Chapter 14 – The Divine Fu is Just a Tree
The moment the city gates opened, everyone felt a jolt in their ears and a sudden tightness in their chests, a sense of stagnation as if they had been abruptly thrown into filth.
“Quick, quick, quick,” Lu Jing frantically pulled out his Subduing Clarity Pills, handing out the priceless pills personally refined by the Medicine King as if they were candy beans, giving a whole bottle to each person. “Take them quickly, or it’ll be terrible if the miasma gets into your body!”
Zuo Yuesheng took the pills and was about to put them away.
“You damn fatty!” Lu Jing was about to die of anger. “This isn’t the time to be greedy! If you’re not going to eat them, give them back!”
“I have Subduing Clarity Pills too. I’ll eat the Medicine King’s personal refinements after I finish mine. This is the least respect one can show for heavenly materials and earthly treasures,” Zuo Yuesheng said brazenly, actually pulling out a bottle of Subduing Clarity Pills.
“Young Pavilion Master, take the ones Young Master Lu gave you,” Lou Jiang said. “This miasma is strangely thick. The ones you brought won’t work!”
As he spoke, the thick, black miasma surged in from the streets leading to the city gates. It felt less like fog and more like a tangible tide. The gables, gray-tiled roofs, arches, and pillars… the houses of varying heights were devoured by the miasma, and many blurry shadows could be vaguely seen within it.
With the appearance of those shadows, everyone heard mournful cries in their ears.
“What… what are they?” Lu Jing asked, trembling.
His situation was similar to Chou Bodeng’s.
The Dawen Mountain Range, where Medicine Valley was located, was full of strange flowers and exotic trees. All year round, it was a riot of blossoms and fluttering butterflies. He had never truly seen the ferocious and fierce side of the miasma. Although he had run away from home for a month before, it hadn’t been the Miasma Moon in Fu City at that time.
“Dead Souls and Wild Ghosts, Demons and Monsters.”
Lou Jiang, for some reason, was no longer just pale; he was completely ashen.
“Let’s go! We have to get to the Teleportation Formation before they do!”
Chou Bodeng glanced at him but said nothing.
This time, no one dawdled. Even Lu Jing, whose legs were as soft as noodles, suddenly seemed to get it. The Crane Step his elder brother had forced him to learn instantly jumped from clumsy imitation to mastery—though there might have been some issues with his spiritual energy circulation, as he didn’t look much like a crane when he ran.
More like a big white duck.
Swoosh.
With a sound of cutting wind, Lou Jiang landed in front of a hidden courtyard.
The moment he landed, he fell to his knees with a “thud,” his face ashen. Zuo Yuesheng and Lu Jing, who arrived right after, didn’t even have time to ask what was wrong before they saw the courtyard. It looked as if it had been plowed over eight hundred times by an ox. It had been turned completely upside down, left and right. Forget a formation, not even a single formation stone was left.
“I thought so…”
Zuo Yuesheng muttered to himself.
He figured that the moment Daoist Priest Xuanqing finished setting up the formation, it was destroyed completely. The entire city of Fu had become a grand puppet theater; how could they expect anyone to leave them a way out?
Chou Bodeng landed to the side with his lantern, his expression unreadable.
“It’s over.”
Lu Jing forced a smile that was uglier than a cry.
“I once swore that if I were to die one day, I would die drunk on a beauty’s lap. I never thought I’d end up dying with a bunch of old men.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Zuo Yuesheng also felt the world spinning, but he still subconsciously contradicted Lu Jing. “There’s no wine, but there is a beauty. Look,” he pointed at Chou Bodeng, “isn’t our great beauty Chou right here? You should hurry up and ask him to fulfill your dying wish.”
“Get lost.”
Before Chou Bodeng could speak, Lu Jing kicked Zuo Yuesheng.
Zuo Yuesheng let out a yelp and suddenly realized something was wrong. Logically, if he dared to joke about Young Master Chou like this, Young Master Chou would definitely come over and deal with him. But now, he was being unusually quiet and broad-minded.
He quickly glanced at Chou Bodeng again.
