Eastern Maitreya Province.
Little Sweet Mountain, the Mysterious Truth Sect.
"The accounts and property have been settled, but besides the carriage seals belonging to the Hall of Joyful Virtue, Martial Nephew Chen must also hand over the White Hut Sword Senior Sister Yan Zhen bestowed on you. Oh, and there's one more thing. I nearly forgot..."
At that moment.
Inside a cave dwelling carved into a cliff of the Mysterious Truth Sect.
A short, plump man in a steward's robes stroked the few short hairs beneath his chin.
Leading the pretty girl in a purple jacket and skirt behind him a few steps farther inside, he found himself a wooden chair and sat down, all smiles. Only after looking around did he ask the owner of the dwelling amiably:
"At the last gathering of the sects, Senior Sister Yan Zhen won three hundred Central Trust Pills as her prize. Junior Brother Yan Ping said he saw it with his own eyes, yet when her belongings were sorted, only two hundred and fourteen were found. He specifically asked me to inquire whether you might know anything about this, Martial Nephew."
Looking around.
The scene here could only be described as desolate.
Aside from a bed, a writing desk, and other sundries, there were no ornaments of gold, jade, or other precious materials, much less the luminous pearls, rare stones, coral, tortoiseshell, seven-treasure agates, and strings of colorful jewels rumored outside.
The steward thought to himself.
Even the little courtyard his own father-in-law had secretly bought below Little Sweet Mountain, keeping it from his wife and daughter, was ten times more lavish than this.
Had someone gotten here first and stripped the place bare?
Or was the young Daoist before him not nearly as favored as the rumors claimed?
The steward took one puzzled look at him, then dismissed the latter possibility.
The youth before him wore an unadorned white robe, his tall, slender figure almost blending into the daylight. A simple green wooden hairpin bound his hair, and his loose robe and broad sleeves were spotless, untouched by dust.
His exceptionally handsome features always carried a sharp chill, like lofty mountains beyond distant mists, forever visible yet beyond reach.
Yet his bearing was lucid and profound, like a fine rain over spring mountains, suffused with warmth and quiet depth.
No wonder Yan Zhen had exhausted every means to abduct him into the Mysterious Truth Sect while she was alive.
Never mind women.
Even a man might find himself momentarily captivated by his grace.
While the steward marveled, his daughter, the girl in the purple jacket and skirt, had already opened her dark eyes wide, barely able to contain the excitement and curiosity on her face.
"Here it comes again-the karmic entanglements of this body..."
Chen Heng, who had been waiting for some time, tightened his fingers. Forcing down the bewilderment and unease in his heart, he gave a light laugh as though nothing were wrong.
"The seal of the Hall of Joyful Virtue is here. As for the Young Crow Carriage, Yan Ping sent another junior brother from the Steward Office to claim it the day before yesterday. You've come a little late, Martial Uncle."
Chen Heng held out the small blue-white seal he had been gripping in his palm for a long time.
Before the steward could take it, the girl beside him rushed forward.
When their hands touched, Chen Heng felt nothing in particular, but the girl's cheeks flushed rosy red, the blush spreading even to her ears.
She held the small seal against her heart, but did not retreat.
Head lowered, she seemed to have something else to say.
But before she could stammer out a word.
The steward sprang to his feet and pulled her behind him, his face dark.
"I should never have listened to this wretched child! Bringing her out to broaden her horizons, indeed! Once we get back, her mother will give her a proper scolding!"
Furious inwardly, he tightened his grip around the girl's wrist.
"As for the White Hut Sword."
Chen Heng acted as though he had noticed none of this.
"The White Hut Sword is a flying-sword artifact. I haven't even attained embryonic breathing yet, much less crossed the threshold of the immortal Dao. How could I wield it?"
"Then what do you mean, Martial Nephew?"
The steward glared fiercely at the girl several more times and raised a hand to rap her on the head. Whether because Chen Heng was present or because he could not bear to strike her, his arm rose and fell a few times before he gave up.
These two were probably father and daughter.
So Chen Heng thought.
"If the White Hut Sword isn't with you, could it possibly be in the hands of another musician from the Hall of Joyful Virtue? Who else besides you could receive such extraordinary favor?" The steward finally turned to look at him, his gaze acquiring a measure of irritation.
Chen Heng shook his head.
"That isn't it. Only when I accompanied her carriage outside would Martial Uncle Yan Zhen lend me the White Hut Sword to wear at my side. Once we returned to the sect, she would take it back. Ordinarily, neither I nor the other musicians in the Hall of Joyful Virtue ever had much chance to see it."
"Oh?"
