Uncanny Immortal 55

Chapter 55

A-Yan took the flower, flattered. “Oh my, Little Immortal Master Xie, are you giving this to me? This is the first time someone has given me a flower too!”

Xie Qingzheng vaguely felt that her master had something she wanted to say.

But her master glanced at her, then turned slightly to look at Miss A-Yan, and said nothing.

Through the white gauze, she couldn’t see her master’s expression. In a flash, she suddenly thought: Oh no, I should have given anything I got to my master first. How could I give it to someone else?

A-Yan held the flower and sniffed it. “It’s quite fragrant. Is this a camellia?”

Xie Qingzheng looked at the camellia in A-Yan’s hand, wanting it back, but she was too embarrassed to ask.

Mo Jiangxue turned around and said coolly, “The mist has cleared. Let’s go.”

Xie Qingzheng withdrew her gaze.

Forget it, forget it. It’s just a flower. My master probably won’t mind such a small thing.

Xie Qingzheng looked around. The forest was quiet, with only the slightly heavy breathing of the shaken rogue cultivators behind her. The mist had cleared, and the person who had whistled and controlled the butterflies had also vanished with the mist, leaving only the grass, trees, and the mucus left by the swarm of snakes in the forest.

Who had set up the maze? Could it be someone from the Ten Directions Domain? Garuda, Tanluan?

If it really was someone from the Ten Directions Domain, then for them to have gotten the news so quickly, did that mean that there was a spy from the Ten Directions Domain either by Xie Youke’s side or in the Xuanji Sect?

And who could that person be?

And who was it that had whistled and ordered the swarm of snakes to retreat?

Mo Jiangxue walked ahead on her own.

Xie Qingzheng’s mind was in a turmoil. She followed Mo Jiangxue’s steps, and after a few steps, she realized that the group of rogue cultivators behind her had not followed.

She looked back at them. They were saying, one after another, “That… I suddenly remembered, I have something to do. I won’t be going to the main altar with the two immortal masters!”

“Ah, I was bitten by a poisonous snake. I need to go back to the city to heal! I’ll be on my way!”

“The green mountains will not change, and the green waters will flow forever. We will meet again if fate allows, two immortal masters!”

The eight rogue cultivators were so scared by the swarm of snakes that their faces were pale. They had instantly lost their interest in going to the Immortal Cult’s main altar to become disciples.

Poisonous snakes, centipedes, scorpions—it was one thing to hear about them, but to actually come into contact with them was too terrifying. They couldn’t stand it.

Besides, they had just said bad things about the Xuanji Sect in front of a Xuanji Sect cultivator. It was really embarrassing!

They supported each other and left the forest, leaving only A-Yan standing where she was.

Xie Qingzheng asked gently, “Miss A-Yan, what about you?”

A-Yan held the flower. “I… I… want to go to the main altar…” She stomped her foot. “Forget it, forget it. We all came together. I can’t abandon them!”

She hesitated for a moment between her companions and becoming a disciple, but in the end, she chose her companions and followed the group of rogue cultivators back the way they had come.

Xie Qingzheng smiled faintly. “I don’t know what other dangers we will encounter. It’s good that they’ve left. It saves us the trouble of having to look after them.”

Mo Jiangxue hummed in acknowledgment.

In the blink of an eye, it was just the two of them, master and disciple, again.

Only then did Xie Qingzheng dare to ask, “Master, how is your body?”

Her poison had just relapsed a few days ago, and for the past two days, she had been attacked by either the Miao women or the poisonous insects. Xie Qingzheng was a little worried.

Mo Jiangxue said coolly, “I’m fine.”

Xie Qingzheng looked at Mo Jiangxue’s back and sighed softly. Her heart sank, and a feeling of dejection arose in her heart.

The road ahead was unclear, and there were still many people who would make things difficult for them.

She was like a chess piece on a board, held in someone’s hand. She didn’t know who the player was, or what the other wanted.

Her fate seemed to have been set since she was a child, full of hardships, schemed against, and harmed.

But her master was different. If it weren’t for her, why would her master have been drawn into these dangers?

It was she who had implicated her master.

After the group of rogue cultivators had left, there was no one to chat with. The forest was silent, not even a single insect chirp could be heard.

They walked in silence, one after the other. Seeing that Xie Qingzheng had been silent for a long time, Mo Jiangxue suddenly stopped, turned her head and glanced at her. Seeing her with her head lowered, her expression dejected, Mo Jiangxue asked, “What are you being difficult about again?”

