Chapter 7

By the time Luo Jiao arrived within the borders of Mount Sanqing, it was already dusk two days later.

When she had left the government office, Luo Jiao had used the Golden Leaf Token to squeeze a bit of extra money out of the Minor Official; so along the way, she had spent rather freely—eating when hungry, drinking when thirsty, paying whenever payment was due, and sparing herself a few steps whenever possible.

After all, her foot injury hadn’t fully healed. A few short steps were barely manageable, but a brisk march or a long trek would be pushing it.

Along the way, Xu Liangdi had stewed in silence, refusing to speak no matter what, and Luo Jiao was hardly cut out to perform stand-up comedy for one. Two days of silence on the road left Luo Jiao with a peculiar, mournful sense of attending a funeral.

At the thought of “funeral,” Luo Jiao’s mood sank at once.

By her reckoning, today was the twenty-seventh of the third month. Barely ten-odd hours remained before Xu Liangdi’s soul scattered completely.

That meant Xu Liangdi’s silence wasn’t just grief; her connection to this world was steadily fading too.

“Do you still want to see the clouds and the sea?”

Luo Jiao cast the words into her Sea of Consciousness.

If Xu Liangdi still wanted to see the sea, then Luo Jiao would oblige—rest for two hours tonight, set off early tomorrow, and climb high to gaze upon the water.

After all, Xu Liangdi had little time left.

But if the events at Mo Fishing Village had stripped away all her desire to see the sea, then Luo Jiao wouldn’t force the matter—she’d find a comfortable inn, sleep soundly, and bid her a proper farewell tomorrow.

Luo Jiao was no self-sacrificing saint. She had no intention of rushing about the whole way only to end with a one-sided, unappreciated gesture.

Xu Liangdi didn’t answer.

Whether she didn’t want to, or truly couldn’t, Luo Jiao couldn’t tell.

She had asked far too many questions like this along the way, all of which had sunk like stones into the sea.

“I know your fate has been cruel, and I know why your heart trembles,” Luo Jiao said. “But you must understand—only ten-odd hours remain of your seven days. Xu Liangdi, are you certain you want your final moments to be forever stuck on these disgusting people and disgusting affairs, instead of going to behold the magnificent scenery you’ve long yearned for?”

Xu Liangdi remained silent.

“Besides, I’m running the errands for you. All you have to do is sit back and enjoy the view.” Luo Jiao grumbled inwardly, Is it really worth all this deliberation?

No answer came even after that.

Luo Jiao sighed and tilted her head back to study the sky.

The sunset glow had faded, and a thin dusk mist was seeping along the streets.

The gate arch overhead read “Jinguan City.” The nearest teahouse’s signboard read “Youjian Teahouse.”

But a streak of Sword Qi had clearly slashed the signboard clean in half—an absurdly comical sight.

The light was dim, and Luo Jiao couldn’t see clearly, nor did she much care. She strode boldly into the teahouse.

There was hardly anyone inside, and the tables and chairs were in disarray—the whole place had an air of post-disaster ruin.

The waiter was friendly enough, though. “Miss, will you be staying the night, or just dining?”

“You can put people up here?” Luo Jiao looked left and right, full of astonishment.

The teahouse was dingy and gray. A few floors above did stack more rooms, but they looked like long-abandoned storage cubbies rather than proper guest rooms. Everything about it seemed off.

“Of course we can,” the waiter said. “A sparrow may be small, but it has all the vital organs. This may be just a humble little teahouse, but food, drink, entertainment—everything’s on offer.”

Luo Jiao was skeptical. “But it’s awfully deserted.”

“Special times, special times. There was trouble just a few days ago.”

The waiter smiled apologetically and explained, “Ah, it was the storyteller. A few days ago he… said some things he shouldn’t have, offended the wrong person, and got beaten half to death. He’s been laid up in the clinic forever with no sign of improvement.”

Luo Jiao’s eyes went wide with disbelief. “What kind of villain is that ruthless?!”

The waiter rubbed the rag in his hands, glanced around, and lowered his voice. “It was a… madwoman recognized as such by the whole world.”

A hundred years had passed, after all. Luo Jiao figured that even if this madwoman was “recognized by the whole world,” she still wouldn’t necessarily know her.

But out of a studious thirst for knowledge, Luo Jiao listened attentively. “May I ask the madwoman’s name?”

“We don’t usually speak the name directly,” the waiter said mysteriously. “We usually just call her Elder Ye of the Fengyi Sect.”

