บท 38: Kill the Daoist Priest
บรรณาธิการ: EndlessFantasy Translation
Li Chu retrieved his sword and looked into the empty night ahead with regrets.
He had killed this ghost, but he got little from it. His gut feeling told him that there was more to this than met the eye.
Qiang turned his head and looked at the empty yard ahead, somewhat doubting his life.
'Where is the wall?'
'Has such an enormous wall gone just like that?'
The young Daoist priest's voice woke him out of his shock.
"Please come with with me," said Li Chu.
It was better not to let Qiang stay here lest anything untoward happened before his grievances dissipated.
You cannot be more careful in times like this. After all, lives are at stake.
Qiang got up quickly.
In fact, he was slightly scared.
But when someone could clear out everything from ten or even dozens of yards away with just the swing of a sword, it was difficult for him to say no.
Li Chu said not a word as he led the way, and Qiang followed him without question.
After bypassing a few streets, Qiang immediately recognized that they were heading to the county magistrate office.
"Are you His Excellency from the Imperial Administration Bureau?" He plucked up his courage and asked.
"No, I am from Deyun Monastery." Li Chu shook his head.
"Ahh, you are Young Daoist Li, right?" Qiang immediately remembered him.
Qiang had heard people say before that there was a handsome young Daoist priest in Deyun Monastery. So when the thought came to his mind, he immediately recognized him.
Then, it suddenly occurred to him that it was Zhen who had told him about this.
So immediately, there was another burst of sadness that rose within him.
Li Chu knew Qiang was sad, but he was not good at comforting others.
He took Qiang all the way to the county magistrate office, where security had been beefed up recently with three squads of magistrate officials led by Chief Constable Zhou Dafu.
He handed Qiang to Zhou Dafu, who would take care of the rest of the problem.
Back in the magistrate office's backyard, Lu Chu saw Li Xinyi waiting for him.
"Are things resolved?"
Li Xinyi knew what he had been doing.
"Yeah, it went well," said Li Chu.
She looked at him with a complicated expression.
They had just discussed Energy Spotting the day before yesterday, so she thought of reporting back and requesting reinforcement from the sect.
She did not expect that Li Chu could already monitor the entire Yuhang Town tonight.
Li Chu had just found a place full of grievances. When he went there and lay in wait, sure enough, a ghost had come trying to bewitch people. He had gotten rid of it in just one fell swoop.
But Li Xinyi wanted to ask this man aloud why he was so quick.
But she knew she could not get any answer out of him.
She had asked during the day. Li Chu told her frankly that he had mastered The Mind's Eye technique founded by Mister Blind Sword.
Li Xinyi gave him a doe-eyed look.
Longing, wanting.
Very few men could refuse a beauty with such appealing eyes.
Besides, Li Chu had no intention of keeping things to himself.
Since Mister Blind Sword was so magnanimous that he let everyone in the martial world learn his exclusive secret technique, Li Chu felt he had no reason to be stingy.
So, he carefully took out a hard little yellow book…
If Li Chu were not the one taking out this book, Li Xinyi would have definitely regarded that person as a conman.
Li Chu's face looked so serious that she really believed his nonsense.
She took this 'secret manual' from Li Chu as if she was holding some treasure.
But when she saw the cultivation methods written on it, she became a little skeptical.
Just by closing one's eyes with no other instructions, one could feel the breath of all things in the world one day all of a sudden.
It seemed like a gimmick however she looked at it.
Probably not even children would believe this kind of nonsense.
But she still practiced according to the method for an entire day.
She could feel nothing.
It really was a gimmick.
But she was not disappointed either.
This outcome was a matter of course. Only fools would buy this.
She got huffy.
"You need the Mind's Eye to see the breath. You don't have it yet, so just take your time to feel it out," explained Li Chu with a serious face.
Indeed, this was stated in the manual.
To Li Xinyi's ears, it sounded like a personal attack.
But Li Chu's ability was real, as much as she did not want to believe it. This was something she could not refute.
So she was angry with herself.
...
The Barrow Cave, Mount Whitebone.
This place was once a lush mountain. It was said that during the battle that had determined the victory and establishment of the Heluo Dynasty, the army had killed over a hundred thousand soldiers from the Southland. Following that, the entire mountain had gradually turned barren.
Hundreds of years later, a torrential flood eroded the mountain wall and washed tons of human bones down the mountain into the fields at the foothill.
Although the local people had reburied those bones in the mountain, they worried that this could cause the rise of spiritual disturbances. Hence, they had invited the immortal master of Qingyanggong, one of the twelve immortal sects, to perform a ritual.
