If Wu Chongyun had been a mute, Wei Mingyi wouldn’t have made her babble incoherently—after all, she wouldn’t understand anyway.
But Wu Chongyun wasn’t mute.
Unabashedly, Wei Mingyi let her gaze roam over Wu Chongyun’s face. Only when those desolate eyes met her own did she put on a pretense, withdrawing her gaze. She softened and repeated her request, “Your disciple is puzzled. Please, Shizun, resolve your disciple’s confusion.”
Wu Chongyun replied indifferently, “Far away, at the sky’s edge.”
Wei Mingyi raised an eyebrow. She knew Wu Chongyun was referring to the Heavenly Dao Alliance and the first-class great families. But her cheat item had already displayed Reputation ranks, indicating that was a level she could reach in the future. Knowing the various factions in advance was definitely beneficial. Besides, forget top-tier families—the 4th-Rate Clan they were currently facing, itself had backing from higher-ranked families.
“Currently confined to this one corner, but who’s to say I won’t one day rule this entire domain?” Wei Mingyi answered confidently.
Wu Chongyun lifted her eyes to look at Wei Mingyi. This cheap disciple was thinking too big. She brushed aside the strands of hair brushing her cheek. Judging by Wei Mingyi’s expression, she knew this girl wouldn’t stop until she got an answer. The wheelchair was blocked; she couldn’t go anywhere. Then, she would just go nowhere. Just as Wei Mingyi thought her confusion was about to be resolved, Wu Chongyun closed her eyes again, seemingly entering a meditative state directly.
Wei Mingyi: “…” This was a bit absurd. She was extremely close to Wu Chongyun. The faint scent of medicinal herbs lingered in her nostrils. Soundlessly, she tilted forward a little more. Just a bit further, and she would touch the tip of Wu Chongyun’s nose, but Wu Chongyun showed absolutely no reaction. Instead, a puzzled voice came from behind.
“Junior Sister, what are you doing?”
Wei Mingyi straightened up, releasing the wheelchair’s armrests. When she turned to face the utterly astonished Mo Xuanxiao, her expression returned to normal.
Questions she couldn’t answer, she’d just not answer.
She asked: “Senior Sister Mo, what brings you here?”
Mo Xuanxiao raised her hand, saying, “Delivering medicine.” The Assistant Master’s health wasn’t good and needed medicine to suppress the condition. Her Shizun had just finished refining a new batch of pills and sent her to deliver them.
Wei Mingyi replied, “Oh,” and reached out to take it.
But Wu Chongyun, who had seemed like she was already dead for a while, opened her eyes again. She ignored the elixir and said faintly, “She has questions.”
Far more used to Wu Chongyun’s silent demeanor than Wei Mingyi, who had only recently joined the Chongyuan Sect, Mo Xuanxiao immediately grasped the deeper meaning in Wu Chongyun’s words. After shoving the elixir into Wei Mingyi’s hands, she added, “Does Junior Sister have some confusion?” And without waiting for Wei Mingyi to answer, she supplemented, “If it’s about those two Daoist scriptures, don’t bother asking.”
Wu Chongyun, giving up any thought of going out, pushed her wheelchair back into the house. Wei Mingyi’s gaze followed her for a moment, then withdrew. After pondering briefly, she asked, “How much does Senior Sister know about the Heavenly Dao Alliance and the ranking of the Aristocratic Families?”
The moment she heard that detestable name, Mo Xuanxiao’s expression turned sour. She reached out, grabbed her long-stemmed pipe, biting it again. After blowing out a puff of medicinal smoke with a calming, mind-clearing scent, she spoke: “The Aristocratic Families claim to act in accordance with the Heavenly Dao. Their alliance is the Heavenly Dao Alliance. Within it, there are four Ministers, one from each of the Four Great Families, known as the ‘Four Sages.’ Anyone born into an Aristocratic Family cannot escape those three words ‘Heavenly Dao Alliance’ their entire life. Even Master-Disciple lineages must deal with the Heavenly Dao Alliance, because it represents the Families’ control over the vast majority of the Nine Provinces’ resources.”
Wei Mingyi’s eyes widened: “Huh?”
