Aura of Devouring Cattle

When Cai Jinjian had backed away as she walked, the moment that foot came down, she had already realized something was wrong.

Of course, something even more unbearable than stepping in dog shit was stepping in it and having someone else see it. And something even more disastrous than that was for the person who saw it to open their mouth and tell you that you had really stepped in dog shit.

Cai Jinjian was not a shallow-minded woman, much less some delicate young lady incapable of enduring hardship. As one of Mountain Lord Cloud Mist Mountain's many children, the fact that she had managed to stand out and secure the final spot spoke volumes. Cloud Mist Mountain had eighteen peaks large and small, shrouded in mist year-round. Its Cloud Root Stones were an important ingredient for the Daoist Cinnabar Alchemy Sect in refining external elixirs, famed throughout the world for being "flawless and untainted," unique in their kind. Thus, those on Cloud Mist Mountain had to be particular about cleanliness and elegance; most were germaphobes, and Cai Jinjian was no exception. Had the town not been involved in something so significant, she would never have Set Foot in it in her life, much less walked step by step through Mud Bottle Alley, full of chicken droppings and dog shit. Most awkward of all, after arriving here, these immortals who had once stood so high above others were like little fish thrown onto shore, suddenly stripped of every support. The profound cultivation that let families occupying Blessed Lands Move Mountains and Overturn Seas, ride the wind through the skies; the wondrous Magic Treasures that subdued demons and vanquished devils, commanded gods and controlled ghosts—all of it was gone.

And so, Cai Jinjian stepped in dog shit.

Fu Nanhua had originally found it amusing. Fairy Cai of Cloud Mist Mountain, immaculate and untouched by the slightest speck of dust, with a boot smeared in sticky, stinking dog shit—who would dare believe it if told?

But the next moment, Fu Nanhua shouted heavily, "Cai Jinjian, stop!"

Song Jixin, standing atop the mud wall, narrowed his eyes slightly and clenched the Dragon-Carved Green Pendant in his palm.

In the alley, Cai Jinjian seemed to cross the distance to Chen Ping'an in a single step. Her slender hand, crystalline as the finest mutton-fat jade, swiftly struck toward the straw-sandaled youth's crown. At the very instant Fu Nanhua called out behind her to stop, she abruptly halted her hand, then slowly raised it before gently patting it down. Having completed this intimate gesture, like an elder fondly indulging a junior, she bent down and stared into the youth's eyes. They were like a clear spring whose bottom could be seen, and Cai Jinjian could almost glimpse her own face within them. Unfortunately, her mood was terrible at the moment. With a smile that did not reach her eyes, she said, "Little fellow, I know you deliberately slowed down when you spoke."

Fu Nanhua sighed in relief. If Cai Jinjian had truly dared to brazenly kill someone here, she might very well have been expelled from the town, dragging all of Cloud Mist Mountain down into a colossal laughingstock.

His face darkened as he reminded her in orthodox Elegant Official Language, "Cai Jinjian, think thrice before acting. If you remain this impulsive, I think it necessary to abandon our pact. I do not want you to make all my efforts a Basket into Water."

With her back to the Young Master of Old Dragon City, Cai Jinjian quietly and swiftly recited, "Those of superior grade see Buddha swiftly; those of inferior grade see Buddha late... Truly there is a Pure Land, truly there is a lotus pond..."

She soon turned around and offered Fu Nanhua an apologetic smile. "I lost my composure. I promise that nothing similar will happen again."

Fu Nanhua sneered. "Are you sure?"

Cai Jinjian merely smiled it off. Rather than solemnly swearing assurances to Fu Nanhua, she lowered her head again to look at the straw-sandaled youth and spoke to herself in the Elegant Official Language prevalent across an entire continent. "My Cloud Mist Mountain originated from one of the Five Sects of Buddhism. We place the greatest emphasis on subduing the restless mind and tethering the wild horse. Yet before coming here, I could not grasp what this restless mind and wild horse truly were. The elders of my family were never willing to pull up seedlings to help them grow, only letting me explore it myself. Who would have thought that today, in your Mud Bottle Alley, stepping in a pile of dog shit would instead let me sense a faint clue..."

Chen Ping'an reminded her, "Older sister, you stepped in dog shit more than half a day ago. Why haven't you scraped it off yet?"

