"Shh-" The man did not even turn his eyes toward Pei Ye, merely raising a finger at him.
Pei Ye followed his gaze. Through the open door of a side room, he saw a figure in white propping an elbow on the table, turning the pages of a book with one hand and gently stroking a black cat with the other.
"Ming-Qi-tian-" the man mouthed.
"Oh..." Pei Ye understood.
He had been so cut off from news these past few years that, despite knowing how astonishing "third on the Crane List" was, he still had no real sense of her fame.
Of the weight carried by the words, "I am Ming Qitian."
"The last time I saw someone from the Crane List was five years ago, when Qi Wuming, the White Deer Palace's twenty-fourth-generation [Blade Ghost], passed through our prefecture. Getting a glimpse of him then was simply impossible. Who could have imagined that we'd wake up today and find Ming Qitian right before our eyes?"
"He was a lot uglier, though."
"But he was a pretty decent fellow. Nothing like his title."
"That title gets passed down. It wasn't made up to suit him."
"Bright Sword Master is different still," a prefectural clerk said quietly. "The White Deer Palace has deep ties to the world, after all, and has built a wide circle of acquaintances over the years. Not Cloud Lang Mountain. They say the Ninth Prince wanted to invite Bright Sword Master to discuss Sword Dao last year, and she wouldn't even give him the time of day."
"Ha, was Sword Dao really what he wanted to discuss...?"
"Shh-"
"The main thing is, there's no way in. Understand?" an older man said. "Cloud Lang Mountain has never been heard to have ties with any family, and nobody's ever heard of Bright Sword Master being close to anyone. My aunt in the Divine Capital said the Ninth Prince asked Yan Feiqing to act as his go-between, simply because Bright Sword Master was rumored to have watched Yan Feiqing practice swordsmanship once. Apparently, Yan Feiqing's face went black on receiving the invitation."
"Hahahaha."
Pei Ye found their conversation amusing. He had meant to ask Ming Qitian how they should confront their enemy. After all, in his simple understanding, whatever Xing Zhi and Xu Weizhou discussed, if anyone could stand against the Immortal Lord in the end, it could only be Ming Qitian. Asking her directly would get straight to the point.
But with so many eyes watching, he felt too embarrassed to approach her, so he simply carried the basin into the old man's room.
He caught only half a sentence from behind him: "Does Bright Sword Master not even have a cup of tea on her table...?"
Then came the sounds of everyone being unable to stay in their seats.
Pei Ye entered the quiet little room. It was far cleaner and finer than their home, and the bed was softer too.
He nudged the old man on the bed, and the old man opened his eyes.
"You're back?" the old man rasped.
"Mm. How have these last two days been?"
"Eating well, sleeping well. I don't want to go back." Perhaps because the boy had returned unharmed, the old man was in a good mood.
"Once this is over, we'll use the reward money to buy a nice house too." Pei Ye poured the hot water into the large bathtub. "Let's give you a bath. It's been several days."
The old man nodded and struggled to prop himself up.
Pei Ye helped him, then went out to the courtyard to draw some well water.
Back in the room, he helped the old man out of his nightclothes, revealing more scars that made his heart tremble.
This was a body that had reached the limits of frailty in every respect. Though Pei Ye had seen it many times, whenever he looked closely and thought about it, he felt a surge of rage he could barely suppress.
"Gravely wounded" could not begin to describe it, for these were not marks left in battle at all.
Someone had hung him from hooks, shackled his hands and feet, and used every possible method and implement to mutilate his body, with the sole aim of making him suffer the greatest pain possible.
Every patch of skin, every bone, every tendon had been painstakingly worked over. Only a month or two spent in sunless darkness, amid the stench of his own piss, shit, and blood, living as something neither human nor ghost through days more terrible than hell, could have left marks like these.
Silently, Pei Ye lifted the old man's frighteningly light body and lowered him slowly into the water, its temperature just right. His fingers brushed the soft, aged, wrinkled skin as he gently washed him.
"Why don't you tell me?" Pei Ye suddenly said.
"Tell you what?"
"Who did it." After witnessing so many things that expanded his horizons over these past few days, Pei Ye felt the world had grown much smaller, though he had never taken a step outside Fenghuai. Many things no longer seemed so impossibly far away.
"Tell me, and sooner or later, I'll cut his head off."
The old man reclined against the tub, the corners of his mouth seeming to lift slightly.
"With you doing it, how long would I have to wait?" he rasped.
Chapter 68: Convergence
"Ten years, twenty years. Depends on who you want killed." Pei Ye scrubbed his back.
"What, did you go out and stumble across some miraculous technique?" The old man chuckled softly.
Pei Ye paused. That struck a sore spot. He had gone out for a Dantian Seed, only for the seed to turn out to be alive. It had taken a turn around his belly, then run off somewhere else.
