Free Web NovelThe child-faced elder and the youth fled swiftly, avoiding fierce ghost gods along the way. They sped away for thousands of li until the elder could no longer hold back his injuries and fell. The master and disciple tumbled and rolled across the ground, skidding for miles before they finally came to a stop.
"Master."
The youth sprang up and hurried to the child-faced elder's side to assess his wounds.
The child-faced elder managed to sit up, waving his hand. "I won't die. That prodigy tricked me; I was careless and paid a heavy price. He is truly formidable. Even without his Innate Dao Embryo, he can react like that. But now I know his methods. Next time he tries to ambush me, it won't be possible." He produced a crimson jade bottle and poured out a medicinal pill.
He did not swallow it at once. Instead he extended his index finger and gently tapped the pill. Light shone from within, using the pill as its core, projecting layered phantoms of Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Primordial Spirit, the Realm of Emptiness, sun, moon, and stars—subtly corresponding to the cultivator stages.
Only then did the child-faced elder take the pill, and his injuries began to recede rapidly.
"If we hadn't explored an immortal's grotto and obtained this immortal pill, I probably would have taken a serious fall," he said, exhaling a foul breath as he rose. "This pill is worthy of being an immortal's; a pity I don't know the refining method. Use one, and there is one less." In a short while his wounds had healed completely.
The child-faced elder pondered, "That prodigy's companion, the woman beside him, is the female immortal from Qixia Taoist Temple. Her cultivation should not yet be fully recovered. As for that hanged ghost's origins, I don't know. Wuxie, let's go and clear out the other old gods." He produced a single-log boat, pasted a talisman onto his body, and transformed into an underworld officer with an ox head and human body, tall and thin. He fetched a child's lamp and hung it from the prow.
The youth, Wuxie, asked, "Master, compared to that prodigy, how am I?"
The child-faced elder replied, "Your adaptability is not as good as his, but your cultivation is not inferior. He lost his Innate Dao Embryo and was dead for eight years; for him to reach his current level is already extraordinary."
Wuxie, not entirely convinced, asked, "Is my Despair Slope technique worse than his?"
The child-faced elder pasted a talisman onto him too and smiled, "The Despair Slope's inheritance is far stronger than what's outside. Even if he obtained the True King's legacy, it wouldn't be enough. However, he will not fight you fairly. He can raise that hanged ghost as a sacrificial tool; don't say you— even I would take losses."
Wuxie's body shifted into a small horse-face and stood beside him, only as tall as his calves. He tilted his head back. "He definitely doesn't compare to Senior Brother."
The child-faced elder laughed, "Zhong Wuwang's strength is still above mine. He was exceptional among men, destined for greatness. After he obtained the Innate Dao Embryo, becoming an immortal was inevitable."
He propped a bamboo pole and the single-log boat rocked gently. From the boat's bottom a small river formed and stretched outward.
The boat followed the little river until it joined a major river. On the surface, row after row of single-log boats sailed, each with an underworld officer aboard. Suddenly they separated, each guiding its own small river deeper inland. Lamps shone from the boats, startling numerous ghosts and monsters, as though searching for something.
"Dao brother, what are you looking for?" the child-faced elder stopped an underworld officer to ask.
That officer, ox-headed and human-bodied, replied in a booming voice, "We serve under Underworld Marshal Xia Xiude. We are seizing wanted criminals." He swiftly unfurled a painting: a man, a cart, a dog. "Dao brother, have you seen them?"
The child-faced elder's heart stirred. The painting was crude; faces were indistinct, but the idea was clear. The figure resembled a young scholar, the black dog walked on two legs, and the wooden cart had arms and a mouth.
"I know where the culprits are," the child-faced elder said.
He pointed the underworld officers toward the location. They thanked him and guided their boats through the void.
The child-faced elder grinned, "So Chen Shi has already offended the Underworld Marshal. In that case, we don't need to worry about Chen Shi getting there before us."
Fusheng Town.
Chen Shi instructed Yu Daoren, "Move Fusheng Town to the mountain as soon as possible. Reclaim fields in preparation for the future. Also, there are other nearby villages. Take some scholars with you and bring them up the mountain too. Do not let them stay in their villages to wait for death. If danger comes, call upon Wang Lingguan and he will respond."
Yu Daoren thanked him.
Chen Shi took Black Pot and the wooden cart and left Fusheng Town.
After the cart had gone over a hundred li, Chen Shi turned back to look. Under the moonlight the rivers and lands were dim, but Fire Mansion Mountain was bathed in sunlight. A towering deity sat atop the peak, a crimson cloak billowing behind him, flapping loudly and extending for dozens of li, providing shelter to the region.