Mo Xuanxiao frowned, tapping Wei Mingyi’s head with the pipe—not too hard, not too lightly—and threatened: “If you encounter the Heavenly Dao Alliance, run immediately. Because the Heavenly Dao Alliance will find every way possible to make you mortgage your innate physique, magical artifacts, cultivation techniques, even your Golden Core, away. There are many Rogue Cultivators who, in their desperation to climb up, have mortgaged away even their own cultivation. At that point, can they even be considered human anymore? They’re just a dish on the Families’ plate.”
That brutal? Wei Mingyi was shocked.
Mo Xuanxiao, unlike the silent Wu Chongyun, went on to tell Wei Mingyi about the classification of the Families. She said: “The Heavenly Dao Alliance classifies families based on the Dao Cultivation level of their cultivators. For instance, the Four Great Clans all have Grotto-Heaven mighty figures in command. Second-rate families, also called Prosperous Clans, require at least three Nascent Soul Stage 3 cultivators. Third-rate families are slightly less—three Nascent Soul cultivators, one of whom must be at Stage 3. As for fourth-rate families, they need three Golden Core cultivators, with one at Stage 3. Any families below that are unranked.”
Wei Mingyi listened and suddenly understood. This quantitative layering gave her a rough framework. Her meager knowledge told her that since the dissolution of Taiyi, the Four Great Clans had stood proudly at the peak, never changing. But according to this structure, there should be promotion and demotion between families, right? She asked: “Within the Prosperous Clans, can’t a Stage 3 Nascent Soul cultivator advance to Grotto-Heaven?”
Mo Xuanxiao glanced at her and said coolly, “Supporting a single Grotto-Heaven is no easy task. Besides, if you were part of the Four Great Clans, would you be willing to let another force emerge and share your resources?” The Prosperous Clans indeed wanted to climb higher, but the Four Great Clans would never give them the opportunity.
“Within the Master-Disciple lineages, are there no Grotto-Heavens?” Wei Mingyi asked again.
This time, Mo Xuanxiao remained silent for a long while before saying, “The Jade Emperor Sect has a Grotto-Heaven mighty figure in charge. It is the strongest within the Master-Disciple lineage.” Although Wei Mingyi hadn’t asked, Mo Xuanxiao added anyway, “Our Master-Disciple lineage has three great sects: the Jade Emperor Sect, the Pure Clean Sect, and the Heavenly Origin Sect. With our current strength, we can’t contact them. But the Founding Ancestor once said: the Jade Emperor Sect is dog shit.”
A sudden vulgarity burst out of nowhere, leaving Wei Mingyi stupefied for a moment. Recovering her wits, she asked, “What about the Pure Clean Sect?”
Mo Xuanxiao sneered: “This faction is extreme, declaring the Master-Disciple lineage as the only true path. Yet no one dares to make a move against the Families. These disciples of the Pure Clean Sect are most skilled at letting the Families off lightly, while turning around to vehemently denounce fellow Master-Disciple lineage members and Rogue Cultivators for being disunited and irresponsible. People of this faction mostly cultivate the Dao of Slander, the most skilled at ‘turning black into white’ and ‘calling a stag a horse.’ In short, if you ever meet them, stay far away.”
“As for the Heavenly Origin Sect, it was transformed from an Aristocratic Family. A thousand years ago, to absorb the sect forces of the Master-Disciple lineage, the Families sent their descendants out to leave home and establish new mountain sects. The Heavenly Origin Sect’s four branches were originally passed down by four surnames, and many of its members are descendants of Aristocratic Families.”
Wei Mingyi: “…” What kind of deep undercover operation was this? No wonder the Master-Disciple lineage had suffered such a crushing defeat.
“Junior Sister need not worry too much,” Mo Xuanxiao said, seeing Wei Mingyi fall silent, and comforted her, “Considering our sect’s power, the most we’d encounter are some 4th-Rate Clans. Everything else is unrelated to us.”
Wei Mingyi wanted to say something, then stopped.
She thought, maybe unrelated now, but that might not remain the case in the future.
With the matter of the Families clarified, Wei Mingyi’s concern turned back to her delicate Shizun. She furtively glanced toward the house. Seeing no movement, she lowered her voice: “What exactly happened to Shizun?”
