Bloodbath
As Su Qing was practicing her lightness technique on the back mountain, she had just stepped onto the stone steps and leaped into the air when she heard an old man coughing by the stream. Looking in the direction of the sound, she saw an old woman leaning on a broken cane, leading a sallow-faced and thin child, pacing back and forth along the rushing stream. The child's small hands were tightly clutching the old woman's clothes, and his face, which was purple from the cold, was flushed with an unnatural redness.
Su Qing's heart softened, and she withdrew her spiritual power, landing on the ground. "Grandma, let me help you cross the river. Then go to your room to rest." The old woman thanked her repeatedly, took the child's hand, and followed her onto the wooden bridge.
When crossing the bridge, the child always hid behind Su Qing, his little hands timidly grasping the hem of her Taoist robe. Su Qing thought the child was just shy and even took out a candied fruit and handed it to him. She didn't notice that when the child took the candied fruit, a very faint black aura flashed at his fingertips.
After settling the two into a guest room at Qingyun Courtyard, Su Qing turned to the kitchen to prepare hot porridge. But as soon as she returned with the porridge, she heard a heart-wrenching scream from the guest room—the moment she opened the door, a stench assaulted her nostrils: the child's eyes were rolled back, his face covered in bluish-black lines, and he was biting the old woman's neck like a wild beast. The old woman's body was visibly shriveling, her bones cracking, and in the blink of an eye, she transformed into a black, shimmering skeleton, lunging at Su Qing! "A reversed talisman!" Su Qing's pupils constricted as she glimpsed a reversed yellow talisman affixed to the back of the child's neck, the paper glowing with an eerie red light—it was an evil spell performed that night!
She hurriedly raised her jade-handled staff, channeling spiritual energy through her fingertips. The water blade sliced through the air like an arrow, striking the skeleton fiercely. But before she could catch her breath, a deafening roar echoed from the mountain. She rushed out of her room and saw that Qinglang Mountain had been transformed into a hellish inferno: a bluish-gray evil aura shrouded in black mist spread from the foot of the mountain to its summit. Countless disciples, their eyes hollow and their bodies radiating black energy, wielded magical weapons and hacked at each other. Those who fell to the ground instantly turned into skeletons with a "crack," roaring as they lunged at the living.
The claws of the high-level evil spirit tore through the barrier, and with a loud crash, it collapsed the archway of the martial arts arena. Debris flew everywhere, and many disciples were hit and instantly lost their breath.
"It was Su Qing who brought the evil spirit in! That jinx!" someone roared from the crowd. Immediately, countless angry gazes were fixed on Su Qing, and curses surged like a tidal wave: "We shouldn't have let you become Elder Mu Han's eldest disciple! A piece of trash who got in through connections, and now she's brought evil spirits and ruined the sect!" "She must be possessed! Look at her seductive appearance, she's no longer a proper disciple!" "Kill her! Killing her will make the evil spirits disappear!" Su Qing's knuckles gripping her staff turned white, her back ramrod straight. She met those venomous gazes, her eyes filled with icy disappointment, but her voice was as clear as ice: "If I had known they were evil spirits, how could I have let them in? You didn't even investigate, just convicted me based on a guess—is this the 'righteous path' of Qinglang Mountain?"
She took a step forward, her staff striking the ground with a crisp sound that made the surrounding pebbles tremble slightly: "You keep claiming to be righteous, yet you only recruit noble children, turning this place of quiet cultivation into a place for power trading! Now that disaster has struck, instead of thinking about exorcising evil spirits, you only think about finding an 'outsider' to be a scapegoat—such a path is not worth cultivating!"
“I have saved the people at the rain-seeking ceremony and protected the disciples of the Yanqing Assembly. How am I like an evil cultivator?” Her gaze swept across the crowd and landed on Tongque, who was hiding behind his master. “On the contrary, some people are afraid to admit the evil thing they are being framed for, and now they are joining in the commotion. Your eyes will only see what you want to see. The truth is not important to you at all!”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than a tall, high-ranking evil spirit suddenly burst forth from the black mist, its dark blue claws reeking of decay, lunging straight for Su Qing's crown.
At the critical moment, a figure in pure white swept past like a gust of wind. Elder Mu Han held a jade ruyi, his spiritual power surging. A clear white light condensed into a semi-transparent shield, which he forcefully blocked the evil spirit's claws with a "bang." As cracks spread across the shield, he flipped his wrist, and the spiritual power at the tip of the jade ruyi suddenly intensified, piercing the evil spirit's shoulder blade like a sharp blade. The black energy was instantly scorched by the spiritual power, sizzling loudly.
