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【Shuiling Palace Exposed for Practicing Evil Arts, Utterly Inhuman, Defying the Heavenly Dao】【Pinned】
【Immortal Alliance Bureau for Punishing Evil Releases Case Details: 32 cities involved, over 5,000 victims, all mortal children】【Pinned】
【All 10,621 Shuiling Palace members implicated, plus 12 branch-pavilion masters, apprehended by Sword Venerable Wuwang and thrown into prison, awaiting the Bureau’s judgment】
【Pinned】
“Sister Little Yun, will a lot of people see this?”
Xiao Wu stretched his head out from behind her, pointing at the glazed mirror in Yun Xiu’s hand.
Three days had passed since the brawl at the Shuiling Palace.
With the case closed, Yun Xiu was cleared of suspicion, that same day she and Feixiao had been released, and her glazed mirror had been returned to her.
The people of Baihua City no longer had to live under the Shuiling Palace’s control, no longer had to fake their deaths and hide their names to survive. To celebrate, the townsfolk had decided to hold the Baihua Banquet again, and after three days of preparation, today was the wildly lively banquet Feixiao kept raving about.
Glazed tiles and roofs, streets dotted with a hundred kinds of flowers, the fragrance of delicacies from the food stalls wafting through the air.
To thank their benefactor, the townsfolk had warmly invited her to attend.
Well… mainly because Sword Venerable Wuwang had left right after the Shuiling Palace business that day, so she was the only one they could get their hands on.
But Yun Xiu had severe social anxiety and simply couldn’t blend into a lively gathering like this. So she’d quietly slipped off by herself to the top of the city tower to hide and play with her glazed mirror.
With the concealment techniques she’d honed over years of practice, there was no way the townsfolk could ever find her.
But there are always exceptions.
“Of course! The whole cultivation world will see it.” Feixiao tossed his doggy head high and said proudly, “Lord Sword Venerable leveled the hundred-thousand-strong Shuiling Palace with a single man and a single sword, I’ve already forwarded such a magnificent feat to all eighteen of my client groups.”
…This husky had tracked her down by her scent, and had brought along the boy Xiao Wu too.
Yun Xiu murmured, “A small correction…”
Feixiao slapped a paw onto her shoulder. “Oh right, plus you, so it’s two people and one sword. As expected of my bestie, absolutely amazing.”
Yun Xiu: “…”
What she’d wanted to say was that he hadn’t used the sword at all.
That day he’d tossed the sword to her, and she had no idea what happened afterward, by the time she turned around to look, the Shuiling Palace’s people had already dropped in neat rows.
…So he really was incredibly strong.
Yun Xiu slowly scrolled the threads. The home page was all discussion of the Shuiling Palace, some rejoicing, some furious, some grieving, some covering their faces.
Rejoicing at escaping the sea of suffering, furious at deeds that outraged heaven and reason, grieving for those already lost.
The face-coverers were the crowd who’d questioned Sword Venerable Wuwang before, their faces slapped sore.
The Shuiling Palace was in decline, true, but it was still an old-school palace gate, a starved camel is still bigger than a horse (a fallen power still outclasses the small fry). No matter how impressive the rising star they’d talked up, he couldn’t possibly level the Shuiling Palace single-handedly in one night, and now they were all hiding behind their glazed mirrors, not daring to make a peep.
She read for a while, then suddenly remembered that scrappy little macaque who’d picked a fight with Xie Wuwang in the Liuhe Wildlands earlier.
Back then he’d kept questioning Xie Wuwang’s swordsmanship, she wondered what expression that guy would wear seeing all this now.
She found that user, 【Trending in Year 233】, and clicked into his profile page.
Three or four days had passed since his post about going to challenge Xie Wuwang, and he’d only put up one new status update: a single cryptic, lofty line paired with a location tag.
【The long night approaches, I shall stand watch here for all living beings, unto death.】
【—South Sea · Frontier · Tianzhu · Duling Great Mining District】
Yun Xiu: “…”
Mining is mining. No need to make it sound so poetic and pure.
But why had he suddenly gone off mining? Just a few days ago he’d been so full of ambition.
