The Dragon King of the West Sea’s dragon pearl had appeared on the Jing City University campus and was being used as the core of a spiritual-energy formation… Qin Shu knew very well what that meant.
The two dragons in his household rarely used their dragon pearls in ordinary circumstances, but in truth, those pearls were enormously important to dragonkind.
Every luminous pearl and similar magical artifact on the market had actually been designed in imitation of a dragon pearl. Everyone wanted one. They carried extremely auspicious symbolism, practically a blessing made tangible.
Because a dragon pearl was the dragon’s “inner core.”
Just like a yao cultivator’s yao core or a human cultivator’s Nascent Soul… it contained enormous stores of energy, dragon qi, and life force. The priceless pearl spoken of in old sayings was the dragon pearl. In ancient times, even saliva collected while a dragon held its pearl in its mouth became a precious treasure fiercely bid on at auctions.
Dragons were innately powerful enough to survive even if their pearls were taken from them, but their strength would fall drastically. They could no longer change form easily, freely travel through heaven and earth, or perform the Dragon Kings’ unique feats of summoning clouds and rain and overturning rivers and seas.
Pei Zhao was a special case, and Qin Shu still had not figured out the full cause and effect behind him, so that could be set aside for now. But the situation in front of them was completely different. A Dragon King without his dragon pearl… that was a massive problem.
Either he was already dead, or he was in extremely bad condition.
The white dragon realized this even before Qin Shu did. His state abruptly changed, and his voice turned hoarse. “That breach or whatever you call it is inside the cave, right? I’m going in to look. I’m going in right now.”
Qin Shu abruptly reached out and pinned him down, gripping the white dragon, who had deliberately shrunk himself earlier, tightly in his palm.
The white dragon reacted almost like he had been triggered. He struggled wildly on instinct, only to discover that he could not break free from Qin Shu’s grasp at all. Angry shock nearly blazed from his faintly glowing golden eyes. “You… when did you get this strong?!”
“Why are you suddenly rushing again? It’s not like we won’t help you. We still don’t know whether the person who set up the formation is friend or foe. What if you offend them immediately and completely destroy the only lead related to your father?” Qin Shu gave him a helpless look. “You’ve lived for thousands of years and you’re still this impulsive. With that state of mind, who exactly are you planning to save?”
“…”
The white dragon was speechless. Perhaps because Qin Shu was gripping him too tightly, the hostility that had finally begun rising in his heart vanished again. He went limp and motionless in Qin Shu’s hand, like a boneless snake.
“Let’s go. We’ll take a look inside.” Pei Zhao did not participate in this brief round of family discipline. His attention was entirely fixed on the seemingly ordinary cave entrance, one of the rare things that had managed to stir his interest.
The cave entrance had barriers and signs forbidding unauthorized entry, with surveillance cameras hanging nearby. Apparently even students from the university were normally not allowed to enter casually.
But surveillance had never been much of an obstacle to Pei Zhao, and concealment arts were not limited to hiding only himself.
The two silently stepped over the barrier and walked inward along strips of artificial lighting installed in the cave.
There was nothing especially scenic inside. It was somewhat damper and colder than outside, and the faint sound of dripping water could be heard.
In ancient times, this had been the cemetery of a wealthy household. After tomb raiders uncovered it, the humid air made the surviving antiquities vulnerable to deterioration, so the site had undergone several rounds of protective excavation. Over time, only historically significant gravestones remained in place. Everything else had been properly transferred to museums.
Qin Shu concentrated and examined the surroundings carefully. Suddenly, he noticed traces of a protective formation. The patterns were hidden inside the lighting strips, almost impossible for an ordinary person to notice, and the design was remarkably clever. The formation was not aggressive either. Its only functions were protection and warning.
The gentle nature of the formation alone was enough to show that whoever had placed these things here was clearly nothing like Zuo Zhe.
Some of the tension left Qin Shu’s shoulders, although he continued holding the white dragon firmly so he could not run wild.
“This way,” Pei Zhao said softly, leading Qin Shu toward a narrower side passage. “Someone’s ahead.”