Xie Qingzheng kicked a pebble by the road, also stopped, and after a long while, she finally said, “Master, it would have been better if you had never met me. My fate is probably not very good. I always bring disaster to the people around me…”

Mo Jiangxue was silent for a moment and said, “Your fate is indeed full of disasters.”

Xie Qingzheng looked up at Mo Jiangxue with a resentful look.

Mo Jiangxue said, “Come here.”

Xie Qingzheng quickly walked forward and stood face to face with Mo Jiangxue.

Mo Jiangxue took her hand and looked at her palm seriously. She said, “But you will meet many benefactors in your life. You will always turn misfortune into a blessing and danger into safety.”

Xie Qingzheng asked, “And you?”

“Me? I have a master-disciple fate with you in my life,” Mo Jiangxue’s tone was calm and cool, as if she were talking about a very ordinary matter. “You and I, master and disciple, are a fated connection.”

Because it was a fated connection, there was no need to talk about being implicated or not.

Xie Qingzheng looked at her, as if she could imagine the cool expression and the clear, cold eyes under the white gauze.

Such a cool person, yet she always did some heartwarming things.

Her heart pounded. Xie Qingzheng turned her gaze away, withdrew her hand, and did not dare to look at her for long.

If she looked any longer, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to resist hugging her.

She didn’t even dare to say another word, fearing that she would accidentally reveal those unspeakable thoughts.

Mo Jiangxue turned around and continued to walk forward. “Don’t think too much. Let’s get out first.”

Xie Qingzheng replied, “Alright,” looked at her back, and followed her steps closely.

The two of them continued to walk forward, but from dawn to dusk, they could not get out of this forest.

Along the way, they encountered an abandoned temple built of gray-white bricks. On the roof of the temple was a tall statue of a human head and a snake’s tail, which seemed to be the statue of the goddess Nuwa. Out of caution, the two of them did not go in.

They couldn’t walk out, and they couldn’t fly out. Xie Qingzheng thought of the abandoned Nuwa temple she had just seen and said, “Can we only go back the way we came? Does the person who set up the maze not want us to go to the Immortal Cult’s main altar? Or is the key to the exit in that temple just now?”

As her words fell, a familiar voice came from behind her, “Two immortal masters! Wait for me! I’ve thought it through! I still want to go to the main altar to become a disciple!”

It was Miss A-Yan.

The master and disciple stopped and turned to look at her.

A-Yan ran to the two of them, her hands on her knees, panting. After a long while, she straightened up and said firmly, “I’m not afraid of snakes, scorpions, or centipedes. I’ve made up my mind to go to the main altar to become a disciple!”

Mo Jiangxue said nothing, staring at her.

The flower in her hand was gone. Perhaps she had thrown it away on the road.

Xie Qingzheng reminded her, “Miss A-Yan, you may encounter many dangers if you follow us.”

A-Yan patted the personal sword at her waist. “Don’t worry. I am a cultivator, after all. Although my cultivation is not as high as yours, I still have the basic ability to protect myself.”

Xie Qingzheng glanced at Mo Jiangxue. Mo Jiangxue said nothing.

Xie Qingzheng said, “Alright then. Miss A-Yan, follow me closely. As long as I am here, I will protect you.”

She was the only witness left who was willing to follow them. Of course she would protect her well.

A-Yan was very moved. “I said such things about your Xuanji Sect before, yet you are still willing to protect me. You are too good!”

Xie Qingzheng chuckled and thought to herself: If you knew who had hung you up in the inn for a night, you probably wouldn’t think so…

The sky had already darkened, and the forest was pitch black. The three of them decided to rest where they were for a while.

Xie Qingzheng asked A-Yan, “Did your companions all go back the way they came?”

A-Yan nodded. “They all went back to Phoenix City the way they came. I’ve asked around. This maze forest is the only way to the Immortal Cult’s main altar. There is no other way. The forest is home to tens of thousands of poisonous snakes. Those snakes only listen to the commands of the Immortal Cult. Someone must have used the snakes to harm us during the day.”

Xie Qingzheng: “So the one who whistled and controlled the butterflies later was either someone from the Immortal Cult or someone related to the Immortal Cult?”

Otherwise, how could they command ten thousand snakes?

A-Yan said, “Perhaps.”

Mo Jiangxue suddenly said, “Miss A-Yan, you have become much braver.”

A-Yan laughed. “Ah? Are you saying because I dared to come back and find you alone? You are all cultivators of the Xuanji Sect. I trust you.”

Mo Jiangxue said, “I thought the Immortal Cult only accepted Miao and Tu women. Do they also accept Han people?”

