Chapter Index

    The tense atmosphere finally eased.

    An elder with a more impetuous nature slammed his hand on the table, about to draw his sword and go to the Beast Taming Sect to settle accounts with Zhuang Xuan and his ilk—although they didn’t know why the Little Martial Ancestor had severed the connection, since the incident had occurred in the West Continent, who else would they settle accounts with if not the Beast Taming Sect?

    The Taiyi Sect was never a particularly reasonable immortal sect to begin with.

    “Meng Lisheng! At your age, you’re still so impulsive?” Elder He scolded. “Sit down!”

    The sword-wielding elder was still indignant, but after being glared at by Elder He, he returned to his seat.

    Only then did Elder He turn his gaze back to Pei Tanglu. “Tanglu, you speak.”

    “We will naturally go to the West Continent,” Pei Tanglu said, “but it would be inappropriate for Elder Meng to go.” Before Elder Meng could glare at him, he explained, “Before the Little Martial Ancestor went to the West Continent, he instructed that if the situation became tense, we should advance three hundred kilometers east to intimidate the Thirty-Six Islands and prevent them from crossing the Qing Province border. If there is any unusual movement from the Thirty-Six Islands, we must stop it immediately. Elder Meng’s swordsmanship is more suitable for guarding the border. I ask that you set out in a few days and lead a team there.”

    Elder Meng had originally wanted to argue, but after Pei Tanglu added, “This is the Little Martial Ancestor’s instruction,” he sullenly replied, “Yes.”

    “Elder Jun, please take the Spirit God Tablet to the great altar of the Witch Clan and ask the Great Shaman on duty to try to find the Divine Lord’s whereabouts again through a ritual.” Pei Tanglu looked at the one-armed Jun Changwei.

    “Yes.”

    Jun Changwei stood up, walked forward, and carefully took the jade pendant with his left hand.

    “Elder Ye, please lead a team to the West Continent immediately.”

    “Yes.”

    “…”

    One by one, figures received their orders and left. The hall gradually emptied until only Pei Tanglu remained.

    He closed the empty Jianmu wood box and looked around.

    This was the place where the Hundred Clans of Kongsang discussed many important matters. The Hundred Clans were extravagant, and the hall was built with old, fallen branches of the Fusang Divine Tree. The beams and tiles were exquisitely carved. However, during the night of Taiyi’s attack on Kongsang, a corner of it was burned by a great fire. The Taiyi Sect had never cared much for superficial appearances, so they simply patched it up with some ordinary wood.

    “It really takes some getting used to…”

    Pei Tanglu shook his head slightly.

    Compared to this unparalleled Fusang Divine Hall, he missed the Subduing Clarity Hall on Taiyi Sect’s Thousand Ren Peak, which had been built brick by brick and timber by timber by generations of Taiyi people.

    Walking out of the hall, Pei Tanglu descended the white jade steps.

    Compared to the East Continent, where the rivers near the sea of Fufeng were vast and mighty, Kongsang was located south of Tang Valley, surrounded by mountain peaks on all sides, with low and gentle terrain in the center. In winter, there was no worry of harsh cold, and in summer, no fear of scorching sun and drought. With a thousand kilometers of fertile fields and vast plains, one could be well-fed and clothed just by diligently cultivating mulberry and hemp and planting the five grains. It was indeed the pinnacle of agriculture and animal husbandry in the Twelve Continents. It also commanded the sun and moon, with gold and silver flowing freely. No wonder the Hundred Clans who controlled this place harbored ambitions of ruling the world.

    “Greetings, Sect Master.”

    “Greetings, Sect Master.”

    “…”

    As he walked, the disciples he encountered bowed in greeting.

    Pei Tanglu noticed that many disciples from various peaks were sparring. After moving to Kongsang, the Taiyi disciples, without any prompting from the elders, practiced martial arts several times more often than usual. This was mainly because Kongsang didn’t have the iron cables suspended over a great river like Fufeng, so everyone had to switch to sparring for their morning practice.

    After twelve years, they had more or less gotten used to living in Kongsang.

    But this habit always had an awkward, constrained feeling to it, like a wild bird from the mountains, used to being untamed, suddenly landing in an exquisite wooden cage. Although the water and food were of the highest quality, it had lost its former freedom.

