, and transparent. It emanated the frigid air of ice and snow, yet it could cut through iron as if it were mud. Thus, while the sword appeared light, agile, and transcendentally airy, it was extremely heavy, and no ordinary person could possibly swing it.
It was the sword Bichen!
The blade reversed, and above Wei Wuxian’s head there came the clang of the sword being sheathed. At the same time, Jiang Cheng’s voice came from the distance.
“I was wondering who it was. So, it’s Lan-er-gongzi.”
The pair of white boots unhurriedly took three steps forward, walking around Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian looked up and got to his feet.
When he brushed past the person, the two locked eyes for a brief second, seemingly accidentally.
The newcomer was cloaked in soft, white moonlight. He carried a seven- stringed guqin on his back. The body of the instrument was narrower than the usual standard and ebony-black in color, but soft in the luster of its wood.
A cloud-patterned ribbon was fastened around this man’s forehead.
The man was exceptional in both looks and elegance: his skin was fair, and his features were as refined as smoothed jade. The color of his eyes was abnormally light, almost like colored glaze, and it made his gaze appear overly cold.
There was a frostiness to his expression, which was stern enough to appear stiff. Even when he saw Wei Wuxian’s currently ridiculous-looking face, he appeared unperturbed.
From head to toe, he was scrupulous and immaculate, without a single foot placed incorrectly. Even so, two words still jumped out in Wei Wuxian’s mind:
Funeral clothes!
Those were funeral clothes, and that couldn’t be denied, no matter how much
the other clans proclaimed the uniforms of the Lan Clan of Gusu to be the most
pleasing to the eye and sang their exaggerated praises to the heavens.
Furthermore, no matter how thoroughly Lan Wangji was praised as an unrivaled rare beauty, nothing could help the fact that he looked profoundly embittered, as if he had lost his wife.
In an unlucky year, enemies are bound to clash. Blessings never come in pairs, and misfortunes never come singly.
Lan Wangji stood unspeaking. He faced Jiang Cheng with quiet calm and met his eyes squarely. Jiang Cheng was exceptionally handsome, but he was still a little inferior to the one standing before him and certainly the more impatient of the two. He quirked a brow.
“Hanguang-jun truly lives up to his reputation of appearing where there is
chaos. What brings you here to the deep mountains today?”
Leaders of prominent cultivation clans did not normally care for these low- level evil spirits. However, Lan Wangji was an exception. He was never pickyabout his Night Hunt prey, nor would he refuse to appear if the nefarious creature wasn’t tough enough or if it would not earn him any acclaim.
He would attend as long as there was a plea for help, and it had always been that way, ever since he was young. Thus, “appearing where there is chaos” was how the people appraised Hanguang-jun’s Night Hunt expeditions and praised his character.
The way Jiang Cheng used the phrase was not complimentary, however, and the juniors attending behind Lan Wangji all felt a little uncomfortable with his tone.
Lan Jingyi was the blunt and outspoken sort.
“Isn’t Sect Leader Jiang here too?”
Jiang Cheng replied coldly, “Tsk. An elder is speaking, who are you to interrupt? The Lan Clan of Gusu pride themselves on being a clan of etiquette.
This is what disciples are being taught?”
Lan Wangji, who didn’t seem to want to exchange any words with him, sent
Lan Sizhui a look. The latter understood: let the juniors speak to each other.
And so, Lan Sizhui stepped forward and turned to Jin Ling to reply.
“Jin-gongzi, the Night Hunts have always been a fair competition among the clans. But Jin-gongzi has set up nets all over Mount Dafan and made it difficult for the cultivators of other houses to tread, for fear of falling into traps. Does this not violate the rules of Night Hunts?”
Jin Ling’s cold expression was cast from the same mold as his uncle’s. “What can I do if they step into traps due to their own stupidity? I must capture my prey, everything else can wait.”
Lan Wangji wrinkled his brow. Jin Ling was about to say more when he suddenly realized he couldn’t open his mouth, nor produce any sound from his throat. He paled in panic.
When Jiang Cheng saw that Jin Ling’s lips were now glued together, unable to part, anger clouded his face and all previous forced civility went out the window.
“You, Lan! What’s the meaning of this? It’s not up to you to discipline Jin Ling.
Release the spell!”This silence spell was what the Lan clan used to punish its disciples.
Wei Wuxian had fallen victim to this little trick on many occasions. While it was not
complex magic by any stretch of the imagination, only those of the Lan family
could undo the spell. If one attempted to speak by brute force, then either their
lips would be torn to shreds by the effort or they’d lose their voice for days. The
penitent one had to keep their mouth shut and self-reflect in silence until the punishment period was over.
Lan Sizhui said, “There is no need to be angry, Sect Leader Jiang. As long as he
does not try to forcibly break the spell, it will be automatically undone in one
incense time.” Jiang Cheng had yet to reply when a man clad in the Jiang Clan’s purple came rushing out of the woods. “Sect Leader!”
When he saw Lan Wangji standing there, however, he appeared hesitant.
Jiang Cheng said derisively, “Go ahead. What other bad news do you have to report?”
The sect disciple said in a small voice, “Not long ago, a flying blue sword
destroyed the immortal-binding nets you arranged.”
Jiang Cheng shot Lan Wangji a look, anger clouding his expression once more.
“How many?”
The sect disciple replied cautiously, “All of them.”
Over four hundred!
Jiang Cheng seethed with anger.
He had never expected such bad luck in this expedition.
He had originally come to assist Jin Ling: the boy was fifteen this year, the age to make his debut and fight for experience with the juniors from other clans. Jiang Cheng had reviewed the options carefully before deciding on Mount Dafan as the hunting ground.