“Whew…”
Actually, Qin Shu had sensed it faintly even without Pei Zhao’s reminder. An immensely powerful, extraordinarily dense spiritual aura spread out from the darkness. Even someone like Qin Shu, who was not especially sensitive to spiritual energy, could clearly perceive how concentrated it was in the air.
They walked silently inward for about five minutes. At first the passage narrowed more and more, almost as though they were entering a dead end, but at the very end it suddenly opened up into a broad, rounded chamber.
Rounded. Truly, incredibly rounded. Qin Shu swept his gaze across it and discovered that the chamber was actually an almost perfectly spherical space, so round it was unnerving. Unless something very strange had happened naturally, it had to have been made by someone.
At the exact center of the spherical chamber, an ordinary-looking middle-aged woman floated in midair in a cross-legged meditation posture. All the power gathered by the spiritual-energy formation poured into her body, gently lifting and enveloping her.
The dense spiritual fluctuations were almost tangible, streams of colored light flowing around her like another sphere inside the larger sphere.
Qin Shu cleared his throat. “Hello?”
The woman’s eyes snapped open the next instant, bright and piercing as lightning as her gaze shot directly toward Qin Shu.
“Who comes here?” Her lips did not move, yet her vigorous voice filled the entire chamber and echoed slowly around them.
“Hello, Senior. I’m Qin Shu, and this is Pei Zhao.” As Qin Shu spoke, he raised the tense white dragon in his hand and gave him a little shake. “This is Ao Wang, Fourth Prince of the West Sea. You should know him, right?”
“Mm. Ao Run’s son.” The middle-aged woman paused slightly and murmured the words, her tone seeming to soften. Her gaze then fell on Pei Zhao before moving away again almost immediately. “I am Yuxu. How could I deserve to be called Senior? Fellow Daoists, have you come because of the dragon pearl, or…?”
She could tell at a glance that Pei Zhao was extraordinary and was extremely sensitive to power. That alone meant she was no ordinary person herself.
Qin Shu smiled. “Senior Yuxu, we mean no harm. We only noticed the dragon pearl on the way here just now. We came to Jing City University for the winter camp, and also because of… the world fracture. You’re meditating here alone because you’re guarding the fracture now that no deity is suppressing it, aren’t you?”
His words were extraordinarily direct and candid, making the cultivator named Yuxu’s eyelid twitch. After a moment of silence, she nodded faintly. “Yes. Unfortunately, my strength is limited. I can only do my best to keep Jing City stable. The gods have withdrawn from the world, and there is nothing I can do about that, so I cannot look after other places. If there is still no improvement in another ten-odd years, I fear even I will no longer be able to hold on.”
“We came precisely because we want to find a way to improve things. Do you know the name Zuo Zhe?” Qin Shu asked tentatively. “He was another of the main culprits behind the gods’ withdrawal from the world.”
“…He’s still alive?!” Yuxu’s expression changed drastically. Even the gentle spiritual energy surrounding her surged violently like rolling waves.
“No, no. We killed him a while ago, in Jiangcheng,” Qin Shu hurriedly added to reassure her. “Don’t worry, Senior. He’s completely dead. I killed him personally, and I ate what was left of his soul too.”
“…Good. Good. My horizons were still too narrow. I never imagined a scourge like that could have survived to this age and continued doing evil in the world.” Yuxu slowly sighed. “Fellow Daoist Qin, thank you. Consider me indebted to you. Killing such a villain is a great service to everyone under Heaven. In time, merit will surely gather around you.”
“You’ve met him before, Senior?” Qin Shu could not help becoming curious. Under normal circumstances, Zuo Zhe’s lifespan should have been exhausted long ago. After that, he had quietly hidden among ordinary society and almost never shown himself openly before cultivators again.
But judging from Yuxu’s reaction, it seemed the two of them had once shared an extremely deep blood feud.
