To capture the rogue Cui, speed was of the essence.
By the third quarter of the Hour of the Chen (7:45 AM), Fu Jinyue and Lu Liuru had finished their deliberations. The two quickly departed from the Sword Sect, flying down the celestial mountain on a spiritual sword.
Naturally, it was Lu Liuru who did the actual flying; Fu Jinyue was merely hitching a free ride.
Meanwhile, by the fifth quarter of the Hour of the Chen (8:15 AM), Yun Heyin, who had been waiting in his courtyard for a long time, could no longer restrain himself. He released his divine perception, only to discover that the neighboring courtyard was entirely empty. After a moment of silence, unable to conceal his gloomy expression, he closed his doors and returned inside.
By the first quarter of the Hour of the Si (9:15 AM), amidst the whistling wind, the female cultivators arrived at the town below the mountain. Vendors were already lining the streets. Guided by Lu Liuru, they went ahead to hunt down the rogue Cui.
By the second quarter of the Hour of the Si (9:30 AM), the study window opened silently. The courtyard was bathed in brilliant, tranquil sunlight. After a few breaths, having found nothing, Yun Heyin closed the window again in tight-lipped silence.
At that very moment, outside the Fortune Inn in the mountain town, Fu Jinyue and her companion happened to cross paths with Cui Zai as he was stepping out.
They shouted for him to stop and blocked his way. Seeing them, he fled in panic, crashing through the crowds and causing an absolute uproar, throwing the street into utter chaos.
“Speak.”
Deep within the alley, the Immortal-Binding Rope wrapped around his body coil after coil, binding Cui Zai tightly.
The Immortal-Binding Rope was Lu Liuru’s dharma treasure. It could bind anyone with a cultivation base below the Nascent Soul stage and suppress their spiritual energy, making it extremely difficult to break free.
With his hands and feet bound, Cui Zai could no longer escape. He could only look up with a bitter smile.
The handsome young man had chicken feathers stuck in his hair and dirt smudged across his face, his brow furrowed and his nose wrinkled in dismay. Yet, his features were exceptionally fine; even in such a wretched state, one couldn’t help but describe him as elegant and dashing.
Fu Jinyue stepped on his chest, forcing his body back against the alley wall. Seeing him grimace in pain from the impact, she felt a strange surge of excitement for some reason.
She yanked the rope, pulling him closer, and said expressionlessly, “Speak. Why did you run just now?”
The young man kept his brow furrowed but forced a smile, saying, “Oh, my dear grandaunt, someone was chasing me, so of course I had to run! What rabbit doesn’t run when it sees a hawk?”
“Slick-tongued,” Fu Jinyue looked down at him coldly. “It seems you fled out of a guilty conscience.”
Cui Zai glanced at the rope in the girl’s hand and remarked, “Look at that, didn’t I make the right call by running?”
With that, he smiled again, completely unhurried and composed.
“It doesn’t matter why you came after me. As long as the escape is successful, it’s another day of freedom and leisure.” His gaze drifted to Fu Jinyue as he shrugged. “But since I failed, I get tied up by you like a dog. Anyone can see which outcome is better; anyone would run.”
His carefree attitude was genuinely infuriating.
Fu Jinyue remained silent but suddenly tightened the Immortal-Binding Rope. The coarse fibers dug deep into his skin, pressing into his jade-like flesh and leaving a path of mottled red marks.
Cui Zai hissed, his eyes glistening with a layer of tears. He begged for mercy, though his tone remained stubborn: “Hey, it was just a joke. Spare me, Fellow Daoist Fu, don’t actually leash me like a dog.”
Fu Jinyue replied, “Every sentence out of your mouth is about dogs. In my view, you’re just being duplicitous.”
“Since you constantly use that analogy, you must be dying to become a dog.” She applied a bit more pressure with her foot against the young man’s chest and chuckled softly. “I am very magnanimous. Why don’t you bark twice right now for me to hear?”
Fu Jinyue tilted her head, pulling him a fraction closer. With a smile in her eyes, she coaxed in a gentle voice, “Go on, bark, hmm?”
Her eyes gleamed with an intoxicating radiance.
It was like the crescent tip of a moon hanging over a cliff, enticing one to reach out and grasp it.
The young man’s breath caught instantly.