He had then set up nets everywhere and scared off all the other cultivators, making it so difficult for them to move that they’d be forced to back off—all so Jin Ling would emerge the winner without anyone fighting him for the title. While over four hundred immortal-binding nets were extremely expensive, the price was nothing to the Jiang Clan of Yunmeng.
However,destroyed nets were a small matter compared to losing face. Lan Wangji’s actions made Jiang Cheng boil with anger, and his fury spiraled higher and
higher. He narrowed his eyes, and his left hand subconsciously stroked the ring
on his right index finger.
This was a dangerous sign.
Everyone knew that ring was a formidable and deadly spiritual weapon. Once the Jiang Clan leader started fiddling with it, it signaled his intent to kill.
However, Jiang Cheng didn’t stroke it for long before he forced his hostility back
down.
Although he was quite unhappy, as the leader of a sect, there was much to
consider. He couldn’t be as impulsive as that brat Jin Ling. Ever since the decline
of the Nie Clan of Qinghe, of the current three great clans, the Jin Clan of
Lanling and the Lan Clan of Gusu had always been close due to the strong
personal friendship shared by their clan leaders. Jiang Cheng ruled the Jiang
Clan of Yunmeng alone, so it could have been said that he was in a state of
isolation.
Hanguang-jun—Lan Wangji—was a distinguished cultivator of great prestige.
In addition, his elder brother Zewu-jun—Lan Xichen—was the clan leader of the Lan Clan of Gusu, and the two brothers had always gotten along well. Overall, it was best if Jiang Cheng kept things peaceful instead of giving in to his violent urges.
Furthermore, Jiang Cheng’s sword Sandu had never formally crossed with Lan Wangji’s sword Bichen, so no one knew which was the better blade. Although he had on his hand the family heirloom ring Zidian, Lan Wangji’s guqin (also named Wangji) was equally renowned. Jiang Cheng loathed being at a disadvantage in a fight, so unless victory was absolutely certain, attacking Lan
Wangji was not within the realm of consideration.
Jiang Cheng slowly withdrew his left hand, which had been stroking the ring.
It appeared that Lan Wangji had set his mind to interfere in this affair, so
continuing to play the role of the villain would only cause trouble. He would
simply have to remember this, for the time being.
After weighing his options, Jiang Cheng turned his head and saw that Jin Ling
still had his hands covering his mouth angrily.
“Since Hanguang-jun wants to punish you, take the lesson this once. It’s not
easy for him, either, to manage the juniors from another clan.”
His tone was sarcastic, but it was unclear to whom it was directed. Lan Wangji, who never responded to such provocation, ignored him.
Jiang Cheng turned, his voice scathing.
“What are you standing around for?
Waiting for the prey to run into your sword itself? If you can’t catch the
creature here on Mount Dafan tonight, then you needn’t come to me again in
the future!”
Jin Ling shot Wei Wuxian a death glare but didn’t dare to glare at Lan Wangji, who’d been the one to punish him into silence. He sheathed his sword and bowed to the two elders, then left with his bow in hand.
Lan Sizhui spoke up, “Sect Leader Jiang, the Lan Clan of Gusu will fully recompense all the immortal-binding nets that were destroyed.”
Jiang Cheng sneered. “No need!”
Then he turned in the opposite direction and strode confidently down the mountain.
The sect disciples behind him all quietly followed with long faces, knowing there’d be an inevitable round of punishment upon their return.
After they had gone, Lan Jingyi posed a general question: “Why is Sect Leader
Jiang like that?!”
Then he remembered his Lan family upbringing and the rules against speaking
behind another’s back. He snuck a scared peek at Hanguang-jun before shrinking back and shutting up.
Lan Sizhui gave Wei Wuxian a light smile and said, “We meet again, Mo-gongzi.”
Wei Wuxian forced a smile, but it was Lan Wangji who spoke instead, his order succinct and clear without any flowery language.
“Do your work.”
Only then did the juniors remember why they were on Mount Dafan. They gathered themselves and respectfully awaited further instructions.
A moment later, Lan Wangji said,
“Do your best, but do not overexert.”
His voice was deep and captivating. If one stood close, it would make the heart flutter. The juniors acknowledged the order politely and headed deeper into the woods, not daring to stay longer.
Wei Wuxian thought to himself that Jiang Cheng and Lan Zhan really were two completely different people.
Even their methods of instructing juniors were irreconcilably opposed.
Just as he was thinking this, he suddenly saw Lan Wangji give him a nod, curt and almost imperceptible. It made him unconsciously pause.
Lan Wangji had been painfully serious ever since he was young. A principled perfectionist, always so stern and stiff, as if there had never been a time when he was lively. Back then, he’d been extremely against Wei Wuxian cultivating the demonic path.
Lan Sizhui should have already informed Lan Wangji of his suspicious behavior at the Mo Estate, yet the man only nodded at him to give his regards.
Wei Wuxian figured he was thanking him for helping the Lan juniors out, so he immediately returned the gesture without thinking.
But when he looked up again, Lan Wangji was already gone.
He paused for a moment, then turned to descend the mountain.
It didn’t matter what prey was on Mount Dafan. He couldn’t pursue it anymore.
Wei Wuxian could rob anyone, but not Jin Ling.
He couldn’t believe that was Jin Ling.
There were so many disciples in the Jin Clan of Lanling that he’d genuinely
never imagined he might run into Jin Ling. Had he known, he would never have
mocked Jin Ling with that comment of his,
“Didn’t your mother teach you any
manners?” If anyone else had said that to Jin Ling, Wei Wuxian would’ve taught
that person what “a loose tongue spells trouble” meant. But the tongue that
said it had been his own.