Hearing the question, Yuxu fell silent again for quite a while. “Before he ‘died,’ he stopped at nothing in pursuit of a method to extend his lifespan and slaughtered my entire family. I was the only survivor, fortunate enough to be taken into a sect to cultivate. I was six years old then. By the time I heard what had happened, there was already nothing I could do.”
What happened afterward hardly needed explaining. She cultivated single-mindedly inside her sect, intending to take revenge. Yet by the time she finally became strong enough to kill her enemy with her own hands, the news she received instead was that Zuo Zhe’s lifespan had run out and he had died. Then A Soul Cultivator’s Notes on Killing caused an uproar, spreading widely among cultivators and receiving no small amount of admiration. For a while, similar “inspirational stories” even circulated throughout the cultivation world because of it.
“Being unable to avenge my family gradually became a long-standing obsession in my heart… Perhaps it was precisely because I had that obsession, one unfinished goal that had never been fulfilled, that I managed to survive until today.”
“How can you call that merely surviving? You’re the longest-lived human I’ve ever met, and you’ve lived openly and properly all the way until now. You’re nothing like Zuo Zhe, stealing other people’s fates and lifespans everywhere he went.”
Qin Shu spoke solemnly, then lifted the white dragon, whose tension had eased somewhat, and gave him another little shake. “Not to mention you’re still contributing to world peace. Even Ao Wang said Jing City was full of dragon qi and was a good place. This guy has an awful personality. That was the first time I’ve ever heard him praise anything.”
“…Qin Shu, you… tch. Forget it.”
The white dragon tried to struggle free, but still could not move at all. He could only lie flat and mutter, his bright golden dragon eyes fixed on Yuxu. “Now that we’re done talking about Zuo Zhe, let’s discuss the more important matter. Why is my imperial father’s dragon pearl in your hands? What did you do to him?”
“He was suppressing a world fracture in western Huaguo when he suddenly sensed that something might happen to him. He sent a subordinate to deliver the dragon pearl to me in advance, and then disappeared without a trace.” Yuxu looked at the little dragon in Qin Shu’s palm with a kindly smile. “He told me not to be stingy with it and to use the pearl as fully as possible, so I had no choice but to do as he asked.”
“Wait, he sent it to you voluntarily?! Why?” The white dragon was utterly shocked. “I was still sealed onto that woman’s face in Phoenix Village at the time. Why was he so busy sending you his dragon pearl that he couldn’t send somebody to save me?!”
The smile on Yuxu’s face grew even more obvious. Her patience was almost strangely good as she explained unhurriedly, “Your imperial father sees farther than you do. He understood what path would benefit you most in the future. Listen properly to these two Fellow Daoists and stop causing trouble. That is how you will stay safe in this chaotic age.”
“…No, seriously, who exactly are you?” The anger in the white dragon’s chest was gently blocked before it could burst out, leaving nowhere for him to vent it. Somehow, even his momentum weakened. “What, are you one of my imperial father’s old flames?”
“Mm.” Yuxu smiled faintly.
“…Mm?” Qin Shu almost thought he had misheard. Eyes wide, he blurted, “Really?!”
“My bond with your father goes back more than two thousand years. At first we separated and reconciled again and again, and once we even went a full century without seeing each other. But after we grew older, we no longer had the energy for all that fighting.” Yuxu sank into memory. “If the suppression of the world fractures had not been too urgent to delay, and if this chaotic age were not already approaching… Ao Wang, once the Severing of Heaven and Earth was complete, I should have formally become your stepmother.”
Elio’s Notes: The “Severing of Heaven and Earth” draws on the ancient idea of separating the human and divine realms and restricting free passage between them. The novel treats it here as a historical supernatural era/event.
“…”
Ao Wang’s eyes widened. For a long while he could not speak. Several times he looked as though he wanted to say something and stopped himself, but he had to admit the explanation made sense.
Because he had secretly guessed something like this himself. A human cultivator who could obtain the West Sea dragon pearl and knew how to use it either had the strength to snatch it from his imperial father by force, or his imperial father had willingly handed it over.
