Chapter 149 – A Child Rides a White Crane
The wind swept across Crane City. On the collapsed houses, the raggedly dressed mute boy slowly knelt down. His blood-stained knees knocked into the ruins, and a small pebble rolled all the way down with a clear sound. The old crane remained motionless, blood flowing over its dark brown eye membrane. The boy hugged it, his cheek pressed against the top of its head.
A bloodied hand fell heavily.
“…Bro-brother.”
A Yu’s pupils reflected the sky-high flames. She was dazed, stunned, not knowing what had happened.
The junior brother’s grip on his heavy saber tightened. He subconsciously took a step forward, then stopped abruptly.
A crane’s cry!
A sharp! Piercing! Furious! Crane’s cry!
The old crane violently pulled out its grayish-blue long beak and let out a mournful, skyward shriek. The junior brother had never heard such a painful and angry cry, like a mother bird losing its fledgling, like a mother whose unborn child had been torn from her womb. The mournful bird cry made his eardrums throb with pain, and his entire brain buzzed.
The next moment, a fierce wind swept the ground.
“Be careful!!!” Lu Xiaoxiao gave a sharp and urgent warning.
The junior brother didn’t have time to dodge before a force struck him heavily in the chest, sending him and his saber flying backward, seeing stars. A mouthful of blood sprayed out. The junior brother didn’t have time to regulate his qi before he rolled on the ground, rolled to the side, and leaped up with his saber. After leaping up, he did not encounter the expected attack.
The crane wasn’t paying attention to him at all!
The old crane frantically crashed into everything around it, using its own skull, its own wings. Its once long and graceful neck now thrashed like a giant snake. It soared into the sky, then plummeted straight down. The beautiful vermilion crest praised by scholars and poets repeatedly smashed against hard stones, shattering them to pieces.
A fierce wind swept through, sending sand and stones flying.
Blood and feathers flew about.
“…Th-this,” the junior brother couldn’t quite believe his eyes, “it’s gone mad?”
“Let’s go!!!”
Half-startled, half-frightened, a strong gust of wind came over. Lu Xiaoxiao flew down from the sky on her sword, grabbed the junior brother, and pulled him up, flying desperately towards the barrier.
Just as they broke through, they heard the sound of wind from behind. The junior brother, suspended in mid-air by Lu Xiaoxiao’s grip on his shoulder, his pupils suddenly widened as he shouted in terror, “It’s chasing us! It’s coming after us!”
It wasn’t that he was too timid, but the old crane’s appearance at this moment was truly terrifying. The red feathers that had turned red for some unknown reason were all puffed up, a large piece of flesh on its head had been knocked off, revealing the white bone beneath, and its grayish-blue beak and sharp red claws were all stained with blood.
It spread its wings and, in an instant, was above their heads.
A dark shadow loomed over them.
Lu Xiaoxiao was holding the junior brother with one hand and A Yu with the other, completely unable to fight back. Cold sweat beaded on the junior brother’s forehead. He gritted his teeth and was about to break free from Lu Xiaoxiao’s hand, but the old crane, with a fierce wind, scraped right past their faces.
A long cry rang out.
With its wings half-tucked, the old crane performed an extremely risky maneuver in the air in front of them, spinning rapidly like a sharp arrow, creating a terrifying storm. The iron feathers on its wings were carried by the wind and shot out in all directions. The moment the feathers shot out, a series of similarly sharp crane cries rang out.
A dozen or so blood cranes that had gathered were hit by the feathers and flew higher in pain.
After forcing back the surrounding crane flock, the old crane spread its wings and shot straight up, shedding most of the remaining force of its spin. At this moment, the flying sword Lu Xiaoxiao and the others were riding on just happened to arrive below it. It swooped down, like a flying boat, and hovered above their heads, following them as they flew forward.
“…Protection.” Lu Xiaoxiao pulled the junior brother up with a grunt and murmured, “It’s protecting us.”
The junior brother stood firm and looked up, noticing that it was still holding something in its claws.
He focused his gaze.
Even for an immortal crane, the number of spirit-infused flight feathers was limited, and losing each one would make flying more painful. But now, the junior brother understood why the old crane had used a method that was clearly more burdensome for itself to force back the other blood cranes—in its claws, it was tightly gripping a person.
Or rather.
A corpse.
—The dead mute boy.
