Yu Zaixi was the type to set off immediately, without a hint of hesitation, regardless of the fact that night was falling.
Once the other three had packed their belongings, he beckoned to Miao Pei. “You have a cloud-ship, right?”
Miao Pei shook his head. “I am the only disciple at Wushang Peak; I am not equipped with a cloud-ship.”
Yu Zaixi sighed and turned to Qin Nai for help. “It is only a thousand miles or so. Do you have any teleportation arrays?”
Qin Nai shook his head. “I can manage within a hundred miles, but a thousand is too far; I cannot do that yet.”
Yu Zaixi sighed again. “Then we walk.”
With that, he began to sway unsteadily as he walked down the mountain. His white robes, embroidered with shimmering gold thread, were ostentatiously bright and particularly conspicuous in the dark night.
Miao Pei stared for a moment before hurrying to catch up. “Brother Yu, perhaps I should inform Master. He might lend us his own cloud-ship.”
Yu Zaixi shook his head. “No need. Walking is better.”
“How can that be? A cloud-ship travels incredibly fast. Even if we walked a hundred miles a day without eating or resting, we would never catch up.”
Yu Zaixi gave a frustrated exclamation, nearly laughing in annoyance. He waved his hand dismissively. “Go, go play with Xiao Ci.”
Xiao Ci was walking behind Qin Nai, eyeing Yu Zaixi. After a moment, he whispered to Qin Nai, “The wounds on his body are healing really fast.”
Qin Nai frowned, staring at Yu Zaixi’s back, unable to suppress his curiosity. “How exactly do you know that?”
Xiao Ci just knew. He could not explain why, much like how he could hear someone speaking in his ear without ever finding the source—a voice that no one else could hear.
Last night, that voice had told him: Keep an eye on Yu Zaixi.
How to watch him? Why? He did not know; the voice had not said.
Yu Zaixi had joked about walking, but they could not truly travel on foot. Miao Pei quietly borrowed a cloud-ship from someone.
The cloud-ship of the Tianji Pavilion was kept in the shape of a small boat. Xiao Ci looked at it with curiosity, prompting Yu Zaixi to pat the back of his head. “I will get you one in the future.”
Xiao Ci looked up at him immediately, his dark, bright eyes unable to hide his anticipation. Yu Zaixi looked down at him and smiled. “But you must start cultivating. Morning practice, techniques, meditation—all of it must be arranged, otherwise you will not be able to use the boat even if you have one.”
Hearing this, Xiao Ci shrank back, looking wilted. “That will take a long time.”
“Not necessarily,” Yu Zaixi laughed. “You have me. It will not be long.”
As he spoke, Xiao Ci remembered something. He held up two fingers together, imitating the way they formed seals, and muttered something under his breath. To his surprise, he actually managed to summon a wisp of spiritual energy that swirled around his fingertips.
Miao Pei had just finished deploying the cloud-ship, which extended dozens of yards. The hull shimmered with a starry white fluorescence. When he turned back, he saw the pure, unblemished wisp of spiritual energy at Xiao Ci’s fingertips and froze.
“At what age did you start cultivating? No, wait, I see you have not even broken through the body-tempering stage. Where did this spiritual energy come from?”
Qin Nai was also surprised, turning his gaze to Yu Zaixi. “What is going on?”
Yu Zaixi laughed, offering no answer, only teasing, “His talent is just frightening, that is all.”
They boarded the cloud-ship. Xiao Ci touched the glowing hull and asked, “Is this Divine Bone Candle?”
“To be precise, it is bone ash,” Yu Zaixi said coldly. This did not scare Xiao Ci, who merely looked at him helplessly, so Yu Zaixi shrugged. “It is all about the same. The bits of bone from the ancient gods have been tossed around by people; they are used to defend against demons. Since you lived in the city before, you were probably not troubled much by demons.”
That was true. Quzhou City was relatively wealthy, equipped with defensive arrays, Divine Bone Candles at the gates, and cultivators on guard. Demons generally did not enter the city. Only the poor areas outside, which could neither afford Divine Bone Candles nor hire cultivators, suffered from demonic disturbances.
Generally speaking, even the most down-and-out city should be able to afford cultivators.
When the cloud-ship docked outside the city of Luozhong, the four of them could hardly believe their eyes.
The city was so dilapidated that it did not look like it was inhabited by people; it looked exactly like a ghost town. It was the middle of the night, yet the city gates were wide open, swaying in the wind with a creaking sound. The city itself was desolate. Looking in from the outside, none of the shops along the main street had signs hanging; clearly, there was no one there even during the day. Demons flickered past occasionally, but they did not approach simply because the party had brought Divine Bone Candles with them.
“Miao Pei,” Yu Zaixi asked, turning his head. “Is this truly Luozhong? Are you sure you have not found the wrong place?”
Miao Pei was doubting himself as well. The cloud-ship followed instructions automatically, and he was half-tempted to find a map to see if there was another Luozhong in the Twelve Continents of Yunlu.
Before he could figure anything out, an old soldier rose from behind the crenellations of the city wall. His armor was so old that copper scales had fallen off, and the red tassel on the spear in his hand had long since shed its hair. He stood on the wall, peering out for a long time before beckoning them over.
Yu Zaixi looked at Qin Nai. “Shall we go see?”
The three of them had cultivation, so they did not mind, but they were worried about Xiao Ci’s safety. After exchanging a look and deciding to go, one of them took Xiao Ci’s hand, while the other drew a protective talisman on Xiao Ci’s back.
Miao Pei retracted the cloud-ship and summoned his own weapon—a broadsword—following behind Xiao Ci with an air of grandiosity.
The group crowded around Xiao Ci as if guarding an emperor ascending the throne. The old soldier had already climbed down from the wall and was waiting under the gatehouse.