Luo Jiao stopped asking.

Definitely don’t know her, she thought to herself. I barely knew any of those scholarly cultivators from the Fengyi Sect to begin with, let alone one surnamed Ye—oh, except Ah Zhou.

Ah Zhou—Ye Qingzhou—had been Luo Jiao’s Junior Sister at Mount Sanqing a hundred years ago. A year after Luo Jiao completed her training, the Daoist of Sanqing, intending to wander the world, had used a Letter of Recommendation to escort Ye Qingzhou to the Fengyi Sect.

Back then, the Fengyi Sect was blessed with talent and scenic grounds—just the signboard above its gates was five times the size of Mount Sanqing’s. And it truly was a great sect; its conditions surpassed Mount Sanqing’s by more than a margin. So when Luo Jiao, then roaming the Nine Provinces, heard the news, she hadn’t worried much, and when Ye Qingzhou’s letters arrived reporting on her coursework, Luo Jiao’s replies were full of nothing but polite pleasantries.

Ah Zhou… Glancing at the waiter before her, Luo Jiao thought again, Mm. Ah Zhou has always been clear-eyed and open-hearted. She could never be the madwoman this man speaks of.

Then a thought struck her—the streak of Sword Qi at the entrance that had split the signboard in two.

She asked, “So that Sword Qi on the signboard—was that the Elder from the Fengyi Sect’s doing too?”

The waiter answered haltingly, “Y-yes.”

Luo Jiao thought, This madwoman’s skills are pretty good, then.

Clean cut, too.

Luo Jiao’s gaze fell on the menu. Following the recommendations, she ordered a few dishes, got a cheerful “Right away!” from the waiter, and closed her eyes to rest.

In the time it took to brew a cup of tea, the first dishes arrived.

Carrying the plates over, the waiter added, “Oh, I forgot to ask earlier—have you come to Jinguan City looking for family, Miss? Or visiting friends?”

“Neither.” Luo Jiao took a big gulp of barley tea and answered offhandedly. “I’m going to Mount Sanqing.”

She’d expected the waiter to toss out a few casual compliments about the mountain’s scenic beauty, its seas of clouds and all that. But when Luo Jiao set down her teacup and looked up, she was met only with the waiter’s flabbergasted stare.

It was quite the spectacular look. If an ordinary person saw an epileptic streaking naked through the market, they’d wear that same stunned expression—a whole riot of colors gathering on one face, before condensing into a single sentence: “Miss, you truly have courage to match your skill.”

Luo Jiao froze, puzzled. “Courage? What courage?”

“Miss, surely you haven’t forgotten what I just told you.” The waiter laughed awkwardly. “That mad Elder didn’t just slash our signboard with one stroke of her sword—she also… split the entire Mount Sanqing apart with a single stroke.”

Luo Jiao: “Huh??”

The waiter drew a deep breath. “If you don’t believe me, go find some high ground and look toward the southwest,” he said. “I guarantee you won’t see so much as a hair of it!”

Luo Jiao’s eyes curved. She smiled indifferently and chalked it up as the waiter talking nonsense.

Who could topple an entire mountain with one sword stroke? Luo Jiao certainly couldn’t, and she didn’t believe anyone else could either. Besides, she’d glanced toward Mount Sanqing’s location several times during the journey—the mountain had been standing right there, perfectly intact!

“Then why did she split the mountain?” she only asked.

“No idea,” the waiter said. “All I know is, a hundred years ago, before Elder Ye joined the Fengyi Sect… she was from Mount Sanqing. Maybe there’s some old story behind it.”

“F-from… Mount Sanqing…?” Luo Jiao hesitated for a moment, then asked in a half-joking tone, “Wait, wait. This Elder Ye you’re talking about—it wouldn’t happen to be… Ye, Ye, Ye Qingzhou, would it?”

The waiter gave her an odd look. “Who else would it be?”

Then he snickered, as if mocking her ignorance, and added, “Ah, forget it. I’ve seen plenty of people like you who know there’s a tiger on the mountain but insist on heading straight for it. Your life is your own to look after—no one else can bear that responsibility for you.”

Night had fallen by the time Luo Jiao finished her hasty meal. She asked the waiter for some hot water and picked the room farthest inside, preferring the quiet.

The door creaked shut, and Luo Jiao collapsed onto the bed.

The meal had been rushed and tasteless, her stomach churning—and her mind churning right along with it, all because of the waiter’s grumbling.

His grumbling about that “mad Elder of the Fengyi Sect.”