After a moment of standing in silence, Wei Wuxian raised his hand and slapped himself across the face.
That slap was hard and clear, stinging his right cheek. Suddenly, there was rustling in the bushes nearby, and when Wei Wuxian peered over, a spotted donkey emerged. He dropped his hand, and this time, the donkey voluntarily approached to rub against it. Wei Wuxian tugged at its long ear and smiled
wryly.
“You wanted to save the damsel in distress but made me go act the hero instead.”
The spotted donkey was whining in response when a wave of cultivators came from the distant end of the hill. After the four hundred-plus immortal-binding nets were slashed by Lan Wangji’s flying sword, the hesitant cultivators that had lurked in Fojiao Town now swarmed up the mountain anew. They were all technically Jin Ling’s competition, and Wei Wuxian pondered for a moment on whether to beat them back down. After a moment of thought, he silently moved off the path.
The group was composed of disciples from various clans, dressed in all sorts of different uniforms. They complained as they went.
“That Jin-gongzi! The Jin family and the Jiang family both, they all spoil him.
So young and already so unreasonable and bossy! It’ll be the end of the world if
he takes over control of the Jin Clan of Lanling in the future. We’ll be doomed!”
Wei Wuxian slowed his pace.
A softhearted girl cultivator sighed, “How can they not spoil and pamper him?
Losing both his parents at such a young age…”
“Shimei, it doesn’t work like that. So what if he lost both his parents? There are plenty of people in the world who’ve lost their parents. If everyone acted like him, it’d be terrible!
“That being said, Wei Wuxian really went for it, didn’t he? Jin Ling’s mother
was Jiang Cheng’s blood sister, eh? And what’s more, she was also the shijie
who raised that Wei Wuxian.”
“What an injustice for Jiang Yanli, too, to have raised such an ingrate. And Jin
Zixuan was an even more tragic case. To meet such a horrible end just because
of some quarrel with Wei Wuxian in the past…”
“Why did Wei Wuxian have quarrels with everyone…?”
“Ain’t that just the question? Besides that pack of crazy dogs he kept, who have you ever heard of getting along well with him? He had enemies everywhere. The world despised him. Even Hanguang-jun couldn’t stand the sight of him. They were always at complete odds with each other.”
“Speaking of, thank goodness for Hanguang-jun today…”
After walking for a while, the sound of a trickling creek suddenly flowed into Wei Wuxian’s ears.
This was something he hadn’t heard on his way here. Only then did Wei Wuxian notice he had taken the wrong path down the mountain and forked off onto another road.
He led the donkey down to the side of the creek. The moon had risen, and the
skies above the water were unconcealed by any branches or leaves. The creek was cracked with patches of frosty white.Reflected back at him, Wei Wuxian saw a face that distorted with the flow of the water.
He slapped the water viciously, shattering that absurd, laughable face. He raised his dripping palms and washed away the powder foundation with the creek water.
What the water now reflected was a young man. Incredibly handsome and poised, he was so pristine it was as if he had been washed by the moonlight above, with a beaming face and bright eyes, and lips that curved slightly upwards.
But when he hung his head to stare at himself, the droplets clinging to his lashes fell relentlessly like tears.
This was a young, foreign face. This wasn’t the Yiling Patriarch Wei Wuxian, who had once razed the earth and ravaged the world with bloody tempests.
He stared at that reflection for a long time before he wiped his face a few
more times, rubbed his eyes, and sat down heavily by the creek.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t endure talk. After all, he was already well aware of
the path he’d chosen back when he first made his decision. He had already cautioned himself to remember the motto of the Jiang Clan of Yunmeng:
“Attempt the impossible.”
He had truly thought his heart was made of stone. But humans were no stalks
of grass, not unfeeling, and in the end, he was human after all.
The little spotted donkey seemed to know he wasn’t in a good mood right now, and amazingly it did not bray impatiently, only swishing its tail while walking away after a moment of quiet.
Wei Wuxian sat by the creek and didn’treact. It looked back and kicked its hooves. Wei Wuxian still ignored it, so the
spotted donkey returned in a huff and caught Wei Wuxian by the hem with its
teeth, tugging and pulling.
It made no difference to Wei Wuxian whether he stayed or left, so since the
donkey had gone as far as to bite him, he went with it. The spotted donkey led
him to some trees and started circling around a piece of grass.
A qiankun bag sat quietly there. Over it hung a broken golden net, so it must’ve been something an unlucky cultivator dropped when they tried to break free. Wei
wuxian picked up the bag and opened it. Inside was an assortment of items like
a bottle gourd of medicinal wine, talismans, a little yao-reflecting mirror, and so on.
He rummaged through the bag for a bit and casually took out a handful of talismans. A ball of flames was suddenly ablaze in his hand.
What had just ignited was a yin-burning talisman. Like its name, it used yin
energy as fuel and would automatically be ignited upon contact with yin energy.
The greater the yin energy, the bigger the flames. It blazed the instant it was taken out of the bag, meaning there were spirits nearby.
The moment Wei Wuxian saw the firelight, he raised his guard and probed around for the direction with the torch raised. When he turned eastward, the fire died down; when he turned westward, the fire blazed. He had only taken a few steps in that direction when he saw a slumped form in white appear beneath a tree.
The talisman burned out, and remnant embers fell from his fingertips. An elder, with his back facing him, was grumbling under his breath.
Wei Wuxian slowly approached, and the words mumbled from the elder’s lips became clearer.
“It hurts, it hurts.”
“Where does it hurt?” Wei Wuxian asked.
“Head, the head. My head,” that elder replied.
“Let me take a look,” Wei Wuxian said.
He circled around to the elder’s side and saw a large, bloody gaping hole on his forehead.