Mm… looks like he gave up his dreams and made peace with real life.
Yun Xiu closed the South Sea mining-monkey’s page, and when she returned to the home page, a new hot thread suddenly popped up.
【AAAAAHHH Sword Venerable Wuwang actually has a disciple!】
Yun Xiu clicked in on impulse.
OP: 【Context: OP is a lowly clerk at some Immortal Alliance bureau. Sword Venerable Wuwang has been staying at the Alliance these past few days on the you-know-what official business. During that time, plenty of people have been, ahem, recommending their own children to Sword Venerable Wuwang, hoping he’ll assess their talent and take them on. OP happened to be passing by and heard the Venerable say, in his own words, that he already has a disciple, his energies are limited and he can’t take on any others.】
【Just an excuse, right?】
【Don’t believe it.】
【Didn’t the Venerable just come out of seclusion?】
OP replying to 【Just an excuse, right?】: 【That’s what I thought at first too. But if it were only an excuse, then during the Alliance’s commendation, the Venerable wouldn’t have passed over a whole hall of rare treasures with total indifference and instead taken a sword embryo sealed in the Sword Heart Pool that he has no use for himself. Pretty obvious this sword embryo is meant for his disciple.】
【What the [stunned/.], then what was the point of me practicing the sword every day to get into the Lingyun Sect?】
【Counts as you being diligent [thumbs up/.]】
【Until my defense counsel arrives, I will not say a single word [aloof sunglasses/.]】
Yun Xiu kept scrolling, all sorts of “broke-down” quips, plus everyone’s guesses about who Xie Wuwang’s disciple was, which sword-dao prodigy it might be.
【The You family’s You Yujing?】
【Agreed, and he came first at the Sword Sect’s last Sword-Debate Tournament, too.】
【That was ten years ago. The old veteran champion didn’t compete that time, so he just snagged the win off a fluke. Who knows what he’d place this time.】
【Why has no one cast a vote for the East Sea’s little princess, Long Rourou? Her swordplay is plenty bizarre too.】
【Mm… how is that not a kind of “sword,” I ask you.】
【She seems to have joined the Lingyun Sect too. This year’s Sword-Debate Tournament will be worth watching.】
Yun Xiu froze the instant she saw that name. Long Rourou, the female lead of that book, The Overbearing Proud Hero Loves Her Madly.
She hadn’t read much of the plot, with trashy reads like that, she never paid the story much mind.
Long Rourou was the Sword Sect’s little junior sister. While out training in the mortal world, through a fateful coincidence she’d run into the Demon King, the male lead who’d been drugged by the cannon-fodder side-heroine, and had accidentally gotten bound to him, so that at a fixed time every month they had to do a little hanky-panky (lovey-dovey hooking-up business) to neutralize the poison.
Yes, that’s right. That was Yun Xiu’s own handiwork.
And then she’d been thrown to the snakes by the male lead.
Yun Xiu silently closed her glazed mirror. But she only had three months left before she croaked, so there was no way she’d get to be part of their little “play” anymore.
“Sister Little Yun, why are you holed up here instead of out having fun? The Baihua Banquet is so much fun, you can even shape sugar figurines and float flower lanterns!”
The boy Xiao Wu blinked up at her.
Yun Xiu shrank back into her corner, pulled her veiled hat low, and yawned drowsily. “No thanks. You and Bro Husky go have fun. I want to sleep a while.”
Feixiao found it a little odd. “It’s broad daylight, why are you so out of it? Haven’t you been sleeping these past few nights?”
Before he’d even finished, he heard the girl’s light, long, even breathing, she’d already fallen asleep.
Such abnormal behavior, connected with her earlier “suicidal streak,” instantly put Feixiao on alert. That night he secretly hid himself, wanting to see just what she got up to when she wasn’t sleeping at midnight.
Sure enough, when night fell the girl woke up.
The evening banquet inside the city was as lively as ever. She quietly slipped out of Baihua City along a deserted path, treading over thorns, heading toward the silent, soundless Black Ridge.