Mo Xuanxiao replied: “The Assistant Master has internal injuries. As for how she got them, I don’t know.” In the Chongyuan Sect, only the Sect Leader was the true disciple of the Founding Ancestor. The rest had all been picked up by the Sect Leader. Not counting Wei Mingyi, Wu Chongyun had been the last. “Three years ago, when the Sect Leader picked up the Assistant Master, she was already on the verge of death, barely breathing. The Sect Leader and my Shizun did everything they could to pull her back from the gates of the underworld, but they couldn’t neutralize the extreme poison entangling her Nascent Soul.”
Wei Mingyi: “Nascent Soul?”
Mo Xuanxiao nodded, “Yes, the Assistant Master is a Nascent Soul Perfected One. She’s older than anyone else in our Chongyuan Sect.”
Wei Mingyi asked earnestly, “What poison is it? How can it be cured?”
“It’s a poison that gradually drains a person’s life force. I heard my Shizun say the poison is called ‘Wither and Flourish.’ It drives a person toward death, but because of the ‘Flourish’ aspect, right when someone reaches the brink of dying, a yearning for life flares up. Struggling on the edge of life and death, unable to live, yet unable to die. As for the cure—” Mo Xuanxiao paused for a long moment, then sighed deeply. “My Shizun doesn’t know, and I don’t either. All these years, we’ve just been searching everywhere for medicine to ease the pain the poison brings her. If the poison can’t be neutralized, then—”
The sentence was cut off abruptly. Wei Mingyi’s heart sank. She knew what Mo Xuanxiao was going to say.
If the poison couldn’t be neutralized, then only the path of death remained.
Mo Xuanxiao continued, “Anyway, Junior Sister, keep an eye on her. The Assistant Master is affected by the poison; she might try to self-harm.”
Wei Mingyi said somberly, “I understand.” She couldn’t bear the thought of a fictional character dying, let alone a living, breathing person. Pity for Wu Chongyun coiled tightly in her heart. Thinking back to her earlier actions, she wished she could slap herself.
She really deserved to die! How could she have forced her critically ill, frail Shizun to answer her questions?
So what if she pretended to be mute? Let her pretend!
After Mo Xuanxiao left, Wei Mingyi began rummaging through her cheat item again.
Nothing but land, land, land. Why couldn’t a pill capable of curing a hundred poisons just pop out?
Useless thing!
After hesitating for a while, Wei Mingyi swept a pile of fallen blossoms out of the courtyard with her foot, then slowly walked inside.
Her beautiful, powerful, tragic Shizun was still posing as a statue. Her calm face betrayed no trace of pain.
A true stoic.
The fingers resting on the wheelchair armrest twitched so faintly, as if in response to Wei Mingyi’s entrance.
Wei Mingyi walked over to the wheelchair, half-kneeling before Wu Chongyun.
Her hand rested very lightly on Wu Chongyun’s leg, her voice full of care: “Shizun, where does it hurt?”
Wu Chongyun’s legs still had sensation. The warmth from Wei Mingyi’s palm, seeping through the fabric of her skirt to reach her skin, made her slightly uncomfortable. Wu Chongyun opened her eyes. When she saw the sympathy in Wei Mingyi’s gaze, she pressed her lips together tightly.
Exactly like Su Xuanjing and the others.
So strange.
The people closest to her in the past wanted to kill her, yet strangers offered her sincere kindness.
But the turbulence in her eyes vanished in an instant. Wu Chongyun regained that cold, detached demeanor that seemed to care about nothing at all.
Just as Wei Mingyi was about to put her cheek on her lap, she spoke: “Go to Flying Bird Cliff.”
Flying Bird Cliff was a sheer cliff on one of the desolate peaks, a place rarely visited.
After gaining ownership of the Chongyuan Sect’s land, Wei Mingyi could see any location within the system.
She didn’t know what Wu Chongyun wanted at Flying Bird Cliff, but remembering Mo Xuanxiao’s warning, she decided against taking that risk.
Meeting Wu Chongyun’s gaze, she lied without batting an eye: “Shizun, your disciple has never been there. I don’t know the way.”
Wu Chongyun replied: “Then you leave.”
Truly decisive, concise, and stabbing right in the heart.
But Wei Mingyi did her own reading comprehension.
“Yes, your disciple will accompany Shizun out for a walk right away.”
