They chatted for what felt like an age. Liu Xiao, still brimming with enthusiasm, wanted to invite Li Changshuang and Weisheng Zhen to stay for a meal, but Li Changshuang merely said the two of them still had matters to attend to, and so they departed the City Lord’s residence.
The moment they stepped out of the barrier, Weisheng Zhen’s guqin automatically returned to his mustard-seed space.
Li Changshuang felt a weight settle on his shoulder. When he turned his head to look, he saw Weisheng Zhen wearing a sinister smile the kind that suggested something terrible was afoot and that old scores were about to be settled.
“Last night, you had nothing to say to me, but with him, you were full of talk? Several hours now, and you still can’t bear to part?”
Li Changshuang’s body stiffened slightly, but he didn’t remove Weisheng Zhen’s hand. Instead, he unconsciously straightened his back a little more. “It’s not like that. You should have seen it too, shouldn’t you?”
Weisheng Zhen felt as though his arm was about to be propped up by Li Changshuang’s shoulder, and withdrew it with a hint of chagrin. “What have you been eating these past few years? How did you shoot up so tall? Your shoulders seem broader too, Can a person still grow at a hundred years old?”
Weisheng Zhen gestured between their heights and realized that his own 182.4 centimeters made him look rather short next to the other man.
This fellow had quietly grown to nearly 1.9 meters!
Just ten years ago, he had been about the same height as Weisheng Zhen!
What was going on?!
Even in the world of cultivation, this height was considered exceptionally tall among human cultivators.
Of course, those body cultivators who routinely reached three or four meters were a different breed entirely they didn’t count.
Weisheng Zhen found it utterly fascinating. He reached out and squeezed from Li Changshuang’s forearm all the way up to his shoulder, seemingly with the potential to explore further: “Your muscles feel much firmer than before, too. I don’t recall your arms being this hard in the past… You really can’t tell with clothes on, and you’re never willing to share a bed with me. We’ve been traveling together for days now, and I never even noticed the change.”
Li Changshuang: “…”
Although he knew Weisheng Zhen wasn’t implying anything, he still lost his focus for a brief moment.
“These ten years must have been very hard.”
Weisheng Zhen murmured.
What had once been merely a passing remark had, because of that very remark, subjected the man before him to a full decade of wind and frost.
Heaven only knew how many secret realms he had entered during those ten years, and how many moments of life and death he had faced.
Li Changshuang said nothing. He subtly evaded Weisheng Zhen’s touch and quickly changed the subject: “I was there for two hours, but I never saw City Lord Liu appear. Liu Xiao said his father has been unwell lately. But you should have sensed it the aura is off.”
Weisheng Zhen nodded. “At first, I thought those violent, bloody auras came from Liu Xiao a body cultivator who’s spent years subduing demons and monsters out in the world. But when I got closer, I realized it wasn’t him.”
“Those bloody auras are coming from deeper within the residence. If it’s not City Lord Liu, then it must be the young master who’s about to be married. Otherwise, Liu Xiao would have no reason to cover for him.”
Li Changshuang said, “From what I can tell, that aura resembles a demon’s more than a cultivator’s. We’ll need to find an opportunity to investigate.”
Though they spoke of investigating, neither of them had a good method at the moment.
As a fellow Void Refinement cultivator, the moment Li Changshuang stepped into Liu Xiao’s domain, he would be detected let alone Weisheng Zhen.
Two days passed in the blink of an eye. The two of them found no good way to sneak into the City Lord’s residence, nor did they spot any trace of City Lord Liu or his youngest son in the city. Fortunately, the wedding banquet was the very next day by then, the truth would reveal itself on its own.
Weisheng Zhen, for the first time in ages, woke up at the crack of dawn.
Perhaps it was because he had been burning the candle at both ends lately, but he found himself falling asleep at the hour of Hai and waking at the hour of Yin, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling around three in the morning, tossing and turning without a wink of sleep. It only made him more irritable, and he turned on his side, his gaze landing on Li Changshuang’s profile.
He was still this diligent.
In truth, cultivators like Li Changshuang, who trained day and night without pause, were the norm for those above the Foundation Establishment stage, cultivation could replace rest entirely. But perhaps because Weisheng Zhen had once lived in the modern world, despite his erratic schedule, he still forced himself to rest for at least an hour or two each day, just to fool his body into believing he had actually slept.
Over time, his body and biological clock had gradually grown accustomed to it, to the point where he couldn’t go without rest at all anymore.
But Li Changshuang was different.
He knew that for over a hundred years, Li Changshuang had been this diligent every single day.
Only such relentless effort, combined with terrifying talent, could have earned him the strength he possessed today.
Weisheng Zhen let out a soft sigh.
When he snapped back to reality, he realized that Li Changshuang, who had been cultivating, was now casting a puzzled look his way.
It seemed his sigh had disturbed him.
“Sorry, did I wake you?” Weisheng Zhen said apologetically, retracting his gaze and lying flat on his back.
“Not at all, it’s just.” Li Changshuang paused. “If something is troubling you, you can tell me.”
“It’s nothing. I just can’t sleep.” Weisheng Zhen pressed his lips together, suddenly feeling a wave of irritation, and turned his back without another word.
But the concerned gaze lingering behind him was almost tangible, burning so hot that it made Weisheng Zhen’s heart ache.
Li Changshuang didn’t press further.
After enduring nearly an hour of sleeplessness, Weisheng Zhen finally gave up. He cast a small soundproofing barrier around Li Changshuang within the room’s formation, then recited a quick incantation and left the room.
He had originally planned to take a stroll near the City Lord’s residence, but unexpectedly, he sensed a faint, unusual fluctuation.
He changed direction.
