Chapter 92:
Chu Wanning knitted his brows. “What item?”
Li Wuxin waved his hand, and Disciple Very Smart swiftly brought over a brocade box. “A weapon.”
Chu Wanning gazed silently at the box for a spell. “Is it a willow vine?”
This time, everyone’s eyes, including Mo Ran’s, widened in disbelief.
“H-how did you know…” Li Wuxin’s voice shook as he spoke.
“Unless it really was you, but…what’s going on here?!”
A golden light burst to life in Chu Wanning’s palm, lengthening inch by inch until it coiled on the floor. As the glow dimmed, a length of willow vine, its delicate leaves unfurled, materialized before the onlookers.
Chu Wanning was unfazed. By now, he was already certain that the incident at Butterfly Town was perpetrated by the same mysterious individual they’d encountered at Jincheng Lake and Peach Blossom Springs. “Li-zhuangzhu, the weapon in the box is this one, is it not?”
“Y-yes.” Li Wuxin’s voice sputtered and nearly gave out on him.
The brocade box was opened. Inside was indeed a length of willow vine, identical to the one in Chu Wanning’s hand in every way.
Chu Wanning narrowed his eyes. His suspicions had already been roused when that fake Jiangui that was used to kill the people of the
feathered tribe and frame Mo Ran had appeared at Peach Blossom Springs.
This confirmed them. “Li-zhuangzhu, may I have a look?”
Li Wuxin mulled it over. Things weren’t exactly going his way right now, and it’d be inadvisable to offend Chu Wanning further. After a
moment’s consideration, he said, “Chu-zongshi is too courteous. I’m only here to inquire about the situation in the first place. Please look all you want—why should I ever refuse? I’d be only too thrilled to get your
thoughts.”
Chang-gongzi, for his part, was rather less than thrilled. He’d come to Sisheng Peak to pick a fight and had spent a small fortune securing Bitan Manor’s support. What was this damnable old fart playing at? Was he really going to switch sides after facing a little pushback? Chang-
gongzi threw pointed look after pointed look at Li Wuxin, until eventually each one was an angry glare.
Li Wuxin paid him no heed, but Mo Ran noticed those looks from where he stood on the side. “Chang-gongzi,” he said mockingly, “are your eyes okay? You seem to be squinting them quite a lot.”
Meanwhile, Chu Wanning had taken the willow vine from the box and was now examining it closely. Sure enough, although it was no different from Tianwen and Jiangui in appearance, its life force was exceedingly weak, far weaker than that of a holy weapon with a master.
This was clearly a dead thing. “Heart-Pluck Willow…”
Xue Meng had keen ears, and when these words reached them, he froze. “What?”
“This vine, and the ones used to kill the feathered tribe back at Peach Blossom Springs as well—they were all broken off the Heart-Pluck Willow,” Chu Wanning replied.
“Ah!” Shi Mei cried out in surprise. “So that’s what it is?”
“Before the old dragon passed at Jincheng Lake, he said the fake Gouchen employed a certain spell that required a strong wood elemental spirit to maintain. It’s likely that he took some branches from the holy tree before destroying Jincheng Lake. Although their spiritual power will
gradually fade with the death of the holy tree, they should still be sufficient for his purposes for some time.”
Chu Wanning’s slender fingers traced the golden leaves on the vine
in his hand. “Even the branches that have been practically depleted of spiritual power have not gone to waste—he has used them either as false evidence to frame others, or distributed them to his puppeteered pawns as weapons.”
As he spoke, a flame kindled to life in his hand. He held that vine that was the mirror image of Tianwen to the fire, and it caught instantly, its blaze reflected in the shocked and stupefied eyes of the onlookers.
“This is not my weapon.” Chu Wanning let the fire lick all the way up to the tip of the branch before closing his palm around the flame,
extinguishing it. He tossed the scorched willow vine aside and said mildly,
“Tianwen is possessed of abundant spiritual energy. Even Samadhi True Fire2 couldn’t hope to burn it, much less an ordinary fire spell such as this.”
Li Wuxin opened his mouth, then closed it. But in the end, he refused to back down so easily, and opened it again. “I, too, have heard about this incident at Peach Blossom Springs. Word has it that Sisheng Peak’s Mo-gongzi murdered the Great Immortal Lord of the feathered tribe.”
“Oi, I didn’t kill anyone.” Mo Ran raised his hands defensively.
Xue Zhengyong, visibly displeased, was unyielding on this matter.
“As I’ve already explained to the other sects, this was not my nephew’s doing. Li-zhuangzhu, the next time you bring it up, I won’t be so polite.”