This was a soul of the dead, probably killed by way of some weapon to the head. He was wearing funeral clothes, their material and cut both of high quality, meaning he had already been properly buried. This wasn’t a soul of the living that a human had lost.
But a soul of the dead should never have appeared on Mount Dafan.
Wei Wuxian couldn’t come up with a plausible explanation for this. Feeling uneasy, he hopped onto the back of the donkey, gave it a slap and a shout, and
urged it to chase in the direction that Jin Ling and the others had approached
the mountain.
There were a number of cultivators pacing near the old graveyard, intending to wait for a windfall. Someone had brazenly raised a spirit-attraction flag, only to summon a bunch of wailing souls.
Wei Wuxian pulled the reins, scanned the area, and asked loudly,
“Excuse me, might I ask where the little gongzi of the Jin family and Lan family have gone?”
As expected, there were actually responses now that he’d washed his face. A cultivator answered,
“They left this place and went to the Shrine of the Heavenly Maiden.”
“The Shrine of the Heavenly Maiden?” Wei Wuxian asked.
The family of independent cultivators from the countryside had also snuck back up the mountain after hearing the immortal-binding nets had been destroyed and joined the night patrol. The middle-aged man saw that his clothes, along with that teeth-baring donkey, looked like those of that lunatic
who had rescued them earlier.
Feeling somewhat awkward at the realization, he pretended nothing was the matter, but the round-faced girl pointed the way.
“That way. It’s a stone cave shrine on top of the mountain.”
Wei Wuxian questioned, “Which deity is worshiped in that shrine?”
“I…I think it’s a naturally formed stone statue of a Heavenly Maiden.”
Wei Wuxian nodded. “Thank you.”
Then he urgently dashed in the direction of the Shrine of the Heavenly Maiden.
The deadbeat’s marriage, the coffins struck by lightning, the fiancé killed by jackals, the father and daughter who lost their souls consecutively, the extravagant funeral clothes… Bead by bead, everything was being threaded together to form a complete string. No wonder the Compass of Ill Winds couldn’t point in the right direction, and the spirit-attraction flag was even more useless. They had all underestimated the creature on Mount Dafan.
Because it wasn’t what they thought it was at all!
Meanwhile, Lan Sizhui and company had already moved on to the Shrine of the Heavenly Maiden in search of clues after coming up empty-handed when investigating the old graveyard.
In Mount Dafan, besides the ancestral graves belonging to the townspeople of
Fojiao Town, there was also a Shrine of the Heavenly Maiden. It was neither
Buddha nor bodhisattvas that were worshiped in the shrine but a “Dancing Heavenly Maiden.”
Centuries ago, a hunter from Fojiao Town traveled deep into the mountains and discovered a strange rock within a cave. It was nearly three meters tall, naturally formed, and looked extraordinarily like a human with all of its limbs posed as if dancing. What was more incredible was that the five features of this stone statue’s face were vaguely recognizable, resembling the smiling face of a woman.
The people of Fojiao Town were greatly amazed. They believed this was a divine rock forged by the gathering of spiritual qi between heaven and earth, and they fabricated many of its related myths themselves. There was one about an immortal lord who was secretly in love with Jiutian Xuannu and carved a statue in her image to alleviate the misery of longing. When the Xuannu discovered it, she was enraged, and the incomplete statue was never heard of again.
There was also another where the Jade Emperor had a beloved daughter who passed early, and his longing for her manifested as this statue. There were all sorts of stories, and all were mind-boggling. Eventually, the townspeople began to truly believe these constructed myths they told each other. And so,the stone cave was renovated into a divine shrine, the stone platform carvedinto a divine altar, and the stone statue was thus worshiped as the “Dancing Heavenly Maiden” with year-round offerings.
The interior of the cave was as spacious as a double-entranced temple, and that statue of the Heavenly Maiden stood in its center. At first glance, it certainly did very much resemble a human. Even the waistline could be said to be wonderfully graceful. However, one began to notice how rudimentary it was upon closer examination. Nonetheless, that a naturally formed object could resemble a human to this degree was already quite the marvel.
Lan Jingyi raised the Compass of Ill Winds high up, then down low, yet the needle was unmoved.
Upon the altar was a mess of candle wax residue and a thick layer of incense ash, and the smell of rotten sweetness wafted from the offering plates. The people of the Lan Clan of Gusu were all at least a little germophobic, so he fanned the air in front of his nose.
“I hear the locals say prayers made at the Shrine of the Heavenly Maiden are very effective, so why is it so run-down? Why isn’t anybody clearing this place?”
Lan Sizhui replied, “Seven people consecutively lost their souls, and rumors
say it’s some fierce fiend that came out of the ancestral graves after lightning
struck, so everyone is scared of coming up the mountain. Since the worshipers
stopped coming, there’s naturally no one to clean up either.”
A disdainful voice sounded from outside the cave: “Nothing but a crappy hunk of rock. Who knows who bestowed it with its divinity and had the audacity to place it here for worship!”
Jin Ling entered with his hands folded behind his back. The silence spell hadn’t lasted long, and his mouth could open once more. However, he had nothing good to say the moment said mouth opened. He humphed, peering at the statue of the Heavenly Maiden.
“These rural villagers. Instead of making a concerted effort on their own when
there’s trouble, all they do is pray to the divine. There are thousands of millions of people in the world, and the deities can barely take care of themselves, so why would they care about them?! Besides, it’s just some nameless rogue deity.
If it’s so efficacious, then can I wish for the man-eating spirit on Mount Dafan to
appear right now in front of me and have that wish be granted?”
A group of cultivators from small clans followed behind him, and at his words,
they immediately agreed, laughing uproariously. The once-silent shrine grew
noisy and crowded all of a sudden with the inpouring of people.
