Mountain Pass
Not far away, the source of the violent gusts and surging air currents was a spirit vessel slowly descending. The vessel was splendid and magnificent, its entire body forged around expensive spirit stones that powered it. At the crack in Nanwu Mountain’s seal stood dozens of cultivators, dressed in all sorts of styles. Leading them was the Lihuo Sect, which had issued the boundary stele decree for Nanwu Mountain.
Within the thick fog at the mountain mouth, dense with yin energy, cultivators brimming with spiritual qi stood there. When they noticed the gusts, they all looked up.
The cultivators in the distance were all extraordinary in bearing, their clothes neat and tidy. Just standing there, they were completely out of place amid the yin energy and mist all over Nanwu Mountain, just as Zhang Fugui had heard in the rumors. The aura they gave off was that of immortals who cut down demons and exorcised evil.
And then, from the spirit vessel that was slowly touching down, a cultivator in blue stepped out. He wore a wide-sleeved daoist robe, his eyebrows and eyes carrying a sharp edge, every movement and gesture full of authority.
As soon as he got off the spirit vessel, nearly all the surrounding cultivators focused on him.
“Who is that?”
“You don’t know? That’s the Su Clan young master. Who in the Southern Realm doesn’t know him?”
In the Donghuan cultivation world, one mountain, four sects, and eight great clans reigned supreme. That one mountain was none other than the legendary gathering place of geniuses, Tianlu Mountain. Tianlu Mountain produced talent in abundance, and for hundreds of years it had been the foremost among human cultivators. Beneath Tianlu Mountain were the four great sects, Cangxue Sect, Luoshan Gate, Xuanyu Manor, and Divine Healer Valley, and on par with them were the Eight Great Clans.
The blue-robed cultivator was Su Yi, young master of the Su Clan, which ranked sixth among the Eight Great Clans.
At only twenty-five, Su Yi had advanced to Golden Core and become the closed-door disciple of the Sect Master of Cangxue Sect. With his talismans and spellcraft, he had become famous at a young age, and he was one of the very few geniuses among young cultivators today.
The other cultivators observed him intentionally or not, their gazes sweeping past the Su Clan members and settling on the blue-robed cultivator at the front. After the Su Clan elder finished speaking with the Lihuo Sect cultivators, the blue-robed cultivator turned and led several Lihuo Sect cultivators toward the depths of the Nanwu Mountain fissure.
The blue-robed cultivator said nothing else. Even as he simply passed by, he gave off a distinct and exceptional presence.
“Is what’s been going around lately true? About the Su Clan in Tianyuan City, that they really have a marriage pact with the young master of the Gu Family of Xize?” Seeing everyone around him sizing up the Su Clan cultivators, a sect disciple asked softly, “That marriage pact, it couldn’t be between the Su young master and that one, could it?”
The cultivator beside him heard this, glanced toward the blue-robed cultivator not far away, and lowered their voice. “You shouldn’t speak carelessly, but I heard this spirit vessel from the Su Clan originally set out west from Tianyuan City. Isn’t the Gu Clan in Xize?”
This matter was strange indeed. Not long ago, a secret about the great clans had suddenly come out of Tianyuan City: rumor had it that the Su Clan and the Gu Clan, far away in Xize, had a marriage pact. The Su Clan ranked sixth among the Eight Great Clans, while the Gu Family of Xize had always been first among them. The Gu Clan young master, Gu Zizhou, was even the first disciple of the world’s number one mountain gate, Tianlu Mountain.
If Su Yi, the Su young master, was an outstanding figure among the younger generation, then Gu Zizhou, the Gu young master, was a genius rarely seen in the entire world.
He reached Golden Core at fifteen and cultivated to Nascent Soul at twenty-five. Looking across the Donghuan cultivation world, he was truly second to none. With his aptitude, given another hundred years, he would certainly be able to reach Soul Transformation and Tribulation Transcendence. His future was beyond estimation.
If the Su Clan really had this marriage pact with the Gu Clan young master, it would surely affect the current balance among one mountain, four sects, and eight great clans. In the past, rumors like this would be clarified in at most half a day. Yet this rumor had spread for quite some time now, and neither the Su Clan nor the Gu Clan had offered the slightest explanation for it.
If they did not explain, then there was a very high chance that it was true.
Behind the withered woods, Zhang Fugui was also seeing so many cultivators for the first time. He had spent so many years in Nanwu Mountain that the cultivators he had encountered could be counted on one hand. Either they had all died and become vicious malice spirits, or they had already been devoured clean by the other ghosts of Nanwu Mountain. But the commotion in the distance, along with that newly arrived spirit vessel, was obviously far more formidable than any cultivators he had seen before.