The Immortal Family Woman had felt that she had already entered a Buddhist Pure Land state of mind. At those words, however, her composure instantly broke, and she fell back into the mortal world, her face turning livid. Yet Fu Nanhua's warning still echoed in her ears, so she could only vent her anger by stretching out a finger and jabbing it heavily into the straw-sandaled youth's forehead. She glared. "At such a young age, has no one taught you that a perverse temper is the sign of early death, and sharp, cutting words belong to one who whittles away his blessings?!"

Chen Ping'an was thick-skinned and tough, so he did not care. He merely looked at Song Jixin in the distance without saying anything.

The latter jumped up and cursed, "Chen Ping'an, what are you looking at me for? What bad luck!"

Fu Nanhua discovered with surprise that before he had even entered Song Jixin's courtyard, he was already displeased. He did not conceal his mockery in the slightest. "Cai Jinjian! How interesting. There is actually someone in this world who would delay her steps upon the great path to immortality over a pile of dog shit."

For once, Cai Jinjian did not get angry. She gave the plain-looking, lean youth a deep look, then turned and left.

Suddenly, the youth behind her said softly, "Older sister, your eyelashes are very long."

A vulgar mortal ant dared tease an immortal goddess?

Cai Jinjian flew into a rage and spun around.

She made up her mind that even if it cost her some fortune, she would teach this country brat, seemingly honest yet truly sly, a lesson. Though Cai Jinjian and the others had entered this place like prisoners confined in a cage, bound hand and foot, colliding with walls at every turn, with all spells and tools temporarily beyond their control, the benefits of cultivation since childhood remained. Once one entered the hall, cultivation could nourish the body in return, as if constantly tempering muscles and bones. Though the effect was not remarkable, far inferior to martial artists who specialized in such things, this foundation was more than enough to handle a youth who had crawled and scrambled through the mud of the streets. It would be as easy as plucking something from her hand to casually strike a few important acupoints, planting the root of illness in him and cutting down his lifespan.

Yet in the slightly dim alley, all she saw was a dark face and a pair of bright eyes.

A bright moon rose above the sea.

Cai Jinjian's eyes first lit up. Then a woman's innate pity welled up within her. Finally, the regret in her phoenix eyes faded away bit by bit, and her smile grew increasingly radiant as understanding dawned on her.

Severing the Inner Demon was precisely an opportunity.

One had to know that the lineage of Cloud Mist Mountain, close to Buddhism yet distant from the Dao, had upheld a single belief ever since its founding ancestor, Old Immortal Cloud Mist: every arising and extinguishing of fate was a tribulation to cross.

Naturally, there was no fixed principle, number, or pattern to crossing tribulations. Everything required the person involved to solve the riddle and break the deadlock himself.

For instance, Cai Jinjian at this moment.

She felt that the restless mind and wild horse she needed to suppress and subdue was exactly that youth, innocent in appearance yet an obstacle in truth.

So she raised a hand again and placed it over the youth's heart, pressing lightly. Every movement flowed like drifting clouds and running water, swift as racing thunder. Even though the youth consciously retreated half a step, he still could not evade the tall woman's attack.

Fu Nanhua stared fixedly at that alluring, graceful back. Not only did he feel no ripple of romantic desire, killing intent instead surged within him, nearly hardening into a Heart of Stone. He deliberately concealed his Killing Intent and loudly roared, "Earlier, you flicked the youth's forehead and caused him to suffer from illness for years to come. That punishment was enough! Why must you still—Cai Jinjian, have you gone mad? Do you really intend to disregard even a Great Dao opportunity over some lowborn wretch?!"

Cai Jinjian ignored him. Fu Nanhua lowered his voice and resumed the composed bearing of a Son of an Aristocratic Family, clicking his tongue as he laughed. "The illustrious Cai Jinjian of Cloud Mist Mountain, haggling with a street youth over every last detail. Wouldn't you be ashamed if word got out?"

Cai Jinjian turned around with a smile. "This little alley truly has fate with me. Who would have thought I could fish up an opportunity even here? It may not be much, but mosquito meat is still meat. What a good omen. I have even greater confidence in that youth named Gu Can now!"

Fu Nanhua was Stunned.

Could it be that this woman had truly gained some insight?

Cai Jinjian raised one foot, looked at the Unbearable to Look At filth upon it, and chuckled. "What a stroke of dog-shit luck."

Song Jixin's expression shifted darkly and uncertainly, revealing none of the changes in his thoughts.

The unnoticed maidservant Zhi Gui stood silently where she was. At one moment, two pairs of Pale Gold pupils surfaced in her eyes—one eye holding double pupils.

