Baoyu City Lord Residence.
The dense web of formations was gone. Only a basic defensive formation remained, better than nothing.
Half the wall around the City Lord Residence had collapsed, and quite a few people had gathered to watch. The townsfolk whispered among themselves that a bolt of heavenly lightning had suddenly fallen the day before and shaken the wall down. Who knew, perhaps the place had incurred divine punishment…
Before long, the guards emerged from inside, drove the onlookers away, cleared a path ahead, and escorted the City Lord out on an inspection.
The townsfolk did not dare linger and scattered in every direction.
Not far away, Xia Yunzhao, who had been watching the whole time, asked, “Well?”
Zhong Yundu said, “That City Lord is the former guard captain. Late Golden Core. I traded a few moves with him.”
Shang Shuangze nodded, indicating that he had noticed the same thing.
Du Yan said, “From the looks of it, everyone in Baoyu City except us has had their memories altered. Zhu Lingzi’s doing?”
Jing Ruyun frowned. “Who else could manage something like that?”
Xia Yunzhao did not answer. He was rapidly replaying everything that had happened yesterday, or rather, the day before now: the Heaven-and-Earth Furnace activating, Zhu Lingzi seizing him and dragging him into the furnace, seeing Xiang Yu, being thrown back out, then their discovery of the furnace’s core, Shang Shuangze unleashing his sword strike…
He raised his head just as Shang Shuangze looked over. The two spoke at the same time. “Baiyujing…”
Du Yan let out a soft sound of realization.
Su Meng hurriedly asked, “What? What is it? City Lord, Senior Shang, what is Baiyujing?”
Xia Yunzhao sank into thought. “Did he let us go out of consideration for Baiyujing? Was he afraid of attracting attention, enough that he even went to all the trouble of altering everyone’s memories throughout the city? Even at the Soul Transformation stage, with such powerful divine sense, changing the memories of an entire city can’t be easy. What connection does he have with Baiyujing?”
Everyone turned to Shang Shuangze.
Shang Shuangze truly lived up to his reputation as the most emotionally stable man among them. Faced with all that pressure, he simply shook his head with his usual expression. “I don’t know.”
Zhong Yundu stared at him. “…Are you actually a disciple of Baiyujing or not? You know nothing every time we ask you!”
Xia Yunzhao immediately jumped to his defense. “Zhu Lingzi is already at the Soul Transformation stage. How could Shang Shuangze possibly know about the affairs of Soul Transformation cultivators?”
Zhong Yundu looked at him in exasperation. “Sure, just keep defending him!”
Xia Yunzhao turned back toward the City Lord Residence. He had no idea how Zhu Lingzi had altered everyone’s memories, but there was not the slightest disorder in the city. Rubbing his chin, he said, “That new City Lord just left with the guards, right?”
Zhong Yundu looked up at the sky. “What are you planning now?”
Xia Yunzhao beckoned to them, sprang up, and vaulted inside.
What else could they do? They left a few people behind to protect Su Ying and Su Meng, while everyone else followed him in.
Not only had the wall around the City Lord Residence collapsed, many of the buildings had as well. That was Shang Shuangze and Zhong Yundu’s handiwork.
The small wooden building, on the other hand, was still standing. Only the two puppets that had guarded it were gone. After searching around the building, they finally found both puppets, already completely wrecked.
“Spread out and look around,” Xia Yunzhao whispered. “Take everything Zhu Lingzi left behind.”
One of the guards hesitated, then whispered back, “City Lord, that isn’t called taking. It’s called stealing.”
Xia Yunzhao corrected himself at once. “Then steal everything Zhu Lingzi left behind.”
The guard: “…”
Everyone searched the City Lord Residence from top to bottom. Taking advantage of the new City Lord’s absence, they hurriedly slipped away, regrouped with those waiting outside, and ran all the way out of the city in one breath.
“All right, they probably won’t chase us this far. What did you find? Let me see.” Xia Yunzhao’s spiritual power still had not recovered, and after running for a while, he could already feel his meridians growing sluggish.
Shang Shuangze took hold of his wrist and slowly transferred spiritual power into him.
Zhong Yundu tossed something down with a clatter and said speechlessly, “I’ve killed people and set fires in this life, but I’ve never stolen anything before.”
Xia Yunzhao said, “That’s not exactly something to be proud of either.” He looked again and found that everyone had brought back quite a haul, from spirit items and precious artifacts to tables, chairs, benches, and stools. Apparently, anything bearing Zhu Lingzi’s aura had been carried away.