A-Yan said, “Of course they do. In the past, the Immortal Cult and the major orthodox Xuanmen sects of the Central Plains would even send cultivators to each other for exchange and learning. But twenty years ago, something happened, and the Immortal Cult unilaterally cut off all ties with the Central Plains.”

Xie Qingzheng was curious. “What happened?”

A-Yan said, “Twenty years ago, the Immortal Cult sent the Holy Maiden of the cult to the Yaoguang sect to become a disciple. But that Holy Maiden later betrayed the Immortal Cult and joined the Ten Directions Domain. From then on, the Miao region no longer sent gu cultivators to the Central Plains for exchange.”

Xie Qingzheng was surprised. “Why did she betray the cult?”

A-Yan: “Because the Holy Maiden is the next cult leader. To succeed to the position of cult leader, one must renounce love and desire. She couldn’t do it. She fell in love with someone from the Yaoguang sect. She was willing to give up the position of Holy Maiden, endure the punishment, and leave the Immortal Cult.”

Xie Qingzheng: “What punishment?”

A-Yan: “To be thrown into this maze forest and be bitten by ten thousand snakes.”

Xie Qingzheng frowned. “That must have been very painful.”

A-Yan nodded. “It was indeed painful. Her whole body was bitten by poisonous snakes until there was not a single piece of good flesh, and her face was completely disfigured.”

Mo Jiangxue was impassive.

She had endured such torment to leave the cult. Her lover must have been heartbroken. Xie Qingzheng felt a sense of pity and asked, “And then? After she left the Immortal Cult, why did she go to the Ten Directions Domain instead of looking for her lover in the Yaoguang sect?”

A-Yan said, “Because the person she fell in love with said that there was a distinction between Han and Yi, and between master and disciple. Once a master, always a mother. They could not be together.”

Xie Qingzheng’s pupils trembled slightly. “She fell in love with her own master?”

A-Yan said, “That’s right. The Yi women don’t care about the rules of the Han people. If they like someone, they like them. What does it matter if they are master and disciple? Little Fellow Daoist Xie, if you were her master, what would you do?”

Xie Qingzheng didn’t dare to look at Mo Jiangxue’s reaction. She answered in her heart: If my beloved had suffered such torment for me, what would I care about the distinction between Han and Yi, or the ethics of master and disciple? I would definitely take her and run away!

But on the surface, she said with a struggle, “She is so pitiful, but, but, matters of the heart cannot be forced… For two people to be together, they have to be in love with each other. If the other party cannot accept it, then there is nothing that can be done…”

Just like Si Li and Yun Yi, they had to like each other to be together.

A-Yan smiled. “They were indeed in love with each other before, and they were very happy.”

Xie Qingzheng was taken aback for a moment and thought to herself: What does ‘happy’ mean? Very happy?

But then she had a doubt. How did this Miss A-Yan know so much about these things? She was not at all as boastful as she had been during the day.

“Ding-ling-ling—”

Just as Xie Qingzheng was about to ask in detail, a sound of a bell suddenly came from the forest.

“The weather is dry, be careful of fire. The deceased is returning home, pedestrians make way.”

A Daoist in a Daoist robe suddenly appeared in the forest, shaking a bell in one hand and holding a red lantern in the other. Behind him followed nine corpses tied together in a line.

The reason she said they were corpses was because Xie Qingzheng could not hear their breathing at all.

The three of them stood up at the same time. Mo Jiangxue took out her qin, Xie Qingzheng held her jade xiao, and A-Yan did not draw her sword, but calmly looked at the corpse-herding Daoist and the nine corpses.

A yellow talisman was stuck on the foreheads of the corpses. They hopped along in the forest, following the rhythm of the Daoist’s bell.

A-Yan said, “This is the Xiangxi corpse-herding technique.”

Xie Qingzheng had never seen Xiangxi corpse-herding, but she had heard of it.

A-Yan added, “Now that there are frequent wars and many people have died, the people of Xiangxi like to have their fallen leaves return to their roots, so they will hire people to herd the corpses and send them back to their hometowns for burial.”

The Daoist did not look sideways and herded a group of corpses past the three of them, as if he had not seen them at all.

There was not a trace of human qi on the corpse-herding Daoist. His face was covered in rouge, and his expression was very stiff. He did not look like a living person, but rather like a paper figure.

This forest was protected by a barrier. A normal corpse-herder probably could not have entered.

