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 the ordinary household items—pots, bowls, pans, and the like—where they were, while putting anything of slightly greater value into a storage bag. Though, to be honest, Lu Junheng’s temporary hideout was about as cheap as his life, so there was hardly anything valuable to begin with.
Once everything was more or less sorted, Shen Xuan looked around the courtyard one last time. His gaze eventually landed on a cluster 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 those flowers suddenly reminded Shen Xuan of another plant.
He had never been particularly interested in flowers or 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 he had first become the Master of the First Divine Temple.
Shen Xuan’s talent for taking care of flowers and plants was completely opposite to his talent with the sword. During the hundred years after Lu Junheng left, the plants Lu Junheng had left behind gradually withered away.
Only that vine-like plant survived Shen Xuan’s terrible care. It stubbornly clung to the windowsill and continued to bloom pale-red flowers every month.
Whenever he was in the mood, Shen Xuan had looked up information about it, but he still had no idea what kind of plant it was. Its vitality was almost as astonishing as Lu Junheng’s ability to survive no matter how many times he seemed destined to die.
An unknown flower was hardly important compared with the complicated history of love and resentment between the two of them.
Yet now that he suddenly remembered it, Shen Xuan found himself missing the faint fragrance of the flowers scattered across the windowsill.
He stood in front of the flowers for a long while before picking the one that had bloomed the fullest and tucking it into his sleeve.
He stepped out of the courtyard and heard someone calling from the street.
“Little Lu—”
Shen Xuan closed the door and turned around.
It was an ordinary-looking middle-aged woman with a basket full of vegetables hanging from 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 this period.
Lu Junheng had always been capable of fitting in anywhere. He simply couldn’t be bothered to make use of that ability most of the time.
When the woman saw the handsome young man who had turned around at the sound of her voice, her greeting abruptly stopped.
She gave an awkward smile.
“I thought you were Little Lu. You came out of his house, so are you Little 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 keenly sensed that the young man did not seem to have a very good relationship with the owner of the house, so she awkwardly changed the subject.
“Oh, it’s already this late. Little 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. Maybe he went to hang himself?”
I’ll buy him a coffin later. If Lu Junheng is unfortunately still alive, I’ll strangle him myself.
The woman fell silent.
She decided there was no way to continue this conversation.
“But there is one thing I’m certain of.”
Shen Xuan pressed down with his finger. A faint click sounded 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 encounter a cultivator wearing the light-blue uniform of the Second Divine Temple.
The cultivator was replacing the notices posted along the street.
Shen Xuan watched as the familiar wanted poster was taken down. He paused for a moment.
Then he changed direction and walked over, casually striking up a conversation.
“Has this wanted notice been revoked?”
The cultivator was startled by the sudden voice. When he turned and saw a pleasant-looking young man, his attitude softened somewhat.
“Yes. The higher-ups just issued the order. The wanted notice for this person has been revoked.”
At the mention of it, some resentment crept into his voice.
“They’ve had him wanted for so long, but the Divine Temple never even gave us a proper explanation of what crime he committed. Lu Junheng is just a young man, after all. It’s not like he’s caused any major trouble. They’ve wasted so much manpower and resources for nothing. If you ask me, it’s better that they finally called it off…”
The cultivator realized that continuing to complain about the Divine Temple might affect his career, so he wisely stopped.
Shen Xuan considerately changed the subject.
“So, does that mean the restrictions throughout the city will be lifted as well?”
The cultivator visibly relaxed.
“Yes. They’ll be removed tomorrow.”
Once the restrictions were lifted, the Divine Temple’s workload would decrease as well.
Shen Xuan suddenly pointed at the wanted posters the cultivator had taken down.
“Are all of these going to be thrown away?”
The cultivator paused before answering, “Yes.”
“Could you give me one?”
The cultivator looked puzzled.
“You can have one, but… what do you want it for?”
Once the wanted notice was no longer valid, 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 very much like my dream lover.”
The one Lu Junheng had given him had gotten wet during their previous confrontation, and the portrait on it had already been ruined.
The cultivator’s gaze naturally fell onto the face on the wanted poster.
He was indeed handsome, but…
His expression became strange.
His thoughts wavered between Is this kid mentally all right? and Well, at least his taste isn’t bad.
In the end, he could only conclude that although the young man’s taste was perfectly fine, something seemed to have gone wrong with his head at such a young age.
Under the cultivator’s sympathetic gaze, Shen Xuan carefully folded the wanted poster and put it away. He thanked him naturally before leaving.
