Ye Chi was having a wonderful dream. In it, he was finally on the verge of holding hands with the senior brother he had been longing for day and night. But just as things were about to reach that crucial moment, a loud howl abruptly dragged him out of his beautiful dream.
“Senior Brother Ye!”
“Senior Brother Ye! Brother Ye!”
“Big Brother! Hurry, hurry, hurry! This is an emergency! The cockroaches are back again! Please, show us your divine powers!”
Ye Chi’s eyes flew open, his heart pounding like a drum. Who the hell is it?!
The moon was beautiful, the flowers were in full bloom, and everything had been perfect. Why did someone have to interrupt his spring dream? He had been so close!
The person outside continued pounding on the door with tremendous enthusiasm. Judging by the force of the knocking, there was a very real possibility that he would smash the door to pieces if Ye Chi didn’t respond soon.
Ye Chi narrowed his eyes sleepily. Still lying in bed, he stretched out one hand and fumbled around the bedside until he found his Blazing Plains Sword. Without even bothering to sit up, he casually flung the sword toward the door.
The person outside fell silent for a brief moment. Then, in a deliberately shrill and coquettish voice, he began wailing again. “Senior Brother Ye~ Don’t be so fierce to me~ All the disciples of Red Miasma Marsh admire you as much as the miasma in the Insect Valley! Our admiration stretches on endlessly and never fades away~”
“Senior Brother Ye~ Saving a life is better than building a seven-story pagoda~”
Get lost! Get lost! GET LOST!
What on earth did I do to deserve being subjected to something this disgusting first thing in the morning?!
Ye Chi rubbed his arms, which were covered in goosebumps. Since there was no way he could return to his previous dream now, he closed his eyes, opened them again, and finally sat up.
Their sect was situated in a basin that remained waterlogged throughout the year. The place was humid and hot, and miasma could be seen drifting through the air in every season.
Back when the founding patriarch had chosen this location for the Mistshadow Sect, he had believed that the spiritual energy of heaven and earth converged here.
Nowadays…
The rainfall had grown heavier over the years, and the air had become increasingly damp. Heh. It turned out that spiritual energy wasn’t the only thing gathering in this place. Insects were multiplying in even greater numbers, especially cockroaches. You could burn the entire field to ashes, and they would still return with the spring breeze.
The Mistshadow Sect could practically be called a protected breeding sanctuary for cockroaches.
Other sects were built high up in the mountains, surrounded by ethereal immortal energy and drifting clouds. The Mistshadow Sect, on the other hand, occupied a low-lying, damp marshland. The sky hung low, the clouds pressed heavily overhead, and not a single mountain peak could be seen in any direction.
Without mountains, there could be no peak masters. Consequently, the masters of the various divisions had simply lowered their titles by one rank and called themselves Marsh Masters instead. It was, at least, a fitting name for a place surrounded by water and marshes.
Ye Chi was the disciple of Xiao Jihan, the Marsh Master of Black Mud Marsh. None of the other disciples particularly liked coming to Black Mud Marsh. The place had neither outstanding people nor favorable terrain, and its spiritual energy was the thinnest of all.
As for Ye Chi’s academic performance, it was truly remarkable.
He had achieved the astonishing distinction of ranking dead last.
Of course, that wasn’t entirely his fault.
His master, Xiao Jihan, possessed the highest cultivation among the several elders, but his teaching ability was rather mediocre.
When it came to instructing his disciples, his preferred method could be summed up in one phrase: let them roam free like sheep and leave everything to fate.
The sect leader had advised him several times to move to Rosy Cloud Marsh, considering his aptitude. Xiao Jihan couldn’t be bothered. Either he wandered the world for years without leaving a trace, or he secluded himself behind the rear cliffs to cultivate. Unless ten days or half a month had passed, he rarely emerged from seclusion.
In any case, his master never taught classes personally. He only returned from time to time to test his disciples. Anyone who could defeat him was permitted to graduate.
That brought them to the real problem.
After all these years, not a single disciple of Black Mud Marsh had managed to last ten full moves against their master.
Ye Chi had learned all his sword techniques from his senior brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, he was both terrible at swordsmanship and unwilling to practice. He would work hard for three days, then slack off for two, resulting in one failed examination after another. He was also frequently caught by the patrol inspectors using his sword to skewer meat and grill various kinds of kebabs.
His performance in the sect’s other elective classes was even more disastrous. He would either pass notes during lessons or openly argue with the elders, driving several of them so furious that their blood pressure shot through the roof.
If there was one skill he could genuinely boast about, however, it was his talent for eliminating pests.
Just when the mountains seemed to end and the road appeared to lead nowhere, a new village would suddenly emerge from the darkness. Perhaps even the heavens couldn’t bear to see him suffer any longer, so they had decided to awaken his innate talent for killing insects.
And thus, he had earned himself a nickname:
The Walking Insecticide.
As they walked, the young disciple from Red Miasma Marsh asked him, “Senior Brother Ye Chi, seriously, how did you develop this skill? Were you a giant panda in your previous life or something?”
Ye Chi was in the middle of tilting his head back to gulp down some water. At those words, he choked and coughed for a long time. “Wha… what kind of nonsense is that? If I had been something that precious, would I still have failed the Sword Formation class three years in a row?”
The young disciple scratched his head and answered earnestly, “That’s true, I suppose… Then you must simply have some kind of special affinity with insects. If you ask me, your constitution is genuinely rare. It’s not the sort of thing an ordinary person can develop just because they want to.”
“…Your way of comforting people is certainly one of a kind.” Ye Chi pressed a hand to his forehead and followed the Red Miasma Marsh disciple into the kitchen.
