More than a dozen cultivators were present, each of them able to stand on their own within the sect. Yet now they all sat in silence, listening to two children quarrel.
Shixiong looked stricken. His eyes were red, his whole bearing inexplicably sorrowful, yet his gaze remained steady and clear.
“Do you mean to drag them in as well? Xiao Yun, this time is different.”
Kong Yun pressed forward, aggressive and unrelenting. “Different how? Do you think keeping it from them is truly for their own good?”
Shixiong’s voice suddenly rose. He was clearly not of an age to be making such decisions, yet he already understood far too much. Stubborn to the bone, he would never bow his head. With fists clenched, he forced out each word: “That is why I said I will go! The rest of you, leave, all of you! This has nothing to do with you!”
Shixiong seemed on the verge of breaking. Kong Yun seized him back with one hand, scolding: “Do you really think this is yours alone to bear? Do you imagine I’d let you face danger by yourself?”
Tears welled in Shixiong’s eyes, but he refused to let them fall. In a voice of calm finality, he said: “Xiao Yun, this time is not like before. This time it means death.”
A cultivator beside Wen Renyi muttered, “Fellow Daoist, shouldn’t you persuade them?”
“We can’t just sit here watching them fight.”
“But seeing little Daoist Kong Yun quarrel with his shixiong is terrifying enough. None of us dares open our mouths.”
Persuade? How could one persuade?
Wen Renyi himself was utterly at a loss, too bewildered to interrupt.
Kong Yun stiffly placed a hand on Xue Cuo’s shoulder. Perhaps he realised how harsh he had sounded. His proud, peacock-like face was taut with tension. He gave a sharp snort. “I wasn’t cursing you. But why should you bear it alone? On the strength of what? Because of those parents who left you behind? Do you truly believe the elders wouldn’t dare kill you?”
“You don’t want to see them dragged down into the mire, but if the Immortal Sect really is using its own disciples to refine Wendao Pills, how long do you think their peace can last?”
“To murder openly in the secret realm, with elders erasing the corpses afterwards. Can such a sect still call itself an Immortal Sect? Do you think Zhu Xiaoyou was the only one wronged in this way? Or are there already too many to count?”
“So many deaths of those who had entered the secret realm, yet why has not a single ripple been stirred?”
Kong Yun had once seen Xue Cuo’s father: a man who treated his son scarcely better than a stranger.
With a mother of iron-blooded ruthlessness, and a father cold as dust, how had Xue Cuo managed to grow up unscathed?
Was it sheer obstinacy alone?
Xue Cuo was far too precocious, so often making others forget that he was still a child. And so, when faced with such matters, he simply could not respond as a child should. They were far too heavy for him.
Wen Renyi listened in silence for a long time. He had a knack for seizing on what mattered most, and by now he had pieced together the essence of the quarrel.
At first he was incredulous. But as Xue Cuo’s despondency, confusion, and suppressed grief deepened, Wen Renyi’s own heart began to heave like a storm-tossed sea.
Nor was he alone. The disciples who had gathered of their own accord were shaken to the core, their hearts boiling.
Wen Renyi’s face had gone pale. He forced a smile and stammered: “Shixiong, you mean… refining disciples into Wendao Pills?”
Xue Cuo looked at them.
After a long silence, he said bleakly: “It is exactly as you heard.”
These were young men who had come from afar, revering the Dao of Wendao Palace. Who could say what price they had paid to be here?
At their age, all they ever heard was the pursuit of the Great Dao, all they ever believed was that one day they would achieve it, and through study ascend to immortality.
The sect divided disciples into ranks. First-tier disciples were treated like stars about the moon; second-tier disciples battled one another like dragons; third-tier disciples suffered in obscurity, yet endured it, telling themselves: a great sect must have its reasons. The strong make the rules. Who were they to object?
Elders and their favoured disciples stood high above, while those beneath fought bitterly for scraps. But still, they told themselves: it was only fair. If you were mediocre, lazy, or dull, you could hardly expect to become an immortal. The fault must lie with yourself.
Not diligent enough. Not resolute enough. Not talented enough.
So they strove to earn contributions instead. Surely, if they proved outstanding, the sect would take notice, perhaps even honour them as guest-officials… and one day, elders.
What a bright and orderly path it seemed.
Wen Renyi too had once harboured doubts. Yet in the Eastern Lands, there was no other great Daoist lineage left. The currents of the Great Dao had all gathered here, in the hands of the topmost sects.
They had come to seek immortality and truth. They had come determined not to be lesser than the first-tier disciples.
So for the sake of that goal, they endured the small injustices.
But what if, in truth, there had never been any opportunity at all? What if no one ever cared whether such opportunity existed for them?
To cultivate day and night, only for one’s end to be ground into a pill?
What was the point?
Wen Renyi could not comprehend it. He could only turn to Xue Cuo again: “Shixiong… you mean to say, refining disciples into Wendao Pills…”
His face was stricken. Xue Cuo did not deny it. After a long silence, he tried to soften it: “Perhaps it is only some cultivators who do this. What I wish to investigate is the Wendao Pill itself.”
Only some?
How is that possible? The disciples had already been seen entering the secret realm to kill as if they were merely harvesting wheat.
Bai Luoluo had taken out Wendao Pills and gifted them as casually as sweets, and no one had stopped him. Plain proof that these pills were neither hidden nor shameful, but existed openly, tacitly acknowledged by all.
