Chapter 11

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Tai Sui’s human body separated from his dragon’s body. With his ashen dead man’s face that had yet to regain the nimbleness of life, he stood behind the dragon’s body, soaked through by the rain. Amid the noisy rain, he said, “General Zhi, when you were mortal, you said that you fought for the common people of Great Wan. Now that you’ve gone to the immortal mountains, you’ve forgotten us, haven’t you?”

General Zhi didn’t respond. Zhaoting had begun to shake. A part of the black dragon fell to the ground and turned back into a “shadow.” The “shadow” flowed towards Zhi Xiu like dirty water and wound around Zhaoting, which was joined with the earth.

At first, the black shadow touched the sword like cold water pouring onto fierce flames; it was vaporized at once. But as more and more black shadows poured off the dragon’s body, the light coming from Zhaoting began to weaken.

Pang Jian was about to speak, but he was choked by the blood still in his throat. For a time, he couldn’t speak, so he elbowed Xi Ping. Xi Ping somehow understood. He hadn’t chewed out Jiangli to his satisfaction, so he turned and scolded the great demon: “Great Wan’s common people belong to many families, but which family are you supposed to be part of? Do you carry your parents’ names, or do you make do with the name of the skin you’ve stolen…”

Tai Sui didn’t so much as turn his head. The black dragon’s tail came crashing towards them.

He sighed. “General Zhi, you were the first to abandon us.”

The black dragon wrapped around Zhaoting, then continued downward to pierce through the earth. Soon, an enormous dragon shadow had spread over the ground like an oil spill.

Raging waves rose on the calm canal outside of Jinping City, as if an enormous dragon were sweeping past underwater, the big waves nearly capsizing the ten-zhang-high steam-powered cargo ships; the southern mountains' ridges cracked, and many ancient trees along the cliffs were pulled up, roots and all; on the Sage’s Road, eternally untouched by dust, the inscriptions suddenly dimmed, and the snow-white stone blocks were splashed with mud from the rain; in Jinping, a crack appeared in the perfectly joined paving stones in Dangui Lane, like a snake, crawling from east to west, straight towards the imperial city, snapping the rich decorative carvings on the stones in two.

The Board of Astronomy’s seismic golden toad spat out a copper bead, setting off alarm bells.

An earthquake!

When the dragon’s tail came crashing towards them, Pang Jian was prepared. He seized Xi Ping with one hand and used his blood-stained other hand to draw a talisman on the ground. “Come on!”

The dragon’s tail fell with a rumble, but the two of them had vanished into thin air.

Xi Ping had seen Commander Pang walk through walls. This time he personally experienced “burrowing into the earth.”

He felt as if he had been turned into a sheet of paper, temporarily losing his senses, his whole body shrinking into a thin slice. In about the space of a breath, he was released once more. Xi Ping instinctively inhaled. The breath seemed to fill up his paper body and expand it once more.

And he was three zhang away, being pulled out of a gravestone by Pang Jian.

Amazing!

Xi Ping had no attention to spare for the fact that he had just nearly been pounded into the earth to join the beauties of the Blissful Village in their peaceful rest. He looked expectantly at Pang Jian, waiting for Commander Pang to instruct him to scold the demon again.

He wanted to have another go.

But when he looked, he found that Pang Jian’s face was rather grave.

Zhaoting could no longer suppress the earth’s tremors. A golden cord broke through the earth and surged towards the sky but was sucked midway into the black dragon’s mouth. The golden cord was pulled towards Tai Sui and wavered on the hem of his robe, quickly forming line after line of celestial inscriptions incomprehensible to mortals.

Pang Jian coughed twice to clear his throat. “This looks bad.”

“What’s wrong?” said Xi Ping.

Pang Jian didn’t answer. Actually, he didn’t especially believe that a half-dead evil cultivator could be a consummate ascended spirit, but regardless of whether he believed it, this demon could actually seize the Dragon Vein out from under Zhaoting.

His face grave, he looked in the direction of Jinping—somewhere, black smoke was rising. The sky above Jinping was clouding over.

Tai Sui had been completely wrong. Even if Jinping’s earth dragon rolled over, the important personages of Dangui Lane would at most receive a fright. There were no tall buildings to crush people on the west side of the Lingyang River, and moreover every family had a big garden where they could go to avoid natural disasters, as well as well-trained servants and guards; what did they have to fear?

The only ones to die would be the people struggling to survive in the narrow alleys and factory shacks… This demon must not have seen any wealthy and high-ranking people; perhaps he was a rustic demon.

“Exalted, don’t you think we ought to get a little further back?” The young master from Dangui Lane tugged at him. “All your subordinates have run off.”

“You go with them.” Pang Jian brushed away his hand and calmly pulled a long bow out from his femur. “I can’t look after you. Go find a place to hide on your own.”