He saw Chou Bodeng holding the paper lantern, standing to the side with his head down, lips pursed, lost in thought. A beauty with downcast eyes, even knowing his vile nature, made one feel a sense of pity.
Zuo Yuesheng thought, Oh, this is trouble.
No matter how messed up Young Master Chou was, he was still a pampered, precious master raised in the lap of luxury by the Taiyi Sect. It was normal for him to be unable to accept such a miserable death, being drowned in miasma and devoured by a hundred ghosts, for a while.
“Ahem, ahem, ahem,” Zuo Yuesheng cleared his throat. Though his own legs were trembling, he tried to comfort Chou Bodeng. “Aiya, I say, Young Master Chou, death is just one of those things. You close your eyes, you open them, and it’s over. Being eaten alive by the ghosts in the miasma is indeed a bit of a torment. But it’s okay, when the miasma comes, we’ll just stab ourselves first, and that’ll be that. You don’t have to be afraid, I’ll go first later.”
Chou Bodeng glanced at him but said nothing.
Instead, it was Lu Jing on the side who started crying first. “No, I’m afraid of pain, I can’t do it to myself.”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Zuo Yuesheng comforted him. “I’ll stab you first, then I’ll stab myself.”
“Then use this saber, it has a good edge,” Lu Jing threw caution to the wind, taking out a saber as thin as a cicada’s wing and handing it to Zuo Yuesheng. “Be quick about it.”
“Alright.”
Zuo Yuesheng knew it was a good saber at a glance. His eyes lit up as he took it, readily agreeing.
“What time is it to be fooling around!” Lou Jiang supported himself with his sword and stood up. He looked at the lantern in Chou Bodeng’s hand, then at the sea of blood roiling in the sky, gritted his teeth, and said decisively, “We’ll go through the sky!”
“Are you talking nonsense?”
Zuo Yuesheng’s eyes widened as he pointed at the spectacular battle in the sky.
“Damn it, are we going up there to be their fireworks, to liven things up for them?”
“Their fight has torn a gap in the miasma, and it won’t close for a while. If we take a flying boat to high altitude and follow the path cleared by that… that Oracle Master, we should be able to fly out of Fu City.” As he spoke, the miasma was already surging toward them. Lou Jiang didn’t have time to say more. He flipped his hand and took out a small white jade boat from his Mustard Seed Pouch. “There’s no time, we can only take a gamble!”
A gamble that the “Oracle Master,” for Chou Bodeng’s sake, would let them go.
As for the Martial God summoned by Daoist Priest Xuanqing…
Lou Jiang hadn’t even considered that such a “High God” would care about the lives of a few low-level ants.
That was a High God from the “Heaven Beyond Heavens.” They were lucky that Daoist Priest Xuanqing could even summon him.
As soon as Lou Jiang tossed the white jade boat into the air, it immediately grew with the wind, transforming in an instant into a flying boat about ten meters high and thirty meters long. It had a pointed bow, a long body, a high prow and stern, and a relatively small arch beam. The transverse rib planks were arranged very tightly, and on both sides of the gunwales were slender cloak-like boards that spread out like falcon wings. It had a total of three sails, like jade shells.
“Isn’t this the old man’s ‘Startled Swan’?” Zuo Yuesheng jumped up the moment he saw the flying boat. “Damn it, is the old man even human? He’d beat me if I so much as touched it, but he actually gave it to you? Fuck, who’s his real son?!”
“If you didn’t crash a flying boat every time you flew one, the Pavilion Master wouldn’t have given the Startled Swan Goose Boat to me,” Lou Jiang said coldly, pulling everyone onto the boat.
The falcon-like wings of the Startled Swan Goose Boat flapped, and its white sails unfurled, lifting it lightly off the ground.
Coincidentally.
Just as the Startled Swan Goose Boat rose, an extremely sharp and piercing sound of metal clashing rang out from high above. Immediately after, the group saw the golden-robed, red-faced, six-eyed Martial God being smashed down from mid-air, crashing like a meteor into the fields outside the city. The Oracle Master followed closely, shifting the battlefield into the miasma outside the city.