Lan Sizhui shook his head quietly and turned around, his eyes unconsciously
sweeping past the face of the Heavenly Maiden. The visible but indistinct features seemed to be a compassionate, smiling face. But he felt an indescribable sense of familiarity with this smiling face, as if he had seen it somewhere before.
Where in the world had he seen it before?
Lan Sizhui felt this was something important. He unconsciously approached
the altar, wanting to examine the face of the Heavenly Maiden in greater detail.
Right then, someone suddenly bumped into him.
A cultivator who had been standing behind him suddenly collapsed noiselessly. The others were greatly alarmed, and everyone instantly raised their guard.
Jin Ling demanded cautiously, “What’s wrong with him?”
Lan Sizhui bent down with his sword in hand to check. The cultivator was breathing just fine, as if he had merely fallen asleep all of a sudden, but he wouldn’t wake no matter how he was slapped or called to. Lan Sizhui stood up.
“This is like…”
But before he could finish, the cave that had been dark was suddenly alight.
Red light filled it, like a cataract of blood washing down the walls. The candles on the altar and in the corners of the stone cave all began to burn on their own.
Clangs resounded in the cave as those who had swords unsheathed them and those who had talismans pulled them out. Right then, someone outside the shrine suddenly rushed inside and splashed the Heavenly Maiden statue with his gourd of medicinal wine. The stone cave was instantly flooded with the thick, choking smell of alcohol. The newcomer took out a talisman and slashed
it through the air, hurling it toward the statue. The altar was immediately set
ablaze, illuminating the cave with the brightness of day.
Wei Wuxian tossed aside the qiankun bag he’d picked up, having used upeverything that was inside it.
He shouted, “Everyone get out! Watch out for that soul-eating Heavenly
Maiden!”
Someone cried out in alarm, “The Heavenly Maiden’s changed pose!”
The divine statue had clearly had both arms raised earlier: one arm pointing to the sky and one foot lifted, her form graceful. Yet in that moment, amidst the vibrant reds and yellows of the blazing fire, it had dropped both arms and legs.
This was absolutely the truth and not a trick of the eye!
In the next second, this divine statue raised one of its legs…and stepped out
of the flames!
Wei Wuxian yelled, “RUN, RUN, RUN! Stop hacking at it! It’s useless!.
Most of the cultivators paid him no mind. The soul-eating monster they’d been searching all over for had finally appeared, so how could they let it go?!
However, even though there were so many spiritual swords attacking, so many talismans being thrown, and many other spiritual devices waving about, none of them stopped the statue from moving. It was nearly three meters high, and when it moved, it was like a towering giant, exceedingly imposing. It picked up two cultivators and raised them to its face. Its stone mouth seemed to open and close, and those two cultivators’ swords dropped to the ground with a clang, their heads bowed. Obviously, they’d just had their souls sucked out.
None of the attacks were effective.
Finally willing to listen to Wei Wuxian, the others swarmed out of the cave, fleeing for their lives in all directions. With so many people and so many faces, the higher Wei Wuxian’s anxiety climbed, the harder it was for him to find Jin Ling. He rode the donkey out, searching as he
dashed into a bamboo grove. When he looked back, he encountered the Lan juniors, who were also in flight.
Wei Wuxian called after them, “Children!”
“Who are you calling children?!” Lan Jingyi protested. “Do you know whose house we’re from? Do you think you’re our elder just because you washed your face?!”
“Okay, okay, okay, gege,” Wei Wuxian acquiesced. “Set off a signal, call overthat…that Hanguang-jun from your clan!”
The juniors nodded and searched their pockets as they ran. A moment later,
Lan Sizhui admitted aloud:
“The signal flares…were all used up that night at the Mo Estate.”
Wei Wuxian was shocked. “You guys didn’t restock?!”
The signal flare was rarely ever used—maybe once every eight hundred years.
Lan Sizhui replied, feeling ashamed, “We forgot.”
“How could you forget?” Wei Wuxian tried to scare them. “If your Hanguang-jun finds out, you’ll all be sorry!”
Lan Jingyi turned ashen-faced. “Oh no, we’ll be punished to death by Hanguang-jun this time…”
“Good. Rightly deserved! You won’t remember without punishment.”
“Mo-gongzi, Mo-gongzi! How did you know that the creature eating souls wasn’t a fiend or a beast, but that Heavenly Maiden statue?” Lan Sizhui asked.
Wei Wuxian searched for signs of Jin Ling as he ran. “How did I know? I saw.”
Lan Jingyi caught up, and the two sandwiched him, one running on his left and
one on his right.
“What did you see? We saw plenty too!”
“You saw, and then? What’s around the old graveyard?”
“What else is there? Souls of the dead.”
“Exactly, souls of the dead. So it couldn’t be a soul-eating beast or fiend.
That’s obvious. If it were either one of those things, then would it leave all those dead souls floating around and not eat them up? No.”
This time, there was more than one asking questions. “Why’s that?”
“I gotta say, you Lans of Gusu…” Wei Wuxian couldn’t resist anymore. “Can
you focus less on memorizing cultivator etiquette, clan origin history, and all
that stinking, long-winded nonsense? And teach more practical things instead?
What’s there not to understand? Souls of the dead are easier to absorb than
souls of the living. The flesh of the living is like a protective screen, so in orderto devour souls of the living, this screen must be removed. Just like…”
He took a glance at the spotted donkey that was panting and rolling its eyes back as it ran.
“Just like this: if there’s an apple in front of you and another apple locked in a
box, which one would you eat first? Of course, the one in front of you. That
creature only devoured souls of the living, and it has a very particular way of doing so. Which means it’s super picky, and quite powerful too.”
