Silence.
Quiet.
The air was dead-still.
The next second—
The husky’s pupils quaked. It looked at Yun Xiu and forced out a soul-deep: “Woof?”
Hold on, was she done living?
A cultivator’s hearing was sharp, and though her voice had been faint, it was more than enough for the white-clad young man to catch every single word, clear as day.
Xie Wuwang lifted his eyes, casting a faint glance over the girl and wolf he’d noticed crouching in the corner from the start… hm?
This one seemed a bit different from the wolf demons he’d encountered on the frontier of the Liuhe Wildlands centuries ago, less ferocity in its eyes, and clearer.
As for the one beside it, a cultivator kept spiritual energy circulating through their meridians every waking moment, yet Xie Wuwang could sense no fluctuation of cultivation on her at all.
Just an ordinary mortal.
From her words, it seemed she was a professional corpse-handler of the Liuhe Wildlands.
Xie Wuwang glanced at the person lying on the ground and asked, thoughtful, “What services, specifically?”
Business!
Yun Xiu’s eyes lit up. She whipped out the paper and brush left over from writing her sect-withdrawal application, sprawled across the big rock, and went scribble-scribble-scribble. In moments she was done. She trotted over and, across the human-shaped crater, handed it to the white-clad young man.
Having handed it over, Yun Xiu lowered her head, tugged at the brim of her veiled hat, and waited obediently.
Up close, from her angle she could see the young man’s well-defined knuckles unrolling the paper slowly, fair and beautiful.
Such perfect hands.
Yun Xiu couldn’t help sneaking several more glances.
The white-clad young man spoke, his voice clear, resonant, and faintly deep. “Cremation is burning the body and interring the ashes, earth burial is interring the whole corpse, water burial is casting it into rivers, lakes, or the sea. Those three I understand. But this fourth one, cliff burial, what is that?”
Yun Xiu clutched her sleeve and explained in a small voice, “I, I figured you and the deceased had a grudge, so maybe you wouldn’t want him to rest in peace just like that. This, this is a plan I custom-designed on the spot based on your situation.”
“Cliff burial: the body is hung from a cliff face, exposed to wind and rain, pecked at day after day by the carrion vultures nearby, until it slowly becomes a bare skeleton.”
The husky, eavesdropping: …hm?
“Oh, right, there’s also a complimentary bundled service.” Yun Xiu pointed at the back of the paper.
Xie Wuwang flipped it over. “A seven-day eulogy recitation?”
Yun Xiu gave a small nod. “A c-custom eulogy tailored to your requirements. If you’re not satisfied, I’ll revise it until you are. Recited three times daily, morning, noon, and night, at the funeral. Seven days free.”
“Also, if you’d like, there’s, there’s custom big-character-poster wreaths, and a leave-a-stink-for-ten-thousand-years urn, and so on, the full one-stop package.”
Xie Wuwang was silent for two seconds, then his eyes showed approval. “You’re very professional.”
Yun Xiu rubbed her hands together. “So, so which plan would you like?”
Xie Wuwang: “Then I’ll…”
“Wait, wait, hold on! Does nobody ask the person concerned for his opinion on a matter like this?!”
The unmoving “corpse” in the human-shaped crater between them suddenly reared up, grimy-faced, head bleeding. “Does my opinion not matter at all?! You two are just going to decide it this carelessly?!”
Yun Xiu: OvO!
A fake corpse, come back to life.
Yun Xiu thought about it for two seconds, then retrieved the service order from the white-clad young man’s hands and, ever so democratically, handed it to the “corpse.”
Timidly: “Well, you pick?”
“Corpse”: ?
Uh-oh, fam, he’d run into a living King of Hell today.
Yun Xiu watched the “corpse” wipe his face, expression grim, then suddenly point at the sky. “Look, a flying sword!”
Yun Xiu stared at him without blinking.
“Corpse”: “…Do you have no such thing as curiosity?”
Yun Xiu, puzzled: “Is a flying sword in the sky strange in the cultivation world?”
Off to the side, the spectating husky gave a scornful “Woof”: “Ignorant and small-minded.”
“Corpse”: “…”
Fam, never in a million years did he think he’d one day be looked down on by a dog.
