Chapter 12 – Only Telling You
The Oracle Master floated backward, and the lantern in his hand didn’t even flicker as he dodged the sword strike.
With the sound of robes cutting through the air, the swordsman landed in front of Zuo Yuesheng, shielding him and the other three behind him.
It was Lou Jiang.
When Chou Bodeng saw him during the day, he had been dressed in a moon-white wide-sleeved robe, his movements carrying the dignified air of an elite disciple from a major sect. But now, this genius of the Mountain Sea Pavilion had blood dripping from his cuffs and hem, his expression anxious and disheveled.
“You, surnamed Lou, where the hell were you?” Zuo Yuesheng was first overjoyed, then alarmed, frantically tugging at his sleeve. “Wait, let’s talk this out. Although the Spiritual Constitution Scripture is from a secret scroll of the Immortal Sects, it’s not impossible that it was accidentally leaked. Don’t just attack.”
…Most importantly, you probably can’t beat him.
Zuo Yuesheng shrewdly completed the sentence in his head.
Lou Jiang swatted away the troublesome, unlucky Young Pavilion Master. He held his sword horizontally before him and stared coldly at the “Oracle Master” who had landed on the tip of a Fu branch. “All the Oracle Masters and Oracle Maidens of the City Divination Department are dead, without a single survivor. The time of death for all of them was yesterday.”
“What!”
Ye Cang cried out in shock.
Chou Bodeng had been frowning at his Taiyi Sword, but upon hearing this, he couldn’t help but glance at Lou Jiang.
“Who are you?” Lou Jiang demanded sharply.
A Luo.
Chou Bodeng answered for the young Oracle Master in his mind.
It seemed Lou Jiang hadn’t arrived when he had asked for the Oracle Master’s name.
The Oracle Master showed no sign of panic at being exposed, as if he hadn’t been serious about his disguise in the first place, or perhaps… he had never taken anyone in Fu City seriously from the beginning, so the quality of his disguise was inconsequential. When Lou Jiang questioned him, he simply looked quietly at Chou Bodeng.
Only when Chou Bodeng glanced at Lou Jiang did he shift his gaze to the wary man.
Lou Jiang’s sword hand suddenly stiffened.
Chou Bodeng thought the Oracle Master’s silver-gray eyes were like snow, like a lake, so tranquil they could reflect the entire world’s shadow.
But in Lou Jiang’s eyes, how could that be snow?
It was clearly eternally frozen Profound Ice! It was the indifferent edge of a blade! It reflected neither people nor things; in his eyes, nothing had value, nothing existed. The other party had only glanced at him casually, yet Lou Jiang’s back was instantly drenched in cold sweat. In that moment, it was even more dangerous than breaking through the encirclement of the city full of puppets earlier.
The veins on Lou Jiang’s left hand, hidden under his sleeve, bulged.
“I don’t need to tell you,” the Oracle Master replied calmly.
So that’s why no one has called you by your name for a long time?
Chou Bodeng was both amused and annoyed.
You little brat.
Since you were too disdainful to tell others, who were you putting on that “pitiful little cabbage, yellowing in the fields, motherless at three” act for when I asked? To think he had thought he’d touched a sore spot and had specially condescended to dust off the past for him—did he think Young Master Chou’s hands were for just anyone to trouble?
“No matter who you are,” Lou Jiang’s back muscles remained taut, his sword hand not daring to relax for a second, “I have already used Sound Listening to report the situation here back to the Mountain Sea Pavilion. If the Young Pavilion Master of the Mountain Sea Pavilion, the Little Martial Grand-Ancestor of Taiyi, and the sole son of the Medicine Valley Master die here, I guarantee you will never escape the pursuit of the Immortal Sects! If you retreat now, the Mountain Sea Pavilion will not pursue this matter.”
The air suddenly grew tense.
Even an idiot like Lu Jing could feel the shadow of death looming over them. Ye Cang was anxious to ask what had happened to the City Divination Department, but Zuo Yuesheng clamped a hand firmly over his mouth. The recent laughter and banter had become a phantom dream. Just as a great serpent coiled beneath the silver crown of the Fu tree, a conspiracy of immense danger lay beneath that dream.
No one spoke again.
The Oracle Master was silent.
He gazed distantly at the Kui Dragon Bracelet on Chou Bodeng’s wrist, his thoughts unreadable.
A light breeze rustled the treetops.
Chou Bodeng suddenly smelled the faint scent of blood.
It wasn’t the blood dripping from Lou Jiang, but the scent of blood carried up from the ground by the wind… This was strange, because they were at the highest point of the ancient, ten-thousand-year-old Fu tree, so high that even if there were fighting on the ground, the smell of blood wouldn’t have wafted this high. Unless… unless the ground was already a river of blood!
Chou Bodeng turned his head and looked down at the entire city.
At some point, the streets of the entire city had been filled with firelight. Looking down from above, it was as if the streets, large and small, were flowing with fresh blood.
“A promise from the Immortal Sects…” the Oracle Master murmured with a sigh. “How solemn. But will you really remember?”