Really, stealing was almost beside the point. The rarest sight was a whole crowd of Golden Core and Foundation Establishment cultivators sniffing around everywhere like dogs. Clearly, the City Lord of Qingxi City commanded far more loyalty than the City Lord of Baoyu City!
Xia Yunzhao carefully rummaged through the pile of odds and ends. Anything useless went straight to Xiao Qing, while anything still reasonably intact was divided among the others.
Suddenly, he spotted a wooden box. It looked familiar. He picked it up and asked, “Who brought this back? Where did you find it?”
One of the guards quickly raised a hand. “I found it in the small wooden building. It was the only thing in there that carried Zhu Lingzi’s aura.”
Xia Yunzhao remembered at once. Right! This box had been sitting on the table in Xiang Yu’s bedroom. They had all seen it when they broke into the building that day. But at the time, it had not carried Zhu Lingzi’s aura at all, and Xiang Yu had said that Zhu Lingzi had never once entered the building.
Looking at the box, Xia Yunzhao suddenly had an intense premonition that Zhu Lingzi had deliberately left it there for him.
He opened it. Inside was a letter, several ancient books, and a heap of jade slips.
Du Yan shook his head slightly. “He really hasn’t given up.”
The others looked puzzled. What did he mean?
Du Yan explained, “That Zhu Lingzi wants to take our City Lord as his disciple. He left, but he even prepared self-study materials for him.”
Su Meng jumped up at once. “Then you definitely can’t read them! Who knows what kind of garbage he left behind?”
Xia Yunzhao said nothing. He merely picked up one of the jade slips and frowned slightly.
Su Meng grew anxious and was about to say more when his older brother stopped him. Su Ying shook his head, signaling that the City Lord knew his own limits.
After a long moment, Xia Yunzhao looked up. “None of us have fully recovered our spiritual power, and Cloudwater Ferry is damaged too. Let’s rest outside the city for a few days.”
No one objected, though they all knew Xia Yunzhao wanted to use those few days to finish reading the materials in the box.
Xia Yunzhao made no attempt to hide it. The moment they found a suitable place to camp, he brought out the Wandering-Cloud Retreat and went straight inside.
The Wandering-Cloud Retreat was a Level-Three magical artifact. Once set down, it transformed into a two-story building. It could not compare with their own valley, but it was comfortable enough, and more than adequate as a place for temporary seclusion.
That afternoon, Shang Shuangze and Zhong Yundu made a trip out and dug up the nearby spirit vein. Without the Spirit-Jade Resin, the vein would rapidly dry up. The fact that they had managed to find it before that happened could only be called a stroke of luck.
City Lord Xia had not exactly been poor to begin with, and with this spirit vein in hand, his pockets were even deeper. He immediately allocated three million spirit pearls for everyone to spend freely on replenishing supplies for the road.
By the third day, everyone had long since recovered, and even Cloudwater Ferry had been repaired. Xia Yunzhao finally emerged.
Everyone crowded around him at once. “How was it? Nothing wrong, right?”
Xia Yunzhao gave a bitter smile. “There’s nothing wrong. Or rather, the problem is that there’s nothing wrong.”
Everyone exchanged confused looks. Zhong Yundu humbly asked, “City Lord, could you speak human?”
Xia Yunzhao was in no mood to banter with him. He waved a hand. “Give me a little time to process this.”
The others looked at one another, then all shot Shang Shuangze a meaningful look before reluctantly leaving.
Even Shang Shuangze seemed a little at a loss. Ordinarily, Xia Yunzhao was delighted whenever he learned something new, and sometimes he would chatter on and on to Shang Shuangze about it. It was rare to see him emerge from seclusion looking so dejected.
After thinking for a moment, Shang Shuangze walked over and sat beside him. “What is it? Were the jade slips fake?”
Xia Yunzhao dropped his head against Shang Shuangze’s chest. “They were real. The ancient books were real too. Those materials record Zhu Lingzi’s entire progression from a Level-One pill cultivator to a Level-Five pill cultivator.”
At this point, Xia Yunzhao had no choice but to admit that Zhu Lingzi truly did want to take him as a disciple. The materials in the wooden box were so comprehensive that even Xia Yunzhao, with Xiao Qing in his possession, found them astonishing.
And that was precisely why his heart felt so heavy.
He continued, “Zhu Lingzi once refined lowest-grade pills too. He used to give pills to mortals.”
Zhu Lingzi had no sect or master either. The reason he had managed to set foot on the path of pill cultivation was naturally because of a fortuitous encounter of his own. His opportunity had come in the form of a pill cultivator’s inheritance inside a small secret realm, one so dangerous that many cultivators who entered never made it back out alive.