“This is… clearing the way for us,” Zuo Yuesheng muttered to himself.
“As expected, beauty clouds the judgment,” Lu Jing said.
Lou Jiang was completely bewildered.
His initial thought was that the “Oracle Master,” invited by the old City Diviner to hold the line, had specifically thrown Chou Bodeng a lantern to protect him from the city full of puppets, so he must have some connection with Taiyi. For the sake of this connection, if they traveled through the sky, the Oracle Master might not stop them and might even lend a hand.
But he hadn’t expected that the other party seemed to have been paying attention to their situation all along. Seeing that they were about to travel by sky, he directly led the Martial God to the ground.
This was no longer just “some connection,” was it?
What was the relationship between this Little Martial Grand-Ancestor of Taiyi and the other party? And what did Young Master Lu mean by “beauty clouds the judgment”?
He had only taken his eyes off the Young Pavilion Master for an afternoon, but Lou Jiang felt as if a dozen years’ worth of events had transpired.
“Let me, let me!” Zuo Yuesheng watched Lou Jiang steer the Startled Swan Goose Boat, his eyes watering with envy. “Aiyo, aiyo, you’re so slow, the daylilies will be cold by the time we get there.”
“I don’t want the Mountain Sea Pavilion to go to war with the Taiyi Sect and Medicine Valley because of a ‘flying boat accident involving the Young Pavilion Master, resulting in the death of passengers at high altitude’!”
Lou Jiang mercilessly refused.
“Listen,” Chou Bodeng, who had been leaning against the ship’s rail, unusually quiet, suddenly said, “what are they singing?”
The Startled Swan Goose Boat was getting farther and farther from the ground, but the voices from below were still clearly discernible.
An entire city, over a hundred thousand people, led by an aged voice, sang the same mournful song in the same rhythm and tone. They sang in the local dialect of Fu City, which Chou Bodeng couldn’t understand.
Zuo Yuesheng listened intently and translated it into the common courtly language of the Twelve Continents for Chou Bodeng:
“Oh, great Fu, god who protects me,
Take my blood as sacrifice, protect my city.
The wind is mournful, oh the bitterness,
I know not if the god will protect or not,
Making my heart bitter, and bitter again.”
“It’s the blessing song of the great sacrifice.” Upon hearing the first half, Lou Jiang’s face turned pale with horror. “I know what the old City Diviner has been plotting for three hundred years! Refining a God into a Spirit! It’s Refining a God into a Spirit!!”
“He wants to refine the Divine Fu Tree and forge… forge an evil weapon!”
Hearing Lou Jiang say this, Zuo Yuesheng’s expression instantly turned to one of horror.
Lu Jing looked at him, then at Zuo Yuesheng, and then at Chou Bodeng. Chou Bodeng was sitting far from everyone else, so it was hard to see his expression, but he probably understood as well. Lu Jing suddenly felt like he was the only fool on the entire flying boat and asked, steeling himself, “What is Refining a God into a Spirit? The Divine Fu Tree is the Divine Fu Tree, what does it have to do with an evil weapon?”
“Do you know how spirit artifacts are made?” Lou Jiang asked, taking a deep breath.
Lu Jing thought, How the hell would I know? I can’t even properly recite the Zhou Treasury, which is required reading for cultivators.
Fortunately, Lou Jiang didn’t really expect him to answer. He was just using the question to calm himself down. “When a person dies, they leave a soul. When a god dies, they leave a spirit. Most gods who protect cities leave behind a bit of their true spirit after they die, to continue protecting the land. Occasionally, by coincidence, a true spirit will attach itself to an object, becoming a spirit artifact.”
Lu Jing vaguely understood something.
“Spirit artifacts are powerful, and over time, some people went down an evil path. Several thousand years ago, a traitor emerged from the Heavenly Works Mansion who killed gods to take their spirits and forcibly refine evil weapons.”
Lu Jing’s hair stood on end. He stood up abruptly and looked down from the side of the boat.