Wang Lingguan seemed to sense Chen Shi's gaze. He turned his head and waved from afar.
"The young True King is an interesting man. Brothers, when you awaken, be sure to meet him." Wang Lingguan looked at the line of miniature shrines, visions of Lingguan figures appearing as if they still stood upon those altars, laughing and talking.
When the people of the Ming migrated to the Western Ox New Continent, one fleet was driven off course by storms from the Sea of Darkness. They should have landed at Xinxiang, but they were blown thousands of li off course and arrived at Lingzhou, south of Gongzhou. The treasure ship was wrecked by the storm; they were forced to land. At that time Lingzhou was a wasteland full of evil spirits and monsters.
Ming soldiers protected the ship's refugees, fighting bloody battles. As hope waned, one soldier cut his wrist and sprinkled his blood onto the black soil, calling Wang Lingguan and five hundred Lingguan spirits to help.
His blood nearly spent, the other soldiers likewise offered their blood, speaking as one, calling to the ancestral guardian deities.
Wang Lingguan sensed their sincere patriotic hearts, yet these soldiers had no deity statues, no shrines, no incense to guide the gods. Their fervor alone could not summon them.
"With our broken bodies, we welcome the divine descent!" The leading soldier sacrificed himself, slitting his throat. Hundreds of soldiers did the same, offering themselves as sacrifice to call the gods.
Wang Lingguan and the five hundred Lingguan descended in avatars and entered those soldiers' bodies. Enraged, they slaughtered the monsters along the western coast and cleansed the land!
The refugees these guardians saved erected the Temple of the Jade Pivot King Lingguan of the Fire Bureau. When artisans tried to carve images of them, Wang Lingguan halted them.
"We borrowed righteous bodies to descend. Why create effigies? The martyrs' flesh is honest as fire, their fervor thunderous. They are the best golden bodies."
They sat in those shrines in the guise of mortals—and that sit has lasted ten thousand years.
At the end of the True King's era, disasters arose. Wang Lingguan and the five hundred Lingguan, in the form of those soldiers, saved the people during the dark times, ensuring humanity persisted through suffering.
They held on for over forty years until the sun rose again.
But then came the Despair Slope's onslaught.
The five hundred Lingguan perished in that campaign one after another. Only Wang Lingguan survived, burying the doctrine.
"Brothers, it is time for us to protect the people again!" A flame burned in his chest as he murmured, "Those five hundred soldiers' bodies may be gone, but their blood still flows. First shelter the living, then avenge our spilled blood!"
Radiant lights trembled above the shrines as if answering his wrath and battle intent.
On the wooden cart, Chen Shi remembered the child-faced elder and summoned Scholar Zhu. "Teacher, the technique that old man used—could it be the Supreme Emperor Purple Palace Technique?"
Scholar Zhu thought for a moment. "Quite possible. But in the True King's treasury, the only scripture I've carefully read is The Ten Books of Cultivation. I haven't studied the Supreme Emperor Purple Palace Technique deeply. The ram-horn tomb guardians told me that if your cultivation is insufficient and you force the immortal arts, you will die if you slip."
Chen Shi recalled fainting repeatedly while reading immortal arts within the True King's treasury.
The ram-horn tomb guardians never warned him. This evil spirit likely wanted to see him die in the treasury.
"The technique he cultivated should be the Supreme Emperor Purple Palace Technique. I fought Yang Bi once and he used that art. But he only knew the surface of it." Chen Shi considered. "Wang Lingguan said after the disaster, Despair Slope came to fell mountains and destroy temples. So I suspect that old man belonged to Despair Slope."
His eyes flickered. "Despair Slope is finishing what it failed to finish back then, uprooting all of China’s deity temples once and for all!"
Back then all the temples had sunk and ceased to manifest. Only after the sun vanished did the temples reappear. That gave Despair Slope the chance to pull these shrines up by their roots and eliminate them forever!
"But why does Despair Slope insist on eradicating these temples?" he wondered aloud.
Despair Slope had many puzzling aspects. For example, it deployed Heaven's Listeners to spy on the world—very suspicious.
And why would Despair Slope use immortal arts from the True King's treasury? Did those arts come from the True King? Or do those techniques have other lineages?
Despair Slope carries too many mysteries.
"Despair Slope wants to obliterate the doctrines of China's gods. How many will die for that?" Chen Shi's eyes flashed with killing intent as he calculated how to kill that child-faced elder.
He glanced at Scholar Zhu, thoughts stirring as he recalled the battle between Scholar Zhu and the child-faced elder. He smiled, "Teacher, in life your cultivation was so strong. Were you really only a xiucai?"