The Black Ridge was steep and dangerous for mortals, prowled by fierce beasts, a place the townsfolk never came to.
Feixiao, puzzled about what she was doing here, followed carefully, skirting rocks and thorns and winding valleys, tailing her all the way, until he rounded a corner, saw the scene before him clearly, and suddenly froze on the spot.
A vast sea of wild flowers grew in this valley, pale blue five-petaled blossoms that looked like glazed glass under the moonlight, swaying in the night breeze, their fragrance brimming over.
The tiny blue petals brushed lightly past row upon row of gravestones, then lightly parted again, like children whispering secrets among themselves.
At the far end of the graves lay a few pits not yet filled in.
The girl sat leaning against a stone wall, head bowed, unhurriedly carving a gravestone with a seal-cutting knife, a box of assorted broken jade tokens and odds and ends set beside her.
Feixiao paused, then walked over. “What are you doing here? And these broken jade tokens?”
Yun Xiu started, looked up, and met the husky’s somewhat heavy gaze. She lowered her eyes and kept carving, replying softly, “That day, at the crematory where the Immortal Alliance was destroying the Shuiling Palace’s ‘failed test subjects,’ they found many children’s identity tokens and belongings. A lot of people came to claim them, these are the ones no one claimed.”
She carefully carved a name into the stone. “Some are broken so badly you can’t make out the name, some, maybe… their families still don’t know. So I picked them up and brought them back.”
Feixiao fell silent. The affair had blown up so enormously, how could anyone not know?
There were only two possibilities.
One: the family, too, had already passed, and the child had been alone in the world all along.
Two: these children had never been loved at home to begin with, cast-offs, so their families wouldn’t even come to gather their bones after death.
Feixiao clamped an iron spade in his mouth from where it lay nearby. “How many left? I’ll help you.”
“This one’s done. Seventeen more.”
Yun Xiu set the finished gravestone in place, settled the jade token into its casket, and lowered it into the pit, Feixiao huffed and puffed as he shoveled soil over it.
One girl and one dog worked away like this the whole night through, and only as dawn was about to break did they finally finish it all.
Not that it was exhausting, exactly, it just took time and patience, and Yun Xiu had long since grown used to this kind of work.
Feixiao pulled out a big bundle of Baihua City’s specialty pastries and set one before each gravestone. “I’d meant to bring some home to my mom in the Demon Realm as souvenirs, but I’ll just give them all to you kids to eat instead. I’ll go buy more later.”
“Now that the Baihua City business is settled, where do you plan to go next?”
Feixiao asked Yun Xiu as he laid out the pastries. “You’re so afraid of meeting people’s eyes and talking to them, why not come with me to the Demon Realm? You’re not afraid of me, right? Most of the folks over there are demons who haven’t taken human form, so they’re a lot like me.”
There was one extra pastry left over from the sharing. To keep these kids from squabbling over an uneven split, Feixiao thoughtfully handled it himself.
He chomped down on the pastry, and seeing that Yun Xiu still hadn’t made a sound, turned his head toward her, and froze.
The daylight was dim, faint threads of murky light filtering through the valley, gentle and fine, falling slowly over the sea of glazed flowers swaying in the wind.
The black-clad girl stood before the gravestones and slowly took off her veiled hat, holding it before her heart.
Her gaze was distant and quiet, her expression pure and reverent, the red cord loosely binding her hair at the nape fluttering gently in the wind, like the black-stemmed, red-blossomed spider lilies on the road to the Yellow Springs, saying not a word, silently seeing off the lonely departed souls as they slowly walked away.
Watching her like this, Feixiao fell silent too.
He obediently pressed his paws together, about to pay his respects alongside her, when the next second, the girl beside him suddenly spoke up.
“Bro Husky, do you have any pastries left?”
Feixiao turned his head. “None. Why?”
“I haven’t eaten all night. I’m starving to death.”
The girl’s gaze drifted slowly to the pastries before the gravestones, her eyes lighting up. “You think if I snuck a bite of one of the offerings, no one would notice?”
Feixiao: “…”
Damn it! His brain must’ve been kicked by a donkey just now, to have thought she looked like some ethereal, otherworldly fairy.
