After Lu Junheng left, Shen Xuan leisurely finished his breakfast and began sorting through the things Lu Junheng had left behind in the courtyard.
He left all the ordinary household items such as pots, bowls, and utensils where they were, while putting anything remotely valuable into a storage bag. Although, considering how cheap Lu Junheng’s temporary residence was—almost as cheap as his own life—there was practically nothing of value to be found.
Once he had finished packing almost everything, Shen Xuan looked around the courtyard one last time. His eyes landed on a patch of flowers in the corner.
The weather was still cold, and the leaves had only just begun to turn green again. Only a few pale-red flowers had bloomed.
The color of the flowers suddenly reminded Shen Xuan of another plant.
He had little interest in flowers and plants, but Lu Junheng occasionally had the strange habit of growing unusual plants at home.
That particular plant had probably been planted beneath Shen Xuan’s window around the time Shen Xuan had first taken over as the Lord of the First Divine Hall.
Shen Xuan had absolutely no talent for taking care of flowers and plants, the complete opposite of his talent for swordsmanship. Thus, during the hundred years after Lu Junheng left, the plants Lu Junheng had left behind gradually withered away.
In the end, only that vine-like plant survived Shen Xuan’s terrible care. It stubbornly clung to the windowsill and bloomed with pale-red flowers every month.
Shen Xuan had occasionally looked up information about it on a whim, but even then, he had never figured out what kind of plant it actually was.
An unknown flower was hardly important compared with the tangled history of grievances and affection between the two of them.
Still, now that he suddenly remembered it, he found himself strangely nostalgic for the fragrance of the flowers spreading across the windowsill.
Shen Xuan stood before the flowers for a long while before breaking off the one that was blooming most beautifully and slipping it into his sleeve.
He stepped out of the courtyard and heard someone call from the street.
“Xiao Lu—”
Shen Xuan closed the gate and turned around.
It was an ordinarily dressed middle-aged woman carrying a basket full of vegetables on her arm. Judging by the direction she had come from, she had probably just returned from the nearby morning market.
She was one of the neighbors and seemed to have gotten along quite well with Lu Junheng’s false identity during his time here.
Lu Junheng had always possessed an uncanny ability to fit into any environment. Most of the time, however, he simply couldn’t be bothered to use it.
When the woman saw the handsome young man who had turned his head at the sound of her voice, her greeting to the neighbors abruptly stopped.
She gave an awkward smile.
“I thought you were Xiao Lu when I saw you coming out. Are you Xiao Lu’s…?”
Shen Xuan thought for a moment before answering, “I don’t know. The owner of this house believes that we currently have no relationship. I respect his wishes.”
The woman immediately sensed that the young man and the owner of the house did not seem to have a particularly harmonious relationship. She awkwardly changed the subject.
“Oh, it’s already this late. Xiao Lu should have gone to work by now, right?”
Shen Xuan smiled warmly and made a friendly guess.
“He left half an hour ago, but he probably isn’t at work. He might have gone to hang himself.”
I’ll buy him a coffin later. If Lu Junheng is unfortunate enough to still be alive, I’ll strangle him myself.
The woman: “…”
She decided there was no way to continue this conversation.
“But there is one thing I’m certain of.”
Shen Xuan applied a little pressure with his finger, and a faint click sounded in the air as the lock snapped shut.
His tone was cheerful.
“No one will be coming back here.”
Shen Xuan walked through the streets and happened to come across a cultivator wearing a pale-blue uniform.
He was from the Second Divine Hall and was replacing the notices posted along the street.
Shen Xuan watched as the familiar wanted poster was taken down, and his footsteps paused.
He changed direction and walked over to the cultivator, casually striking up a conversation.
“Has this person’s wanted notice been withdrawn?”
The cultivator was startled by the sudden voice. When he turned and saw a pleasant-looking young man, his attitude softened somewhat, and he patiently explained.
“Yes. We just received the order from above. The wanted notice for this person has been withdrawn.”
Speaking of this, he couldn’t help sounding a little resentful.
“They’ve been wanted for so long, yet the Divine Hall never even gave us a specific crime. This Lu Junheng is just some young kid, and it’s not like he caused any major trouble. They’ve wasted so much manpower and resources over him. Honestly, it’s about time they withdrew the order…”
The cultivator realized that continuing to complain about this could affect his career, so he wisely stopped himself.
Shen Xuan considerately changed the subject.
“I see. Then will the city’s barrier be lifted as well?”
At the mention of this, the cultivator visibly relaxed.
“Yes. It will be lifted tomorrow.”
Once the barrier was removed, the Divine Hall’s workload would decrease as well.
Shen Xuan suddenly pointed at the wanted poster in the cultivator’s hand.
“Are all of these going to be thrown away?”
The cultivator paused before answering, “Yes.”
Shen Xuan politely asked, “Could I have one?”
The cultivator looked puzzled.
“You can, I suppose… But what do you want it for?”
Once the wanted notice was invalidated, it was nothing more than an ordinary piece of paper. They were going to throw them away with the rest of the trash anyway, so there was no harm in giving one away.
Shen Xuan smiled.
“I want to keep it as a souvenir. He looks just like the person of my dreams.”
The one Lu Junheng had given him had gotten wet during their confrontation, and the portrait had already become blurred.
The cultivator couldn’t help looking at the face on the wanted poster.