He quickly slipped into work mode. Crouching in the corner, he skillfully arranged a small sword formation and watched expressionlessly as an entire family of cockroaches scrambled desperately through the air, flailing their legs in a frantic attempt to escape.
“Brother Cockroach, even if you put on a flower-hand dance performance for me right here and now, I’m still sending you straight to the afterlife.”
“Chi! Have you finished clearing out all the cockroaches?” Senior Sister Ning, who had been sorting vegetables outside, poked half her head through the doorway. “Last time, the senior brother sent by the Foreign Affairs Hall was supposed to handle the infestation. For someone with such a high cultivation level, he sure made a mess of things. He spent the entire afternoon working on it, and yet the insects came back as soon as the spring breeze blew. To make matters worse, he even blasted a hole that big in my stove!”
Those proper sword cultivators from the Foreign Affairs Hall had a rather extreme approach to pest control. After setting up their formations, they would simply unleash several sword qi attacks directly at the cockroaches’ nests.
With a loud explosion, the insects would indeed die. However, the egg cases hidden in the cracks remained completely untouched. Within a few days, another entire nest of cockroaches would hatch and emerge.
It was a classic case of treating the symptoms without addressing the root cause.
“There are two nests hidden beneath the stove. Behind the cupboard, there are another five nests scattered around, and that’s not even counting the three cockroach egg cases.” Ye Chi counted them off on his fingers. “If even a single cockroach crawls out of this kitchen during the next three months, I’ll put on a live performance for you all. I’ll eat a cockroach sashimi-style, right here on the spot…”
The several disciples outside immediately pressed their palms together and begged him to stop talking.
“Don’t! Please, my brother, anything but that! You say things like this every single time. After listening to you, I can skip lunch altogether! Ugh, ugh, ugh!”
“Then give me the money you save on lunch.”
“Senior Brother, our budget really isn’t that generous! Tingyun Marsh has plenty of money. Why don’t you charge the people over there instead?”
Whenever Ye Chi encountered a question he found difficult to answer, he simply stopped talking. He wiped his sword, smiled, and deftly avoided responding.
Senior Sister Ning, who was standing nearby, let out a cackling laugh.
“Why else?! It’s because our little Chi has a crush on Lord Siqing!”
“Just think about how many times you’ve run over to Tingyun Marsh! You go there every other day, claiming that you’re checking whether any insects have appeared. What, is the feng shui at Tingyun Marsh particularly bad? Does it breed insects at an extraordinary rate? Is that why you can never finish exterminating them, no matter how often you go?”
Ye Chi could chatter endlessly about practically anything, but the moment he heard that particular name, the tips of his ears turned red. His entire demeanor suddenly became awkward and bashful.
Naturally, he went there to see Senior Brother Shen. Even a single glance at him was enough to sustain Ye Chi for another three days, provided he watered down the memory and savored it slowly.
Shen Zhuoqing was the senior disciple in charge of the spiritual plant garden at Tingyun Marsh. He was exceptionally skilled at cultivating spiritual plants, and the most popular elective course on the curriculum—the one devoted to spiritual plant cultivation—was taught by him.
He had neither father nor mother. The previous sect leader had found him in an abandoned village outside the Insect Valley and brought him back.
Strangely enough, Lord Siqing possessed a naturally occurring, extremely faint fragrance of grass and trees. Simply being near him made people feel an inexplicable sense of closeness deep in their hearts.
The title Siqing could be understood as someone who presided over verdant plants.
Ye Chi felt that no title could suit Shen Zhuoqing more perfectly.
In his heart, Senior Brother Shen was like a bright, immaculate moon hanging over the water, so beautiful that even the flowers, grasses, and trees seemed to lean toward him as they grew.
“Just think about who Lord Siqing is!” Senior Sister Ning tapped him with the handle of her spatula. “Your master and Lord Siqing have such a good relationship. If your master finds out that you’ve been harboring feelings for Lord Siqing, won’t he skin you alive?”
Ye Chi slid his Blazing Plains Sword back into its sheath. The blade struck the mouth of the scabbard with a dull, muffled clack.
“Your master is always running over to Tingyun Marsh, too. Just yesterday, he even delivered a three-hundred-year-old snow ginseng.”
Ye Chi lowered his head and smiled bitterly.
And what had he ever delivered?
A few rounds of free pest-control services. Occasionally, he would shamelessly snatch some of the logistical chores that belonged to the other disciples at Tingyun Marsh, all in the hope of arranging a spectacularly romantic encounter with Shen Zhuoqing.
“Little Chi,” Senior Sister Ning said, looking at her lovesick junior brother with sympathy as she patted his shoulder. “I almost feel sorry for you. Why don’t you… give it a try? Who knows? Maybe Lord Siqing happens to like your type!”
Ye Chi remained silent for a while, gazing at the sun outside the kitchen window. Then, he suddenly spoke.
“Senior Sister, do you have any errands that need running? Preferably something that involves going to Tingyun Marsh.”
Senior Sister Ning raised an eyebrow. Then she turned around, rummaged through a cabinet beside the stove, and pulled out a coarse-cloth bundle, which she promptly shoved into Ye Chi’s arms.
“What a coincidence! Yesterday, Lord Siqing sent word through someone that he was running short of several medicinal powders used for preparing cultivation soil. I’ve already prepared them, but I haven’t delivered them yet. You can make the trip for me, and while you’re there…”
Before she could finish speaking, Ye Chi had already tucked the bundle into his arms and vanished in the blink of an eye.
“Thanks, Senior Sister!”
Okay…. I picked another novel 🙂👉👈 But don’t worry..
I will do my best to update on time and regularly! I hope everyone enjoys it