“Yun Xiu.”
Yun Xiu clutched her stomach and answered feebly, “What is it, Bro Husky?”
Feixiao looked blank and lifted his head. “I didn’t call you.”
Then who was calling her?
Yun Xiu scanned around, puzzled, and turned her head, only to abruptly meet a pair of beautiful, inky-black eyes.
Under the shade of a tree nearby, the white-robed young man was watching her with a gentle expression, and there was no telling how long he’d been there, brows and eyes like a painting, untouched by mortal dust.
Yun Xiu blanked for a moment, and then the social-anxiety sufferer instantly grew nervous, hurriedly putting her veiled hat back on, her voice stammering.
“F-fellow cultivator, is there, is there something you need here?”
She’d assumed they’d never cross paths again, that the next time they met would probably be at her own grave.
Xie Wuwang gave a slight nod. “There is indeed one very important matter I’ve come to find you about.”
Had she gotten tangled up in another murder case?
Yun Xiu lowered her head and nervously picked at her fingers. “Please, please go ahead, I’ll cooperate for sure.”
“The main Lingyun Sect has sixty-two peaks, twenty-four of which each hold different facilities built for the sect’s disciples. Take Qingdeng Peak’s Library Pavilion, for instance, which stores a million ancient and rare texts that any disciple may borrow, or Miaoshou Peak’s Medical Hall, where healer-cultivators will do their utmost to treat any injury or illness, or Miaowei Peak’s Fine Delicacies Kitchen, where the meals… Once you join the sect, you’ll never again sleep rough with nowhere to turn.”
Yun Xiu hadn’t slept all night, and this speech was like a lecture, propped on her iron spade, she listened until she was nodding off, giving the occasional nod.
“Mm, mm-hm…”
“If you have any questions about the sword dao, come only to me. For matters outside the sword dao, the sect has three thousand one hundred instructor-elders, all of long standing, who can answer any question of cultivation. As for lodging, I have a peak within the sect where you may live, there’ll be no need to share quarters with the other disciples.”
“So, Yun Xiu…”
“Mm-hm…”
“Would you be willing to take me as your master, and become my disciple?”
“Mm…”
Yun Xiu suddenly jolted awake. “Wait, mas-mas-mas-mas… master?”
Beside her, Feixiao, munching melon (eating popcorn / rubbernecking), was so shocked his tail shot straight up. Awooo awooo! Sword Venerable Wuwang taking a disciple of his own accord, was this a giant meat pie falling straight from the sky?
Something like a faint smile seemed to glimmer in the depths of the young man’s inky eyes. “I made all that preparation before speaking, and here you’ve agreed so readily. Since you’ve already changed how you address me, our master-disciple bond is established as of today.”
He summoned the sword-light and stepped onto it, then reached out a hand toward her.
“The Baihua City business is done, there’s no meaning in staying here any longer. Yun Xiu, come back to the sect with your master.”
Yun Xiu: “…”
Hold on, is that all it takes to accept a disciple in the cultivation world? A single offhand sentence and we’re master and disciple?
And how was that her “changing how she addressed him”? She’d clearly been questioning him.
That flawless, slender, fair hand, the one she’d secretly stared at for so long, was now spread open right in front of her, and her graceless gaze couldn’t tear itself away. Trembling, she raised her hand bit by bit.
No, wait, Yun Xiu suddenly recalled, the Lingyun Sect was a Sword Sect.
The Hehuan Sect Master had told her the Sword Sect people loathed Hehuan Sect witches above all, that is, a fox spirit like her.
If she joined a Sword Sect and, one careless moment, failed to keep her fox tail hidden, wouldn’t they just feed her to the snakes?!
No, wait, why were her thoughts getting so barren too? Always snakes, snakes, snakes…
A gentle breeze suddenly blew up from behind, nudging her a step forward.
The mountain wind wheeled through the valley, the pale blue sea of glazed flowers swaying in the bright sunlight, like children romping and joking.
Steadying her veiled hat, Yun Xiu lifted her head, and saw her own hand resting in his palm.