**
City Lord Liu’s youngest son’s wedding banquet was set for noon, but the bridal procession had already begun beating drums and gongs early in the morning to prepare for the bride’s arrival.
Out of respect for Liu Xiao, a Void Refinement cultivator, many cultivators from the city had arrived days earlier. Yet now, the City Lord’s residence, which should have been bustling with excitement, felt eerily desolate. Not only that, even the city itself seemed to lack any festive or auspicious atmosphere.
It was supposed to be a grand wedding, but the mood was off in every conceivable way.
But when Weisheng Zhen and the others had arrived two days ago, it hadn’t been like this.
Li Changshuang stood silently in mid-air outside the City Lord’s residence, his sword at the ready behind him.
He could sense that the aura had faded considerably compared to two days ago, but it was still within the City Lord’s residence. That meant Liu Xiao knew full well that he had arrived at this place, yet made no attempt to hide the person or the thing carrying that aura.
Either he was overly confident, or…
Li Changshuang looked up at the sky.
It was nearly noon, yet the sky was oppressively dark. Li Changshuang stopped deliberating. With his right hand forming a hand seal and his left hand gripping his sword, a terrifying aura soon rose from the center of Liuci City amid his low incantation.
It was a formation that enveloped the entire city!
The light of the formation climbed higher and higher, soon piercing straight into the clouds. But strangely, such a massive formation drew no attention from anyone nearby. Even the lord of Guangci City, thousands of li away, noticed nothing amiss.
This in itself already signaled that something was wrong.
Yet Li Changshuang’s face showed no trace of surprise. The sword aura in his hand swelled inch by inch. With his gaze fixed intently, the sword pointed toward the City Lord’s Mansion from afar.
The next moment, he vanished from midair.
The sword’s tip, like a point of cold light, struck directly against the barrier Liu Xiao had set up. Soon, a sound like shattering glass echoed through the void. Li Changshuang swung his sword back to block, shielding the imminent burst of energy from the eyes of the countless mortals within the city.
If those mortals still had their wits about them, perhaps they would have been thinking of how to flee this place, or some might even have felt gratitude toward Li Changshuang for saving their lives.
But the people who had gathered on the city’s roads at some unknown point all had vacant eyes and lusterless faces, as if their souls were no longer within their bodies.
A vast, pitch-black sea of people an utterly chilling sight.
“Daoist Liu, how exactly did things come to this state?”
Even as he spoke, Li Changshuang’s hands were not idle. His sword moves were agile, and in an instant, he exchanged over a dozen strikes with the Hunyuan Mace in Liu Xiao’s hands.
To avoid affecting the mortals in the city, Li Changshuang subtly led Liu Xiao up into midair to continue their duel.
“How exactly?” Liu Xiao let out a mocking laugh. “That is a question I would like to ask as well!”
“Young Sect Master of the Sword Sect, surely you must have realized by now? Yes, the whole matter is exactly as you suspect.” A hint of sorrow seemed to flicker across Liu Xiao’s face, but his gaze quickly hardened, as if nothing anyone did could stop what he was about to do next.
“If this succeeds, I will willingly go to the Golden Lotus Temple afterward to atone for my sins. But for now, even if you are the Young Sect Master of the Sword Sect, you cannot stop me!”
Liu Xiao wielded his Hunyuan Mace with fierce vigor, his metal-attribute spiritual power clashing and tangling with Li Changshuang’s. But before long, his strength began to wane. Gritting his teeth, he steeled his resolve.
The rate at which his spiritual power leaked outward accelerated, seemingly refined by the formation and channeled entirely into Liu Xiao. Li Changshuang immediately felt a hint of pressure, yet it did not pose much of an obstacle to him.
“This method ultimately defies the way of heaven and earth. If it is ever discovered in the future, the two of them will not escape death either.”
Li Changshuang’s tone was calm, as if he still wished to persuade the man toward good. “If you had handed your father and young son over to the Golden Lotus Temple earlier, perhaps they could still ”
“Earlier?” Liu Xiao seemed to hear something utterly absurd. “When Daoist Li says ‘earlier,’ do you mean half a year ago, when I returned home and saw that they had already turned into black demonic bones that ‘earlier’?”
The formation had been in place for half a year, just like the Rotten Water Village before it.
Remote, ignorant that was what bred such great calamity.
Li Changshuang paused briefly and said no more, only quickening the pace of his sword.
Soon, the Hunyuan Mace in Liu Xiao’s hand was knocked away, and his massive body crashed heavily into the ruins of the city lord’s mansion.
Li Changshuang then formed a hand seal, and from the ruins, two black skeletal remains slowly floated up.
As Liu Xiao had said, the black bones were thick with demonic energy. The strange auras that Wei Shengzhen and the others had sensed earlier were also emanating from these two skeletons.
However, the master of the treasure-hunting beast was neither Liu Xiao nor the demonic bones rather, it was someone hidden in the shadows, using the bones to track them.
Who it was, was unknown.
Li Changshuang waved his hand in a backhanded motion, intending to collect them into his demon-subduing pouch, but he failed. From the ruins came Liu Xiao’s loud laughter: “Young friend Li, stop wasting your effort! Even if you defeat me, what then? I have already fused the lives of everyone in the city, including all the cultivators into this formation to nourish them. Now that the formation is complete, all their lives are tied to it. Once you die, no one will ever know what happened here!”
But Li Changshuang merely gave him a faint glance, a trace of mockery flashing swiftly through his eyes.
Before Liu Xiao could discern the meaning behind that look, a lazy voice drifted in from outside the city.
“How ignorant I’ve been a mere Blazing Heaven Formation, and you think it can trap the Sword Sect’s once-in-ten-thousand-years genius?”