Xue Cuo understood this. Wen Renyi and the others understood it too.
A youth with a hard and bitter fate spoke dazedly: “My gege, Wen Renyu, entered Wendao Palace and never returned. The master there said he went travelling the world.”
“My master as well.”
“I came here for my shijie, yet I have not met her once.”
Travelling the world. Secluded in closed-door cultivation.
Once, such explanations had been enough. No one would have doubted them.
After all, the immortal road is long. What was a century or two to wait? There would always be a day of reunion.
But now, if this dreadful conjecture were true, then where had the gege who had wandered for a hundred years without returning to the sect gone?
Wen Renyi suddenly remembered that, on one occasion when he had passed by a stranger of elder’s rank, he had felt a strangely familiar aura from him that set his heart racing, though he clearly did not know the elder at all.
That elder bore no resemblance whatsoever to Wen Renyu, yet he had felt, at that moment, as though Wen Renyu had just walked past.
He had never given it a thought until now; belatedly realising, he gazed blankly at Xue Cuo, not daring to continue.
Xue Cuo knew all too well how dangerous this matter was, and he did not wish these geges and jiejies to be dragged into it, so he shook his head and said, “Fellow Daoists, there is no need for you to trouble yourselves.”
He could investigate it alone.
“But Shixiong, if what you say is true, how can we possibly stand by?”
“Absurd, utterly absurd that such a thing could exist in this world! Wendao Palace is the foremost of the immortal sects, its Dao lineage long and unbroken. I do not wish to speculate too far, but if such a cultivator truly exists, I will fight him to the death!”
“Do not be afraid, Shixiong. We do not provoke trouble, but we are by no means afraid of it.”
“If this is true, then even if we shed blood upon the sect’s threshold, we disciples will appeal to justice and answer to Heaven itself!”
“I do not know Zhu Jun, but from this day on, I shall be Zhu Jun!”
“Defend our Great Dao!”
Kong Yun laughed, set a hand on Xue Cuo’s shoulder, and lifted his head. “Even if I were to abandon this Dao altogether, I would still stand by you.”
Though the words were stirring, the elders had no regard at all for disciples still at the Foundation Building Stage.
The reason Minggong Yao and the other elders had not struck at Xue Cuo earlier was in truth bound up with their own selfish motives and considerations.
After leaving that day, they gathered together. Though their anger had been vented, their blood kin had indeed perished, body and soul.
Fortunately, their souls were still being nurtured; later a finer vessel could be chosen for them.
Seven disciples, seven soul-gathering lamps. The candle flames wavered faintly, and within each flame a human face could just be glimpsed.
Huang Zizhuo’s features twisted. “Father, shibo, shishu, that brat and Xi Tao were simply let go!”
The other flames also clamoured at once, until Minggong Yao snapped, “Silence! You were far too careless. Without even asking who was inside, you acted recklessly!”
Buffeted by her rebuke, Huang Zizhuo trembled and dared not utter another word.
A cultivator at her side tried to soothe her. “Shimei, do not be angry. I think we have turned misfortune into blessing. The Sword Immortal and Xue Zhenzhen now owe us a favour. Such a boon is rarer than celestial qi falling from the heavens!”
“Indeed! I say we should send a letter by talisman to the Sword Immortal, else we shall have rendered a favour in vain and gained no advantage.”
Minggong Yao considered and found it very much to her liking. “So it should be.”
At once she raised her brush, invoked the talisman, set out her reasoning, and sent the flying talisman away. The elders were well pleased, for in their hearts they had already determined what benefits they would demand.
After all, it was their own dearly beloved kin, their blood relations, who had been killed without cause. Yet now they even began to feel a secret relief that it had been their closest kin, for otherwise where would they find a pretext to demand recompense from the Sword Immortal?
The flying talisman soon returned. Minggong Yao’s eyes lit up. “Fellow Daoists, it has come.”
As the message had been sent in her name, naturally she was the first to open it.
She smiled as she broke the seal.
Clang—
A peerless, lawless sword intent burst forth, coalescing into a streak of sword light.
“Shimei, beware!”
Minggong Yao froze where she stood, unable to move, until a hand shoved her from behind and she stumbled back in fright.
But behind her stood the soul-gathering lamps. In an instant the seven flames were extinguished at once, shattering to powder and dust.
“My son!”
“My grandson!”
The pavilion, secret and solid, reinforced by countless arrays and talismans, shuddered and split cleanly apart.
That single sword evoked the most dreadful of memories in the hearts of Taiyi Sect’s elders.
Though many years had passed, the Sword Immortal who had once cleaved open the sect’s great mountain array and pierced the heavens seemed to stand before them once more, alive.
Minggong Yao shuddered with fear. “What does Jun Wuwei mean by this?”
A Taiyi Sect elder said stiffly, “Minggong-shimei, I advise you not to attempt to contact him again. His temperament is usually mild, but I sense he is greatly irritable at present.”
Minggong Yao: “…”
The other elders exchanged glances, none daring to speak. That sword strike… Even if they exerted their full strength… perhaps… they could not… possibly withstand.
Alas, the soul lamps that only moments before had been laughing and discussing rebirth were now all extinguished.
The next day.
When the Wendao Bell tolled, Xue Cuo climbed the steps one by one and walked up to the gates of Fei’e Palace.