Lan Jingyi was shocked. “Is that how it is? That makes a lot of sense, I think!
Wait! So you’re not actually crazy!”
Lan Sizhui explained as he ran, “We all thought the landslide and the lightning
striking the coffins was how the lost souls came about, so naturally, we thought it would be a soul-eating fiend.”
“Wrong,” Wei Wuxian said.
“What’s wrong?”
“The order is wrong and the cause is wrong. Let me ask you: between the
landslide and the soul-eating business, which came first and which came after?
Which is the cause, and which is the consequence?”
Lan Sizhui replied without hesitation, “The landslide happened first, the soul-eating came after. The former is the cause, the latter the consequence.”
“Completely wrong,” Wei Wuxian explained. “The soul-eating came first and the landslide after. The soul-eating was the cause, and the landslide was the consequence! The night of the landslide, there was a sudden thunderstorm, and
lightning struck open a coffin. Remember that. The first to lose his soul, that
deadbeat, was trapped on the mountain for a night, then got married a few days later.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Lan Jingyi asked.
“Everything!” Wei Wuxian replied. “An idle, penniless good-for-nothing— where did he get the money to host such a grand wedding?”
The boys couldn’t answer. It was no wonder—the Lan Clan of Gusu had never been a family that needed to consider the question of wealth and poverty.
Wei Wuxian continued, “Have you seen all the souls of the dead floating around Mount Dafan? There’s an old man who was killed by a brutal strike to the head. The craftsmanship and material of his funeral garb were both exceptional. To wear such extravagant funeral garb—there was no way his coffin was empty. There must’ve been some accompanying funerary items to
keep his spirit at peace.
The coffin that was struck open by lightning was probably his. The people who came to collect the corpse didn’t discover any funerary items, so they must’ve been taken by that deadbeat, which would explain his sudden wealth. The deadbeat suddenly became rich and got married after the night of the landslide, so something strange must’ve happened that night. It was storming, and he was hiding from the rain in the mountains. Where on Mount Dafan is there shelter from the rain? The Shrine of the Heavenly Maiden. And usually, when people visit a shrine, they always do one thing.”
“Make a wish?” Lan Sizhui said.
“Correct. For example, he might ask to get lucky, hit it rich, have the money to get married or something. The Heavenly Maiden fulfilled his wish and sent forth lightning that struck open the graves, showing him the wealth within the coffins. His wish was granted, and as its price, the Heavenly Maiden descended on his wedding night and sucked out his soul!”
“You’re just guessing, right?” Lan Jingyi said.
“Yes. But if we pursue this train of
thought, then everything can be explained,”
Wei Wuxian replied.
“How do you explain Miss A-Yan?” Lan Sizhui asked.
“Good question,” Wei Wuxian said. “You must’ve asked around too, before you ascended the mountain. A-Yan had only just gotten engaged at that time.
Every young girl who’s just been betrothed must have the same wish.”
Lan Jingyi didn’t quite get it. “What wish?”
“Nothing more than ‘I hope my husband will love and cherish me for the rest of his life, that he’ll only love me,’ or some such,” Wei Wuxian said.
The youths were confused. “Can a wish like that be granted…?”
Wei Wuxian shrugged. “It’s easy. As long as her husband’s life ended soonafter, then wouldn’t he have loved only her for his entire life?”
Understanding dawned on Lan Jingyi, and he exclaimed in excitement, “Oh! So…so…so after Miss A-Yan became engaged, her husband was killed by a jackal in the mountains the very next day, and it’s very possibly because Miss A-Yan went and made a wish at the Shrine of the Heavenly Maiden!”
Wei Wuxian struck the iron while it was hot. “Whether it was the jackal or something else that killed him is hard to say. A-Yan has another point of interest: of all the victims, why is she the only one whose soul has returned?
How is she different from the others? The difference is that she has a family
member who also lost his soul. In other words, there was a family member who
replaced her! Blacksmith Zheng, A-Yan’s father, loved his daughter. So when he
saw that his daughter had lost her soul and no medication was working, under such dire circumstances, what was the only thing he could do?”
Lan Sizhui answered quickly this time. “He could only place his last hope in the
heavens, so he also went to the Shrine of Heavenly Maiden to make a wish. The
wish was ‘I hope my daughter A-Yan’s soul will return’!”
Wei Wuxian commended him. “That’s why only A-Yan’s soul returned and the
reason why the third person to lose his soul was Blacksmith Zheng. And although A-Yan’s soul was spat back out, it couldn’t escape being damaged.
Once the soul returned to its rightful place, A-Yan unconsciously began to
imitate the dancing pose of the Heavenly Maiden, including the smile.”
The commonality between those who had lost their souls was clear: they had
most likely all made a wish before the Heavenly Maiden statue, and the price
for their wishes to come true was their souls.
This Heavenly Maiden statue had once been an ordinary rock, but it just so happened to resemble a person, so it had received centuries of worship that led it to gaining spiritual power. However, its greed was insatiable. One single, deviant whim gave it a mind to expedite the elevation of its spiritual powers by way of consuming souls. Offering the fulfillment of a wish in exchange for the devouring of a soul—it operated on the same terms as those wish-makers who offered their own souls up to be devoured. It was a fair trade, by all
appearances. Everyone got what they wanted, which was why the needle of theCompass of Ill Winds did not move and the spirit-attraction flag summoned
nothing. The treasured swords and talismans were all ineffective because the creature on Mount Dafan wasn’t some nefarious being, but instead a god! This was a rogue god, raised up by centuries of worship, so to use devices made for attacking malicious spirits against it was the equivalent of attempting to extinguish fire with fire!