The “corpse’s” head went red with rage. He abruptly pulled a spirit orb from his sleeve and crushed it. Smoke burst out at once, and Yun Xiu’s vision was instantly swallowed by white fog.
An echo came through the thick fog.
“Sword Venerable Wuwang, I’ll be back—!”
But the white fog lasted only two short seconds before a sudden strong gust scattered it.
Yun Xiu’s veiled hat was blown loose and shot up into the air.
“Eh—”
A pale-blue phantom flash of sword-light streaked across the sky, and before Yun Xiu could react, a flying sword carried her veiled hat back and stopped before her.
“Th-thank you.”
Yun Xiu lowered her head, took back the veiled hat, and put it on before murmuring her thanks.
She looked into the distance. The “corpse” was sprinting off into the night, his gait wild and unrestrained, like a monkey (a scrappy little macaque, self-deprecating internet slang for a hapless goofball) at the seaside.
Yun Xiu pointed at the monkey, a little puzzled. “Isn’t, isn’t he your enemy? Aren’t you, going to chase him?”
Xie Wuwang sheathed his sword, his tone calm. “I’ve never met that man, he’s no enemy of mine. I was merely passing through this airspace on business when he suddenly came charging up, yelling something about ‘for the fam’ and ‘gotta go viral,’ and rammed straight into Zhezhu, then fell.”
Yun Xiu: “Zhezhu?”
Xie Wuwang: “My sword.”
So he’d been staging a shakedown.
Yun Xiu blinked. “So you’re not going to kill him?”
Xie Wuwang: “…Probably not.”
Yun Xiu: “Oh.”
She lowered her head and picked at her fingers. So there’d be no dead body, where was she going to dig up eight orange spirit stones for the husky now…
Mid-thought, the white-clad young man was holding his sword and giving it a few shakes. Nothing. Just as Yun Xiu was wondering what he was doing, he shook it a few more times, and out of the sword tumbled half a green spirit stone, its edge gnawed and chipped.
He looked at the half spirit stone in silence for two seconds, then paused. “I’ve delayed your business. If you don’t mind…”
The husky: “Awooo awooo awoo!”
“We don’t mind, we don’t mind!”
Spirit stones in the cultivation world came in grades, in the order red-orange-yellow-green-cyan-blue-violet. Red was the lowest, one orange stone was worth ten red, and one yellow was worth ten orange.
By that math, half a green spirit stone was worth about fifty orange.
The husky happily dug out four yellow spirit stones and two orange ones for Yun Xiu, then carefully tucked the half green stone into an inner pocket, tail wagging merrily.
It raised a paw onto Yun Xiu’s shoulder, its dog-face solemn. “Kid, you’ve got my seal of approval.”
Yun Xiu, puzzled: “You didn’t even make much extra, why are you so happy?”
The husky: “Obviously because it’s a spirit stone Sword Venerable Wuwang touched! Heh heh! Sword Venerable Wuwang! Awoooo, I can’t believe I got to meet an idol this impressive, I almost didn’t recognize him just now. This trip totally paid off.”
Yun Xiu tucked away the spirit stones and continued on foot up the mountain. “I see.”
That monkey had shouted “Sword Venerable Wuwang” before he left, come to think of it.
Seeing her so unfazed, the husky eyed her suspiciously and trotted to keep up. “Don’t tell me you don’t know who Sword Venerable Wuwang is?”
Yun Xiu lowered her brows. “It does sound a bit familiar. I remember seeing that name somewhere…”
She pulled out her glazed mirror and opened the Cultivation Forum.
And there, right in today’s hot threads, she saw this one.