Beside them, Lu Liuru coughed a few times, looking rather uncomfortable. “I—I’ll go keep watch at the entrance of the alley.”
The female cultivator’s face was neither harsh nor gentle as she awkwardly advised, “Fellow Daoist Fu, falsely reporting a heresy cultivator spy is a matter that can be big or small. Once you clear up the reason, it’s fine as long as he’s willing to apologize. Control yourself a bit, don’t do anything… impulsive.”
After all, this was still a Golden Core cultivator.
Lu Liuru left it at that and truly walked to the mouth of the alley to keep watch. As she walked, she thought to herself: That Golden Core senior is exceptionally good-looking; it’s no wonder Little Friend Fu, who cultivates the Hehuan sect path, is tempted.
Recalling the ambiguous tension in their banter, and thinking of her own Passionate Sword Dao, she thought, Well, it’s all just cultivation in the end. Nothing to be surprised about, nothing to be surprised about.
Seeing that she was actually walking away, Cui Zai hurriedly cried out in mock panic.
“Don’t, don’t leave!”
“Fellow Daoist Lu, Lu Liuru! What do you mean ‘keep watch’ and ‘impulsive’? What is she going to do to me?!”
Fu Jinyue lost her patience and tightened the Immortal-Binding Rope once more, squeezing the breath out of Cui Zai until he no longer had the strength to bicker, leaving him to helplessly await his fate.
“Speak,” she lowered her gaze. “Why did you claim I was a heresy cultivator spy back then?”
“Ha, it was all a misunderstanding.” Cui Zai panted heavily, in severe pain. He explained, “I am an artifact cultivator. You know what an artifact cultivator is, right? Dharma treasures and the like are all made by us.”
Cui Zai continued, “A few months ago, I got my hands on a rare material that can divine good and bad fortune. While forging an artifact, I refined the material into it and created a small object—a handbell. It doesn’t have much use, but it can distinguish between orthodox and heresy cultivators. That day, after I ran into you, the handbell began to shake inside my storage pouch, which is how I discovered your identity.”
He shifted slightly, seemingly wanting to pull the item out to show Fu Jinyue. But bound tightly by the Immortal-Binding Rope, he had no choice but to give up. He added, “If you don’t believe me, untie me, and I’ll bring it out for you to see.”
Distinguishing between orthodox and heresy cultivators?
Fu Jinyue’s brow furrowed.
Seeing her silence, Cui Zai glanced out of the corner of his eye at Lu Liuru, who was keeping watch at the alley entrance, and said flatteringly, “But Fellow Daoist Fu is truly impressive. Despite being a heresy cultivator and only at the Qi Condensation stage, you can command a Foundation Establishment disciple of the Sword Sect to do your bidding. How did you hide your identity, and how did you befriend the Sword Sect? Why don’t you let this rogue cultivator learn a thing or two?”
Though he spoke as if probing for information, his eyes never left Fu Jinyue’s face.
Noticing a slight shift in her expression, Cui Zai said in surprise, “Oh, this… you didn’t hide it at all?”
Fu Jinyue crouched down to meet his gaze. Confused, Cui Zai forced a pleasing smile.
“What—what is it?” he asked.
Fu Jinyue said, “You have such a handsome face, yet you constantly make such deliberately vulgar expressions. It’s a waste.”
Cui Zai smiled awkwardly, “My thanks for Fellow Daoist Fu’s praise?”
Fu Jinyue added, “Cut out the clownish antics. You’re a strange one; you’re already a Golden Core cultivator, so why are you always shrinking back, looking like a coward who’s afraid of everyone?”
So cowardly that even a Qi Condensation cultivator could ride roughshod over his head.
Cui Zai maintained his thick-skinned, forced smile. “A rogue cultivator traveling the world must naturally keep a low profile and be polite to—”
Fu Jinyue didn’t feel like wasting her breath arguing with him and cut him off directly: “I told you to drop the acts, liar.”
The word “liar” caused Cui Zai’s brow to twitch, and his smile nearly crumbled.
Fu Jinyue said, “You keep claiming you forged a handbell to identify orthodox and heresy cultivators, but that isn’t the case at all, is it?”