Fu Nanhua vaguely sensed something. He abruptly turned his head and looked around quickly, but detected not the slightest anomaly. Finally, he inspected the Young Girl maidservant from head to toe and found nothing amiss. He could only attribute that discomfort to Cai Jinjian's actions drawing the gaze of that heavenly Sage in the town.

Cai Jinjian was in high spirits. The many stagnant thoughts that had piled up in her before now poured downward like floodwaters bursting through a dike.

How could it be merely a small opportunity?

If Cloud Mist Mountain, hollowed out from within, had not truly needed an immortal family Heavy Item of sufficient weight to stabilize the mountain gate's continuously leaking fortune, and if she had not needed it to cement her status as the next Mountain Lord, Cai Jinjian would have dearly loved to leave this place at once and return to Cloud Mist Mountain for ten or twenty years of secluded cultivation.

Cai Jinjian walked toward the maidservant in Fu Nanhua's shabby alley.

The youth behind her asked, "Did you do something to me?"

Without turning her head, Cai Jinjian replied, "Little fellow, you are thinking too much."

The youth fell silent.

Cai Jinjian looked back with a smile. "You will be dead in half a year at most."

The youth froze for a moment.

She smiled charmingly. "You really believed that? Older sister was lying to you!"

Chen Ping'an grinned.

The immortal family man and woman, Cai Jinjian and Fu Nanhua, had almost the same thought arise in their hearts at the same time.

Frogs at the Bottom of a Well, ants beneath the mountain.

Song Jixin, crouching on the wall and watching the show, rubbed his temples with both hands, his face wearing an exceedingly rare seriousness.

Even though Zhi Gui had already taken that eccentric older sister to find snot-nosed Gu Can, and that young fellow who would throw away a fortune at the slightest disagreement and play the fool had also entered his own courtyard.

The quick-witted Song Jixin still crouched there in a daze. In the sight of this youth, as exceptional as a Son of Heaven, a Thin Young Man stood in Mud Bottle Alley. He watched the tall woman's back for a while, soon withdrew his gaze, and walked toward his own Courtyard Gate, but the firewood door remained unpushed open for a long time.

Song Jixin hated this feeling: someone who usually neither showed mountain nor revealed water, yet at certain times was like a stone in a latrine. Leave it there and it offended the eye; move it away and it dirtied the hands.

So much so that he did not even hear what Fu Nanhua said behind him.

The Young Master of Old Dragon City had no choice but to repeat himself. "Song Jixin, do you know there is a kind of person in this world completely different from people like you?"

Song Jixin finally came back to himself. He turned around, still crouching, looking down at Fu Nanhua in his high crown, luxurious brocade robes, and elegant bearing. "I know."

Fu Nanhua could only force the words that had reached his lips back down his throat. Still unwilling to leave it at that, he asked with a smile, "You really know?"

The mysterious youth from the town gave him a cold look and sneered. "Are you going to say that they bring the dead back to life, restore flesh to white bones, live forever, and possess boundless Dao arts?!"

Fu Nanhua nodded, pleased. "We can count as half Fellow Daoists."

Song Jixin's peripheral vision flicked toward the neighboring courtyard gate. He seemed somewhat absent-minded, entirely out of place.

Fu Nanhua spoke frankly. "Then I will open the skylight and speak plainly. No matter what you have, as long as you are willing to name a price, I will smash my pots and sell my iron to buy it!"

Song Jixin asked in confusion, "I can tell that between you and that woman, your family background and standing are a notch higher. Since she can treat the fellow next door that way, why are you willing to treat me so..."

Fu Nanhua took over on his own. "As an equal?"

Song Jixin nodded and praised him. "You are pretty sharp. Talking with you isn't tiring."

Fu Nanhua did not care about the youth's condescension, whether in position or in his arrogant tone.

Completely unlike Cai Jinjian, who regarded the straw-sandaled youth as a lowly ant, Fu Nanhua not only felt a certain closeness toward Song Jixin, but had always held this area of Mud Bottle Alley in awe, for reasons he could neither explain nor understand.

Thus, Fu Nanhua truly regarded the youth before him as a Fellow Daoist.

The farther one traveled along this great path, the more status high or low, distinctions between men and women, and age itself became empty illusions, utterly meaningless.

Song Jixin jumped down from the courtyard wall and said softly, "Let's talk inside."

Fu Nanhua nodded. "All right."

As Song Jixin crossed the threshold, he casually asked, "Just asking, what is your relationship with that older sister who looks like she is Good for Childbearing?"