“Brother…”
Lu Xiaoxiao heard the girl in her arms whisper, and cold tears dripped onto her neck one by one. At this moment, even without turning back, Lu Xiaoxiao suddenly understood something.
A cold blue light appeared in front of them.
They had reached the barrier.
The moment Lu Xiaoxiao passed through the barrier with the little girl and the junior brother, she heard a heavy thud.
She stopped her flying sword and turned to see the old crane, with its feathers scattered and its flesh exposed, sliding slowly down the barrier.
“Crane Immortal!”
The little girl cried out, wriggled out of Lu Xiaoxiao’s arms, and rushed towards the old crane.
The junior brother grabbed her by the collar and brought her with him as they half-fell, half-landed on the ground. Outside the barrier, dust flew up. The old crane had also crashed to the ground. Blood, a large pool of blood, slowly spread out around it. The crane lay in the pool of blood, its feathers gradually fading from scarlet, returning to a color as white as snow.
It lowered its head, gently took the mute boy in its beak, and placed him in front of its chest feathers.
Then it covered the mute boy with its large wings.
Just like the evening two days ago, just like the morning long, long ago, it used its wings to block the winter wind, and the children hid in front of its chest.
You clap one, I clap one, a child rides a white crane.
You clap two, I clap two, two children look for clear fruit.
You clap three, I clap three, three children feed the white crane.
You clap four, I clap four, four children…
…
In those early mornings when the sun was just rising, the sea surface outside the walls of Crane City was illuminated into a shimmering expanse of ten thousand acres. When the wind blew, it would create fine, colorful ripples, like glazed glass lying on the earth. On the city wall, the mute boy and the girl with the deformed arm sat on a sand pile. The girl sang a nursery rhyme in a clear voice, swinging her little legs. To the rhythm, the boy and the old crane clapped hands.
The child who could speak had no arms, and the child who had arms couldn’t sing, but a mute, a cripple, and an immortal crane could still play the game happily.
…You clap five, I clap five, five children fold paper cranes.
Crane, oh crane.
The cranes of Crane City…
The old crane’s head also plunged into its own wings, its grayish-blue beak and the pale white face pressed together.
It was dead.
They were both dead.
“…six children weave bamboo boxes.”
A Yu’s song gradually faded in her throat, and large tears rolled down one after another. The wind blew on the child’s face, but it couldn’t dry the tear stains.
Lu Xiaoxiao raised her hand and rubbed her face hard. She walked over and picked up the little girl, who seemed to have turned into a stone statue, intending to take her to treat the wound on her arm—if it wasn’t treated soon, this little girl’s remaining two stumps of arms would also be crippled. Just as she turned around, Lu Xiaoxiao was stunned.
She didn’t know when, but a large group of people had gathered at the edge of the barrier.
There was a stooped old carpenter, a disheveled female laundry worker, a dark-skinned sand carrier, and also Beast Taming Sect disciples in pale green robes, people in crimson ritual robes… They stood in the ruins, and like A Yu, stared blankly at the crane and the boy in the pool of blood outside the barrier.
High in the sky, the blood cranes were still crashing against the barrier in flocks.
A muffled, thunderous explosion sounded.
Everyone looked up and saw thirty-six cold swords fly in all directions. Balls of black mist shot into the sky, condensing into one after another half-human, half-bird strange demons, which landed among the crane flock. Their auras were much weaker than before, but they had used some method to avoid being attacked by the crane flock.
Lou Jiang coughed violently, retreating step by step, until he had retreated six or seven meters before finally stopping.
“Fellow Daoist Lou, it’s alright! You can enter the formation now!”
Within the barrier, the Beast Taming Sect elder guarding Crane City suddenly opened his eyes and shouted with joy.
With a flash of green light, a pale-faced Lou Jiang appeared in the formation.
The Beast Taming Sect elder stood up, spread his hands, and a City Blessing Seal emitting a faint glow appeared in his hand. As the light of this City Blessing Seal emerged, the streets and alleys of Crane City began to emit a faint glow along with it. The West Continent was cold, and there was no warm place in winter. To provide a wintering ground for the crane flock, the Beast Taming Sect had built the entire Crane City into a huge formation. Now, this formation was about to be fully activated.
“Taiyi Sect, Mountain Sea Pavilion, you claim to act on the Divine Lord’s orders, but it turns out you’re just this!!! Hahahahaha!”
The strange bird that had landed far away clapped and laughed loudly.
