Shouhui

In the troubled times of the recent past, Blood Qi ran rampant. The Blood Qi of ordinary people could be used to cultivate all kinds of Cultivation Methods, while Blood Qi refined from cultivators could supposedly be made into pills that advanced one's cultivation.

As a result, common folk were disposed of at will like two-legged sheep. There were even "shepherds" who penned the people up across an entire commandery, harvesting in autumn, storing in winter, and "sowing" in spring.

Qinghuan's histories recorded explicitly that when Sovereign Dongyuan recovered a certain major commandery in Jiangbei, he gathered barely more than a hundred thousand people from the entire commandery. The sovereign promptly changed his decree that very day and wiped out the local sects that had already submitted.

The two returned to Fang Lin's hotel lodgings in the scenic area, neither looking particularly well. Once the matter of "Blood Qi" was reported, the Thunder Palace would inevitably be mobilized, and things would become very troublesome.

The Thunder Palace would investigate again and again, taking the approach that it was better to kill the wrong person than let anyone slip through. And since the "Blood Slaughter Incantation" concerned the Three Witches Dao Lineage, Jixia would certainly send people too.

"Brother Fang, what are your plans from here?" Jiang Wangxuan wanted to hear Fang Lin's thoughts first.

"When all's said and done, we'll have to rely on the Jiang Household, the local big shots!"

Fang Lin spoke teasingly. "Brother Jiang, why didn't you say something when you saw me get off at Luzhou Station a few days ago? Don't you consider me a friend?"

Uh...

Jiang Wangxuan said innocently, "You didn't ask! I just watched you get off the train, all excited."

Fang Lin folded his arms and huffed. "If I hadn't heard some old-timers shooting the breeze here in the scenic area, you really would have fooled me. That famous Jiang Household in Luzhou is your family, right?"

"Oh? What are people out there saying about our Jiang Household?" Jiang Wangxuan asked with interest.

"Two Xuantians in one family, blue smoke rising from the ancestral graves!"

Jiang Wangxuan mulled it over. He had to admit, it had quite a rhyme to it. "There's something you don't know, Brother Fang. There are only five people in my family; we can hardly be called local big shots. If I hadn't been a little lucky and awakened my spiritual aperture, my family wouldn't even have a graded Cultivation Method."

Fang Lin's expression froze. Recalling the few words Jiang Wangxuan had said on the train a few days earlier, he admired him all the more. "I never expected you to come from a poor family, Brother Jiang, yet possess such profound Dao wisdom concerning the mortal world."

"Oh, I just read it all in books. I was speaking offhand, borrowing the wisdom of those who came before me. How could that be called wisdom? And how could the mortal world be so easy to comprehend? Just look at what happened today: you and I are caught between advancing and retreating!"

Fang Lin did not quite agree. "It's simply a question of whether we still dare to investigate further. The spiders took the initiative to ambush and kill me today, which shows that what I'm looking for may have threatened their colony."

"The legendary Cicada Immortal?"

The big fat fish in the Rising Yang Mansion flopped into view. Though this fellow had no sense of boundaries, he certainly knew a lot, and the big fat fish was eager to update his database.

"The Cicada Immortal did indeed exist, but she wasn't an immortal. She was a Purple Mansion True Person with a Divine Ability, whose Daoist name was Shouhui. True Person Shouhui was originally a cold cicada who gained a Divine Ability and traveled through Wuyue back then."

"This True Person was said to have a trace of the bloodline of the Frost Cicadas, a Demon Race from High Antiquity. Vast Cold Heaven even sent down several True Persons to look for her. The Frost Cicada clan had produced a Cold Qi Golden Core, so Vast Cold Heaven naturally attached importance to her."

"From what you're saying, did this True Person Shouhui not join Vast Cold Heaven?"

Fang Lin nodded. "Not only did she not join, she also took a heterodox path. At the time, a Buddhist sect's secret realm, the Golden Incense Temple, appeared in Wuyue. True Person Shouhui displayed her Divine Ability and obtained a scroll on the path of incense offerings, then vanished from the lands of Wuyue."

"The next news of True Person Shouhui came several hundred years later. It was said that villagers here in Luzhou had built a temple to the Cicada Immortal. People went looking for it and found the temple had long since fallen into ruin. What's more, it didn't enshrine the Cicada Immortal, but a black wooden tablet."

"Still, they did find some traces of the Cicada Immortal's presence here on Jinping Mountain. One of my ancestors once obtained an object connected to the Cicada Immortal."

Fang Lin took a thumb ring from his robes and made it float in the air.

The ring's material looked like neither jade nor stone. It felt like ice to the touch, yet did not melt. It was a clear gray, like the thin ice on a river in the depths of winter, not quite frozen through, with a layer of extremely faint, deep blue beneath it.

Held up to the light, the deep blue slowly flowed through the ring, like moonlight sinking into a cold pool, or frost formed on a cicada's wings.

Hm? Jiang Wangxuan seemed to have spotted something new. Hidden within the blue light was a streak of iridescence that appeared for only an instant whenever the blue light completed a full circuit.

"Did you notice the flash of iridescence in the ring, Brother Jiang?"

Fang Lin opened the window of the hotel room and pointed the ring toward Jinping Mountain. The iridescent light came alive, roaming through the ring in place of the icy blue light.

"That's why I said True Person Shouhui took a heterodox path. The iridescence inside is a strand of incense-offering Qi-or, more precisely, the thoughts of living beings, settled over several hundred years and condensed into radiance."

Huaqi!

Jiang Wangxuan understood. "When did True Person Shouhui attain her Divine Ability?"