The person on his back had been silent for a long time. Zhang Fugui shivered. “So many cultivators…”
The youth said coldly, “Be quiet.”
Zhang Fugui clapped a hand over his mouth.
The youth was covered in blood, his injuries severe, his voice especially hoarse, yet when Zhang Fugui was reprimanded, he did not dare move again.
Zhang Fugui could not help shivering. He was almost unable to tell anymore. Was this person blind or not?
The sounds in Su Yu’s ears became even clearer. He felt that his hearing should not have been this sharp, but the footsteps inching closer seemed to grow nearer and nearer.
A riot of colors swirled where the voices came from, mingling with those white wisps of yin energy. The strange, vivid strands of light looked as if they had been painted by divine hands, splashed recklessly across a black backdrop. Su Yu could not help staring in a daze. Those points of light scattered over one moving object after another, especially several enormous ones, where they were especially dense, dotted and layered like shimmering, iridescent splendor.
Su Yu had never seen such a sight before. “What is that?”
Zhang Fugui paused. Following the direction Su Yu was pointing, he froze for a moment. “Such a big ship… I heard them just now. They seem to call it a spirit vessel.”
Su Yu turned the strange yet familiar words over in his mind. A spirit vessel. That enormous thing was a spirit vessel.
Then those multicolored wisps of mist… were they being released from the spirit vessel?
“What is the Su Clan?” Su Yu suddenly asked.
At this, Zhang Fugui froze. Even though he had died in Nanwu Mountain years ago, he had still heard the Su Clan’s great name.
In the Southern Realm of Donghuan, who did not know who the Su Clan of Tianyuan City was? They were a famed cultivation family. The Lihuo Sect cultivators guarding the mountain mouth outside were not even worthy of being considered collateral branches of the Su Clan. Even in a remote place like Nanwu Mountain, people knew the Su Clan’s illustrious name. How could this Daoist not know…?
He immediately came to himself and hurriedly explained everything he knew.
After he finished and saw that the person still said nothing, Zhang Fugui asked carefully, “That’s all I know. Is there anything else you want to know?”
“Nothing.” Su Yu lowered his eyes. White and strange colors intertwined in the distance.
It just sounded… disgusting.
Seeing that the Daoist no longer spoke, Zhang Fugui did not dare ask more, but he could not help carefully studying the youth.
Wasn’t the Daoist from the Southern Realm? Why did he seem to know nothing about it?
Zhang Fugui glanced sideways. He saw the young Daoist leaning against his back with his gaze lowered. The youth’s condition seemed much better than before, no longer like he was on death’s door, and his body had grown a little warmer, more like a living person’s. “There are a lot of cultivators over there now. It looks like they’re all going into the mountain… They must be here to cut down demons and exorcise ghosts. Once they go in, we’ll have a chance to get out.”
Su Yu did not speak, listening quietly to Zhang Fugui’s plan.
Looking into the distance, although there were many clusters of colored light in the dim field of vision, like smoke curling up from cooking fires, there were even more white wisps like Zhang Fugui himself. Su Yu only had to lower his head slightly to see those wisps rising from the soil below, drifting into the sky, as if drawn by something and led deeper inside.
It was in the same direction the cultivators were headed, as Zhang Fugui had said.
He had no interest in those cultivators. On the contrary, when he heard the word cultivator, he felt the same kind of irritation he felt toward the Su Clan, a kind of unspeakable disgust. He did not know where this emotion came from. Clearly there was nothing in his mind.
And just then, several strands of yin energy suddenly broke away from the mass. They did not drift toward the east where the evil ghosts were gathering, but instead floated toward the southeast. In the darkness, those few strands of yin energy were especially conspicuous, their course unlike that of the majority of the drifting yin energy. Su Yu slightly raised his eyes and caught sight of several streaks of strange light rising from the direction of the iridescent spirit vessel.
Those streaks of strange light came from the cultivators. Su Yu was just about to look more carefully when he saw them swept into the white yin energy. The moment he saw those strange lights, a wave of nausea rose in his throat.
Zhang Fugui noticed that the hand on his shoulder had tightened. “Daoist… what’s wrong? Does your leg hurt?”
Su Yu said, “Something is coming.”
Something was coming… what was coming? Zhang Fugui looked out in response, but besides the cultivators he could not see anything else. Just as he was about to ask what it was, a chill suddenly spread across his arm.
All at once, the rustling in the woods intensified, and a fierce gust of wind swept straight at them.