【HOT】
【Is Sword Venerable Wuwang a little overhyped?】
Original poster: 【Looks aside for a sec, just talking pure strength. Sure, five hundred years ago he was #1 in the cultivation world, but think how many genius cultivators have emerged during his five centuries in seclusion. The Demon Realm’s rising stars even have contenders for Demon King, and the Immortal Realm’s cranking out talent too. Sword Venerable Wuwang just made his name young and got famous. If it actually came to a fight now, who knows who’d end up the real Sword Venerable. And people keep hyping up his “one sword to split heaven and earth.”】
【Why “looks aside”? Afraid that if you saw the wall of praise for Sword Venerable Wuwang you’d feel inferior?】
【410K likes】
【Checked the OP’s profile, dude’s barely ten years old, never mind, go play, kid】
【390K likes】
【Little kids should just study hard and post less】
【340K likes】
【Well, this is eye-opening. It’s Wuding Year 233 and someone’s STILL questioning whether Sword Venerable Wuwang is strong enough. You know how many new students all the sects combined enrolled last year? Ten thousand three hundred. This year, on the single piece of news that Sword Venerable Wuwang has left seclusion, Lingyun Sect and its branches alone have already hit two hundred thousand new-student applications】
【260K likes】
【Wait till your master sees this thread and gives you a beating, then you’ll behave】
【180K likes】
As Yun Xiu scrolled, the husky rattled on beside her leg about Sword Venerable Wuwang’s glorious deeds.
Aside from the top comments, she saw that skeptics like the OP were actually not few. Plenty of comments below said Sword Venerable Wuwang was already a tear of a bygone age, that this was the era of the rising newcomers now.
Scrolling on, she came across a user named 【233 Guaranteed Trending】, who claimed to be a disciple of the South Sea Vajra Arhat and vowed to use his own Golden Light Shield to prove that Sword Venerable Wuwang’s sword couldn’t cut through anything and everything, telling the fam to follow him for the sequel and witness the miracle.
Yun Xiu: “…”
That would be that monkey from earlier, presumably.
She was socially anxious, and she’d kept her distance from Sword Venerable Wuwang the whole time just now, never daring to look up at his face, but from all this, it seemed his temper was pretty easygoing. A junior offended him like that and he didn’t even get angry.
Mm. A good person.
Yun Xiu backed out and switched to a different search app, looking up 【Lingyun Sect】. Their sect page popped up: Lingyun Sect, a great sword-cultivation sect, over eighty percent of its disciples sword cultivators, teaching-staff strength such-and-such, etc.
In the admissions brochure there was a line of characters graceful as a coiling dragon.
—【Soar Straight Up, Ninety Thousand Li】(a pun on “Lingyun,” lit. “reaching the clouds”)
…
A pale-blue sword-light streaked across Qixing Mountain and dissolved at the Star-Plucking Platform.
The blessing ceremony was over. The disciples of the Star-Plucking Platform had dispersed, leaving only two figures. One was a woman reclining on her side atop a cloud-mass, her face half-veiled by drifting mist, her gauze still stirring.
The other stood with lowered eyes beside her, expression grave, cautious as if facing a formidable foe.
The woman propped her chin lazily. “This seat saw the sword-light long ago, yet no man appeared with it. Sword Venerable Wuwang dawdled until now to arrive, could it be some pretty flower of my Hehuan Sect snagged him along the way?”
Xie Wuwang’s face was cold, he made no reply. He produced a jade slip, and a ten-thousand-character proclamation floated up in the air, an Immortal Alliance emblem hanging at its lower right.
The auto-reading proclamation denounced the Hehuan Sect’s vile conduct in every line, each phrase a gem, brimming with blood and tears.
The Hehuan Sect Master listened it through unhurriedly, then gave a soft laugh. “And here I wondered what it was. So this trip is to dispense justice on behalf of those timid old codgers who don’t dare come themselves.”
“And what does the honorable Sword Venerable intend? To flatten my weak, pitiful little sect with a single stroke, like when you quelled the Devil Tide five hundred years ago, or…”
The white-clad young man calmly put the jade slip away. “That is at a separate price.”
The Hehuan Sect Master’s words caught: hm, hm?
With that, the honorable Sword Venerable turned and left without the slightest lingering. In an instant, only a sword-light slowly fading into the night remained at the Star-Plucking Platform.
The Hehuan Sect Master: ?
Hold on, he just left?
What did he even come for?
“Knock, knock, knock…”
A soft knocking on a pillar came from behind. The Left Protector, Dan Mo, whose attention had been entirely on the Sword Venerable, whipped her head around, and in the darkness met two eyes, clear yet brimming with wisdom.
Once she saw clearly, Dan Mo froze. “Young Sect Master?”