    “…I wonder when we’ll be able to go back to the East Continent.” Below the martial arts stage, a disciple with a sword on his back gulped down some water and wiped his mouth.

    “What are you talking about,” his companion tapped him with his sword hilt. “The elders all said that Kongsang is our original territory. We were forced to move to the East Continent before. Not to mention we still have to guard the sun and moon, but just talking about Kongsang, Kongsang was a city built by the Little Martial Ancestor himself. Are we really going to hand over the Little Martial Ancestor’s city to someone else?”

    “But, but…” the disciple with the sword on his back scratched his head and muttered, “but the Little Martial Ancestor doesn’t come back often.”

    He gestured.

    “Back when we were in Fufeng, during competitions, the Little Martial Ancestor would move a chair to the side of the stage, cracking melon seeds while shouting for us to place bets. Whoever lost, if they had money, would go down the mountain to buy wine for everyone. If they didn’t have money, they would go pluck a phoenix feather…”

    Among the Taiyi disciples, there weren’t many with money, but there were plenty of stingy ones. In order not to contribute their hard-earned money for sword-refining to other people’s stomachs, or to receive special attention from the elders for the next few months, everyone racked their brains every day, trying to figure out how to beat the others.

    “It was so lively back then…”

    The Little Martial Ancestor loved to laugh and play, and he had more bad ideas than anyone else.

    Don’t be fooled by the fact that he was ranked number one on the Profligate Rankings by the outside world. In fact, the disciples of the Taiyi Sect loved to hang out with him the most.

    The Taiyi disciples didn’t know Chou Bodeng’s true identity, but he was the Little Martial Ancestor, and he had been handsome since he was a child. Even the elders had to bow and greet him. As long as he took the lead, even if they went to chop down the bamboo that Elder Ye Anxue treasured like his own heart to use as barbecue skewers, Ye Anxue could only fume and glare, unable to utter a single word of scolding. It was more effective than a get-out-of-jail-free card.

    With the Little Martial Ancestor around, during every major competition in the sect, everyone would place bets during the day, fight to the death, and then at night, they would put their arms around each other’s shoulders, set up a fire to roast meat, and laugh and joke. It was more joyful than anything.

    Now they had moved to Kongsang.

    Bamboo forests were everywhere, and there were more rabbits and birds than in Fufeng. Even wine was not like before, where you had to fly on a sword, twisting and turning until you were about to vomit, just to buy some. If you wanted to drink or roast meat, it was simpler than anything. At first, it wasn’t that no one tried to make a fuss out of habit.

    But the fire was lit.

    Beside the bonfire, there was no one in flashy red clothes, tapping a jar with chopsticks, leading the drinking games. This wine, no matter how they drank it, just felt wrong.

    Gradually, no one bothered anymore.

    “Everyone cultivates and spars as if they’re holding their breath, competing with someone,” the disciple with the sword on his back looked at the stage. “Their cultivation has improved, but it’s just not satisfying.”

    Not satisfying…

    Not satisfying.

    No one was satisfied.

    Pei Tanglu walked down the stone steps, one by one, to the mountain gate, and finally stopped in front of a stone stele.

    A river like a white ribbon flowed slowly through the fertile fields, winding and meandering, its current very steady.

    Pei Tanglu remembered Elder Meng’s occasional complaints, saying that those guys from the Hundred Clans looked at this kind of slow-moving, unheroic water all day long, no wonder they had no backbone… The Tang River was a quiet river, once praised by the Mountain Sea Pavilion as a supreme scenic spot, saying its waves rippled, its mist stretched for thousands of miles, and the water and sky were one color. It was indeed beautiful.

    “In the end, I’m still not used to it.”

    Pei Tanglu smiled wryly and shook his head.

    He let out a whistle.

    The river water splashed, and a small black mountain emerged from the calm center of the river. The small mountain quickly moved, approaching the riverbank. It turned out that it wasn’t a mountain, but a three-legged dragon turtle with a black shell. On the turtle’s back was a stone stele, shaped like a sword.

    When the Taiyi Sect left the East Continent, they didn’t take much with them.