His voice was filled with an indescribable mockery and, for the first time, a cold killing intent.
Sensing that sliver of killing intent, Lou Jiang unhesitatingly activated the Green Emperor Mirror.
He had been on high alert, his sword held before his chest, ready to strike at any moment. But his true killing move was the Green Emperor Mirror hidden in his sleeve. Lou Jiang didn’t know if he could complete the charged-up attack; the sense of danger from his opponent was too strong. Fortunately, for some reason, his opponent had held back and only now revealed his killing intent.
The Green Emperor Mirror grew larger in the wind, and ripples spread across its mottled bronze surface. A scaled dragon claw emerged from it, reaching for the Oracle Master. A dragon’s roar shook the heavens, and the entire tree swayed in the wind. The gray bird’s nest was instantly pulverized, and the male bird fell from the tree, shielding the female. The Oracle Master retreated, dodging the attack and standing in the empty air. The Flood Dragon burst from the bronze mirror, pursuing him relentlessly.
No matter how troublesome Zuo Yuesheng was, he was still the sole son of the Mountain Sea Pavilion’s Master. The Pavilion Master wouldn’t let him be killed outside. The Green Emperor Mirror that Lou Jiang carried actually sealed the soul of a Flood Dragon!
“Is he even human?!” Zuo Yuesheng was dumbfounded.
His cultivation was low, so he couldn’t judge the realm of the fighting dragon and soul. He could only feel the wind and waves crashing in the air. The azure Flood Dragon stretched out to a full thirty meters, and the gales stirred by its coiling movements caused the Fu tree’s crown, which covered the entire city, to ripple like white waves. Such a massive Flood Dragon, yet its opponent fought alone, without a saber or sword. But this one person, with every wave of his sleeve, caused the azure Flood Dragon’s soul to dim a little more.
“Go!”
Blood streamed from Lou Jiang’s ears and nose as he yelled.
“The Flood Dragon can’t hold him!”
As he spoke, the third watch of the night arrived.
Dong! Dong! Dong!
The thunder drum used for divine worship was struck heavily, its sound like the roar of an angry giant, shaking the heavens and earth.
At some unknown time, Daoist Priest Xuanqing had appeared on the city’s tallest tower. With his hair unbound and feet bare, he chanted an incantation to summon a High God, his voice like a great bell. With the drumbeats, the sound of men shouting and horses neighing suddenly filled the sky, accompanied by lightning and thunder. Within the clouds, the hundred-meter-tall, awe-inspiring image of a Red-Faced Six-Eyed High God gradually appeared.
Daoist Priest Xuanqing’s sect did not specialize in combat with sabers and swords, but in divine worship and formation arrays. Those with high cultivation could, with the aid of a formation, invite a god to descend. The High God invited was related to the time the thunder drum was struck and the drummer’s cultivation level. It was the middle of the night, so the summoned god should have been gentle in nature.
But Daoist Priest Xuanqing was as fierce as fire. When setting up the formation, he used his own lifeblood to draw the patterns, forcefully summoning a ferocious Martial God at the third watch!
The moment the Red-Faced Six-Eyed Martial God appeared in the clouds, Chou Bodeng felt a tremendous force from the Taiyi Sword in his hand, pulling him down from the tree.
Lou Jiang grabbed Zuo Yuesheng with one hand and summoned a phoenix to carry the others. He had been most worried about Chou Bodeng, the highest-ranking and number one profligate, being left behind, but he found that Chou Bodeng was even faster than himself.
As Chou Bodeng was pulled from the top of the Fu tree by the Taiyi Sword, the red-faced god in the clouds seemed to sense something, and its six eyes suddenly opened.
The Oracle Master waved his sleeve, shattering the Flood Dragon, and soared into the sky amidst the lightning and thunder.
He pulled a slender Scarlet Saber from thin air and, at the instant the red-faced Martial God looked toward Chou Bodeng, unleashed three crescent-moon-like arcs of blood-red light!
***
Blood.
The firelight made the pervasive crimson all the more glaring.
“Wh-wh-what’s going on?” Lu Jing’s voice was choked with sobs.
The tears he had held back when he recovered his Yin-Yang Pendant on the Fu tree finally, shamefully, fell.
No one paid him any mind.
The entire city of Fu had indeed awakened.
The main doors of every household were wide open, and everyone, regardless of age or gender, stood in the middle of the streets, holding a torch high in one hand while blood dripped from the other. The blood converged into a winding river, slowly flowing toward the city’s center. As if numb to the pain, they walked step by step toward the Divine Fu Tree at the city’s heart, chanting praises of varying lengths.
It was as if they were being controlled…
“Puppets.”
The muscles in Lou Jiang’s face twitched. He pulled out a compass and was nervously confirming his direction.
“I was ordered by the Pavilion Master to trace the source of the Soul Threads, and I tracked it all the way to Fu City. But I never expected…”
He never expected that right under the nose of the Mountain Sea Pavilion, someone had used Shadow Puppets to turn almost the entire population of a city into puppets!