The steward was slightly startled.
"Martial Uncle Yan Zhen feared I would kill myself when alone, so she never left anything sharp near me. Even my hairpin was sent over only after a Daoist attendant had ground down its point, let alone a sword."
Chen Heng explained this calmly, his voice without a ripple.
"Then... the White Hut Sword?"
"Before Martial Uncle Yan Zhen was assassinated, the Jade-Piercing Boy of Refined Rock Mountain asked her for the White Hut Sword to protect himself," Chen Heng said evenly. "The Jade-Piercing Boy is now slaying demons around the Northern Ridge. I'm not the only one who knows about this-Martial Uncle Yan Zhen's father, Elder Yan, knows as well. Whether it is true or false, you need only ask the Jade-Piercing Boy when he returns."
"So that's how it was? I see."
The steward nodded dubiously. Before he could voice the rest of his questions, Chen Heng raised a hand and interrupted him.
"If you also intend to ask about the Central Trust Pills, Martial Uncle, spare yourself the trouble. When someone is bent on accusing you, there is never any shortage of charges. Those pills were of no use to me in the first place. Besides, after Martial Uncle was assassinated, Elder Yan vented his anger on everyone present, myself included, and confined us in the water dungeon for a hundred days. Never mind money or possessions-even the long zither I carried was seized by the senior brothers of the Discipline Office."
His eyes dark, Chen Heng said:
"If Yan Ping wants to pin a crime on me, this excuse is far too clumsy. I was already wounded by Xu Si and have little time left. Does he think he cannot even outlive a dying man?"
Looking at the youth's face, so pale it was almost bloodless, the steward shook his head.
For a moment, he felt chilled by such callousness, then experienced a rare stirring of pity.
While Yan Zhen was alive, Chen Heng had been treated as a plaything in her palm, summoned and dismissed at her whim, denied even a moment's freedom on this mountain. Yet his status had also been honored.
He had become Chief Musician of the Hall of Joyful Virtue at the age when boys first bound their hair.
Everyone knew that this position, and indeed the entire sprawling Hall of Joyful Virtue, had been created by Yan Zhen specifically to please Chen Heng, but no one dared say a word.
For Yan Zhen's father, Yan Feichen, was not merely the foremost of the Mysterious Truth Sect's three great elders.
He was also an accomplished master who had established his Dao Foundation and opened his Purple Mansion.
Commanding clouds and lightning, rising from the earth in flight, turning iron into gold, and the like.
At his realm, all these were merely minor arts.
If he could advance another step, comprehend cavern mystery, and form a Golden Core, he could be called a True Person even across the vast expanse of Eastern Maitreya Province.
With such backing, before Yan Zhen's death, Chen Heng could have acted without restraint had he wished.
Given how much Yan Zhen doted on him.
There truly were few in the Mysterious Truth Sect on Little Sweet Mountain who could have stopped him.
Unfortunately, Yan Zhen had died suddenly. On her way back from visiting a friend, she had been ambushed and killed by Xu Sai, the Rogue of the Western Sea. A single sword strike had obliterated her soul, denying her even reincarnation.
Her attendants had also been caught in the battle, and well over half of the forty had died.
Though Chen Heng had been fortunate enough to survive, Xu Sai's true qi had struck his body. Every day, he had to endure the torment of its cold poison, his organs steaming and seething.
Even so.
Afterward, Yan Feichen had still punished him, confining him in the water dungeon for a hundred days and adding injury upon injury.
Now, he could not even retain his position in the Hall of Joyful Virtue. Its seal and carriage had to be handed over to the Steward Office, counted and entered into the registers one by one.
After all these blows.
Even someone utterly ignorant of worldly affairs would know that Chen Heng's present circumstances were nothing like his former days...
"If Senior Sister Yan Zhen were still alive, how would those Daoists in the Discipline Office dare extort bribes from you? Who in the sect would strip you of your position in the Hall of Joyful Virtue? And now they won't even leave you a zither?"
Recalling everything that had happened, the steward sighed. He no longer bothered to say the things he had already been reluctant to bring up.
The matter of the Central Trust Pills was merely a fabricated charge Yan Ping had begged him to concoct against Chen Heng.
Only upon arriving today had he learned that Yan Ping had already used his tricks to seize the Young Crow Carriage, the most valuable possession in this dwelling, leaving him not so much as a drop of profit.
Remembering, too, that Yan Ping had offered him no gift when asking him to handle this business, the steward became even less inclined to wade into these muddy waters.
"It is my duty. The sect ordered me to collect the seal and play the villain. I'm sorry to have offended you today."