Scholar Zhu was in the habit of hanging the noose from the cart's canopy, letting himself be suspended to feel the wind. He did so now and replied, "Of course I was a xiucai. I failed the provincial exam."
Chen Shi was puzzled, "But your talent—it's hard to say there was none to follow you in history. Why only a xiucai?"
Scholar Zhu hesitated, then told the truth. "When I sat for the xiucai exam I used the Zhu surname to show the world that the Zhu clan had not died out, that the True King's bloodline still existed. After I passed the xiucai exam, the news spread across fifty provinces to the Western Capital. After that, every time I took the imperial exams I failed. In total I tested for the provincial graduate slot fourteen times."
Chen Shi had never heard him speak of this and so listened quietly.
Scholar Zhu said, "Along the way of taking those exams I saw the people's suffering, witnessed the decline of livelihoods, and the officials oppressing the common folk—worse than the evil spirits. I wanted to take the palace examination and tell the world the Zhu surname still exists, that someone's there! I wanted to become the True King, to solve the people's hardships, the factionalism in officialdom, and court corruption! I had all kinds of lofty hopes—wanting to restore the True King's prosperous age!"
He wanted to know the truth about the end of the True King's era.
No one dared use the Zhu surname now—only he did.
"But I took the exams fourteen times and didn't pass a single one."
Scholar Zhu hung from the noose with a calm expression, as if telling another person's story.
"I thought it was because my talent was insufficient, so I trained like a madman, pursued learning and self-improvement. I risked my life to enter the True King's tomb, narrowly escaping death at the tomb guardians' hands many times. They beat me until I was near death and tossed me out. But I crawled back. The ram-horn tomb guardian told me after five thousand years the old Zhu family finally produced someone with backbone—he let me enter the True King's tomb.
"He said he'd waited five thousand years. The old Zhu line produced no one with backbone; they were all scared of the tomb's ghostly domain. I alone was stubborn and unafraid of death. I read the True King's scriptures and made unprecedented breakthroughs. I was confident that next time I'd pass the provincial graduate exam.
"But I failed again."
Despair filled Scholar Zhu's eyes. "By then I had already reached the Great Ascension Realm, yet I still couldn't pass. I couldn't even become a provincial graduate. I was powerless. Then I suddenly thought: screw the exams, screw the metropolitan and palace tests! I am invincible now! I have no rivals!"
Chen Shi cried out, "You cultivated the 'Laozi'!"
Scholar Zhu laughed heartily, "Exactly—I cultivated 'Laozi'! Fearless of heaven and earth! If you won't let me pass the exams and be the top scholar, then I'll march on the Western Capital! I'll take on the Five Armies camp alone, even the General Cannon of the Divine Mechanism. I smashed through three armies on my own! I stormed into the Western Capital's inner city, into the royal palace, sweeping through the Cabinet's thirteen ministers!"
Chen Shi applauded, "Well done!"
Scholar Zhu laughed uproariously. "Of course it was a triumph! Those old bastards monopolize government and treat my Zhu family's land as their own. They've bred offspring across the country, leeching off the common people. They deserve to be beheaded! They allow evil spirits to prey on the people. Under Ming law they'd be annihilated—wipe out their nine clans!"
Chen Shi was excited, "And then?"
Scholar Zhu's face darkened. After a pause he said, "They suppressed me with the Nine Halls of the True King."
Chen Shi's mouth twitched. "You can't be blamed for that. The Nine Halls are immortal artifacts, treasures of the immortals. Even real immortals would suffer against those nine divine implements."
"Those were used by the ancestors to suppress evil spirits, not to subdue later generations." Scholar Zhu showed pain. After a moment he continued, "After they suppressed me, the hidden ancestral elders of the Thirteen Great Clans appeared and challenged me one by one. They lived longer and had higher cultivation. They never spoke a word to me; they defeated me one after another."
Chen Shi fell silent.
What Scholar Zhu experienced mirrored what Grandpa Chen Yindu had faced when he besieged the Western Capital. The hidden elders appeared and challenged Chen Yindu one after another, showing him the Upper Realm, forcing Chen Yindu to withdraw and go into seclusion in Huangpo Village.
"They didn't mistreat me." Scholar Zhu's face returned to calm. "They released me. They didn't want to bear the accusation of regicide. I wandered the Western Ox New Continent in a daze, broken in spirit. I hit wall after wall in this world, battered by the times. I had no direction left, no courage to live."
In the end he chose to hang himself.
He went outside the True King's tomb, picked a yellow earth slope, and hanged himself from that old willow tree.
He wanted to watch coldly how the world rotted under the Thirteen Great Clans' machinations, to see this age destroy itself!
"Little Ten, do not feel any sympathy for the Thirteen Great Clans. They do not deserve it," he said calmly.