“Ding-ling-ling—”

In the darkness, Xie Qingzheng looked at the nine corpses, and in an instant, it was as if she had been struck by lightning—

Those corpses were clearly the rogue cultivators from the day, and the last corpse was exactly the same as the Miss A-Yan beside her!

If Miss A-Yan had already become a corpse, then the person standing beside her, the person she had been talking to, who was she?

Xie Qingzheng’s limbs went cold, and her blood seemed to freeze.

Mo Jiangxue suddenly slapped out a lit talisman. The talisman hit the corpse-herder and the corpses, and their bodies, like a painting drawn by an artist, were instantly compressed into thin pieces of paper, which fell to the ground and slowly burned.

Xie Qingzheng reached out to grab the “A-Yan” beside her. When her hand touched her clothes, it felt like she was touching paper, not the feel of cloth at all.

Mo Jiangxue looked at “A-Yan” and said, “She is also a paper figure.”

Xie Qingzheng: “But how does she look exactly like a real person?”

Mo Jiangxue: “Because blood was dripped on her, and a spell was cast. She can maintain the appearance of a real person for a period of time and can even chat with people.”

As her words fell, the “A-Yan” in Xie Qingzheng’s hand suddenly shattered into hundreds of paper figures, scattering throughout the forest.

Her brain buzzed. Xie Qingzheng felt as if her scalp was about to explode. She almost screamed and quickly moved closer to Mo Jiangxue.

A large group of A-Yan-like paper figures stood in the forest, drew the paper swords from their waists, and let out a sharp laugh, which was indescribably eerie and strange.

A gloomy wind blew. Mo Jiangxue lifted her sleeve and glanced at the cold poison that had already spread to her wrist. She sighed, “Let’s not fight. Let’s run.”

Xie Qingzheng was about to say, “Didn’t you say two days ago that you never run away?” but then she thought, there had already been a battle today. If they fought again, her master’s heat and cold poison might relapse. It was not worth it. It was better to avoid it if they could. Thirty-six stratagems, running away is the best!

She placed the xiao to her lips, played a few notes, and cast a simple barrier. Then she quickly took Mo Jiangxue’s hand, used the Myriad Manifestations Steps, and darted through the forest, saying as she ran, “Master, I’ll teach you the incantation for the Myriad Manifestations Steps later!”

A disciple was going to teach her master a technique. Hearing this, Mo Jiangxue was not offended and hummed in acknowledgment.

The hundreds of paper figures behind them quickly broke through the barrier and chased after the master and disciple. The paper swords in their hands were as sharp as real swords. With a light swing, they cut off the branches in the forest.

Xie Qingzheng ran in a panic, circulating her spiritual energy, and ran very fast, temporarily leaving them behind.

Passing by the abandoned Nuwa temple again, Xie Qingzheng said, “Master, should we go in and hide?”

Mo Jiangxue hummed in acknowledgment.

The temple was surrounded by a gray-white wall, two zhang high. The green vines of the forest had already climbed up the wall. There was no gate. The two of them gathered their qi, leaped in, and on the other side was another wall of about the same height. They leaped three times before they saw the main gate of the temple.

They pushed open the door and went in. The temple was pitch black. On the main hall was indeed a statue of the goddess Nuwa.

Xie Qingzheng closed the door, put her palms together, and whispered, “Goddess Nuwa, please protect us. Don’t let those paper figures find us.”

She looked around at the layout of the hall and saw a stone coffin in the center. The lid of the coffin was only half-closed, and there was no body inside. Xie Qingzheng still shivered.

Who was this coffin for?

There seemed to be a rustling sound outside. Mo Jiangxue and Xie Qingzheng looked at each other and, by tacit agreement, both jumped into the stone coffin.

Xie Qingzheng reached out and grabbed the coffin lid, pulled it, and the lid fit perfectly with the tenon of the stone coffin.

The master and disciple lay side by side, squeezed together, their bodies pressed tightly together, with almost no room to turn.

In the darkness, Xie Qingzheng heard the faint breathing of the person beside her and sensed that that person’s hand had reached out and was feeling around the coffin wall behind her, her arm brushing against her body.

“W-what are you doing?” she asked, her voice trembling with nervousness.

Mo Jiangxue said in a low voice, “Looking for any mechanisms or arrays…”

The breath of her words sprayed on her ear. All the blood in her body seemed to be rushing to her ear. The space in the coffin was too small, and every movement could easily touch the other’s body. Xie Qingzheng kept her hands properly on her own body, afraid of touching her master’s body.

Author’s Note:

Tanluan: What’s wrong with touching? I’m going to make you two lovers do happy things~~~