Lan Jingyi exclaimed loudly, “Wait! Just now, inside the shrine, someone else
got their soul sucked out too, but we didn’t hear his wish!”
Wei Wuxian’s heart lurched, and he halted in his step. “Someone had their soul sucked inside the shrine? Tell me every detail of what happened there without leaving out a single thing.”
Lan Sizhui quickly gave a clear account. When Wei Wuxian heard Jin Ling had
said—“If it’s so efficacious, then can I wish for the man-eating spirit on Mount
Dafan to appear right now in front of me and have that wish be granted?”—he
exclaimed aloud.
“Is that not a wish?! That was making a wish!”
The others who had agreed with Jin Ling were tacitly understood to have made the same wish. Since the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden was right before them at the time, the wish had already come true, so what followed had been a collection of payment owed!
All of a sudden, the spotted donkey came to a stop and started running in the
opposite direction. Caught off guard, Wei Wuxian was once again thrown off its
back, but he stubbornly grabbed onto the reins. However, from ahead of them
in the shrubbery there came the crunching and slurping sound of something being eaten. An incomparably gigantic figure was hidden in the bushes, its massive head moving back and forth over the abdomen of a person on the ground. When it heard an approaching noise, its head shot up, meeting their eyes.
The soul-eating Heavenly Maiden’s facial features had originally been unclear,
the shapes of the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth rough. But after she’d devoured
so many cultivators in one go, her five features were now distinct. It was now
the face of a smiling woman. Copious blood dripped from her bottom lip as shegnawed vigorously upon the arm dangling from her mouth.
Everyone immediately followed the spotted donkey and bolted in the opposite direction.
Lan Sizhui cried despairingly, “That’s not right! The Yiling Patriarch said the high-level ones only ate souls, and only the low-level ones ate flesh!”
Wei Wuxian replied helplessly, “What are you blindly believing in him for?
Anything he came up with was utter bullshit! None of the rules are absolute!
Just take her for a baby. When she didn’t have teeth, she could only eat gruel
and soup, but now that she’s grown up, she wants to eat meat. Her spiritual powers just shot up—of course she’ll want to try something new!”
The soul-eating Heavenly Maiden stood up. She was big and tall, and she moved all four of her limbs as she danced crazily, seeming jubilant. Suddenly, a piercing arrow came flying through the air and caught her right in the forehead, the arrowhead penetrating through to the back of her head.
Having heard the strum of the bowstring, Wei Wuxian gazed at where the sound came from. Jin Ling stood upon a tall hill nearby, already nocking the second arrow onto his bow and drawing the string. He let go, and another arrow pierced through her head, its impact so powerful that it forced the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden to stumble back.
Lan Sizhui yelled, “Jin-gongzi! Set off your signal flare!”
Jin Ling ignored him, determined to bring down this monster. Sullenly, he knocked three arrows onto the bow this time.
The soul-eating Heavenly Maiden wasn’t upset in the least, despite having been shot in the head twice. A smile still graced her face as she charged toward Jin Ling. Although she danced as she went, her speed was still terrifyingly fast, and half the distance was covered in an instant. Several cultivators popped out from the sides to fight her, impedingher from moving farther.
Every single arrow Jin Ling shot hit the mark, and he fired nonstop. It seemed
as though he’d made up his mind to empty his quiver before going near the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden for close-range combat. His hands were steady and his aim was precise, but unfortunately, no spiritual devices would work on her!Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji were both waiting for news in Fojiao Town. Who knew if they would notice anything amiss and rush over? You needed water to extinguish fire. If spiritual devices wouldn’t work, then how about demonic tricks?!
Wei Wuxian pulled out the sword hanging on Lan Sizhui’s waist, cut down a piece of thin bamboo, and swiftly made a flute. He placed it on his lips and sucked in a deep breath. A sharp flute note pierced through the night sky like a whistling arrow, shooting straight for the clouds.
He shouldn’t have done this unless it was absolutely necessary. But with things as they were, he no longer cared what was summoned, as long as it was murderous enough and vengeful enough. As long as it could rip apart the soul- eating Heavenly Maiden, it was good enough!
Lan Sizhui was completely dumbfounded. Lan Jingyi, however, covered his ears and cried out in dismay.
“What are you doing playing a flute at a time like this?! It sounds horrible!”
Of the group of cultivators engaged in fighting the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden, several had already had their souls sucked away. Jin Ling drew his sword. He was less than six meters away from the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden, and his heart was pounding, hot blood surging to his brain.
If I don’t take her head in one swing, then I will die here. If I die, I die!
Just then, clinking and clanking sounds resounded within the forest of Mount
Dafan.
Clink clank, clink clank. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, the noise came haltingly and reverberated in the deathly silent forest. It sounded like iron chains hitting each other, dragging on the ground. It was coming closer and closer, louder and louder.
For some reason, this sound was oppressively threatening. Even the soul-
eating Heavenly Maiden stopped her dance, her arms raised in the air as she stared blankly at the deep darkness from whence the sound came.
Wei Wuxian put away the flute and stared intently in the same direction.
Although the ominous feeling was growing stronger and stronger, since this creature was willing to answer his summons, then at least it was one that would obey him.
The noise came to a sudden stop, and a silhouette materialized from the darkness.
After seeing the figure and its face clearly, many of the cultivators’ faces
contorted.
Even when facing the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden, who could suck away their soul at any time, they never shrank back, nor did they show any sign of fear.
However, the sound of their screams was now filled with unconcealable terror.
“…The Ghost General, it’s the Ghost General, it’s Wen Ning!”
Like the Yiling Patriarch, the one known by the moniker “Ghost General” was infamous and widely known by all. And the two usually appeared together.