Fu Nanhua answered without hesitation, "For now, we are on the same side, but not on the same road."

Song Jixin gave an oh and said something inexplicable. "Then the way you handle things is far too hesitant and messy, not clean at all. I used to hear that the world outside was full of immortals and Demons, strange and dazzling. But as long as one is a cultivator, once there is a grudge, shouldn't one uproot the grass and eliminate the roots, Eliminate Future Trouble?"

The eldest son of the Fu family was, after all, an immortal descendant raised in Old Dragon City and accustomed to great storms and waves. Hearing this, no emotion showed on his face.

He asked with a smile, "Do you have a grudge between you?"

The youth opened his eyes wide, feigning surprise. "What are you talking about?"

It seemed he had realized that the man before him did not believe him, so Song Jixin withdrew his exaggerated, affected expression. He sat down first in a chair in the main hall, gestured for Fu Nanhua to sit as well, and then said seriously, "Chen Ping'an next door lost his parents when he was very young. We have been neighbors for so many years and have never once argued. Believe it or not."

Fu Nanhua instantly understood the youth's hidden meaning.

The youth next door had no one to rely on. He was nothing more than Rootless Duckweed.

If he died, then he died. No one would investigate the matter.

The Young Master of Old Dragon City did not know whether to laugh or cry. He suddenly realized that the turmoil in this little alley had unfolded in an absurdly comical fashion.

The impoverished youth next door could be said to have brought this Sudden Disaster upon himself precisely because he had deliberately concealed the address of Song Jixin and his servant, and he would suffer disaster and lose his life because of it.

Yet just now, this Song family youth, who seemed to come from a Bell-Ringing, Pot-Eating household, wanted to kill someone with a borrowed knife.

If one blade was not enough, then another.

Fu Nanhua could not help feeling deeply moved. No wonder Master Han Fei's Book 'Han Feizi' said: the cub of a tiger or leopard, though its markings have yet to form, already possesses an Aura of Devouring Cattle.

In Gu Can's courtyard, the child had already been locked in an inner room by his mother. The woman sat facing the elder who called himself a True Lord.

The elder withdrew his palm, its lines crisscrossing like tangled paths, and smiled. "The overall situation has been decided."

The woman asked in confusion, "May I ask what the immortal master did just now that could make Chen Ping'an..."

At this point, she saw a sharp edge suddenly blaze in the elder's eyes and was so frightened that she quickly closed her mouth.

The elder looked toward the courtyard gate and lightly flicked his sleeve. A fresh breeze arose, whirling restlessly through the small courtyard, lingering without leaving. Only then did the elder say, "For a figure of my standing, the deeper I become entangled after entering this place, the more I fall into the helpless plight of a Mud Bodhisattva crossing a river. Though I cannot yet be said to be unable to protect myself, the longer this lasts, the more... hm, as that youth Song Jixin put it, the more it becomes dragging mud and carrying water. In the end, I can only wind up covered head to toe in karmic entanglement. Fortunately, that person has earned the wrath of Heaven and man. Even after already making the concession of taking a great step back, he still cannot preserve his reputation in old age and cannot escape utter ruin. What a pity. A situation that had originally promised to enjoy incense offerings for a thousand autumns has taken a sharp turn downhill, becoming miserable beyond sight... Only by taking this chance can I make some arrangements for your son, to see whether I can both end that youth's life and cut off any future trail-following by certain Sages and immortal masters, sparing us the future trouble of reckoning after autumn. Then my newly accepted Disciple may charge down the path to immortality with the force of wind and thunder, and in the end transform into a dragon..."

The woman sat beside him, listening only in fragments, sweat pouring down her body.

The elder asked with a smile, "Do you find it strange? People of the world beyond, who eat clouds and drink dew and ignore mortal affairs—why is it that after dedicating themselves to cultivation, cultivating and cultivating, they seem only to have developed such scheming malice? Not much better than you, an ignorant village woman with shallow eye sockets?"

The woman hurriedly lowered her head and said with a trembling voice, "I would never dare think such a thing!"

The elder smiled it off and quietly waited for Cai Jinjian of Cloud Mist Mountain to knock on the door.

Upon the path of cultivation, spells were boundless and divine abilities endless. Principles came in great and small; the Dao came in high and low.

Cai Jinjian viewed you as ants, but did this True Lord not likewise view her and Fu Nanhua as ants?

What reason was there to discuss with ants beneath one's feet?