    The many divine beasts within the sect, whether they were the flood dragons in the river or the phoenixes and Howling Celestial Dogs raised by the elders, did not accompany them.

    Firstly, it was a gesture to the Thirty-Six Islands that had entered Qing Province, showing that the Taiyi Sect had never regarded the demonic and divine beasts under its command as servants, choosing to leave them in places more suitable for their own growth. Secondly, it was also an invisible constraint. When the Taiyi Sect moved west, the common people of its cities could not follow. The sect’s River Dragons, Fan Oxen, Phoenixes, and other demonic beasts had no reason to be driven away by the Thirty-Six Islands. Leaving them in Qing Province, if the demon race of the Thirty-Six Islands violated their agreement and wantonly slaughtered and devoured the city dwellers, then these divine beasts that had grown up in Taiyi would immediately intervene.

    The only one that followed the Taiyi Sect west was this dragon turtle carrying the stele in the river.

    The sword stele on its back was the other mountain-suppressing sword of the Taiyi Sect.

    It had no edge and no blade.

    The sword’s name: Calming the Storm.

    Pei Tanglu floated up and hovered in mid-air, reaching out to virtually grip the stone sword.

    As Pei Tanglu lifted the stone sword inch by inch, the sound of the water suddenly grew louder, and waves began to surge on the river’s surface. The deep black sand on the dragon turtle’s shell vibrated, as if gradually shedding a weight of ten million stones. With a muffled clap of thunder, the stone sword was completely drawn out. Amidst the surging waves, the dragon turtle stood on its three legs in the water and let out a long cry to the sky.

    When it had calmed down, Pei Tanglu, holding the now normal-sized Calming the Storm, landed on the shore.

    The old turtle approached the riverbank, took the corner of his robe in its mouth, and nodded up and down, its front feet constantly patting the riverbank.

    Pei Tanglu understood what it meant.

    It was asking: Where is the Divine Lord?

    Like the Taiyi Sword, Calming the Storm was also forged by the Divine Lord. The difference was that Calming the Storm was originally a sword forged by the Divine Lord for Kongsang. At that time, the heavenly pillars of the East and South Poles had not yet been erected, and the river water flowed freely on the newly forged thick earth, washing away the soil beneath the Fusang tree. Therefore, the Divine Lord chose a local stone and carved this sword to suppress the water.

    Later, when the four poles were established, the river water in the center of the Twelve Continents subsided.

    Kongsang became the center of the world, with fertile fields and plains, and no longer needed such a sword.

    That was also why the Hundred Clans of Kongsang didn’t care much when the Taiyi Sect took Calming the Storm with them.

    The memory of the turtle clan was generally not very good, but for some reason, this old dragon turtle could remember the Divine Lord clearly for ten thousand years. When the previous sect master brought Chou Bodeng back from the Witch Clan, it broke through the water of the Ren River for the first time, carrying the stele and circling the main peak. If Elder He hadn’t discovered it in time and persuaded it to come down, it would have climbed directly to the top of the mountain peak.

    The eighteen years that Chou Bodeng spent at the Taiyi Sect were the eighteen years that the Taiyi disciples saw the old dragon turtle most frequently.

    On fine days, for more than half the time, the red-robed youth would lie on the turtle’s back, sunbathing. Beside his recliner, he would cast a line with a rod that may or may not have had bait, and next to him would be a plate of osmanthus cakes.

    He would break off two pieces and throw one.

    The dragon turtle would open its mouth, stretch its neck, and close its mouth.

    Gulp, gulp.

    Occasionally, a clueless fish would get hooked, and with a flick, it too would be gone with a gulp.

    No one knew what the man and the turtle were fishing for.

    Pei Tanglu bent down and patted it. “Next year, the Little Martial Ancestor will be back next year. When he comes back, he will definitely bring you osmanthus cakes.”

    Only then did the old turtle let go and slowly sink.

    Pei Tanglu squatted by the water, watching the ripples expand and then disappear, one after another.

    Bubbles rose to the surface, gurgling.

    Vaguely, there were still the children of old.

    Without reminiscing about the past, one wouldn’t know the old dreams.

    You can support us on

    Note