It wasn’t that she thought anyone was twisting the truth, or that she wondered whether Ye Qingzhou’s temperament had truly changed, or what other reason there might be. For a moment, Luo Jiao simply found it hard to accept.

A hundred years had passed, yet things hadn’t really changed—no vast seas had turned to mulberry fields, no people turned strangers. Ye Qingzhou was still in the Fengyi Sect, had even risen to an Elder’s seat.

But if nothing had changed… then she had gone and split Mount Sanqing apart!

…Fine, then.

Luo Jiao recalled that on the road into Mount Sanqing’s territory, she had glanced toward the area a few times—there had clearly been a mountain’s silhouette.

So “Ye Qingzhou destroyed the mountain” might not be true at all.

Luo Jiao rolled over on the bed.

Whether or not I owed Xu Liangdi the fulfillment of her dying wish, a trip to Mount Sanqing was already in order, she thought. And even if I’d only heard the waiter’s gossip, this hundred-years-later Mount Sanqing is worth investigating in its own right.

But just as she’d settled her course, Luo Jiao stared at the pillar in the room for a long while—and suddenly smelled a strange fragrance.

It was cheap and harsh, faintly like waterlogged, rotting wood, with a hint of Knockout Powder about it.

Only then did Luo Jiao jolt awake to the fact that her limbs were gradually going numb!

She dragged her heavy eyelids up toward the door—

And suddenly heard an angry shout.

It was Xu Liangdi, who had been silent in the Sea of Consciousness all this while!

“…Hey!” She didn’t know Luo Jiao’s name, so in her panic, “hey” had to suffice. “Get to the window—” She glanced around, realized the cramped little room had no window at all, and changed course. “Or—run! Run, now!!”

Luo Jiao rolled her eyes and said bluntly, “Way too late for that.”

“What do we do?!” Xu Liangdi was nearly in tears. “I can see three men standing outside… and one of them is holding a tube, with medicine hidden inside…”

Luo Jiao cut her off as if none of it concerned her, steering the conversation elsewhere. “Playing dead for days on end, and now you finally feel like talking to me?”

Xu Liangdi snapped, “How can you joke at a time like this!”

Luo Jiao gave a couple of dry “heh”s and was about to reply when she heard the three men outside chuckling sinisterly.

One asked, “Should be fast asleep by now?”

“Wait a bit longer,” another answered. “This knockout drug isn’t the good stuff—takes a while to kick in…”

“…………”

In a daze, Luo Jiao also caught the waiter’s voice. “Charging off to Mount Sanqing all alone—if she’s not a madwoman, she’s a fool,” he said. “If she’s mad, then we can count ourselves as ridding the people of a menace. And if she’s a fool, well, then she’s ours to play with.”

“Good thinking, going to pump her for information! Hahaha, otherwise we’d never have dared relax.” The first man snickered slyly. “I’ve never seen such a pretty little miss in all of Jinguan City!”

“Ah, ever since that madwoman from the Fengyi Sect split Mount Sanqing clean out of sight, our Jinguan City has gone downhill—turned into a ‘Ghost City’ straight out of common storybooks. Same handful of people coming and going, boring as anything. Dazhuang, we had a deal—we knocked her out for you, so get moving. Once the rice is cooked, she’ll count as your wife. Best if she bears you an heir, but even if not, there’s always the future.” The waiter had shed his easygoing, smiling mask from that evening, turning shrewd, calculating, and vicious. “In any case, Dazhuang, remember—waiter Wang did you an enormous favor. You’ll remember to ‘repay the debt’ later.”

“Of course, of course.” The man called Dazhuang chuckled. “Heh, I’m past thirty and still unmarried—shameful, truly shameful. And now I’ve picked up such a beautiful wife, heh heh, heh heh… a dream fulfilled at last…”

Luo Jiao understood now.

Marriages, funerals, heirs—it all came down to the same tired business. None of it had anything to do with her. And yet it was precisely this rotten business that had turned the lonely, seventeen-year-old Xu Liangdi into a prized morsel, with jackals and wolves from every direction lining up for a bite—

And that made it Luo Jiao’s business.

She spat inwardly and sneered: These mortals are as pathetic as ever. Nothing but filth between their ears.

Creeeak.

A hoarse sound—the wooden door pried open from outside.

A greasy-faced man walked in, a square face covered in coarse flesh, his smile jiggling in a way that lent him a false air of simple honesty.