Xi Ping froze, watching Commander Pang step forward raising his bow.

Xi Ping knew nothing about “ascended spirits,” but he had already worked this much out from the blue-clothesers' reactions: in the fight between General Zhi and Tai Sui, even the Exalteds of Heaven’s Design Pavilion had to stay out of the way. It was the same way house cats and street mutts were best off not even watching dragon wars and tiger battles, and instead running as fast as they could; even accidentally making a sound would bring mortal danger; they could only burrow into the earth to save their lives.

But something had possessed the mutt Commander Pang. With a struggle, he approached the edge of the enormous dragon shadow and brazenly drew the long bow with no arrow notched. A whirlwind formed at the center of the empty bowstring. The veins on the back of Pang Jian’s hand popped suddenly as he forced his ceaselessly shaking hand to remain stable. Scraps of leaves, fragments of rock, droplets of rain…everything was pulled in.

An evil cultivator “within half a step of shedding his skin” sounded too unbelievable. Even the immortal sect couldn’t have expected it. If General Zhi had backup, it would have appeared by now. Heaven’s Design Pavilion only had cultivators of the open-eyed period. Pang Jian was well aware that in all of Jinping, apart from the immortal envoy, his own better than nothing cultivation was the highest.

“Time for a last-ditch effort,” Pang Jian thought. “At worst I’ll die in the line of duty. I’ll see it through.”

When the bow was fully drawn, a reddish-gold arrow appeared out of nowhere on the empty bowstring, with fletching like the legendary phoenix, so scorching it dazzled the eye.

But when this awesome arrow hit the churning black shadow, it was like a weak spark sinking into a deep pool; before Xi Ping could even open his eyes, it was annihilated.

Xi Ping didn’t know what kind of bow this was, but he felt that the arrows it shot seemed to be a part of Commander Pang. As the arrow disappeared, Pang Jian staggered, the blood instantly draining clean out of his face. Only in his wild wolf’s eyes was the blaze unextinguished. He stared steady as stone at the golden cord weaving inscriptions on Tai Sui’s clothes and notched a second arrow.

Having lost Commander Pang’s protection, Xi Ping knew he ought to turn and run as far as he could. But for some reason, he stared at Pang Jian’s figure for a time without moving.

Amid the reeking wind and bloody rain, Xi Ping watched across a distance of several zhang as Pang Jian set about his futile task, shooting arrows whose flames grew weaker and weaker to no avail.

A second arrow, a third, a fourth…

There was blood at the ghastly pale corners of Pang Jian’s mouth, but the arrows fell with precise accuracy, closely pursuing the golden cord. Even if he had to move one step at time, he was still approaching.

The moment the sixteenth arrow fell into the black shadow, the golden cord actually paused for an instant. For just that instant, a segment of the golden cord “climbing” up the robe was pulled back by Zhaoting, and General Zhi and the demon were once again at a standstill.

Pang Jian couldn’t hold out any longer. His legs went weak, and he went to his knees. Before his knees touched the ground, he was dragged backwards over three chi from behind. A sharp wind like a chopper nearly scraped the soles of his shoes as it fell, cutting a deep gouge in the place where he had just been standing.

Pang Jian turned his head in astonishment and saw Xi Ping. He didn’t even have the strength to speak now. He could only use his eyes to ask: What are you still doing here?!

Xi Ping truly had the makings of an arrogant and overweening person. Propping up Pang Jian with both hands, he cheered him on enthusiastically: “Exalted, shoot another one, that one just now worked, I think you can do it!”

Pang Jian: “…”

Easy enough for you to say! Go fuck yourself!

“Are you out of arrows?” As if by divine aid, Xi Ping understood Commander Pang’s look. He got out a big branch from somewhere, as long as the arm span of a grown man. All the little twigs on it had been pared away and a long string of rotting paper messily strung to it, all the lewd verses he had torn down in the Blissful Village—he had been pretty busy just now.

Then this mystical youth took a paper fan out of his clothes and strung it onto the big branch as well. “Use this as an arrow! That Exalted Zhao said this karma beast or whatever is the Southern Sage’s mythological animal and can expel evil. Try it! Hurry, hurry, while the wind is in the right direction!”

The karma beast that hated all evil, forced into coexistence with a pile of unspeakable material, showed an ominous glint in its enormous eyes, as if it wanted to expel this bastard Xi first of all.

Pang Jian managed to take a breath. “Kid, are you even human?!”

He put a hand on Xi Ping’s shoulder, holding himself up, and really did take the incredible “arrow.”

This time, Pang Jian didn’t shoot the branch at the great demon. He considered briefly, steadied his shaking hand as best he could, and shot the spear-like piece of wood into the air.

