Chapter 69 – Cinnabar Blooms in the Cold Pool

“We’re here.”

Lou Jiang swept his sword horizontally, cleaving two pouncing Gu-Carving Vultures in half. As he landed, his entire body convulsed, and he nearly fell to his knees.

The few who followed were in no better shape. Except for Chou Bodeng, everyone looked exceptionally wretched, their faces as white as paper, blood dripping continuously from their clothes and weapons. Zhunan was the largest city in Qing Province. The nine cities were centered around “Candle City” as the main city, with the other eight as auxiliary cities. They were in Azure Flower City, located in the due east position, one of the auxiliary cities. But even an auxiliary city was over fourteen kilometers long from north to south. The four of them, carrying the unconscious Chou Bodeng, had practically crossed the entire Azure Flower City, fighting a continuous, bloody battle against swooping Gu-Carving Vultures and obstructing Filth Demons, with no chance to catch their breath.

If it weren’t for Lu Jing, their walking pill repository, they would have exhausted themselves halfway.

“When this young master gets back to the Medicine Valley, I’m going to break my brother’s record in the wooden dummy trial.”

As soon as Lu Jing landed, he started spitting out the black bird feathers in his mouth.

Lou Jiang glanced at him.

Among the four, whether in terms of cultivation or experience, Lu Jing was the weakest link. Arranging for him to cover the rear had been a last resort. Because he had to lead the way, Monk Budu was carrying Chou Bodeng, and Half-Diviner had to protect their vulnerable flanks. Unexpectedly, Lu Jing had actually held his ground. Throughout the journey, they had not suffered a single attack from behind.

At first, Lou Jiang had been worried and had even diverted some of his attention to keep an eye on him.

Initially, Lu Jing’s parrying with his twin sabers was indeed very clumsy. One time, Lou Jiang was about to turn back to support him, but just as a Gu-Carving Vulture was about to break through their rear defense, Lu Jing pounced like a wild beast. He ignored the claws wreathed in wind blades and, like a starving wild dog latched onto the vulture, tore and wrestled with it. The man and bird tumbled from mid-air, crashing onto a rooftop. Lu Jing plunged his saber into the spot where the neck bone connected to the spine, successfully severing the vulture’s neck.

From then on, the dark green twin sabers in his hands became the fangs of a wild dog. He fought like a desperate man, never defending, his saber technique extremely ugly but exceptionally practical, faintly showing signs of becoming its own style.

The Mad… Mad Dog Style Blade Technique!

But ordinary people couldn’t use this style.

Lu Jing could fight like a desperate man who never defended because he was an immortal sect scion. His seemingly ordinary inner clothes were actually top-grade silver silk armor, which was why he could throw himself at a Gu-Carving Vulture instead of being disemboweled by its claws. And an ordinary person could never be like him, taking a thousand damage to deal eight hundred, then popping pills and instantly becoming a vigorous hero again, ready to take another eight hundred damage with gusto.

Despite this, Lu Jing’s performance still showed that he actually had extraordinary potential, but his talent had been previously concealed by a life of debauchery. This reminded Lou Jiang that in Fu City, Lu Jing had been the same. At the beginning of their escape, Young Master Lu’s lightness skill, the Crane Step, hadn’t even reached the entry-level. But under the threat of death from the surging miasma, he had quickly leaped to the level of mastery.

Could this be the correct way for immortal sect scions to develop their talents? Throw them into a desperate situation without the protection of their elders, forcing them to develop their potential for the sake of their own lives?

“Where is it?” Half-Diviner asked.

They had crossed the entire city, only to arrive at the west auxiliary gate, and nothing else.

After catching his breath, Lou Jiang led the group towards the city gate. As they drew closer, they saw that this gate was about 4.7 meters long and 3.7 meters high, extremely narrow. It went about 14 meters deep, with a dark gray arched roof, and was sealed on both the inside and outside with diamond-shaped iron grates cast from black iron. It turned out this was not a city gate for people to pass through, but a water gate culvert.

“Are we going to pass through the water gate to leave the city?” Lu Jing guessed.

“No,” Lou Jiang said. “We’re going to the bottom of the sea.”

“Through here?”

Lou Jiang nodded. He fumbled around the city wall near the water gate culvert for a while and found a particular stone. The city walls of Zhunan were extremely thick, built from massive blocks of black stone, each weighing over five thousand kilograms. Lou Jiang carved a formation onto the black stone, and the stone slowly moved inward by about thirty centimeters.

Click.