Dragons were amorous by nature, and their branch of the West Sea lineage… had always been particularly prone to falling hopelessly in love. Ao Wang himself was proof of that. It had to be hereditary, which meant his imperial father could hardly have been any better.
“You… Fine. I’ll shut up. You keep talking.” The white dragon thought by himself for a long while and only with great difficulty managed to convince himself. Finally, he spoke again in a strange, gloomy tone.
“He’s adorable, isn’t he?” Yuxu laughed softly again.
Qin Shu did not dare answer that. Scratching his head, he continued, “Senior Yuxu, let’s talk about the serious matter first. It’s also related to the world fractures. Cough… We’ll have to start with Zuo Zhe.”
＊
Half an hour later, the two left the cave, hurrying away before security came by on patrol.
There was now an almost unnoticeable wood-colored bead among the beads around Qin Shu’s wrist. Mixed between the blood-red beads, it should have looked completely out of place, yet to anyone else’s eyes there was nothing unusual about it at all.
The bracelet itself was a new design Chang Liu Yi had sent over a few days earlier. The additional wooden bead had been condensed from magical power by Yuxu.
Her family’s ancestral cultivation method was called the Evergreen Art, which naturally had a strong affinity with plants and vegetation. It was not especially suited to fighting on the battlefield, but once someone cultivated the Evergreen Art successfully, it could give them roughly twice the lifespan of an ordinary cultivator.
The technique was best suited to people with gentle, genuinely kind natures. The more sincerely they cherished plants and trees, the easier it became to progress. One could imagine that when Zuo Zhe set his crooked sights on the secret of Yuxu’s family longevity, he had probably become furious with frustration. After all, there was no way a person with a nature like his could easily extend his life through the Evergreen Art.
Yuxu was his complete opposite. She carried a blood feud, yet had never become utterly extreme because of it. Even though she possessed a treasure as precious as a dragon pearl, she used it only as a tool to preserve Jing City’s stability and devoted herself completely to that work, not even caring that it delayed her own cultivation.
Despite having lived for thousands of years, she did not put on the airs of an elder in front of Qin Shu at all. Instead, she treated them with considerable respect. Only when she looked at the white dragon did an extra trace of maternal affection inevitably appear.
It was precisely this temperament that had allowed her to cultivate smoothly for thousands of years and become the sole surviving grandmaster of the Evergreen Art. No matter how “low” her combat power supposedly was, she could still effortlessly crush ninety-nine percent of cultivators. On top of that, she possessed an extremely unusual power that came close to creation itself.
For example, a moment ago Yuxu had casually pointed a finger and turned qi into wood, condensing it into a modest magical artifact that she gave Qin Shu as a small greeting gift to mark the start of their cooperation. The wooden bead functioned as one of her eyes, making long-distance communication convenient at any time, and it was also exceptionally effective at calming the mind, warding off evil, and attracting wealth.
Elio’s Notes: The supplied raw prints 精心, literally “careful/meticulous,” in the bead’s list of effects. Context strongly suggests 静心, “calming the mind,” which is the sense used here.
Qin Shu had never received anything this good from Daoist Master Xu. Now he finally got to experience it. The moment he came down from the mountain, a sleek, glossy crow landed on his shoulder, dropped the diamond ring in its beak into Qin Shu’s palm, then calmly flew away.
“…Isn’t this a little too effective at attracting wealth?” Qin Shu stared blankly for a moment, then picked up the ring for a closer look. “That’s a real diamond. And it’s huge!”
“Let’s go. We’ll take it to lost and found. Gives us the perfect excuse to look around.” Pei Zhao also had one of the beads. The moment he saw the diamond ring flashing in the afternoon sunlight, his eyes quietly lit up.
Qin Shu led him around the pond toward the denser cluster of buildings. Catching sight of Pei Zhao’s shining eyes, he immediately raised an eyebrow. “You like diamond rings?”
Pei Zhao tilted his head. “You don’t?”