At the time, Zhu Lingzi had only been at Foundation Establishment, yet he not only survived the secret realm but emerged with a pill cultivator’s inheritance. It was then that he discovered just how talented he was at alchemy.
The inheritance was remarkably complete. Although it only reached the level of a Level-Five pill cultivator, it contained pill recipes ranging from the lowest grade all the way through Grade Five.
Zhu Lingzi was not an ordinary cultivator, or perhaps it was better to say that he looked farther ahead than most. At the time, he lived in a small city called Yanxun, whose population numbered only in the tens of thousands.
He realized that if he wanted to cultivate in peace, having a stable place to live was important. He was at a critical point in his cultivation and did not want to move from city to city. And if the city itself was to remain stable, then its mortal population had to remain stable as well.
So he refined large quantities of lowest-grade pills and either sold them cheaply or gave them away to treat mortal illnesses. He even made several mortal friends and attended their wedding feasts.
This continued until he advanced to become a Level-Two pill cultivator. He was still at Foundation Establishment at the time, and his cultivation continued to improve at a respectable pace, but his progress in alchemy had hit a bottleneck.
He realized that he could not keep working behind closed doors, so he left Yanxun to travel.
He was gone for more than eighty years. By the time he returned, all the friends he had once known were dead, and Yanxun had forgotten the cultivator who had once treated its people. Even the descendants of his old friends trembled before him and respectfully addressed him as “my lord.”
So he left Yanxun once more and never returned.
He came to Baoyu City and became its City Lord. He continued cultivating and refining pills until he reached the Nascent Soul stage and became a Level-Four pill cultivator, whereupon he encountered another bottleneck.
This time, he had far more experience and understood his own state much better. He realized that the other cultivators had been right.
“What is the Dao?” he had written on one of the jade slips left for Xia Yunzhao. “The Dao is law, the laws that govern heaven and earth.”
When rain falls, the ground gets wet. When wind blows, it carries away dust. Whether you are a cultivator or a mortal, these things do not change.
And how does one discover these laws? By experimenting. By experimenting again and again, regardless of the consequences.
That was the process of “attaining the Dao.”
And so Zhu Lingzi embarked on his path of experimentation. Wherever his predecessors had gone, he wanted to go and see for himself. The mortals and low-tier cultivators caught up in those experiments were merely the losses one should expect along the way.
What of the Heaven-and-Earth Furnace? What of the Human-Origin Dao Embryo? If they could help him attain the Dao, why would he not use them?
The more Xia Yunzhao recounted to Shang Shuangze, the worse he felt. He rushed through the last few sentences, then asked, “Do you think he’s right?”
Shang Shuangze slowly stroked the back of his neck and said softly, “Don’t you already have your answer?”
Xia Yunzhao lay across his lap. After a long silence, he said just as softly, “He has to be wrong. If what he says is true, then something is wrong with the Heavenly Dao itself.”
A cold gust suddenly swept past, and a tiny bolt of lightning cracked down from the sky.
Xia Yunzhao did not even raise his head. He closed his eyes and looked inward at Xiao Qing in his sea of consciousness. Xiao Qing had exhausted itself earlier. It had taken a blow from Zhu Lingzi while protecting Xia Yunzhao and had been asleep for days without waking.
Now the little bronze pill furnace floated in the boundless qi sea, every pattern on its surface rendered in exquisite detail. Even the inscriptions that could not be looked at directly flickered on and off as though breathing.
Xia Yunzhao thought, Zhu Lingzi has to be wrong. Otherwise, why would Xiao Qing have appeared at my side?
Shang Shuangze continued stroking him. “When we reach Qianyuan Sect, you’ll meet many cultivators. Perhaps you’ll find your answer there.”
Xia Yunzhao shook his head abruptly. “My answer has never changed. I only want to understand why other people arrive at a different one.”
Shang Shuangze smiled. “I would gladly walk this path with you.”
* * *
After several days of rest, the group finally set out again.
With the spirit vein now supplying it, Cloudwater Ferry moved much faster than before.
Xia Yunzhao happened to be too wary to stop anywhere now anyway. Every time they stopped, something went wrong. Who could take that? He did not know whether the cities they visited were cursed with bad luck or whether he was the unlucky one… In any case, eating and sleeping aboard the ship was perfectly comfortable, so they might as well make one straight run for the shores of Wangjin Sea!
More than twenty days passed in this manner, and Cloudwater Ferry duly bypassed two large cities where they could have stopped.
At most, they occasionally landed in the wilderness to kill a few slaughter beasts and stretch their limbs. Otherwise, they did not encounter so much as a single traveler.