As if some mechanism had been triggered, the group then heard the sound of a winch being pulled, and the black iron gate of the water gate culvert slowly rose.

“Quick, let’s go.” Lou Jiang quickly returned and hung a Water Repelling Token on Chou Bodeng. “The water gate will close again soon.” Pausing, he hurriedly asked, “Do you all know the Water Repelling Art? I only have one Water Repelling Token.”

Monk Budu and Half-Diviner nodded. Lu Jing said that although he didn’t know the Water Repelling Art, he had Water Repelling Pills.

“It’s good to be rich…” Monk Budu said with great envy.

As soon as the water gate opened, a cold, sinister wind instantly blew up, accompanied by the rumbling sound of a waterfall. It seemed the black iron gate also had some kind of wind-suppressing and sound-insulating effect. Half-Diviner, holding his Star-Pushing Plate, jumped down first. Monk Budu, carrying Chou Bodeng, followed closely behind. Lu Jing was third, and Lou Jiang brought up the rear.

Just as Lu Jing jumped down, he heard the clash of swords from above.

He looked up, and his pupils shrank abruptly.

—Lou Jiang was fighting with a black-clothed person, and they fell down together!

The water gate culvert was a vertical drop, like a shaft. They fell with the waterfall-like stream of water, their vision extremely dark, with nothing to grab onto on any side. For a moment, knowing something was wrong, they were unable to help Lou Jiang. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before the group crashed into a deep pool in the darkness, submerged in the cold water.

A great Sanskrit sound boomed along with the roar of the water. Lu Jing had never felt that the bald donkey was so useful—having him around was like having a portable holy light that was on call twenty-four-seven, ready whenever needed!

The holy light shone everywhere.

Lu Jing saw, not far from him, Lou Jiang and the black-clothed person wrestling, fighting in the water, rising and falling with great speed. Lu Jing was afraid of accidentally injuring Lou Jiang, so for a moment he couldn’t do anything, just floated in the water with his twin sabers, anxious. At the critical moment, a square object shot past like a meteor, accurately hitting the back of the black-clothed person’s head.

The black-clothed person’s hand, which was choking Lou Jiang’s neck, loosened. Lou Jiang stabbed his sword into his abdomen, then grabbed him and joined the others.

“What’s going on?”

Half-Diviner reached out a hand and summoned back his Star-Pushing Plate.

It was he who had just thrown the Star-Pushing Plate as a hidden weapon, giving the black-clothed person a critical blow to the head. If Chou Bodeng were awake, he would surely marvel at how this Daoist deeply understood the truth of fighting that “no matter how good your kung fu is, you’re still afraid of a brick.” It was a pity that the Star-Pushing Plate, one of the three great divination tools of the Twelve Continents, in his hands, not only failed to push the stars above and deduce the earth below, but was even reduced to being used as a brick.

“This guy,” Lou Jiang said, ripping the mask off the black-clothed person’s face, his tone icy, “has been tailing us the whole time.”

“Isn’t this that grandson of some Grand Elder from your Mountain Sea Pavilion? Ying Yuqiao? Crap, I knew this kid was no good.” With the help of the Buddhist light, Lu Jing recognized the tracker’s face.

“How did he do it?” Monk Budu frowned. “This humble monk prides himself on his spiritual sense, but I did not detect his presence.”

Lou Jiang searched Ying Yuqiao’s body and finally pulled out a dark green heart-protecting mirror. “A Shadow-Following Mirror. When activated, it allows one to follow like a shadow. He used this to follow us the whole time. It was only when we entered the water gate just now that the formation on the black iron gate broke his concealment, exposing him.”

“Strange,” Half-Diviner said thoughtfully. “His attire doesn’t look like he was following on a whim. It’s more like…”

“He’s been watching us from the very beginning,” Monk Budu finished.

“Why watch us?” Lu Jing was puzzled. “Could it be because we slapped him in the face before, so he holds a grudge and is trying to get us from the shadows?”

“No.” Lou Jiang’s face was grim. “I suspect he might have known what was going to happen today from the start.”

“This kid knew…” Lu Jing’s words trailed off as he suddenly understood Lou Jiang’s meaning. “You mean, his grandfather, that Grand Elder Ying, is the inside man?”

Lou Jiang nodded.

The group exchanged glances, a chill crawling up their spines. They remembered that among the people who had just summoned their life-bound artifacts to block the lightning was Grand Elder Ying. If Grand Elder Ying was really the inside man, when would he reveal himself, and when would he make his move?