“Wait, so it wasn’t because I was exiled by the old man,” Zuo Yuesheng said, aghast, “that you followed me, afraid I’d get beaten to death?”
“Fatty, you’ve got it backward,” Chou Bodeng explained. “It’s because he had to investigate the Soul Thread matter that you were exiled to Fu City.”
After all, a renowned genius from the Mountain Sea Pavilion suddenly arriving in a pitifully small, unremarkable city could easily alert the enemy. But add in a well-known eccentric like Zuo Yuesheng, and people would only sigh, “What misfortune for the Mountain Sea Pavilion’s family.”
Zuo Yuesheng couldn’t catch his breath and nearly choked to death.
This is my own father? My actual father?!
“This isn’t real!”
Ye Cang, who hadn’t been turned into a Shadow Puppet, stumbled step by step toward a middle-aged man, just like the controlled walking corpses.
“I don’t believe it! This isn’t real! Uncle Yang, wake up!”
“Hey!” Lu Jing tried to call him back.
Thud!
With a dull thud, Ye Cang fell down stiffly.
Zuo Yuesheng, holding a club he had produced from somewhere, grabbed Ye Cang by the collar with his other hand and grinned sheepishly at the group. “…I think I might have used a little too much force.”
Lu Jing recalled the loud thud and thought, That wasn’t just a little too much force, you were planning to knock him dead!
Chou Bodeng, holding a paper lantern, gave Zuo Yuesheng a token round of applause. “Not bad, not bad, decisive enough.”
“Stop wasting time. The entire city is a sacrificial ground now. Do you want to stay and be human sacrifices?!” Lou Jiang found the right direction and led the group, quickly dashing toward the south of the city.
“Why do you say it’s a sacrifice?”
Lu Jing asked as he followed Lou Jiang, dodging the numbly advancing people.
“Blood.”
Unexpectedly, the one who answered was not Lou Jiang.
It was Chou Bodeng.
“In the five sacrifices of a ritual, meat represents abundance, and blood represents purity. Through blood, man can communicate with the heavens and the earth,” Chou Bodeng’s expression was very grave. “The earliest interpretation of ‘sacrifice’ in oracle bone inscriptions comes from holding meat and taking its ‘qi’ juice, and this ‘qi juice’ is blood. To go to such lengths to control an entire city with Shadow Puppets to obtain voluntary blood offerings—this is the highest level of sacrifice.”
“You’ve even read oracle bone inscriptions?” Zuo Yuesheng said, carrying Ye Cang. “Then again, you’ve even read my grandfather’s long, smelly notes…”
“So impressive!” Lu Jing was filled with awe.
The veins on Lou Jiang’s forehead throbbed. “Get down from that wall first! Walk properly!”
“No!” Chou Bodeng refused flatly. “The road is covered in blood, it’s too dirty!”
Lou Jiang wished he could trade places with Daoist Priest Xuanqing. He’d go summon a High God, and Xuanqing could lead this bunch of profligates to safety. Suddenly, Lou Jiang noticed something was wrong.
He stared at Chou Bodeng for a couple of seconds, and his face changed drastically. “Where did you get that lantern in your hand?”
“You mean this?” Chou Bodeng held up the paper lantern. “He threw it to me.”
When he was pulled down from the Fu tree by the Taiyi Sword, the Oracle Master had tossed the lantern he was carrying over, and Chou Bodeng had instinctively caught it.
Now he thought it was quite nice; the light was much cleaner than a torch’s.
He?
Realizing that the “he” Chou Bodeng was referring to was the person currently fighting the Red-Faced Six-Eyed Martial God in the sky with thunderous clashes, Lou Jiang’s vision went black. He couldn’t take it anymore and was about to pull Chou Bodeng down and throw away that damn lantern.
“Wait a minute,” Lu Jing interjected weakly. “What about my guards? They came with me, I have to take them with us.”
Lou Jiang paused.
“They’re dead,” he said flatly. “All dead.”
Lu Jing fell silent and followed sullenly.
“What about Fu City?” Zuo Yuesheng asked. “Fu City pays tribute to our Mountain Sea Pavilion and has never been a year late.” As he spoke, he walked past the step-by-step advancing people of Fu City, and his legs couldn’t help but tremble when he met their numb eyes. “…According to the rules, if something major happens, the Mountain Sea Pavilion must protect Fu City. These people, can they still be saved?”
“Probably,” Lou Jiang said, glancing at the sky. “Once the puppet master impersonating the Oracle Master is dead, they should recover.”
“That’s not right.”
Chou Bodeng stopped on the wall. The paper lantern the Oracle Master had thrown him looked ordinary, but the light filtering through the plain paper was very soft. Although the people possessed by Shadow Puppets on the street also held torches high, the feeling the two lights gave was completely different. One was bright and clear, the other dim and turbid, as if one shone upon the mortal realm, and the other upon the netherworld.
The faint light fell on Chou Bodeng’s face.
Lou Jiang suddenly noticed that this number one profligate of Taiyi had a pair of fearsome eyes. They were pure black, and when he wasn’t smiling, they were deep and chillingly sharp.
“The puppet master is not him.”