Since then, this mountain had been called Mount Whitebone. Later, the cave where the bones were buried was known as the Barrow Cave.
Hundreds of years had passed since then.
The moon shone down obliquely into the Barrow Cave, casting four different shadows on the wall.
Sitting on the east side was a figure wearing a former-dynasty attire—a plain white robe with large sleeves fluttering in the air. Looking closely, one would find that there was nothing under the clothes.
Looking up again, there was a skull where the head should be. In each of the empty eye sockets on the ghastly skull, there was a dancing ghost fire.
The figure raised a hand, and it turned out to be just a skeleton.
With the move of its finger, a loud cry echoed in the cave.
"I bump into a Daoist. Ahhh—"
The voice ended with an agonizing scream.
"This is Lancai's voice message. It just went to Yuhang Town to collect a Lifesilver, but only sent back this message. Some-Some-Something bad must have happened to it," said the white-robed skeleton in a low, hoarse voice.
"A Daoist? Is that the one who slaughtered our kind in the haunted house?"
Sitting on the south side was a tall ghost wearing thick armor. Its face was not clearly visible under the moonlight, but the bloodstain and rust on its iron armor were. It seemed that the armor had seen better days.
Its sound was as harsh as the metals' grinding sound to the ear.
"Most likely it is him," said the white-robed skeleton. "Since the haunted house incident, I am worried that if things continue this way, he would kill all of us and those rebel forces following us out of the Realm of Ghost. So we have to speed up the collection of Lifesilver. I didn't foresee that he would go after the one collecting the Lifesilver."
"How foolish! As soon as we remove the seal on our king, we could have as many lower subordinates as we want. Trying to rush things has gotten one of our ghost generals killed."
Sitting on the west side, opposite the skeleton, was an extremely broad shadow. It was about three yards tall, one yard wide at the shoulders. It looked like a human, but it was not a human.
Its voice was forceful, its sneer echoing in the cave.
"Heiya!" yelled the white-robed skeleton. "You know, Lancai and I jointly decided to speed up the collection of Lifesilver. But we can still get killed even if we don't rush to unlock the seal. That Daoist might be targetting us afterall."
"Exactly."
The last ghost in the cave, sitting in the shadow on the north side, was a woman judging by the charming voice.
"From where such a powerful Daoist pop up all of a sudden in this small town of Jiangnan? Most likely he is a Daoist from Baiyujing or Qingyanggong. He might be keeping an eye on us after discovering something.
"Then what should we do now? I want to hear from you," said the white-robed skeleton.
"The seal on the king is about to be broken. We just need a little more Lifesilvers. What do you say if we go elsewhere to collect the Lifesilver? As long as it is safe, even if it is farther away," said the armored ghost on the south side.
The white-robed skeleton was silent on this.
"Where else can we hide? Are we not hiding far enough? There will be other cultivators elsewhere. It is just a Daoist priest. Why not we just kill him? We put too much hope on our king. Where are we going to find so many Lifesilvers? Before that, maybe we would have been wiped off one by one by one," said the ghost called Heiya on the west side.
"You might have a point. But we still don't know the strength of the Daoist priest…" The woman with a charming voice hesitated.
"If he really has a high level of cultivation, he would have found us here long ago. How can we still sit here and discuss it so calmly?" said Heiya.
"But—"
Just as the woman wanted to say something, the white-robed skeleton cut in. "That's enough."
"I agree with Heiya," said the white-robed skeleton. "I also think we might as well kill him now. He first went to the haunted house and killed our kind. Now he is preventing us from collecting the Lifesilver. Clearly, he is singling us out. Heiya has a point; we can't always pin our hopes on our king."
Heiya chuckled.
As laughter reverberated in the cave, the white-robed skeleton spoke again.
"Then I'll leave this matter to Heiya. First, find out who this Daoist priest really is, then make preparations. Both Qingjia and Hongling will be under your command. Make sure nothing goes wrong."
Heiya stopped chuckling abruptly. It paused and asked in hesitation, "Baijian, you—"
"I will stay here to refine the Lifesilvers collected earlier. I can't leave at this critical moment. It is not worth it for this incident to delay breaking the seal on our king," said the white-robed skeleton immediately.
"But you—"
Just as Heiya wanted to say something, the white-robed skeleton interrupted. "Don't tell me you can't do it, Heiya. Just now you were the most impassioned. I thought you were the Number One ghost general. If you are scared, we can talk it over—"
"Who told you I am afraid?"
Heiya rose to his feet and swaggered out of the cave.
The sound of its footsteps was as simple as a piece of white paper.
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