When it came down to why Lu Junheng had been wanted by the Second Divine Temple, it actually had very little to do with Lu Junheng’s own actions.
Lu Junheng was carefree, sharp-tongued, mischievous, excessively curious, and disrespectful toward the gods, among many other questionable qualities. But at the end of the day, he was still a righteous cultivator with a bottom line. He would never do something like murder or arson that violated the laws of the Divine Temples.
Moreover, when Lu Junheng had truly been fifteen or sixteen, he had been far too young and inexperienced to have any real opportunity or ability to provoke an enormous organization like the Divine Temple.
In fact, most wanted criminals in the cultivation world who had committed serious crimes would first be judged by the First Divine Temple, which was responsible for laws and punishments. Only afterward would the Five Divine Temples jointly issue a wanted order.
Lu Junheng’s case was extremely unusual.
The wanted order against him had been issued solely by the Second Divine Temple.
The connection between Lu Junheng and the Second Divine Temple could be traced all the way back to the time of his birth.
Sixteen years ago, the Second Divine Temple had undergone an unusual change of leadership.
At the time, Lu Fengsheng, the Master of the Second Divine Temple, had announced without warning that he was stepping down. He then left the Second Divine Temple with a newborn child.
That child was Lu Junheng.
The Second Divine Temple fell into chaos for several months. It was only after the new Master took office that everything gradually returned to normal.
Afterward, the Second Divine Temple gave no further explanation. Publicly, they simply stated that it had been a normal change of leadership.
At the time, Lu Junheng had only been a newborn baby. Given the dignity of the Divine Temple, regardless of whatever grievances had existed between the previous generation, it should have been unthinkable for them to deliberately target a child.
Yet two years after Lu Junheng began appearing in the cultivation world, the Second Divine Temple suddenly issued a wanted order for him.
And it demanded him dead or alive.
When people asked why, the only answer they received was the vague phrase:
“Divine revelation.”
The pinnacle of a cultivator’s path was godhood.
Yet throughout ten thousand years of the New Era, gods had always existed only in legends.
Five legendary gods had used spiritual treasures of heaven and earth to create the five Divine Pillars that now supported the world, preserving it from the destruction of the Old Era and ushering it into the New Era.
The five divine weapons, formed from the Five Elements spiritual treasures, 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 Temples, which guarded the five Divine Pillars and maintained the order of this world, records concerning the gods were extremely scarce.
And as for a “divine revelation”…
During the several centuries Shen Xuan had served as Master of the First Divine Temple, he had never once heard of such a thing.
Lu Junheng entered Taiyi Academy at sixteen.
By the time Shen Xuan met him, Lu Junheng had already recovered from his earlier hardships. Aside from being slightly less irritating than he was now, his lazy and seemingly unmotivated demeanor was more or less the same.
Only the wary look that instinctively appeared in his eyes whenever someone approached remained as a trace of everything he had endured in the past.
Shen Xuan had never met the inexperienced Lu Junheng from before the age of sixteen. He had only heard one or two things from Lu Junheng himself during their occasional conversations.
From those scattered remarks, Shen Xuan could roughly tell 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, came forward and made some kind of exchange with the Second Divine Temple that Lu Junheng was able to enter Taiyi Academy. The Second Divine Temple’s pursuit of him was temporarily called off.
Shen Xuan had always believed that this experience was largely responsible for Lu Junheng growing into a cultivator unlike most others—someone who possessed almost no basic reverence for anything related to the “gods.”
Yet the exact content of that so-called “divine revelation” remained unknown.
Even until Lu Junheng betrayed the Divine Temple in his previous life, the two of them had never managed to uncover the truth.
Shen Xuan was certain that at this point in his previous life, the Second Divine Temple had never voluntarily withdrawn Lu Junheng’s wanted order.
Had his adoptive father intervened early?
Or…
Had Lu Junheng done something?
Thinking about this, Shen Xuan walked toward the city gates.
He found a teahouse near the gates, ordered a pot of tea, and waited for his target.
An hour passed.
He ordered two more pots of tea.
More than halfway through the second hour, his stomach began to hurt from drinking so much tea, so he ordered a plate of pastries.
By the end of the second hour, he had begun contemplating different ways for Lu Junheng to die.
He left home, went to the Divine Temple’s station, then went to the eastern part of the city, then the west…
Shen Xuan mentally reviewed Lu Junheng’s movements throughout the day and finally began to lose patience.
Lu Junheng had already wandered all over the city and had passed by the city gates three times.
What exactly is this bastard doing? Exercising?
Is he actually going to leave the city or not?