Chapter 142 – Red Paper Umbrella
Crane City, the Twin Towers.
Lu Xiaoxiao was like a cat held by the scruff of its neck, unable to move from her spot, staring eagerly at the green-shirted swordsman who had subdued her with a single hand. Unfortunately, this person was not their Senior Brother Ye. His attitude was merely that of someone casually looking after the neighbor’s unruly brats, just making sure they didn’t die, with no intention of letting them get involved.
…We should have just called Senior Brother Ye to come with us.
Lu Xiaoxiao thought with regret.
Glancing around, she suddenly noticed an unexpected movement on the roof tiles and hurriedly tugged on the green-shirted swordsman, who was fully focused on observing Crane City. The swordsman looked down and saw words appearing one after another on the accumulated snow, as if someone were writing from a distance.
Lou Jiang, Crane City is the Dragon’s Tail Acupoint.
“The Dragon’s Tail Acupoint?”
The green-shirted swordsman frowned, recognizing the familiar handwriting.
Beside him, Lu Xiaoxiao and her junior brother craned their necks, also peering at the words on the snow. After seeing the first two words, they glanced at each other in surprise, then both looked at the green-shirted swordsman.
Lou… Lou Jiang?
So this was the former genius of the Mountain Sea Pavilion, the Azure-Front Sword Lou Jiang, the one Little Martial Ancestor called “the worrywart who’ll get old fast”?
Lou Jiang, who was looking down at the snow, had no idea how Young Master Chou was badmouthing him. He simply used his qi as a brush, quickly writing a reply in the snow. He wrote extremely fast, but the response from the other side appeared even faster. Terms like “secondary two veins,” “qi of the four directions,” and “six mansions” were recognizable individually, but when strung together, they were completely incomprehensible. Lu Xiaoxiao and her junior brother felt dizzy just looking at them, almost wanting to turn and flee.
The junior brother had just looked away in terror when he saw a ball of red light rise from the dark Crane City.
“What’s that?”
He blurted out.
His voice was drowned out by a deafening roar.
***
Scorching red ice was blasted into the sky by the lake water. Burning eaves, broken pillars, and flying stones and snow were reflected on the ice’s surface, shattering and overlapping, as if a silent, ancient city had suddenly been pushed onto a volcano, its demise mirrored in countless fragments at the moment of eruption.
Monk Budu clearly heard Lu Jing beside him curse loudly as he shot forward, intending to intervene.
Lake water rained down from the sky.
It was bone-chillingly cold.
Lu Jing lowered his head, standing amidst a pool of shimmering, broken reflections.
Chou Bodeng rose, sword in hand, no longer looking at the turbulent Heavenly Lake. “Ye Cang, Lu Jing, take the water mirror and go to Crane City.”
“Yes!”
Ye Cang stepped forward.
Lu Jing, his clothes soaked, descended the mountain, treading on the unsettled waves.
“Monk,” Chou Bodeng looked at Budu and asked, “if the dragon vein trembles and the qi of an entire vein surges into Heavenly Lake Mountain, how many days can you suppress it?”
Monk Budu fingered the White Bone Buddhist Beads on his wrist. Casting aside all pretense of saving face, he made a quick calculation and said bluntly, “Half a month at most.”
“Then you stay and guard Heavenly Lake Mountain. Contact Fatty Zuo and mobilize all the Mountain Sea Pavilion flying boats within the West Continent. Have Wu Luo lead the Gu masters to wait at Ten Thousand Mounds Mountain. Send all the Startled Swan White Colt Boats to pick them up and rush to Whale City. Inform Half-Diviner that the Ghost Valley Military Lineage is to move out immediately and press close to the West Continent, but they are not to enter it…” Chou Bodeng gave his orders as he walked out of the stone pavilion.
A Taiyi Sect disciple who had remained in Plum City hurried up the mountain.
“Little Martial Ancestor, the people from the Beast Taming Sect have arrived.”
Chou Bodeng stopped.
Beside him, Shi Wuluo had already cast a cold gaze towards Plum City’s south gate.
“Arriving at a time like this,” Chou Bodeng suddenly sneered. “What a coincidence.”
***
Snow piled higher and higher on the city gate tower.
A silent procession stood in the cold wind, vast in number, composed of white-bodied, black-tailed, single-horned Piebald Leopards, long-furred, tusked, red-eyed Giant Elephants, and nearly a hundred cultivators. They brought with them an endless line of heavy wooden chests, and banners embroidered with the totems of a myriad of beasts flapped fiercely in the heavy snow.