"I heard a Dantian Seed can grow back," Pei Ye said.
"Where did you hear that horseshit? Everyone only gets one. Once it's gone, it's gone. If you want one, you'll have to find another."
"It's true. Have you heard of 'Endowed Fortune'?" Pei Ye asked.
The old man froze for a moment. "Where did you hear about that?"
"From the people who came from outside." Pei Ye wrung out a towel and began scrubbing the old man's chest. "Zhu Gaoyang came looking for it. And that night, while you were asleep, Ming Qitian asked me about it too."
"Who are these people? Never heard of them."
"Zhu Gaoyang is two hundred and ninety-sixth on the Crane List, you know."
"Oh."
"Ming Qitian is third on the Crane List."
"Mm!"
"See? You haven't heard of them because you're out of touch. They said 'Endowed Fortune' could regenerate a Dantian Seed. Anyone who's lost theirs can practice this martial art and grow another."
"...'Endowed Fortune' doesn't conjure another one out of thin air." The old man sighed. "But it can indeed solve your problem of not having a Dantian Seed."
"Right?"
"You want this martial art?"
"It's a way forward. But first, there's no news of it, and second, I definitely couldn't beat Ming Qitian and the others to it... Besides, Ming Qitian saved my life. I don't want to fight her for it."
"All right."
"What's all right?"
"You want 'Endowed Fortune.' That can be done."
"Sure it can, but didn't I just say there's no news of it, and I can't fight them for it?" Pei Ye rolled his eyes.
Once he finished washing the old man, he lifted him out and dressed him. After emptying the water, he returned to the room to find a Black Jade Kitten standing on the windowsill.
"Oh, so you remembered to come back." Pei Ye glanced at the cat.
But there was no trace of amusement on the black cat's face. In a cool, composed voice, the cat said, "I know the Supreme One True Dragon Immortal Lord's purpose now."
Pei Ye stopped in his tracks. "What?"
"This descent was never the Torchworld Cult summoning a god. From the very beginning, it was the Immortal Lord's own command."
"!"
"He sensed, through some unseen connection, that there was something here that threatened him. So he sent down a wisp of his consciousness to destroy it."
"...What is it?"
"He doesn't know. Neither do I."
"How do you know all this?"
The black cat extended a paw, and Pei Ye picked the cat up. A trace of weariness had returned to those Jade Eyes. "My consciousness is split in two. One part is here; the other is in the piece of flesh Qiongqi tore from beneath my neck when I was surrounded and attacked."
"..."
"At that time, the Immortal Lord's consciousness wasn't inside Qiongqi yet, so I could conceal myself at leisure."
"So when Ming Qitian came, you were inside Qiongqi?"
"Yes. I thought that if she turned back to kill Qiongqi, I would risk exposing myself to help her. But she only took you away." The black cat gave him a quiet look.
"Haha."
The black cat snorted coldly. "Stop laughing. If he can't find that thing, he'll destroy everything. Make no mistake-he really has that power."
Pei Ye grew serious. "When?"
"Very soon."
"Then what do we do? Find this thing and hand it over to him?"
"...Is that what you think?"
"Yes. If we can't beat him, we can't really let him bury all of Fenghuai, can we?"
The black cat quietly studied the boy's clear, open face. "In my view, even burying all of Bowang Prefecture would be better than letting him achieve his goal."
The Firewood-Cang Mountains.
Seen from high overhead, a circle of magnificent blue had appeared among the mountains. At first glance, it looked like a lake, but no lake would be so eerily Dark Blue or so perfectly shaped. It looked more like an enormous gemstone.
As though a bucket of dye had been spilled.
Every plant, large or small, had been infected with that Dark Blue, from leaves to branches. Within this domain, not a trace of any other color remained.
The animals suffered the same catastrophe. If even a single "Spore" entered the food chain, the entire ecosystem would be unable to escape, let alone with thousands upon thousands raining down at once.
Every animal invaded by the Dark Blue frantically searched for prey to devour, until they encountered one another and, through fighting and consumption, produced a stronger victor.
Amid this swift and frenzied "integration," birdsong and insect cries gradually vanished. The entire forest became pure and deathly still, like an enormous piece of blue amber.
At that moment, a decree seemed to descend. Fierce flames began roasting this amber, and the whole expanse of magnificent blue began to dissolve, melt, flow, and gather.
It was a heart-stopping spectacle almost impossible to witness: countless living creatures, each wondrous in its own way and vastly different in form, all transformed into the same substance. It was extinction and destruction, but also rebirth and unification. No spectacle could be grander than one enacted through life itself.
When these traces were discovered several days later, it would mark the Immortal Platform's first direct understanding of this Immortal Lord.
After returning to the Divine Capital, they would promote two elderly scholars and grant them noble ranks, have them resume a task abandoned fifty years earlier, and give them the highest level of access to the archives.
Before you continue