How could an ordinary thing like this branch approach an ascended spirit cultivator? It had hardly left the bowstring before it disintegrated. The papers on it also went to pieces and floated towards Tai Sui like snowflakes.

There wasn’t a trace of spiritual energy on these scraps of paper. Tai Sui didn’t so much as look at them.

But the next moment, he suddenly froze.

Slowly, Tai Sui tilted his head. His gaze fell on the hem of his robe.

A two-cun long karma beast passed from countless scraps of paper onto his robe—the grave clothes had designs on them. When the karma beast landed amid the inscriptions, it opened its mouth wide and bit them!

The little beast’s body was immediately torn apart and disappeared into nothing. But it had bitten off a corner of the robe, and the dovetailing line of inscriptions immediately went askew.

Inscriptions required extensive knowledge and profound scholarship. The least error, and everything would go wrong. At this tiny tear, the inscriptions in golden cord collapsed instantly and were pulled in by Zhaoting!

The collapsed inscriptions swirled wildly. Tai Sui’s robe seemed to become a pool of molten gold, lighting up the Blissful Village’s night as though it were noon.

At the same time, General Zhi’s voice rang in Xi Ping and Pang Jian’s ears: “You two have some guts! Get back!”

General Zhi was evidently far away; how could his voice reach their ears? Before Xi Ping could understand it, Pang Jian, without any hesitation, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him back into the gravestone.

The two of them had just hidden in the stone tablet when there was a furious dragon’s roar. The scattered golden cord gathered into a big net, one end wrapped around Tai Sui, the other held to the ground by Zhaoting.

The torrential rain came to a halt, as abruptly as it had begun to pour, as though someone had shut a sluice gate.

There was sudden silence all around, all the different sounds ceasing at once. For a space, even time stopped.

In the dead silence of the Blissful Village’s woods, you could have heard a pin drop.

The big golden net sudden drew in. The enormous dragon in the net struggled desperately, trying to throw the net off itself. Then a fierce flash of light fell from the sky onto Zhaoting, piercing through the dragon’s body on its way.

Like a snake stabbed through the heart, the huge dragon immediately raised its head from the ground. The whole Blissful Village was nearly razed flat. The gravestone where Xi Ping and Pang Jian were hiding fell over with a crash. Xi Ping, nearly stifled to death, rolled out of the stone tablet and was on the point of being sent flying by the dragon’s tail!

Just then, a ray of red light flew from Xi Ping and blocked the dragon’s tail as it came towards him.

Amid the thundering, a woman’s faint sigh sounded in his ears, just for a moment, like a hallucination.

Pang Jian took the opportunity to pull him back into the earth. At the same time, countless golden threads “grew” out of the ground. Following the light from Zhaoting, they passed through the black dragon and Tai Sui’s human body, cutting them to pieces. A ray of bloody light flew from the body parts toward the horizon, but an unshakeable golden cord stuck to its tail. The next moment, the bloody light was pinned to the ground by Zhaoting, following after the golden cord.

A thick scent of blood spread explosively in all directions, nearly knocking out Xi Ping, who had just climbed out of the stone.

Dimly, he heard pattering. The rain that had stopped earlier was falling once again.

The rain washed away the scent of rotting wood, but it couldn’t wash clean the stink of blood. Rumbling came from the ground, like thunder, but also like a dragon’s roar, echoing the quivering of Zhaoting.

The quaking of the earth and shaking of the mountains stopped. The Dragon Vein had been placated by Zhaoting and returned to its original position.

After a long time, Xi Ping at last came around. He climbed up shakily and found that he had been covered in blood.

The dozen mu of the Blissful Village had all been soaked with blood coming out of nowhere, turning the rain into a red river, as if the beautiful souls whose homes had just been raided had returned to the human world to shed all the blood they hadn’t had time to shed during their lives, creating a hellish lake of blood.

Xi Ping dizzily held onto a tree trunk to support himself and retched. He saw the normally perfectly turned out blue-clothesers each looking even more sorry than himself. A few couldn’t even stand up. Far away, a few evil cultivators whose limbs hadn’t been intact to start with had suffered even more damage; there wasn’t a single one without parts missing. The dear friend who had originally been missing half of his skull was the most horrifying. There were no contents left on top of his neck; it was unclear whether he would be able to live.

Only Jiangli was missing.

Xi Ping held his buzzing ears and felt faintly anxious. He thought, Has she run off?

“Looking for your little confidante?” A wound-covered hand reached over and took the wine pot Xi Ping had kept tucked into his clothes—the wine pot had gone through all the rolling and scrambling with him, but it hadn’t broken.

Xi Ping blurted out, “She’s not my…”

“All right, she’s not.” Zhi Xiu sighed. “Stop looking, she’s at your feet.”