The man in the lead had a dignified face, as if he had long been in a high position.
In the past, whenever he appeared in any continent or city, hosts of people would vie to serve him tea and water. Even when visiting the main sects of other immortal sects, he would be received by elders of considerable status. Today, however, he had been leading his people, standing outside the gate of Plum City, a small city under the Beast Taming Sect’s own jurisdiction within the West Continent, for a full six hours.
Not long ago, Monk Budu, on account of the Hundred Bows Manor incident in Plum City, had relayed the Divine Lord’s order to the Beast Taming Sect, telling them to select someone to make a trip to Plum City. If the Divine Lord was not satisfied with the person who came, then the Divine Lord would personally pay a visit to the Beast Taming Sect and walk through their sect gates. After the message was sent, the Beast Taming Sect had remained silent.
Until today, the person they had chosen finally arrived in Plum City.
There could be no more solemn a representative than this.
The master of a sect, in person.
Zhuang Xuan.
Sect Master Zhuang.
The goose-feather snow grew thicker, piling up on everyone’s shoulders. Yet the sect master at the head of the procession stood motionless before the thin city gate, his temples and shoulders dusted with snow. Naturally, no one behind him dared to brush off the snow, and the entire procession of nearly a hundred people stood silently, waiting in the snow.
The snow was about to reach their knees.
Lightning flashed across the sky, momentarily illuminating the black city walls and the white ramparts of snow.
The city gate opened.
A red figure walked out from the wind and snow.
***
A harsh wind howled down.
After the winter solstice, the snow in Plum City was already considered heavy, but compared to the snow outside the fjords in the northernmost part of the West Continent, it was a minor flurry.
Here, snowflakes were as large as platters. A gust of wind could whip up a snow wall dozens of meters high, pushing forward like a tide, or simply turn into a sheet of pale sand in mid-air. A cultivator who had not reached the Dao Enlightenment Stage would be frozen into dust that shattered at a touch upon stepping in here. Even a cultivator at the Law Guardian Stage couldn’t last long without a fire-warding item like Fire Essence.
The fierce wind rolled with the tide of snow, whipping overhead.
A group of Beast Taming Sect cultivators was stationed on a boundless sheet of ice. They had placed Fire Essence into glazed lanterns carved with formation patterns and lit them to ward off the cold.
The only one who hadn’t lit a Fire Essence was an old man.
He was very old, very gaunt, a dry bag of bones draped in a black cloak with frayed white fur trim. He carried a wooden sword with a cracked scabbard on his back. The old man sat cross-legged at the base of an ice wall, his eyes closed. The ice wall rose straight up from the ice sheet, standing tall and majestic, like the insurmountable edge of a plateau.
Before such a massive ice wall, a person could crane their neck until it stiffened and still not see its top, feeling smaller than an ant, like an insignificant speck of dust. A procession of a thousand people was just a small black dot on the ice sheet, easily swallowed by the heavy snow.
Such a majestic ice wall, such a vast ice sheet, was nothing special here.
Around them were many more, even larger icebergs.
They floated on the dark blue seawater, forming a bizarre and terrifying river of giants. The largest glacier covered five hundred kilometers, more imposing and colossal than a large city. Glaciers and ice sheets converged, and the world was reduced to shades of dark blue, deep black, and pale white, making one shudder with the feeling that the dome of the sky had collapsed here.
The harsh wind howled.
The jagged icebergs moved slowly.
Icebergs collided with one another, creating a deafening roar as dustings of snow and ice exploded in the air, a vast expanse of white. The seawater surged in huge waves, pushing outwards layer by layer, causing more icebergs to collide beneath the surface. The outer layer of snow was shaken off, revealing the ancient Profound Ice within, crystal clear and emitting a cold light.
White River, Cold Water.
Immense beauty and terror merged into one, forming the most dangerous and wondrous sight in the West Continent: the Hundred Rivers at Sea.
The harsh wind and swift currents pushed the ice sheets and icebergs rapidly forward. Once the Hundred Rivers flowed south and crashed into the strait, it would be an absolute disaster. The horn to summon the whale pods had long been blown, but the ice-breaking pods had yet to appear. They merely swam back and forth on the other side of the Hundred Rivers, separated from the Beast Taming Sect cultivators by massive icebergs and vast ice sheets.
The prelude to the southern descent of the Hundred Rivers was already nearing the strait.
In the coastal cities.