After courteously giving Chen Heng a Daoist salute.
He caught sight of the inexplicably bashful expression on his daughter's face again.
An unaccountable fury flared in the steward's heart. He snatched the blue-white seal from the girl's hands and examined it with his true qi.
Once he saw that the spiritual light emitted by the seal was correct, he hurried to leave.
"Wait."
Chen Heng suddenly called him back.
"My... that older clansman of mine..."
Recalling the face in this body's memories, Chen Heng frowned and asked:
"Where has the sect placed his body?"
"Your older clansman? Wait, do you mean the man who brought you up the mountain together with Senior Sister Yan Zhen?" The steward paused, then suddenly understood.
"Ah, him. He was placed in the mortuary below Little Sweet Mountain. There are people assigned to watch over it. Do you intend to take his body back home, Martial Nephew?"
"Before he died, he specifically asked me to bury him on our clan's land. I'll grant his wish."
"You are remarkably magnanimous, Martial Nephew!"
The steward offered this praise and was about to leave again when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of something as Chen Heng cupped his hands in salute.
Beneath those broad sleeves.
A red cord ornament tied around his wrist was exposed.
"That thing! Isn't that the talisman writ for entering the Earth Abyss? What audacity this boy has!"
The steward's heart gave a violent jolt.
Ignoring the girl's questioning gaze and faint struggles.
He forced out a few dry laughs and tugged her along as though carrying a rabbit, saying nothing more.
As soon as they left the dwelling, he wrapped them both in true qi and rose into the air in a streak of golden flame.
In an instant, they plunged into the clouds and vanished.
"They're finally gone. I shouldn't have given anything away, should I?"
Seeing that the two had finally left, Chen Heng felt somewhat reassured, and his taut nerves relaxed a little.
Fortunately, the visitor had not been particularly familiar with this body.
Although Chen Heng had inherited its memories, small details in his gestures and movements would inevitably reveal something amiss to those close to him.
Still.
Speaking of people close to him.
Apart from the deceased female Daoist, Yan Zhen.
Here in the Mysterious Truth Sect on Little Sweet Mountain, this body did not seem to have anyone else who could be considered close to him.
Chen Heng stopped dwelling on it and formed a hand seal.
The rock walls on both sides rumbled, soon joining together to close the entrance, looking as though they had always been one seamless, natural whole.
"The immortal Dao, the immortal Dao..."
Chen Heng sat down on a meditation cushion, surveyed the empty stone chamber, and fell into thought.
After struggling on a hospital bed in the modern world for six long years, abandoned by his parents, and finally dying in misery on the night before Lunar New Year's Eve, had he actually been reborn in the body of this youth who shared his name?
In this great age of the immortal Dao, radiant as the midday sun and utterly unlike his former world.
"Here... can I attain eternal life?" Chen Heng lowered his lashes, his thoughts surging like a tide.
But before he could think any further.
A chill suddenly erupted from his chest, brutally cutting off every thought.
The surging cold bound him like a gauze robe spreading from within to without, reaching from his organs to his skin. Every pulse brought an icy, searing pain that pierced his flesh and invaded his bones!
"Why is it flaring up again!"
Chen Heng's expression changed violently. He suddenly vomited black blood uncontrollably, all ten fingers clawing desperately at the hard ground as countless veins bulged along his neck.
With every breath, the indescribable, wrenching pain seemed to intensify. The taste of blood surged up his throat, and for a time his insides felt as though they were burning, then being seared with needles.
Only after dozens of breaths did the chill silently retreat like a lurking snake, as though nothing had happened.
By then, despite the bitter cold of the twelfth lunar month, his temples and back were soaked with sweat.
"Xu Si. Cold Dipper True Qi."
Chen Heng slowly pushed himself upright from the ground. Beads of blood rolled from the torn skin between his fingers as he spoke in a faint voice like paper tearing:
"Two lifetimes, and I still can't escape a body plagued by illness. How absurd."
He closed his fingers, instinctively taking something from the pouch at his waist and holding it in his palm.
Its warm, smooth, delicate touch soothed his heart, as though every stray thought had been swept away.
"Golden Cicada, I never imagined you would come to this world with me, much less reveal supernatural powers. What a blessing."
Chen Heng opened his hand and gazed at the exquisite, translucent jade cicada in his palm.
"But in my current predicament, which way should I turn?"
Gently closing his fingers around the jade carving he had happened to pick up in a stream in his previous life, which had inexplicably followed him after death into this great age of the immortal Dao, Chen Heng sank into thought.
"And another thing."
"The entanglements surrounding this body really are troublesome..."
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