By then, Xia Yunzhao had completely recovered his spirits. Standing on deck with one hand braced against the railing, he gazed proudly over the endless sea of clouds. “See? I told you. We should just keep going in one push until we reach our destination!”
Shang Shuangze chuckled. “Mm. You’re always right.”
Beside them, Zhong Yundu drawled, “City Lord, Madam City Lord, allow me to remind you that we’ve already spent more than ten thousand low-grade spirit stones on this trip.”
Xia Yunzhao whipped his head around. “That much?”
Zhong Yundu spread his hands. “Look how fast we’ve been traveling. In just over twenty days, we’ve already covered nearly half the journey. Give it another month or so and we’ll practically be there.”
Xia Yunzhao hesitated. “Should we slow down a little?”
“It really wouldn’t matter,” Du Yan said with his usual air of someone who had money to burn. “We’ve used less than a tenth of that spirit vein. It’s more than enough to carry us all the way to Qianyuan Sect.”
Xia Yunzhao shot to his feet. “What? We’ve already used a tenth of it?! Quick, slow down! I’m taking that spirit vein back to Qingxi City as a family heirloom!”
Du Yan: “…”
Zhong Yundu gave him a thumbs-up. “Only you.”
Du Yan: “…” That wasn’t what he meant…
The City Lord hurried off to slow the ship and conserve resources. Then Su Meng’s voice rang out across the deck. “Food’s ready! We’ve got mutton, beef, and turtle today. Seniors, what do you want?”
It was only after they started traveling aboard the ship that everyone discovered just how good Su Ying and Su Meng were at cooking. Even simple ingredients became delicious in their hands. The two brothers also especially enjoyed being needed, so naturally, the job of cooking had fallen to them.
In truth, many of the cultivators present had already reached the point where they no longer needed food. Even those who had not were accustomed to taking fasting pills while traveling. It was only after meeting Xia Yunzhao that everyone had developed the good habit of eating three meals a day.
Xia Yunzhao efficiently reduced the ship’s speed. The moment he emerged from the control room and heard Su Meng’s shout again, he asked curiously, “Turtle? Where did that come from?”
Su Meng trotted over like an eager puppy. “Senior Shang flew down and caught it this morning! We passed a big river earlier. You said yesterday that you wanted fish, so Senior Shang went looking for some, but then he ran into this enormous turtle. He figured you’d never eaten one before, so he brought it back.” He spread his arms wide. “It’s as big as a table! Brother says we can cook it several different ways!”
Xia Yunzhao had never eaten turtle before either, and his interest was instantly piqued. “Is it good?”
“It is!” Su Meng nodded furiously and could not help swallowing. “Among aquatic beasts, turtles contain way more spiritual energy than fish! They taste good even in a plain clear stew. Brother can also use the shell like a roasting pan. It’s delicious!”
Su Meng had successfully made Xia Yunzhao hungry too. “Then let’s eat it! There are plenty of us, so make a few different flavors. I want spicy! And clear stew!” He turned to the others. “What do all of you want?”
“Red-braised!” Zhong Yundu raised his hand.
Du Yan nodded slightly. “Clear stew sounds good.”
“City Lord, I want something sour…”
“How about grilling some?”
Xia Yunzhao swept a hand outward. “Don’t just stand around waiting to eat. Go help! Oh, right, where’s the turtle?”
Shang Shuangze smiled and lifted a hand slightly. With a heavy thud, an enormous turtle landed on the deck.
Only then did Xia Yunzhao realize that Su Meng had actually been conservative. This turtle was bigger than a table, unless one meant the kind of enormous banquet table that could seat more than a dozen people!
The turtle was not only huge, but also fairly high-ranked, with strength at the peak of Level Two and only a hair away from Level Three. It was only because it had run into Shang Shuangze that it had ended up as their meal. Against someone else, the outcome might not have been so certain.
The turtle was still alive. Its four massive, table-leg-like claws paddled weakly, and though its head was still dazed, it was already trying to escape.
Xia Yunzhao immediately called out, “Don’t throw away the turtle blood either. That has to be good too!”
Everyone laughed. Several guards swarmed forward to help butcher the giant turtle, while Xianchan and Xianbao joined the commotion, the two fluffy little creatures getting underfoot everywhere.
Come to think of it, everyone ate fish fairly often, but none of them had really eaten turtle before.
They collected several basins of turtle blood for Su Ying to deal with. As everyone cut open the shell and abdomen, one of the guards suddenly shouted, “Huh? There’s something in its belly… Treasure pearls! There are three treasure pearls inside the turtle!”
Xia Yunzhao had been helping pour spiritual water. At once, he ran over. “Seriously? Let me see.”