It instantly drew the attention of many cultivators. Before they could even grasp the situation, the dead trees around the withered woods were snapped one after another. The originally fairly gentle yin wind suddenly grew violent. The wind carried a bone-chilling cold, and with a cry of “ah,” one cultivator walking in front, not paying enough attention, was cut by a passing blade of wind that split open his outer robe and drew blood at once.
“What’s going on!?”
“Defend yourselves! There’s something strange about this yin wind!”
“Spirit-Detecting Compass!”
The cultivators all around fell into panic. The older and more experienced ones quickly stepped back several paces, snatching the Spirit-Detecting Compass from the hands of the cultivators beside them. The compass needle was spinning furiously. An unprecedentedly thick mass of yin energy surged rapidly, and within just a few breaths, the needle of the compass abruptly snapped.
The cultivators were thrown into chaos, while the yin wind at the Nanwu Mountain mouth inexplicably raged even more fiercely.
“Fall back out of the Nanwu Mountain mouth!”
Winds roared through the withered woods. Su Yu heard the howling in his ears grow increasingly shrill. In his field of vision, the white wisps of smoke moved even faster through the air, wrapping around the drifting wisps of other colors, whirling up from the ground like a cyclone and forming bizarre currents in the sky.
Zhang Fugui barely managed to stand steady in the gale. As a ghost who had nested in Nanwu Mountain for so long, he had never seen such terrifying wind.
He had only run a few steps with the youth on his back, but the cultivators in the gale were retreating faster than he was. He saw those immortal-like cultivators raise spirit artifacts, and one old man with white hair and beard threw out a huge spirit artifact. The moment that powerful artifact was brought forth, the turbulent currents in the area became even more ferocious.
Almost in an instant, Su Yu saw the white air mass burst outward. “Don’t go over there!”
Zhang Fugui stopped in his tracks. The next moment, the spirit vessel of the Su Clan transformed into a wall of gold light and crashed down with a boom at the only exit of Nanwu Mountain.
They were just one step away, and the only exit of Nanwu Mountain was sealed shut.
“It’s over.” Zhang Fugui’s face went ash-gray.
Once the wall of light formed, the white-haired elder controlling the spirit vessel blocked Nanwu Mountain’s exit to prevent yin energy from surging out. His cloudy gaze swept over the cultivators below, who were all gasping for breath, confirming that most had already escaped. He was just about to seal the final opening.
Suddenly, he caught sight of a figure through the wall of light.
At the edge of the withered woods, extremely close to the entrance, a middle-aged man in coarse cloth robes looked over here in panic. His skin was bluish-white, clearly a soul body that had died years ago and since taken form.
What the elder cared about was the “person” on that soul body’s back. He should have been a person, yet the elder could not sense the slightest bit of spiritual qi belonging to a cultivator from him. The youth was covered head to toe in blood, and the only thing that was astonishing was his face, with an almost strikingly exquisite beauty, carrying a strangely familiar feeling.
And then, the gale within Nanwu Mountain surged again. Black mist was whipped by the wind and slammed into the wall of light formed by the spirit vessel. Cultivators who had not yet managed to withdraw were swallowed by the wind and vanished from everyone’s sight in an instant.
“What is going on? Didn’t they say this place only had overly thick yin energy?”
“How could this be a minor issue? There’s something wrong with Nanwu Mountain. The Lihuo Sect’s information was wrong!”
The cultivators from the other sects all turned to look at the Lihuo Sect cultivators. Even several loose cultivators had not expected Nanwu Mountain to suddenly turn into such a disaster. Before this, they had lingered around Nanwu Mountain for days, and at most the outer area had only howled with yin wind.
“Only low-level cultivators like you would think this is a place to train and make a name for yourselves. Would a place meant for ordinary training attract the Su Clan?” A loose cultivator stepped forward and looked toward the Su Clan and the Lihuo Sect in the distance. “I’m afraid this is a powerful cultivator’s relic site, isn’t it?”
As soon as those words fell, the other cultivators all looked toward the Su Clan.
A secret realm left behind by a powerful cultivator after death?!
Any time one found the dwelling of a powerful cultivator or a secret realm they had left behind, it was a great chance for cultivation.
And just then, a Su Clan elder stepped forward and raised a hand to stop the cultivators at the outer edge.
The loose cultivator looked warily at the Su Clan members. “What do you mean by this?”
“The yin energy here is abnormal. There may be vicious malice spirits above the Nascent Soul stage at work.” The Su Clan elder stepped forward and cupped their hands at the other cultivators, saying with a smile that was not quite a smile, “Fellow cultivators, please withdraw beyond the wall of light.”
“This place is now under the Su Clan’s control.”