Since she had long known about the existence of the heresy Hehuan sect from the system, and had personally witnessed the orthodox path’s hatred for heresy cultivators within the Sword Sect, she had naturally taken the time to have Yun Heyin test her once their relationship softened.
“You detected my uniqueness through some other method.” Fu Jinyue hooked her finger under the liar’s chin, forcing his stunned expression clearly into view. She smiled and sighed, “Unfortunately, you guessed wrong. I am not a heresy cultivator.”
In this realm, the distinction between a conventional cultivator and a heresy cultivator was clear-cut.
While both defied heaven to seek longevity, conventional cultivators absorbed the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, upheld heavenly principles and kindness, and focused primarily on self-cultivation.
Heresy cultivators were vastly different; they relied on plundering and refining the cultivation bases of others, with no shortage of bloodthirsty individuals among them.
Because their spiritual energy was plundered, its circulation differed from normal; once taken into the body, it ran in reverse. When channeling spiritual energy to cast spells, the traces left behind were also unique—what was commonly referred to as “demonic energy.”
However, as the conflicts between the orthodox and heresy paths deepened, heresy cultivators had also devised brilliant methods to conceal their aura.
With these methods, unless someone scrutinized them thoroughly with spiritual energy, they would not be discovered.
The result of Yun Heyin’s thorough inspection of Fu Jinyue was this: she was neither a heresy cultivator nor a conventional cultivator.
The level at which the spiritual energy circulated within her body was one tier higher than anyone else in the world.
Unfathomable and incomprehensible, it was entirely unique.
This also served to support her consistent public claim of “cultivating the ancient orthodox Hehuan sect path.”
Fu Jinyue thought to herself, Cui Zai is no saint. This man clearly hadn’t interacted with me closely, yet from just a brief encounter, he picked up on my uniqueness. Fortunately, he definitely doesn’t know exactly what makes it unique, which is why he followed conventional logic to assume I was a heresy cultivator, intending to report it to the Sword Sect for a reward.
To uncover how he knew, she had to make him speak himself.
“Tell me how you knew.”
Cui Zai closed his eyes. “I won’t say.”
Fu Jinyue countered, “Are you going to speak or not? If you don’t, I’ll drag you up to the Sword Sect and see how they treat a liar who made a false report about a heresy cultivator.”
Cui Zai opened his eyes in humiliation. “Must you be so utterly ruthless?”
Fu Jinyue began, “Five, four, three…”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Cui Zai abruptly interrupted. “I really can’t say! Fellow Daoist Fu, aren’t you just stripping away my last shred of privacy? Traveling outside as a rogue cultivator, how can I not keep a few trump cards for myself?”
Fu Jinyue resumed counting down, “Three…”
Cui Zai wore an expression of someone facing execution. “The matter with the heresy spy was my fault, and it must have caused you a lot of trouble, Fellow Daoist. How about this, how about this—I’ll give you a few dharma treasures? A spiritual sword? A storage pouch? A protective robe? They’re all top-quality goods.”
Fu Jinyue pondered briefly and asked, “All of them?”
Cui Zai was horrified. “You want all of them?”
Fu Jinyue restarted the countdown, “Three, two…”
Just as she was about to say “one,” Cui Zai yelled, “Fine! All of them, all of them, all of them! On top of everything, I’ll add one more thing, alright?”
The countdown stopped.
As if terrified of Fu Jinyue, he added, “I truly cannot reveal my trump card; revealing it would be worse than killing me. From now on, I will give you forty percent of all the profits from my artifact refining. I’ll make an Inner Demon Oath right now. Consider it a token of my deep, torrent-like regret toward you. How about it?”
Fu Jinyue didn’t buy it. “You are full of lies and utterly treacherous. I fear the moment I let you go, you’ll run.”
“I have a communication dharma treasure that possesses the dual capability of locating people and transmitting objects. Once bound by a drop of blood, it can never be removed. Except for secret realms, it can locate a person at any time.” Cui Zai wore a pained expression. “Is that enough sincerity for you?”
Fu Jinyue said expressionlessly, “Hand it over.”
She had to inspect the goods first.
With Cui Zai’s permission, she retrieved a pair of twin-fish jade pendants from his storage pouch. The pendants were divided into the colors of Yin and Yang, black and white. Put together, they formed the shape of two swimming fish holding each other’s tails. The bodies of the fish were vivid and incredibly beautiful.