Xi Ping looked down. His black boots were soaked through with blood. He looked as though he had just waded through a sea of bodies. There was nothing at his feet but mud.

He looked up at General Zhi in confusion.

Zhi Xiu didn’t answer. He casually wiped the blood off the wine pot with his sleeve. With no thought for dirt, he drank the remaining wine in the pot.

Beside him, someone picked up in a hoarse voice: “You must not have noticed the ‘life-swapping talisman’ you’re carrying.”

Pang Jian limped over and saluted Zhi Xiu. “Shishu.”

“No need to be so polite,” Zhi Xiu said mildly. “Call some people to come clean up the aftermath.”

Even a person as insolent as Pang Jian became somewhat more respectful when facing General Zhi, in spite of himself. He suppressed his wildness and responded with a proper, “Yes, shishu.” He turned and took out his whistle, faced north and blew three times. Then he said another word to General Zhi and went to inspect his companions and the evil cultivators.

Xi Ping went after him and asked, “Exalted, what is a ‘life-swapping talisman’?”

Perhaps owing to the life and death adventure they had just gone through, Pang Jian’s manner towards Xi Ping had improved slightly. He answered, rather patiently, “A life-swapping talisman is a special type of talisman that doesn’t require very high cultivation to draw. It only needs to be drawn on some item you’ve carried close over many years. If the person who takes the life-swapping talisman encounters mortal danger, the talisman’s maker will take it on in your stead. That’s why it’s called life-swapping. Did she give you something?”

Xi Ping remembered something. He took out the birthday jade.

Its color, originally almost like blood jade, had at some point turned to mottled coral. It looked even cheaper. There was a crack down the middle of the words “Ning’an Chen family.”

Jiangli’s accent had never changed. Xi Ping knew that she came from Ning’an, and the great demon had called her “sister of the Chen family”…

Was this her birthday jade?

“It has the remnants of a spell.” Pang Jian took the birthday jade from his hand and smelled it. “But this talisman is a type of protection talisman that does no harm, so the head office’s karma beasts didn’t take it for an evil item. When that evil cultivator’s tail nearly turned you into a piece of flatbread just now and suddenly froze, that must have been the effect of the life-swapping talisman. She took that hit for you.”

Xi Ping instinctively denied it: “Wait, no… Didn’t she think I was going to give that thing to Heaven’s Design Pavilion?”

“When the talisman’s maker confers the talisman, she only needs to have the person receiving it drink a drop of her blood, and in the future, even if the object that carries the life-swapping talisman is lost, the spell will still remain on you. It won’t lose its effect.”

Xi Ping was dazed.

Yes, when Jiangli had given him the silk brocade bag, she had in fact poured him a cup of odd-tasting tea. He had thought it was because the pot was rusty.

“Tsk.” Pang Jian handed the jade ornament back to him. “Taking advantage of people with your pretty face.”

Xi Ping took the piece of jade. “Exalted, don’t you suspect me?”

Pang Jian gave him a strange look. It seemed to be ridiculing, yet without any malice. He was looking at Xi Ping, but Xi Ping wasn’t the target.

“You? If some of your fellow sons of the rich and powerful had pushed each other into losing their heads and playing around with witchcraft and sorcery, then you would be rather suspect. But stupid things like worshipping evil gods and sacrificing yourself… Your sort doesn’t usually have anything to do with that,” Commander Pang said with a trace of mockery. “You don’t have the makings.”

In all his life Xi Ping had never done anything apart from eating and drinking except making merry. The worst things he had encountered had been household punishments from the Marquis.

Now, dressed in bloody clothes and standing in the ice-cold rain, squeezing the cracked piece of jade, he had been informed that Jiangli was dead.

His ears heard it, but his mind was muddled. Standing perfectly still in the sea of blood, he still unconsciously looked around, waiting for Jiangli to appear so he could ask for an explanation—

Didn’t she see him as just the same as Big Dog Wang’s ilk?

Hadn’t she decided that as soon as he found the horoscope on the jade, he would immediately hand it over without another thought?

Didn’t she think he was not only faithless and heartless, but also a complete bastard?

Then why would she give him her only birthday stone? And swap her life for his when he ran into peril?

Hadn’t she ever met a decent man in her life?

Xi Ping could make no sense of this no matter how much he thought about it. He was bewildered for a long time, then finally realized: he wouldn’t be able to find Jiangli.

The immortal had said that she had turned into a pool of blood, becoming one with the many women like her in the Blissful Village.

He hadn’t had a last look at her, only remembered the last words she had said in the mortal world. She had said: “But your feelings for me are clearly more ephemeral than dew!”

But her life, her fate, her hurried trample through existence—how could any of it be more substantial than dew?

It was only romance… Look at this stupid woman talking nonsense.