Yu Zaixi walked to the front, stopped a few steps away, and bowed politely. “I apologize for the disturbance in the middle of the night.”
The old soldier seemed unaccustomed to such politeness. He scrutinized Yu Zaixi repeatedly, unsure, and then glanced at Qin Nai, Miao Pei, and Xiao Ci. “Are you truly cultivators from the mountains?”
Yu Zaixi, long accustomed to such scenes, answered smoothly. “No, we are rogue cultivators. We have not been on a mountain for many years.”
The old soldier stroked his chin and shook his head slowly. “That is not right. This cloud-ship of yours is a new model.”
A person of the world, Yu Zaixi thought. He laughed, hung his head, and sighed. “To tell you the truth, we stole it. It is truly dishonorable, and I did not expect you to notice.”
The old soldier did not believe him, but instead asked, “What are you doing in Luozhong?”
“We are looking for someone,” Yu Zaixi whispered. Acting like a guilty thief, he leaned in close to the soldier and asked, “Has a cultivator in black robes been here recently? He stole something of ours, and we are looking for him. It is a very important item.”
It was a matter of whether he could go home.
Before he could think of what else to say, the old soldier stepped back suddenly and narrowed his eyes. The night was pitch black and moonless; Yu Zaixi had to use spiritual energy to help him see the man’s expression, but he still could not make it out. Instinctively, he took a step forward and tilted his head. “Is something wrong?”
“The black-robed cultivator left more than half a year ago. You are pursuing him now; are you truly here to look for him?”
Yu Zaixi froze. “Half a year? But according to our information, he appeared in this city just last month. How can this be?”
Before the soldier could respond, he turned to Qin Nai. “Could it be that the cultivator we tracked is not him? That is terrible. If this causes a major disaster, the Sect Leader will definitely…”
Yu Zaixi cut himself off, offered an embarrassed laugh, and nodded at the soldier. “My apologies. We must head elsewhere.”
Hearing this, the old soldier grew anxious. He exclaimed, “You cannot leave! What Sect Leader? You came to catch someone; is he a criminal?”
The word “criminal” sounded both very distant and very familiar. Yu Zaixi felt a momentary, fleeting trance before shaking his head to deny it. “No, I… we were just passing through. Sorry for the intrusion.”
He turned to leave, only to be grabbed by the old soldier. “You are not allowed to leave. You must make yourselves clear.”
Yu Zaixi looked down in surprise; his arm was being held fast by a mere mortal, unable to move. He looked back at the old soldier, unable to understand why. “Are you a cultivator as well?”
So much for keeping up the act, he thought.
“No,” the soldier replied, his temper surprisingly good—he answered the question despite his agitation. “He has already left the city, but he left something behind. Tell me the truth, and I will take you to get it.”
Yu Zaixi’s eyes darted around. He looked at Qin Nai, then at Xiao Ci. As for Miao Pei, he was still staring wide-eyed, unable to snap out of the drama.
It should not be the bone whistle, Yu Zaixi thought. Whatever it was, he wanted to see it, so he said, “He harmed a child here once. We are not exactly catching a criminal, just trying to get to the bottom of the matter. Have you seen him? Did he say anything to you?”
The old soldier’s mouth fell open in a slow “ah,” and his expression turned desolate. He loosened his grip. “He did not say anything. He just gave me the item before he left. You may go; I will not let you see it.”
Yu Zaixi protested, “That is not right. I told you the truth; why are you breaking your word?”
“It is not that I am breaking my word,” the old soldier said with a bitter smile. “You are not the person he was waiting for. You cannot see that item.”
“Who is he waiting for?” Yu Zaixi asked, brow furrowed. Could he be waiting for Tianxing?
Unfortunately, the old soldier did not want to say any more, waving his hand as he turned to leave. “Go.”
“Is the person he is waiting for his junior brother?”
“Junior brother?” The old soldier paused, then shook his head vigorously. “No. Stop guessing.”
“He has a younger brother who is still alive in this world, does he not?” Qin Nai asked suddenly. The old soldier did not answer and only walked away faster.
Qin Nai immediately looked at Yu Zaixi. “I only know a little about what you have been investigating these past few days and cannot analyze much, but judging by that old man’s reaction, Elder Tianhe must have a younger brother.”
Yu Zaixi looked at Miao Pei. “Have you heard of this?”
Miao Pei shook his head. “He only had a junior brother; I have never heard of a younger brother.”
Xiao Ci looked up at the three of them, then back at the city. Yu Zaixi noticed and asked with a smile, “Why? Have you discovered something is wrong?”
Xiao Ci chuckled. “You three are calling him an old man?”
The three of them fell silent.
They had forgotten—they saw a man with a weathered face and immediately labeled him an old man, but they themselves were cultivators whose appearances had remained unchanged for a hundred years. Even Miao Pei, the youngest, was four hundred years old. They really could not go around calling people old men.
Yu Zaixi reached out to pat Xiao Ci on the head but pulled his hand back after being swatted on the back of his hand.
Qin Nai smiled and looked into the city. “This city is truly desolate, and the city gates are wide open; it has no power to resist demons. The people living inside must have a very difficult life.”
Yu Zaixi recalled what Ruan Chi had said: the city was filled with poor people, and without the ability to resist demons, life was indeed hard.
Before he could offer another remark, Qin Nai began walking inside. “I am going to leave a defensive array. It should be of some help.”
Yu Zaixi crossed his arms and watched him. “If you continue to be this kind, you will be left behind in no time.”
As if to prove his point, the old soldier poked his head out from behind the wall to stare at Qin Nai. Qin Nai bowed politely. “Pardon the intrusion.”
Yu Zaixi could not help but laugh.