Fu Jinyue loosened Cui Zai’s bindings slightly, exposing only one of his hands so that only his wrist and five fingers could move. Cui Zai chose the white piece, while Fu Jinyue held the black one.
Cui Zai explained, “First, bind it with a drop of blood, then record a strand of each other’s spiritual energy and true name. The spiritual energy is to find the path, and the true name is to find the person.”
Fu Jinyue watched Cui Zai finish first before letting her own blood drop onto it. Then came the step for the true name.
She stopped Cui Zai’s movements, coughed lightly, and said, “Fu Jinyue.”
Previously, out of caution, the name she had given Cui Zai was “Fu Qian.”
The young man looked utterly dumbfounded. “You used a fake name to trick me. How cunning.”
Fu Jinyue remained silent, merely pretending everything was normal as she proceeded to record Cui Zai’s true name.
However, the young man stopped her. “Cui Lecheng.”
Fu Jinyue looked up at him. Cui Lecheng averted his gaze, offering a guilty, awkward chuckle. “Haha, it’s only natural to be cautious when traveling outside. I didn’t expect to share the exact same thought as you, Fellow Daoist… Come, come, come, let’s record the spiritual energy next, so I can give you the other treasures.”
Fu Jinyue grabbed Cui Lecheng’s white fish jade pendant and infused her own spiritual energy into it. When it came to recording Cui Lecheng’s spiritual energy, she ran into a problem.
Due to the Immortal-Binding Rope, his spiritual energy couldn’t be released freely as it normally would.
But untying him completely was also inappropriate.
“Why don’t you untie me?” Cui Lecheng suggested again.
Fu Jinyue cast a sidelong glance at him, muttered “in your dreams,” and pressed her black fish jade pendant directly against Cui Lecheng’s forehead. Since she only needed a single strand, a close distance like this would allow some to be infused.
“Channel your spiritual energy into it,” she commanded.
The cold jade felt icy, but it had warmed up slightly in Fu Jinyue’s hand. Pressed against him, he could faintly feel the residual warmth. Cui Lecheng stared at the face of the person before him. Seeing her staring back with an earnest expression—even if she was just staring at his forehead—he fell into a brief daze.
The ethereal spiritual energy trickled into the jade pendant like mist.
While waiting, Fu Jinyue noticed out of the corner of her eye that when this man wasn’t deliberately acting foolish, his face was actually quite captivating.
In truth, he possessed an excellent bone structure. His brows and eyes were clear and open, his bearing extraordinary, and his build lean and tall. One look at him evoked the image of those carefree, chivalrous heroes in martial arts tales who robbed the rich to feed the poor.
Her heart fluttered slightly—a bit shamelessly.
Since her heart was swayed, she followed her desires and leaned down closer.
She had always acted willfully. As she leaned in, their breaths intertwined. They were too close, close enough to clearly discern a tiny red mole just beneath the corner of the young man’s eye. It was perfectly placed at the end of his eye, like a meticulous stroke added by a painter, imparting a hint of hidden charm.
Cui Lecheng did not dodge or turn away, allowing her to approach, appearing somewhat dazed as if he hadn’t yet realized something was amiss. Fu Jinyue thought to herself that since this man had permitted her to ride over him and abuse her authority for so long anyway, she might as well just pin him down completely. If she lifted her skirt and sat upon this face, what kind of sensation would it be…
“Jinyue!”
An abrupt shout broke her train of thought.
Lu Liuru had suddenly called her name.
Not “Fellow Daoist,” but “Jinyue.”
Detecting the urgency in her tone, Fu Jinyue froze instantly. Alert yet bewildered, she lifted her head to look toward the entrance of the alley.
A figure stood there, backlit by the sun.
The halo of light outlined his silhouette. Yun Heyin’s expression was dark and unreadable, his hand resting on the hilt of the sword at his waist. His shadow spilled into the alleyway, stretched long by the light.
He gazed at them quietly, his eyes falling upon Fu Jinyue. She was pressed extremely close to the bound man, her expression filled with a trace of confusion, while strands of her hair draped ambiguously over the other’s chest. Every single strand was an absolute eyesore.
Yun Heyin spoke softly, “The matter for tomorrow morning that you spoke of… was to be in an alley with someone like this?”