“Demonic creature! Today you will pay the price for your actions!” The Beast Taming Sect elder’s robes billowed in the wind. He raised his long eyebrows and sternly rebuked, “This old man will definitely use your blood to repay the blood disaster of Crane City today! I will have your bones nailed under Crane City for ten thousand years to come! Even the mastermind behind you, the Beast Taming Sect will definitely investigate to the end and demand blood for blood!”
“Hahahahahaha! Hahahahaha!” The strange bird threw its head back and laughed. “Blood disaster? The ones who personally brewed today’s blood disaster in Crane City were not us! It was you yourselves! The Beast Taming Sect, ha! Today you know about blood for blood, but why didn’t you know there was such a term when you were treacherous and used despicable means in the past?!”
“How dare a demonic spirit speak such filth!”
The Beast Taming Sect elder angrily rebuked. With a wave of his hand, the City Blessing Seal flipped, and dozens of cold, faint pillars of light shot into the sky.
The pillars of light appeared one after another. The strange bird’s figure exploded into a ball of black mist, but in the next second, it reappeared in another place, only the black mist around it was churning more and more fiercely. Compared to it, the other evil spirits of unknown origin it led were not so lucky. They were constantly pierced by the pillars of light and frozen in place.
The strange bird was indifferent to the life and death of its subordinates. In the gaps between dodging the pillars of light, the dark red blood light in the eye sockets of its rotten, skeletal head flickered.
It turned its gaze to Lu Xiaoxiao and the others. “Ha! You think the cloud cranes went mad because they were poisoned?”
With a sharp, short laugh, the strange bird flapped its wings, stirring up the earth fire and black smoke in Crane City. It took a deep, intoxicated breath of the black smoke, like a person inhaling shamanic smoke.
“What a wonderful scent! What a fragrant scent of the Profound Shadow Orchid! Yes, the crane food was mixed with other things, that’s right,” it cackled strangely, its laughter indescribably odd. “But this Profound Shadow Orchid is no poison! You bunch of ridiculously stupid cultivators! The only function of the Profound Shadow Orchid is—”
Boom.
The formation light condensed into several white bolts of lightning, striking vertically towards the strange bird.
The strange bird retreated in a disheveled state.
Within the barrier, Lou Jiang’s gaze turned cold as he looked at the Beast Taming Sect elder in charge of the City Blessing Seal.
“—to disrupt all contracts made with blood when the earth fire is rampant!” The strange bird’s voice came from afar. It had fled to the edge of Crane City and was looking down on the entire city and all the restless, crazed immortal cranes. “As long as the blood contract is broken, everything will immediately calm down! It just depends on whether you…”
“Dare to break it!”
***
Blood.
Blood splattered in the air.
The withered, aged old man slid down the smooth ice surface. Before he could hit the ground, a huge, burly figure arrived with a gust of wind, grabbed him by the neck, and spun him around in mid-air. With a loud crash, a huge hole was smashed into a shell of ancient profound ice that was as hard as metal.
A splashing sound of water.
A man with deep blue skin and scales covering his arms and legs leaped out of the water, dragged the white-haired old man out, and roared like a wild beast, punching down again and again. The sound of breaking bones was incessant, but this first Sword Saint of the West Continent, famous throughout the land, remained silent, not drawing his sword once.
“A He, stop for a moment.”
A somewhat childish voice sounded.
The burly sea demon withdrew his fist, and with his anger still unabated, threw the old man into a pile of snow.
Tinkle, tinkle.
The sound of silver bells rang out at the end of this West Continent’s Ancient Sea, so ethereal it seemed to float down from the dome of the sky.
Gu Qingshui coughed up a mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of his internal organs.
The sound of silver bells stopped in front of him.
“Are you the leader of the West Sea Sea Demons?”
Gu Qingshui asked.
The sea demon called “A He” had crushed his neck bones, making his voice hoarse and unpleasant, like a broken bellows fanning.
“The outcast of the Beast Taming Sect,” the leader of the West Sea Sea Demons spoke. Her accent when speaking the human language was strange, stiff and cold, filled with unconcealed disgust and malice. “Aren’t you the first swordsman of the West Continent? Why don’t you draw your sword?”