His reaction seemed to stir some memory in Mo Ran’s mind. He stilled, and a flicker of something indiscernible flashed through those habitually smiling eyes. “Uncle…” he muttered.
“The incident at Peach Blossom Springs was a set-up,” said Chu Wanning. “The situation was chaotic, and I was afforded no opportunity to defend my disciple’s innocence. But, today, since Bitan Manor has come
all this way seeking the truth, I will certainly tell you the whole tale.”
In the wavering candlelight of the lamps, Chu Wanning offered a concise summary of the events of Jincheng Lake and Peach Blossom Springs. By the time he finished, the disciples of Bitan Manor were stunned speechless, and Li Wuxin was sweating so profusely that his clothes were soaked through. He dithered for a while, then asked, “Does Chu-zongshi mean to say there’s someone in the world at this very
moment who has mastered one of the three forbidden techniques, the Zhenlong Chess Formation?”
“That is correct.”
“But how can that be?! It’s a forbidden technique! E-even the leader of the Rufeng Sect, first in the cultivation world, would be hard-pressed to acquire the scroll for such a thing—”
Chu Wanning cut him off. “I have spoken nothing but the truth.
Whether you believe or not is up to you.”
“Impossible.” Li Wuxin insisted, his face pale. He guffawed loudly through trembling lips, as if by doing so he could convince himself this was an unfortunate joke. “If there’s really someone out there who has mastered the Zhenlong Chess Formation, the world will be thrown into disarray. Everything in the upper and lower cultivation realms alike is in danger of being rewritten!”
Ex-Emperor Taxian-jun was a little miffed. “That guy only knows it, he hasn’t ‘mastered’ it. If he had, would things still be so peaceful now?”
Li Wuxin’s whiskers quivered, and he had just opened his mouth to retort when a sword flashed in through the door. A Bitan disciple, clothes bloody, stumbled off it. The disciple coughed up a mouthful of blood before raising his tear-streaked face to Li Wuxin.
“Zhuangzhu,” he cried, “it’s terrible! The barrier you erected around Butterfly Town has shattered! Vicious spirits rushed out, and my seniors used their own bodies to block the spirits’ escape, but my shixiong…all thirty of them who were guarding the barrier…sacrificed themselves to hold back the ghosts. Only I was left to bring the news…” He drew in deep, shuddering breaths, then raised his voice in a piteous wail.
“Zhuangzhu! Hurry—notify all the sects of the upper cultivation realm!
Every dead soul in that town is being controlled! It’s a forbidden technique! A forbidden technique!”
“What?!” Li Wuxin stumbled backward into a pillar, as pale and haggard as a corpse dumped from its coffin.
“There’s no way we can hold them off by ourselves…” The disciple wept miserably, his tears washing the blood from his face. “Zhuangzhu!”
He suddenly noticed Xue Zhengyong, and turned to grovel toward him as well. “Xue-zhangmen, I’m begging, please come too! All of my
shixiong… I… how can I face them…” He rambled incoherently for a few more seconds, then closed his eyes and howled at the sky in grief.
“They’re all…they’re all dead!”
The hall was deathly silent for a beat. Then it burst into an uproar.
Xue Zhengyong was ever level-headed in the face of disaster. He immediately directed Madam Wang to send messages to the remaining eight great sects of the upper cultivation realm, and put Xue Meng in charge of gathering the elders.
“Chu Wanning?” Xue Zhengyong turned to him next.
“There’s no time to waste. I’ll go first.”
“But you don’t know how to ride swords…”
Before Chu Wanning could reply, Mo Ran rushed over, eager to meet this so-called master of Zhenlong Chess Formation. “Don’t worry,
Uncle, I’ll take Shizun.”
Chu Wanning cast him a glance but said nothing—silent assent.
The two strode out of the hall side by side. Shi Mei stood frozen in place for a long moment, face pale, before snapping out of it and saying,
“M-me too…”
But by the time he ran outside Loyalty Hall, they were gone.
Xue Zhengyong called him back and told him not to run off alone. All Shi Mei could do was go after Xue Meng and wait to leave with the second group.
As for Bitan Manor, Li Wuxin had lived his life in luxury—never once had he run into anything as big as this. But the old fart still wanted to save face. He drew in a deep breath to collect himself, then set about
giving instructions. He had someone care for the messenger disciple and others contact the elders of his own sect, gathering his forces in hopes of making a good showing at Butterfly Town and thereby regaining some dignity.