He certainly was handsome, but…
His expression became strange.
His thoughts wavered between Is there something wrong with this kid’s head? and Well, at least his taste isn’t bad.
In the end, he settled on a conclusion about Shen Xuan:
His taste is fine, but somehow his brain seems to have gone bad at such a young age.
Under the cultivator’s sympathetic gaze, Shen Xuan carefully folded the wanted poster and put it away before thanking him naturally and leaving.
When it came down to it, Lu Junheng being wanted by the Second Divine Hall actually had little to do with Lu Junheng’s own actions.
Lu Junheng was lazy, undisciplined, sharp-tongued, mischievous, overly curious, and disrespectful toward the gods, among many other undesirable qualities. But he was still fundamentally a righteous cultivator with a bottom line. He would never do something like murder or arson that would violate the Divine Hall’s laws.
Moreover, when Lu Junheng was truly fifteen or sixteen, he was still young and inexperienced. He had neither the opportunity nor the strength to provoke a giant organization like the Divine Hall.
In fact, most of the truly vicious criminals wanted by the cultivation world were first judged by the First Divine Hall, which was responsible for laws and punishment, before the Five Divine Halls jointly issued a wanted notice.
Lu Junheng’s case, however, was extremely unusual.
His wanted notice had been issued solely by the Second Divine Hall.
Lu Junheng’s connection with the Second Divine Hall could be traced back to the moment he was born.
Sixteen years ago, there had been an unusual change in leadership at the Second Divine Hall.
At the time, Lu Fengsheng, the Lord of the Second Divine Hall, had announced without warning that he was stepping down from his position. He then left the Second Divine Hall with a newborn baby.
That child was Lu Junheng.
The Second Divine Hall remained in turmoil for several months before the new Lord took office and restored things to normal.
Afterward, the Second Divine Hall offered little explanation. Publicly, they simply stated that it had been a normal change of leadership.
At the time this happened, Lu Junheng had been nothing more than a newborn baby. Given the dignity of the Divine Hall, regardless of whatever grievances existed between the previous generation, they should not have openly targeted a child.
Yet two years ago, after Lu Junheng began appearing in the cultivation world, the Second Divine Hall suddenly issued a wanted notice for him.
And it specified that he was to be captured dead, not alive.
When people asked why, the only vague answer they received was two words:
“Divine revelation.”
The ultimate goal of cultivation was to become a god. Yet throughout the ten thousand years of the New Era, gods had always existed only in legends.
The Five Gods had used spiritual treasures of Heaven and Earth to establish the five divine pillars that now supported the world, preserving the world from the destruction of the Old Era and bringing it into the New Era.
The five divine weapons formed from the Five Elements were the weapons they had left behind in the mortal world.
But beyond those legends, no one had ever truly seen a god.
Even within the Divine Halls, which were responsible for guarding the five divine pillars and maintaining order in this world, records concerning the gods were extremely scarce.
As for a so-called divine revelation…
There was even less evidence.
At least during the several hundred years Shen Xuan had served as Lord of the First Divine Hall, he had never once heard of such a thing.
Lu Junheng had entered Taiyi Academy at the age of sixteen.
When Shen Xuan first met him, Lu Junheng had already recovered from his earlier hardships. Aside from being slightly less annoying than he was now, he looked almost exactly the same as his current lazy, listless self.
Only the instinctive vigilance in his eyes whenever someone passed nearby still carried traces of what he had experienced in the past.
Shen Xuan had never met the young Lu Junheng before the age of sixteen.
He had only heard a few scattered stories when the two of them occasionally chatted.
From those fragments, Shen Xuan could roughly infer that those two years had been extremely difficult for Lu Junheng.
No one knew how a child barely in his teens had managed to survive endless pursuit and assassination attempts.
In his previous life, it was only after Lu Junheng’s adoptive father, Lu Fengsheng, stepped forward and reached some kind of agreement with the Second Divine Hall that Lu Junheng was able to enter Taiyi Academy.
Only then did the Second Divine Hall temporarily stop pursuing him.
Shen Xuan had always believed that this experience played a major role in turning Lu Junheng into the kind of cultivator who was completely different from most others—a man who lacked even the most basic reverence for anything related to the word god.
But the actual content of the so-called divine revelation remained a mystery.
Even when Lu Junheng eventually defected from the Divine Hall in his previous life, the two of them still hadn’t managed to uncover the truth.
Shen Xuan was certain that at this point in his previous life, the Second Divine Hall had never voluntarily withdrawn Lu Junheng’s wanted notice.
Had his adoptive father intervened early?
Or…
Had Lu Junheng done something?
Thinking about this, Shen Xuan continued toward the city gate.
He found a teahouse near the gate, ordered a pot of tea, and waited for his target.
An hour passed.
He ordered two more pots of tea.
More than two hours passed. His stomach began to ache from drinking so much tea, so he ordered a plate of pastries.
When the second hour finally ended, he began contemplating the various ways Lu Junheng might die.
After leaving the house, Lu Junheng had first gone to the Divine Hall’s local station. Then he had gone to the eastern part of the city, followed by the western part…
Shen Xuan went over Lu Junheng’s movements for the day and finally began to lose patience.
Lu Junheng had already wandered all over the city.
He had even passed by the city gate three times.
What exactly is this bastard doing? Exercising?
Is he actually going to leave the city or not?