Everyone hurried aside. He crouched and peered into the bloody abdominal cavity, then laughed. “I wondered what it was. Aren’t these Water-Viscera Spirit Pearls?”
One of the guards asked curiously, “City Lord, you know this treasure?”
Xia Yunzhao nodded. “They’re called Water-Viscera Spirit Pearls, or Water-Viscera Stones. Many aquatic beasts swallow spirit items that their bodies can’t digest, and those materials eventually condense into pearls like these inside their organs. Qingxi City doesn’t have many waterways, so it’s normal that you’ve never seen one.”
He took out the three Water-Viscera Spirit Pearls and rinsed them clean with spiritual water. Sure enough, they were three glossy, sky-blue pearls with a smooth, warm luster. “Water-Viscera Spirit Pearls aren’t especially high-ranked, only around Level Two, but they continuously release a small amount of water-attributed spiritual power, so they’re still quite useful.”
After a moment’s thought, he said, “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll make the call. One goes to our Crimson-Cloud Brocadefish, and Liang An and Guang Yun get one each. Sound good?” He looked at Shang Shuangze.
As if Shang Shuangze could possibly object. He immediately nodded.
The guards all laughed. The two people their City Lord had picked were both members of the guard.
Qingxi City’s guards were treated quite well. These pearls were rare, but judging only by their function, most of them truly had no use for one. They were mostly fascinated by the novelty of something cut straight out of an aquatic beast’s belly.
Liang An and Guang Yun, however, looked both surprised and touched. They exchanged a glance, then asked a little sheepishly, “City Lord, you still remember our names?”
Xia Yunzhao stared at them speechlessly. “How many days have we been traveling together? If I still couldn’t remember you, wouldn’t I be an idiot?”
The two of them chuckled. They also knew why Xia Yunzhao had given the pearls to them. Of all the guards, only the two of them cultivated water-attributed methods. The pearls were not much use to the others, but they would benefit these two greatly.
That meant Xia Yunzhao did not merely remember the name of every member of the guard. He even remembered the attributes of the cultivation methods they practiced.
Holding all three pearls in his palm, Xia Yunzhao lowered his voice. “The Crimson-Cloud Brocadefish is still asleep. You two choose first. I’ll toss the one left over into its tank.”
Both men grinned. Looking almost like thieves, each chose the one he liked best and tucked it carefully away.
A sharp sizzle came from nearby. The turtle meat had already been prepared and gone into the pan.
Su Ying and Su Meng were anything but timid when they cooked. If anything, they had a bold, freewheeling style in the kitchen.
The brothers propped up the enormous turtle shell and lit spiritual fire beneath it. They clearly meant to use the shell itself as a wok and stir-fry the turtle meat right inside it, making the “original broth for the original food” saying unusually literal.
The spiritual power had not yet completely dispersed from the shell, and the spiritual fire heated it until it was scorching. The moment the turtle meat hit the surface, it rolled and darkened, and its aroma burst into the air. Su Ying seized the moment and tossed in a handful of chilies. Sizzle! A rich, spicy fragrance immediately billowed out.
Xia Yunzhao was practically drooling. “Shang Shuangze, hurry! It’s time to eat!”
Then he shouted again, “Brother Du! Brother Zhong! Hurry, food’s ready!”
They exchanged glances, laughed, and answered him.
Somehow, the group polished off the entire enormous turtle without leaving a scrap.
They did not even throw away the shell. Xia Yunzhao thought it made a remarkably good wok and decided to save it for next time.
That plan did not last long. Xianchan crawled inside it that very night and slept there. From that point on, the shell became its thirty-second nest. Since it was so spacious, Xianchan magnanimously declared that it was willing to share with its two masters and Xianbao.
Xia Yunzhao’s position was that children should not be spoiled and that one good beating would straighten them out. Unfortunately, no one aboard Cloudwater Ferry agreed. Thus, the kitten escaped discipline yet again.
Cloudwater Ferry continued onward at its reduced speed for another five or six days.
One morning, Xia Yunzhao got up and, as usual, leaned over the side of the ship to admire the scenery. In the distance, he vaguely made out an enormous city. Its gates were somewhat lower than Baoyu City’s, but the city itself covered an even larger area.
He instinctively started to adjust their course to go around it when Zhong Yundu glanced ahead and said in realization, “Oh, we’ve reached Buxianxian.”
Xia Yunzhao found the name interesting. “Buxianxian? Is this city famous?”
Zhong Yundu thought for a moment. “Not really. But it is rather unusual. It’s the only city inhabited entirely by mortals.”