The assembly set off from Sisheng Peak in force, rushing across the sky toward Butterfly Town like hundreds of shooting stars. From where Li Wuxin stood on his sword at the head of the fleet as they flew through the clouds, he couldn’t resist stealing a sidelong glance at the disciples of the foremost sect of the lower cultivation realm. Never had he expected to one day march into battle alongside such riffraff, the very people he had
looked down upon all his life. For a moment, his feelings were rather complicated. Traveling by swift sword, the group traversed a thousand miles in a blink. Soon the clouds before them parted to reveal a stream of bloody demonic light shooting straight up toward the sky, and Li Wuxin had no more thought to spare for matters of the upper or lower cultivation realm.
Floating in midair was an enormous, glimmering array of crimson light the length and breadth of the town itself, delineated neatly into the checkered squares of a chessboard. On that chessboard, like so many carved figurines, hovered the silhouettes of the dead townsfolk: five hundred households, over one thousand souls, hanging in the air like a dense forest of human flesh.
Li Wuxin cried out despite himself. “I-it really is…Zhenlong Chess Formation!”
Xue Zhengyong, his expression dark, turned to the Bitan Manor leader. “Li-zhuangzhu, I’ll take my people to the southeast side, but we’ll have to trouble you to handle the northwest. We must hold out till the other sects arrive.”
There were more pressing matters at hand than Xue Zhengyong’s presumptuous use of we, so Li Wuxin merely nodded. “Got it, got it.”
Xue Zhengyong cupped his fist in his hand respectfully, then led the disciples of Sisheng Peak out of the clouds to alight on the southeast side of Butterfly Town. The defensive barrier that Bitan Manor’s disciples had bled and died for was nigh on the verge of collapse, the field of its spiritual energy weakening by the minute. Beyond the translucent barrier roamed masses of walking corpses.
“Chu Wanning!” Xue Zhengyong caught sight of a man standing before the barrier in fluttering white robes beside a figure in silver-blue light armor. “What’s the matter?” he called out. “Is the barrier
irreparable?”
Chu Wanning had been on the scene for some time. The number one zongshi of barriers was standing right there—Xue Zhengyong couldn’t understand why this one was still in such a sorry state. But his calls raised no response. Xue Zhengyong was about to try again when Mo Ran turned
and gestured for him to be silent. “Uncle, shh. Come over here.”
Xue Zhengyong walked over. “What is it?”
“Don’t disturb him.” Mo Ran pointed at Chu Wanning. Although he stood straight and tall, his eyes were closed and his palms were pressed together before his chest, his lips completely colorless.
Xue Zhengyong started. He reached out to feel for a pulse at the side of Chu Wanning’s neck, then asked in alarm, “Soul Projection?”
“Yeah. It’s all ghosts in there, a couple thousand of them. But we couldn’t find Luo Xianxian, so she’s probably farther into town. We don’t know what’s happening yet, or what that guy is plotting, so he went to ask Luo Xianxian.”
“The girl is already a vicious ghost gone berserk! What’s there to ask!” Xue Zhengyong smacked his own thigh in anger. “Reinforcing the barrier is more important right now!”
“Don’t!” Mo Ran said sharply. “Shizun temporarily cast his soul out using Soul Projection precisely because it’s all dead people in there. This way, he can slip in without alerting the enemy. If we reinforce the barrier now, he’ll be killed!”
“What?!” Xue Zhengyong exclaimed, panicked. “Stay right here and keep an eye on him; I’ll go tell Li Wuxin!”
Mo Ran nodded. “I’ll send up a blue signal as soon as Shizun’s soul returns; then we can start mending the barrier from all directions. But before that, Uncle, you must under no circumstances allow them to mend it. If they do, the thousands of ghosts will go into a frenzy. Shizun is just a bodiless soul in there; he won’t be able to defend himself.”
“I know! I know already!” Before he’d even finished his reply, Xue Zhengyong had already sped away toward Li Wuxin.
Mo Ran raised his eyes to look at that barrier on the brink of failure.
“We’re running out of time.” Mo Ran turned and spoke to him in a low voice. “You must have found Luo Xianxian by now, right, Shizun?”
In his worry, Mo Ran reached out without thinking to close his warm hand around Chu Wanning’s ice-cold one. “Just a little longer…”
It was then that Shi Mei touched down nearby with Xue Meng and the rest. When he looked up from the crowd, he was greeted by the
unexpected sight of the pair before the barrier, hands entwined. He froze, and the color drained from his face. He bit down on his lip and slowly turned his head away.