“They feel too hard. They’d press into my fingers and make me uncomfortable. Gold is softer, hahaha… But if you like them, that’s all that matters. I’ll buy you plenty later.” Qin Shu lifted Pei Zhao’s hand and very seriously counted his fingers. “Mm. Ten fingers total. Two huge diamonds on every finger. Not excessive, right?”
“That would be far too uncomfortable.” Pei Zhao leisurely played along with his nonsense. “Ten is enough. Quality, not quantity.”
“Very reasonable. Zhaozhao, you’re still the smart one! Fine. When I buy them, don’t tell me you don’t want to wear them. Put them on at least once so I can take a picture, okay? Totally reasonable, right?”
“…Okay.”
The two chatted and joked the entire way as though nothing unusual were happening. By the time they reached several of the teaching buildings, they looked almost no different from ordinary students and had drawn little attention.
However, after handing the diamond ring to a teacher staying on campus over winter break, they did not hurry away. Instead, they continued following ordinary passersby as though nothing were happening, floor by floor quietly familiarizing themselves with the internal layout of the various administrative departments.
Aside from professors whose winter classes had offices scattered elsewhere, most Jing City University staff worked in this building.
Audit Office, Legal Affairs Office, Financial Management Office… Anyone with the authority to secretly manipulate compensation for traffic deaths and the continued operation of that bus would have to be in one of these offices, or hold an even higher position.
This time Qin Shu did not send the white dragon ahead to scout. Considering how sophisticated Zuo Zhe’s mechanisms and formations had been, there was no guarantee his subordinates had not learned to imitate them. Alerting the enemy would make killing them more troublesome. Pei Zhao was the best at investigating things like this, and with Yuxu also watching through the wooden bead, they effectively had double insurance.
“There are two people in the restroom. They smell like demons.”
When the two silently reached the third floor, Pei Zhao suddenly pulled Qin Shu to a stop at the stairwell and spoke softly.
“The restroom again? Is it another hidden cave-dwelling setup?”
“Mm. Probably. The aura is very faint, as though there’s a barrier between us. The smell of demons is too distinctive. Even hidden in a different space, it’s still obvious.”
Qin Shu froze, torn between amusement and disbelief. “What is wrong with these people? Such bizarre hobbies. Why do they all like conducting their grand schemes in restrooms…?”
“They’re far weaker than Zuo Zhe. Not worth wasting time on.” Pei Zhao frowned slightly. “Wait here a moment.”
The words had barely left his mouth before Pei Zhao vanished from Qin Shu’s sight.
Two breaths later, he strolled back out of the restroom as though nothing had happened. Qin Shu had not even seen what occurred. He could only feel the visual barrier before him disappear completely, revealing the true form of the cave dwelling wedged into a spatial gap.
With the deliberately erected barrier gone, Qin Shu did not need to enter personally to inspect it. His strength had improved more and more recently, enough for him to perceive things that were now “obvious.”
Even through the wall, Qin Shu could see everything clearly. Opening the door of the last restroom stall and activating two concealed mechanisms was enough to enter and leave the cave dwelling with ease.
The small cave dwelling that had once been carefully hidden was now completely empty. Pei Zhao had casually taken everything of value. Only a few dark-red fragments of formation patterns remained faintly visible on the floor, already useless.
Two cultivator corpses also lay neatly across the damaged formations, faces blank and eyes still open. Everything valuable on them had likewise been taken, including storage bags and various defensive artifacts… Their bewildered expressions made it obvious that when they died, they had not even realized they were already dead.
“Let’s go. We’ll look around a little more, then get dinner.” Pei Zhao looked at the slightly dazed Qin Shu and poked his arm.
“…Okay.” Qin Shu instinctively took his hand and walked a few steps back the way they had come before suddenly looking thoughtful. “They were weaker than the sea beasts you create in your illusions?”
“Mm.”
These two cultivators were even weaker than the minor monsters in the “dungeon,” so there was no value in using them for Qin Shu’s combat training.
Qin Shu understood. Beings comparable to Zuo Zhe were simply too rare.
In that case…
“Zhaozhao, you brought the oil lamp, right? Extra training tonight?”