People lit the tower lamps and watched the seawater rise, bit by bit.
***
“…Thirty thousand pieces each of Azure Jade, Fine Jade, Flawless Jade, Jasper Jade, and Lang Jade. Six thousand units each of Fire Essence, Water Essence, Wood Essence, Earth Essence, and Metal Essence. Five-Colored Cinnabar Wood Fruit, Shackling Lotus…” Zhuang Xuan, the Sect Master of the Beast Taming Sect, pointed to the last heavy chest. This seemed to explain why they had taken so long to arrive in Plum City after receiving the message.
Each heavy wooden chest was loaded with such a staggering number of five-element treasures that the spiritual energy they radiated was too dense to be contained within the false universe of a Mustard Seed Pouch. And just the six thousand units of each of the five essences alone would be enough to bankrupt a small sect, let alone the other items.
Even for the Beast Taming Sect, bringing out so much at once could be described as a grievous blow.
However, the listener remained utterly indifferent.
Zhuang Xuan pointed out the contents of each chest one by one, then bowed deeply to the Divine Lord. “An evil presence has festered in a city within the West Continent. It is due to my Beast Taming Sect’s lax governance, and my own poor leadership. I have deeply failed to live up to the hopes of the Divine Lord’s teachings at Buzhou. I have come to offer my apologies.”
The Divine Lord stood in the wind and snow, holding an oiled-paper umbrella.
The umbrella was tilted low, obscuring the Divine Lord’s face from others. All that could be seen was a fair hand, purer than the jade bone handle of the umbrella, and vermilion sleeves fluttering in the wind.
“Apologies?”
He asked softly.
His tone betrayed no joy or anger, nor any particular attitude, yet it made everyone’s heart suddenly tighten.
To show respect for the Divine Lord, those who had accompanied him to Plum City this time were all people of status within the Beast Taming Sect. But for most of them, this was their first time seeing the Divine Lord. They had heard many legends about him and knew of his profound inscrutability, but they hadn’t necessarily felt much fear. In fact, due to recent rumors about the Divine Lord being injured, they had even made their own assessments.
—Until they truly stood before the Divine Lord.
Black night, white snow.
A figure in red emerged, and the world fell silent.
They were facing the being who now single-handedly controlled the Twelve Continents.
Zhuang Xuan bowed again and said, “Regarding the matter of Hundred Bows Manor, I will naturally give the Divine Lord a satisfactory explanation.” With that, he looked coldly at his retinue. “Elder Zhuang, Elder Zuo, Elder Li…” He called out seven or eight names, and the named individuals, their faces pale, stepped forward with stiff movements.
“Elder Zhuang colluded with Hundred Bows Manor, having them forge the vile spears needed for whale hunting, while he provided cover for the manor’s private raiding of flying boats. Elder Zuo’s great-grandson took a daughter of Hundred Bows Manor as a concubine, accepting twenty thousand gold…” Zhuang Xuan recounted the misdeeds of these men one by one, then unhooked the sword from his waist and presented it to the Divine Lord with both hands. “I ask the Divine Lord to pass judgment.”
The Divine Lord did not take the sword.
The red paper umbrella slowly turned in the white snow.
The snow fell harder, and the surrounding air grew colder. Zhuang Xuan remained bowed for a long time, then said after a moment of silence, “I understand.” A curved arc of sword light flashed, and a spray of fresh blood splattered onto the snow. Several men fell forward simultaneously. The pupils of the first to fall still held a trace of disbelief, as if he couldn’t believe his own brother would be so decisive and ruthless.
“These men’s crimes are heinous. To have the Divine Lord deal with them would truly dirty your hands,” Zhuang Xuan said, lowering his blood-stained sword, his expression remorseful. “It was my own lack of consideration.”
He paused slightly.
“Furthermore, there is one other person, our sect’s former head sword elder, Gu Qingshui. This man, for the sake of empty fame, committed wanton slaughter, presumptuously killing an old friend of the Divine Lord who had guarded the northwest corner for many years. As this person had already departed for the Ancient Sea, it was difficult to apprehend him at once. He has now been expelled from the sect. The Beast Taming Sect will immediately devote all its resources to capturing him. At that time…”
Zhuang Xuan’s words stopped.
The red paper umbrella had closed.
The Divine Lord raised his head in the snow, the cold mist illuminating his face.
He seemed to be smiling.
He asked with a laugh, “At that time, you’ll ask me to bestow a punishment, is that it?”