“I, Gu, have come to accept my punishment and will not draw my sword again.” Gu Qingshui paused, suppressing the blood that rose to his throat, before speaking again in a low voice. “The matter of slaying Shi Yi is something I, Gu, have wronged the demons of the West Sea for. I have no face to draw my sword, and I am not worthy to draw my sword.”
“Heh.”
The great demon of the West Sea let out a cold laugh.
A non-human foot, covered in green scales, stepped on his head, forcing him to turn his head in the blood and filth. His white hair was scattered in the pool of blood. Gu Qingshui struggled to raise his eyes. Blood flowed into his eyes, dyeing his vision completely red. When he saw the appearance of the leader of the West Sea demons, Gu Qingshui was suddenly stunned.
A girl with crimson-gold eyes looked down at him.
She looked to be only six or seven years old.
He had seen similar eyes before, no, almost identical eyes… a pair of crimson-gold eyes… crimson-gold eyes, like two ever-bright lamps, that had never closed from beginning to end. That was the first pair of eyes that had died by his sword but refused to be extinguished, burning like fire, gazing at the continent of the Twelve Continents.
Gu Qingshui remembered that the royal family of the West Sea Sea Demons were all direct descendants of Shi Yi.
“Gu Qingshui, Sword Saint of the West Continent, the Mountain-Suppressing Sword of the Beast Taming Sect, sword name ‘Wuyuan’.” The girl slowly recited, a cold, cruel sneer flowing from her crimson-gold eyes. “They all say your sword is not drawn for fame, not drawn for great profit. They say that on the day you began cultivating the Dao, you swore that there would not be a single vengeful soul under your sword. So, they say your sword is actually the ‘sword of no grievance’.”
Gu Qingshui subconsciously clenched his hand.
It was empty.
After cleaving through several icebergs, the sword that had accompanied him for many years had sunk into the Ancient Sea.
The Wuyuan was not without its grievances.
“I, Gu, am not worthy,” Gu Qingshui said. “There are vengeful souls under my sword.”
“You came to the Ancient Sea, thinking you were atoning for your sins with your death? You think that by dying at the hands of us sea demons, you can wipe the slate clean?! Hahahaha!” The girl’s crimson-gold eyes became ferocious. “You’re dreaming! I’m telling you, you’re dreaming! Today, you won’t even be able to die in peace!”
“You want to die with a clear conscience! Today, you will die with your eyes wide open!”
She seemed to have thought of something incredibly ridiculous, laughing so hard she bent over. She suddenly bent down, close to Gu Qingshui’s face, a cruel malice in her gaze. “I heard you hate evil as if it were your enemy. Besides constantly cultivating in seclusion, whenever you come out, if you hear of any sect elder bullying others, you will also draw your sword to punish them. Everyone fears your integrity, everyone praises your incorruptible righteousness… Hahahaha, incorruptible righteousness? Hating evil as if it were your enemy? Hahahaha, how funny! You’re just a blade! Just a blade that’s being used and doesn’t even know it! A person like you who stays in seclusion and has no one under you except a few disciples, why don’t you think about how you always manage to hear about who in the sect has committed a wrong?!”
The harsh wind blew Gu Qingshui’s white hair.
“For a stupid fellow like you, who even dares to personally convict and execute the Supreme Elder’s grandson, who could be better to use to eliminate dissidents?” The girl released him, waved her hand, and pulled a handful of old letters out of the void. “Take a look, you stupid, pitiful wretch.”
Familiar handwriting imprinted itself on his pupils.
Gu Qingshui’s expression froze as if it were a mask.
“…You humans are truly terrifying,” the girl said with admiration. “At least we demons don’t have such malicious methods. Whoever is strong is the boss. But you humans? Ha!”
Gu Qingshui, who had been as still as an ancient well, struggled to crawl towards the letters that had fallen in the snow.
His withered hand trembled violently.
Like the most wretched, most worthless beggar on the street, he desperately grabbed the letters in his hand.
…Elder Meng wants to seize power, the Grand Elder is secretly helping him, it is not advisable to confront him directly… Elder Gu will be coming out of seclusion soon, we can let him hear about it by chance…
…The Taiyu Clan has a request, under the guise of an evil spirit, order Elder Gu to go…
…The matter of Shi Yi will likely offend the West Sea, many of the elders are unwilling to go.
…
The letters scattered into the sky one by one.
The girl leisurely circled Gu Qingshui, tossing the papers one by one.