There was only one man whom that name referred to: the number one fierce corpse under the control of Yiling Patriarch Wei Ying, the one who aided his tyrannical rule, fanned the flames of chaos, helped the villain in his evil, and caused havoc in the world. Wen Ning!
Wen Ning’s head was slightly bowed, and his hands drooped by his sides like a marionette waiting for the orders from his puppeteer.
His face was pale and delicate, and as a matter of fact, he had a certain easy
and somewhat melancholic handsomeness. However, there were no pupils in his eyes, only a field of deathly white. With this, plus the numerous black cracks crawling up his neck to his cheeks, that melancholia was transformed into a terrifying gloom. The hems of his long robes and sleeves were tattered and frayed, revealing wrists the same ghastly white as his face. A pair of iron shackles and chains were locked over them, same with the ankles.
The clinking and clanking sound was created while he was dragging himself along, and when he stopped, everything returned to a deathly silence once more.
It wasn’t hard to imagine why the cultivators present were all terrified. Wei
Wuxian wasn’t any calmer than the others, and the tempestuous waves in his heart had already surged past his head.It wasn’t that Wen Ning shouldn’t have shown up here but rather that he shouldn’t have appeared in this world at all. He should’ve been killed and reduced to ashes long before the Siege of the Burial Mounds!
When Jin Ling heard the others say Wen Ning’s name, the sword he was pointing at the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden unconsciously changed directions.
Taking advantage of him being distracted, the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden reached out her long arm in delight and picked him up.
Seeing how she had already opened her mouth wide and was nearing JinLing’s face.
Wei Wuxian no longer had time for his own shock. He raised the bamboo flute once more. His hands were trembling slightly, and the melody he played quivered with him. On top of that, because of how crudely made the flute was, the sound could almost be said to be raspy and awful.
Two notes were played, and Wen Ning began to move.
In the blink of an eye, he shifted and appeared before the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden. Wen Ning struck out with his palm, and the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden’s neck made a cracking sound. Her body didn’t move, but th slap turned her head all the way around. Her face was now facing the same direction as her back, but still that smile remained. Wen Ning struck again,
barehanded, and cleanly chopped off the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden’s right hand, which held Jin Ling in its clutches.
She looked down at the wrist that had been cut so cleanly. She didn’t twist her own head back to the correct position but instead turned so her face and her back were facing Wen Ning.
Wei Wuxian didn’t dare slack off. He took adeep breath and bowed his head, directing Wen Ning to face battle. However, it wasn’t long before he began to feel more and more apprehensive.
Low-level walking corpses could not think for themselves and required his orders as guidance. Even fierce corpses, stronger in attack, were often confused with no consciousness of their own. Wen Ning was different. He’d been refined by Wei Wuxian, and it wouldn’t have been a lie to say he was the strongest fierce corpse in the world. One of a kind. He could think, he could ponder.
Other than his lack of care for injuries, or for fire, cold, poison, and anything the living might fear, he was no different from the living.
But the Wen Ning in this moment clearly had no consciousness of his own!
Just as he was feeling bewildered by this, alarmed cries suddenly sounded from the field. It turned out Wen Ning had beaten down the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden, firmly pinning her on the ground before picking up a boulder taller than a man, raising it over the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden, and heavily bludgeoning her with it. The powerful blow struck the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden’s body like lightning, forcefully crushing her into pieces!
Amidst the white debris of rocks strewn about, a glowing, snow-white pearl rolled forth. This was the core formed by the dozens of souls the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden had devoured, and if collected and carefully managed, the people whose souls had been devoured earlier could still be restored. However, no one had the mind to pick up that pearl at the moment. All the swords that had been previously pointed at the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden earlier had all now turned Wen Ning’s way.
One of the cultivators shouted at the top of his lungs, “SURROUND HIM!”
Some answered hesitantly, but there were more who were wavering, and some slowly backed away. That cultivator shouted again:
“Fellow cultivators, stop him and don’t let him escape! It’s Wen Ning we’re talking about here!”
His words roused the crowd. As if a mere soul-eating monster could be compared to the Ghost General. Although it was unknown why he had come, killing a thousand soul-eating fiends could not compare to capturing one single
Wen Ning! After all, with a bite harder and more fearsome than its bark, this
was the most obedient mad dog of the Yiling Patriarch’s.
Catching him would make one’s name soar across the cultivation world! The only reason they had rushed to attend the Night Hunt at Mount Dafan in the first place had been to fight over nefarious creatures and gain experience, so it couldn’t be helped that there were those who stirred at this thought.
However, the older cultivators, who had personally witnessed the madness of Wen Ning in the past, still didn’t dare to move recklessly, and so that man shouted again:
“What are you all afraid of? It’s not like the Yiling Patriarch is here!”
That was true, when they thought about it. Yeah, what was there to be afraid of? Wen Ning’s master had already been shredded to pieces!
With those words, the swords circling around Wen Ning abruptly closed in.
With a swing of his arm, the heavy black chains swept the circle, knocking all the flying swords away. Then he took a step forward, seized the neck of the person closest to him, and lifted him easily off the ground.
Wei Wuxian knew the melody he had played earlier was too urgent, too aggressive, and it had exacerbated Wen Ning’s ferocity. He had to be neutralized, his emotions calmed, and so Wei Wuxian confidently played another tune.
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End of Chapter Third's Part 1.
It was a long chapter, that took me a long time to translate and edit the things, And also Manga toon doesn't allow more that 15000 words in a chapter, So after completing the chapter, when I was About to save it. It was reported that I'need to delete half of it.........Well, That's ok.
I'll Write 2nd part of Chapter 3~
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Thanks for making it till here~
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To be continued~
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