“We have to notify your Pavilion Master immediately!” Lu Jing asked. “Don’t you have the ‘God-Listener’ for passing messages?”

“I can’t,” Lou Jiang said, opening his hand to reveal the God-Listener shattered in his palm. “It was just destroyed by this traitor, Ying Yuqiao.”

Lu Jing cursed and threw a vicious punch at Ying Yuqiao’s gloomy face. He only meant to vent his anger, not to kill this traitor right now. But Ying Yuqiao’s eyes suddenly flew open. The whites of his eyes had disappeared, leaving only a pure, pitch-blackness. Black mist surged from his body, pouncing like tentacles towards the people around him.

The four of them were too close to Ying Yuqiao. So close that when the change happened, they had no time to react before they were engulfed by the black mist, their vision stolen, their world suddenly plunged into darkness.

Lou Jiang felt his hand go empty; Ying Yuqiao had broken free, taking his sword with him. Vaguely, based on the movement of the water, he could sense that Ying Yuqiao seemed to be attacking Lu Jing. Lou Jiang wanted to intervene, but it was as if the shrill cries of countless women were echoing in his ears, dragging his mind into an abyss, and his movements were slowed down countless times.

It was karmic obstruction!

Ying Yuqiao had actually turned into an evil spirit at this moment!

Lu Jing was probably the only one among the four who remained somewhat conscious, because his wrist was being gripped tightly by Ying Yuqiao’s deathly cold hand. The force was so great that Lu Jing’s entire face contorted; he had no doubt his wrist was already broken! Ying Yuqiao pulled out the sword Lou Jiang had stabbed into his abdomen and slashed at Lu Jing’s throat.

He had to save himself, but in the face of true karmic obstruction, Lu Jing finally understood why those who fell to evil were hunted down by everyone in the Twelve Continents. It was an endless wave of resentment and malice that crashed over you, freezing your very bones and soul.

Lu Jing was unable to move, unable to dodge, and could only await death.

A bone-chilling cold erupted from the depths of the pool. Everyone felt as if endless vengeful ghosts were shrieking and howling as they rushed out. The water churned, and they were slammed against the cold stone wall by a powerful impact. But including Lu Jing, all four of them were still alive! Apart from their churning qi and blood, they hadn’t even suffered any real injuries!

What happened?

They all looked up at the center of the pool at the same time.

The culvert connected to what was less a pool and more a giant well, collecting the torrential rain from the entire city. At this moment, wisps of black were gathering and dispersing in the well water, as if a drop of thick ink had been dropped into clear water. The source of the ink was not Ying Yuqiao; he was pinned to the other side of the well wall by a sword, completely dead.

Chou Bodeng floated silently in the water.

His long, dark hair spread out like seaweed, his raven-feather-like eyelashes still lowered. His pale face was like paper, like snow, like all lifeless, cold colors.

He was not awake.

The moment he hit the stone wall, Lou Jiang figured out where the karmic obstruction on Ying Yuqiao had come from.

Among those in the know, Ying Yuqiao’s reputation was actually very poor. He privately took pleasure in torturing and killing courtesans and maids. It was said that the bodies of the women he had killed could be piled into a hill. Because the deceased were all lowly mortal women, and with Grand Elder Ying’s status and power, no one had ever said anything. Thinking back now, perhaps Ying Yuqiao had considered this from the very beginning when choosing his targets.

The karmic obstruction on Ying Yuqiao was already deep, but compared to Chou Bodeng, it was still insignificant.

Chou Bodeng was not awake, and Monk Budu’s Bodhi beads were still locked on his wrist. Just the wisps of karmic obstruction that broke through the suppression were enough to pin Ying Yuqiao to the stone wall without him even being able to say a word. The difference between the two was more than a thousand miles. If the Bodhi beads were unlocked, the karmic obstruction on Chou Bodeng probably couldn’t be described by “a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.”

It would probably take the destruction of an entire continent, of hundreds of millions of lives, to accumulate such deep karmic obstruction.

They were protecting a monster.

A monster burdened with endless sins.

The cold pool was bone-chilling.

Chou Bodeng’s red robes trailed down with the water, then slowly spread out. The karmic obstruction seeped out from the edges of his robes, like a blooming flower of extreme evil, a spider lily, the edges of its gorgeous petals suffused with the black of sin. At first glance, no one would think he was a living person who could laugh and curse.

That was a bizarrely beautiful, lone, wild ghost.

But what the hell?

What kind of evil ghost would instinctively save people even while unconscious?