“You thought you were being righteous, thought you could clean up the filth within. The righteousness was handed to you by others, the filth was what others wanted to remove.” The girl looked down from above. “Every righteous act you thought you were performing was helping to fuel evil. What do you think you are? You think you’re worthy of a death without regret? You think you’re worthy of peace after death?”
…Brother Gu’s actions are all for the great cause, the life and death of the West Continent rests on you.
Respectfully, Zhuang.
The letter brought by Steward Mu flashed before his eyes. Gu Qingshui held those letters in his withered hand, motionless.
“Let me guess,” the girl crouched down, “when they asked you to leave the sect and come here to accept your death, did they say something like… this is for the continuation of the sect, that it’s a last resort, that it’s so the people of the West Continent can live in peace?”
Seeing him as still as a stone statue, the girl clapped her hands and laughed loudly.
“Hahaha, just as I thought, just as I thought.” Her laughter suddenly stopped, and the great demon of the West Sea, in the form of a girl, had a hatred and malice in her eyes that was so thick it couldn’t be dissolved. “Then let me tell you a few more things, a few secrets… Do you know how your Beast Taming Sect’s blood contract came to be? Do you know what kind of sect you’ve joined?”
“A treacherous, despicable, and shameless sect!”
The girl’s voice was sharp, every word ferocious.
“An alliance in blood.
Never betray, never abandon.”
She recited the original oath, her expression as if frozen by the cold ice of the Ancient Sea.
“That was the contract after the heavens were established in the West Continent… It was a contract of friendship between demons and humans…”
“Because, the northwest sky is deficient.”
The heavens are deficient in the northwest, so the harsh wind rages, and the cold water and angry tides are rampant, crashing against the thick earth of the West Continent, tearing open one ravine after another. The West Continent is the most treacherous of the Twelve Continents in terms of terrain, with a fragmented landmass, ten peaks for every nine rivers. The harsh wind roars in the canyons and bays, and the foothold for humans and beasts becomes smaller and smaller.
The weather is incredibly cold, and the winter is so long it seems to have no end.
So, humans, who are born in the morning and die at night, and demons, who have seen oceans turn into mulberry fields, made a contract.
The demonic beasts were powerful and enormous, but their intelligence was not yet developed, and they did not know how to use their brute force. Humans were intelligent and clever, but their strength was too small. With blood as the contract, they formed an alliance, never to betray. From the day the contract was made, humans would command, and demons would act. Demonic beasts carried mountains and stones, running across the land, while humans surveyed the mountains and rivers, calculating the eyes of the life-cycle.
“Just like the long Ice Season…” The girl’s gaze fell on the void, as if she were seeing a distant, distant place through the memories passed down from her ancestors. “When the Hundred Rivers flow south, you guide the whale pods to break the ice and guard the rivers.”
Just like Crane City in the Glazed Sea bay, the cranes carry the immortal sect, and the immortal sect sets up formations to provide warmth in the cold winter.
Year after year, they shared blood and sweat.
And finally, they built city after city.
In the frigid winter of the deficient northwest, lantern lights appeared.
“But you betrayed the oath, you deceived us. You humans, so smart, so cunning, so vicious. You studied the contract day after day, studied the formations, and finally, you changed the formations! You forcibly took the essence blood of the demons and turned our kin into your slaves!” The daze on the girl’s face suddenly vanished, and her expression became ferocious. “You bunch of thorough liars, you all deserve to die!”
Kacha.
The ice shell suddenly cracked due to her anger, and the seawater churned, as if the sea were roaring.
Gu Qingshui fell into the seawater and was pulled out, coughing violently, coughing so hard it was as if he were about to cough up all his internal organs.
His blood splattered on the girl’s porcelain-white face, splattered in her ferocious golden eyes.
“You think you’re sacrificing yourself to save some things?” The girl’s pupils were filled with an overwhelming rage and the pleasure of revenge. “Do you know who gave us these letters? We are just demons, just stupid demons. Where would we get so many things, how would we know about your human schemes and plots?”
Gu Qingshui’s hand, clutching the letters, was as pale as a dead man’s.
He let out a low, painful roar.
The girl laughed loudly.
“It was your own Beast Taming Sect!”
“It was your own Beast Taming Sect Master who personally delivered them!”
“Because I said… I said just letting you die is not enough. What’s the point of a person who’s not afraid of death dying? I want you to die a meaningless death! I want your entire life to be meaningless!”
Just like us!