"No one knows. All we know is that the Golden Incense Temple secret realm appeared in year 673 of the Qinghuan calendar, more than seven hundred years ago. And strangely enough, this iridescence wasn't in the ring at first."

A strand of warm, cooking-fire true essence appeared in Fang Lin's right hand. Smiling, he said, "I found this thing in my family's treasury. The records of its storage clearly state that no iridescence appeared. I suspect that only after the Hearth Fire fruition was attained did the path of incense offerings manifest in the world."

"Doesn't that mean True Person Shouhui was quite likely to have found a path to Huaqi back then? She was a person of great wisdom!"

Jiang Wangxuan could not help feeling admiration. Ever since Qingheng Great Luo had placed Huaqi into the Clear Ring Convention, it had ceased to manifest its former powers outwardly, apart from opening the immortal path and enlightening Cultivation Methods for the living beings of Qinghuan.

Even if cultivators in this world were fortunate enough to obtain the inheritance of Huaqi, they could not sense the existence of its fruition at all. Thus, the path of incense offerings had been cut off at the time.

Jiang Wangxuan also suspected that beyond Qinghuan, Huaqi most likely did not even have "Qi."

"After I brought this ring to Jinping Mountain, the iridescence inside it became increasingly vivid. And when I was searching the mountain for the Spider Immortal's remains, I encountered the spiders."

"So you suspect that the spider mother obtained True Person Shouhui's legacy, Brother Fang?"

"Hard to say!" Fang Lin's brows knotted. "The spiders' Blood Slaughter Incantation comes from the Three Witches Dao Lineage. It's a far cry from True Person Shouhui's path of Cold Qi."

"Brother Fang, would you let me take another look at the ring? I keep feeling it might have another use."

"Please. The ring hardly qualifies as a Law Artifact; it can only serve as a dwelling place for this iridescence. Once broken, the iridescence will disperse into the world on the spot. Take your time examining it here, Brother Jiang. I'll go down and ask around some more about the mountain."

With that, Fang Lin vanished from the hotel room. Jiang Wangxuan looked up and only then realized that the setting sun filled the sky outside the window.

He sent a message home saying that he was traveling and telling Jiang Dezhao to prepare to go into the city within the next couple of days to have Huaqi enlighten his Cultivation Method.

Then he bent over the ring, turning it over in his hands. The moment Jiang Wangxuan had first seen it, he had felt an affinity for it.

The outside of the ring was plain and smooth, but extremely shallow engravings could be made out. They had not been cut with a blade or chisel; rather, they looked as though something had slowly etched them into the surface, their lines as fine as hair.

Only after bringing it close and examining it carefully could he make out a circle of cicada patterns.

The cicadas' heads pointed downward, their wings folded. The veins on their wings were clearly visible, and at the end of each vein was a speck of frost no bigger than a grain of rice.

The top of the ring rose slightly, and on that raised spot was a faint mark, like the outline of a crescent moon.

The moon?

Jiang Wangxuan looked up again. Night had now covered the land, and a crescent moon hung in the sky. Cooking smoke curled up from the scenic area's several streets; the food business here seemed to be doing quite well.

He looked hesitantly at the ring in his hand. Could it be that True Person Shouhui, who cultivated Cold Qi, also had some attainments in Grand Yin?

Vast Cold Heaven in the north had always revered Grand Yin and was also a Xuantian in the north that openly recruited students of the Grand Yin lineage. It was said that its admission requirements included mandatory standards for several key Grand Yin Law Techniques.

That left many students and parents unsure whether they were applying for Cold Qi or studying Grand Yin. But how could the Law Techniques of the Grand Yin path be so easy to learn?

Why not give it a try?

Jiang Wangxuan was itching to try. Mainly, the moon pattern engraved on the ring gave him some confidence. It definitely had nothing to do with the big fat fish in the Rising Yang Mansion holding up a sign that read "100% connected to Grand Yin."

Let's do it. Brother Fang, bless me with a big red prize!

The silver-white moon disk in his Qi sea activated, and moon essence carefully poured into the ring. Multicolored radiance lit up the entire room in an instant.

As moonlight flowed into it, the ring seemed to awaken gradually, siphoning up the moon essence Jiang Wangxuan sent into it.

"Foolish master, I told you! Since True Person Shouhui had Frost Cicada blood, how could she not be close to Grand Yin? Historical records clearly state that the Frost Cicada clan once performed the great feat of flying to the moon!"

Jiang Wangxuan ignored the big fat fish hopping about in the Rising Yang Mansion. All his spiritual sense was now focused on the ring. The cicada patterns engraved in it were awakening, and a silver-white "jade cicada" appeared in the room.

The cold wings on its back slowly spread, and seven-colored radiance flowed around its entire body.

A cicada's cry and a sigh crossed time and space to ring out once more over Jinping Mountain's night sky. The sound was clear and cold, like frost falling onto a jade plate, chilling those who heard it to the bone.

Yet the cicada's cry was heard not by the ears, but by Qi. Ordinary people who had not cultivated Law Power could not hear it. Fang Lin, who was nearby chatting with the owner of a local bar, had a drastic change of expression.

He looked in surprise toward the hotel as a streak of silver frost darted from the balcony of a room and flew straight toward Jinping Mountain.

The silver frost traced a streak of silver-white brilliance across the night sky, then spread out to either side like a pair of cicada wings flying through the heavens.

In the time it took the hotel owner to turn around, the "guest" who had just been chatting so enthusiastically and spending so freely had vanished into thin air.

Then someone outside shouted, "Look out there! Is that the Cicada Immortal showing her divine power?"