The Startled Swan Goose Boat was ascending at an extremely fast rate. In the time it took to exchange a few sentences, it had already surpassed the height the gray bird had taken them to. His field of vision became wider and wider, and he could easily take in the entire city.
Fu City was like a silver lake submerged in black fog.
With the ancient Divine Fu Tree at its center, it was roughly an irregular circle with a circumference of about seventeen kilometers, covered by the faintly glowing, wide crown of the Fu tree, as if the entire city were draped in snow.
At this moment, darkness surged into the city from the east, west, north, and south.
In the past, the light of the Divine Fu Tree was gentle, like still water, like light gauze. But now, in the midst of the firelight and the faint, indistinct blessing song, the ancient Fu tree erupted with a powerful silver light. The silver light was like sharp swords, cutting into the endless black miasma. Lu Jing had never imagined that a tree could be so brilliant, as brilliant as a star!
“Then… then what’s the point of the ritual?” Lu Jing’s voice trembled.
“A plant as a god is as weak as a duckweed, but its lifespan is like that of heaven and earth.”
The one who answered was Chou Bodeng. He had stood up at some point and walked to the stern of the boat. The wind made his red clothes flutter loudly.
“It has lived for too long.”
The Divine Fu Tree was very weak.
It couldn’t be like a Kunpeng or a Kui Dragon, bringing peace and clear seas wherever it passed with a sweep of its tail. It could only stand in one place, each leaf emitting a faint light. Billions of leaves, billions of faint lights, gathered together like snow, like gauze, to drive away the filthy black miasma.
The Divine Fu Tree was very strong.
A Kunpeng or a Kui Dragon would die if its head was cut off, but the Divine Fu Tree’s root system stretched endlessly, accumulating thousands of years of life force. Even if thunder broke all its branches and heavenly fire burned all its leaves, it would still have a day of spring returning to a withered tree, of new buds sprouting again.
“There is only one way to take the true spirit of the Divine Fu Tree,” Lou Jiang’s knuckles turned white on the rudder of the Startled Swan Goose Boat. “Make it exhaust the life force it has accumulated over thousands of years on its own. Make it…”
“Die on its own!”
So, the person who wanted to take the Fu tree’s true spirit came up with such a vicious plan.
They opened the city gates during the Miasma Moon, letting in the demons and monsters from outside, letting in the filth and foulness from outside, artificially creating a great calamity that would destroy the city. Then they controlled the entire city’s population, using their blood as a sacrifice, to perform the most solemn ritual, praying for the Divine Fu Tree to save the city.
“Actually, the Divine Fu Tree can not only expel miasma, but it can also actively slay evil spirits,” Lou Jiang said hoarsely. “But that comes at the cost of its life force. The life force accumulated over a long thousand years is transformed into a momentary flash of brilliance.”
Lu Jing was stunned.
He stared blankly at the glow, as brilliant as a star.
No matter how long-lived the Divine Fu Tree was, how many thousands of years did it have?
But the miasma was endless.
“What god, what spirit.”
Chou Bodeng said softly to the Taiyi Sword. The Taiyi Sword held him back tightly, using all its strength to stop him. The wrist of the hand holding the sword was slender, and under the nearly transparent skin, blue veins were clearly visible. The knuckles were cold and pale.
“It’s just a tree.”
What could a tree understand?
Did it know what a trap or a conspiracy was? Did it know that the person who had cared for it for hundreds of years would one day develop boundless greed and cruelty? It didn’t know! It only heard people praying to it with all their lives, so it also used all its life to save this city.
Plants are ignorant; they don’t understand that the human heart is the true demon and monster.
It was just a tree.
So, it was going to die.
“But, I don’t like it,” Chou Bodeng said slowly, a smile gradually appearing on his face. “Either you let go, or I’ll cut off my own hand.”
Lu Jing vaguely heard Chou Bodeng speaking and wanted to ask what he was saying.
As soon as he turned his head, Lu Jing was so scared he screamed, “Chou-Chou-Chou-Chou Bodeng! What are you doing?”
Red robes billowed.
Chou Bodeng had jumped from a height of ten thousand meters!!!