Luo Jiao certainly didn’t know this man, yet the face felt terribly familiar. That “honest” smile was exactly the one worn by the drunken freeloaders in the pleasure houses who craved fine wine but had empty purses. Or the farmers hoeing fields at the village edge, shoulders loaded under the blazing sun, faces slick and shining when they looked up—yet this big square-faced fellow’s build was also something like the butcher at the market entrance, part ox, part horse, thick and solid, the kind who could level a crowd with one swing. Luo Jiao couldn’t shake the feeling that once men reached a certain age, they all started sharing one face—a face that couldn’t quite be called ugly, but was never pleasant to look at either.

Luo Jiao guessed this was “Dazhuang.”

She let out a scornful laugh without a shred of restraint.

The moment their eyes met, Dazhuang’s smile froze. His eyes went wide with utter disbelief, and he muttered, “Well, whaddya know—she’s not dead asleep?”

Luo Jiao’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “What fun would there be if I were?”

Dazhuang froze, then, thinking of something, started giggling again. “Heh heh, heh heh. Feisty little miss, aren’t you.”

Little miss. Wife. Bride… These days, Luo Jiao felt surrounded by such words. They made her want to vomit.

Dazhuang stared at her, pressing closer step by step, greed glinting in his eyes. “Don’t you mind, little miss. Someone as pretty as you… Dazhuang will treat you right.”

Luo Jiao merely leaned lightly against the bedframe and asked, eyes downcast, “Why me?”

Dazhuang blinked. He could read, but he’d never been much of a student, and his limited wits couldn’t produce any reasoning of his own, so he simply parroted the waiter: “My brother says, a child carrying gold through a crowded market, a beauty showing her face on the street—it’s only natural they draw fire. And you, little miss, you’re both.” He sat on the edge of the bed, glanced at the door, then lowered his voice. “Little miss, I never liked my books growing up, but I do know one thing. When a plump, juicy lamb wanders into a wolf pack—isn’t the lamb itself at fault?”

Luo Jiao shot him a look of pure disgust and muttered, “Strange. Did I step on bad luck somewhere? Why has everything been going wrong lately, and why do I keep running into this human filth?”

Dazhuang didn’t catch her words, but he saw the undisguised loathing in Luo Jiao’s eyes. He couldn’t have cared less—his mind was fixed only on making her submit willingly after tonight.

“Hey! Use that… that art of yours, that magic!” Seeing Dazhuang lean in, Xu Liangdi was frantic. “What are you waiting for!”

Luo Jiao replied only listlessly in her heart, No need.

She faced Dazhuang and said, “A child with gold, a lamb among wolves. Eating sheep is a wolf’s nature. Tell me—is harming your own kind your nature?”

“Not exactly.” Dazhuang aped her scholarly tone. “Loving money and loving women—that’s my nature.”

Luo Jiao chuckled. “By that logic, then—a weak one entering a strong pack—the weak one is also guilty of a crime?”

Dazhuang’s smile grew ever more lecherous. “Of course.”

Luo Jiao: “Good.”

That “good” was utterly inexplicable, but Dazhuang took it as her accepting her fate.

The man’s hand crept toward the hem of Luo Jiao’s clothes. Just as he moved, the girl repeated, “The weak one, entering the strong pack?”

Dazhuang: “…Huh?”

Luo Jiao slapped his hand away and abruptly sat upright, her eyes perfectly clear—not the slightest sign of having been drugged. “You seem to have gotten one thing wrong. The weak, the strong…”

“You don’t belong to the latter.”

The words had barely fallen—giving Dazhuang no time to react—when a pair of slender fingers closed around his, and snapped his fingers clean in two!

The next instant, Dazhuang felt something strike his forehead, and then his balance was gone, his whole body flipping backward!!

CRASH!!

“Ugh, arghh…………”

In the teahouse’s secluded little room, the burly man lay sprawled like a fallen warhorse, biting his tongue, his curses slurred and muffled.

The girl remained sitting calmly at the bedside, a smile in her eyes.

Luo Jiao stretched her limbs.

And for a moment, something of her old aura surfaced.

This body… she thought. I’m getting more and more fluent in it.

But Luo Jiao also knew: the more control she seized over this body, the more Xu Liangdi’s consciousness would scatter.

No time for such melancholy now.

Hearing the tremendous crash, the other two outside burst through the door.

At the sight before them, astonishment flashed through their eyes—but they quickly collected themselves, grabbed the wooden boards from the corridor, and like two enraged lions, charged straight in—