Although he still looked like an old man, his white hair at the temples disheveled in the wind, his movements were sharp and showed no signs of age—when dodging the long tail swept by the evil spirit, his figure was as light as a feather; when slashing out with a spiritual energy blade, the muscles in his arms were taut, each strike precisely hitting the evil spirit's weakness. But there were too many evil spirits. One attacked from the side and behind, its sharp claws fiercely grabbing at his cheek. He hurriedly turned to the side, avoiding a fatal blow, but the claws grazed his cheek, tearing off a piece of wrinkled "human skin" that revealed smooth and delicate skin underneath. Elder Mu Han's heart tightened. He wanted to raise his hand to cover himself, but another evil spirit entangled his movements.
The evil spirit roared and rammed into his chest, forcing him to stagger backward. His back slammed heavily against a broken pillar, and he spat out a mouthful of blood onto his plain white Taoist robe. Even more fatal was that the force of the impact shattered the spiritual energy that had been maintaining his disguise, and the remaining "old skin" on his face peeled away, revealing a strikingly handsome face—sharp black eyebrows, a hint of lingering sharpness in the corners of his eyes, a high nose bridge, and lips tightly pressed together in pain. Despite his youthful appearance, his eyes held a composure beyond his years.
He didn't have time to gather his spiritual energy to disguise himself, so he could only grit his teeth and use the jade ruyi to get up. Several more deep wounds appeared on his back, and his moon-white Daoist robe was soaked with blood. Yet he still stood in front of Su Qing, his voice hoarse from the disordered spiritual energy, but still firm: "Go!" Su Qing stared blankly, feeling that this face was somewhat familiar (as if she had seen it outside the Muqing Hall before), but she couldn't connect him with the "old master" she had been with day and night. In her heart, her master was still that elder with graying temples, gentle and dignified. The handsome man in front of her was at most a fellow disciple who was familiar with her master.
Before she could think it through, a sharp pain shot through her back—Tong Que, wielding a dagger imbued with evil energy, plunged it deep into her back. "Su Qing, you deserve to be the scapegoat!" Her grandmaster, staff in hand, bound Su Qing's wrists with spiritual power like chains. "Kill her, and atone for the sect's sins!" Su Qing staggered back, looking at the greed in Tong Que's eyes, then at the disciples still cursing. The pain in her heart was far greater than in her back. She broke free, enduring the excruciating pain as she charged towards the horde of skeletons, her water blades slashing wildly. Only one thought remained in her mind: find her master, her master would surely believe her. She stumbled and ran towards the back mountain. The Muqing Hall was in ruins, the training ground littered with corpses, but she couldn't find the familiar old man's figure.
It wasn't until she rushed into a pine forest that she saw a handsome man lying under a pine tree, covered in blood—the very man who had just stood in front of her. His moon-white Taoist robe was tattered, and blood was still seeping from the wound on his back. His breath was so faint that it was almost imperceptible.
"Who are you?" Su Qing squatted down, her fingertips just touching his clothes when she was startled by the familiar scent of ink on him. But when she saw the completely unfamiliar young face, she suppressed her doubts.
She thought her master had already been killed in the chaos. Despite her despair, she gritted her teeth, picked up the man, and placed him in a nearby cave, where she applied some herbs to his wounds.
After doing all this, she returned to the Ancestral Hall, placed the jade-handled staff in front of the hall door, and kowtowed three times towards the inside of the hall.
The curses from inside the hall pierced through the door, but she straightened her back and walked out of Qinglang Mountain step by step—behind her was the burning sect, and in front of her was an unknown mist. She didn't know who the man she was dragging was, nor did she know where she should go in the future. She only knew that she would never return to this place that had utterly disappointed her.
As Mu Han held the Qingling Jade to regulate his breathing, his fingertips suddenly stopped—the spiritual light emanating from the jade revealed the evil altar hidden behind Qinglang Mountain. His movements were still somewhat unsteady as he stood up, but he still placed the Elder's Token into Su Qing's palm: "I need to destroy the altar, otherwise the remaining evil spirits will continue to multiply. Wait for me here; I will return within three days."
Su Qing watched his figure disappear into the forest, her fingers clutching the Elder's Token, feeling empty inside. She waited in the cliff cave for two days, but Mu Han didn't come. Instead, she felt a strange pang of fear—as if something was pulling her, her feet uncontrollably turning back towards Qinglang Mountain, finally stopping in front of a rocky slope she had never set foot on before.
The slope was overgrown with weeds, except for a single bluestone slab embedded in the soil, from which a faint smell of blood seeped. She had just squatted down to examine it more closely when a sudden, tearing pain shot through her old back wound, her vision went black, and she stumbled and bumped into the bluestone slab.
The stone slab flipped over with a "click," revealing a bottomless abyss beneath. Before she could grab onto anything, she plummeted down the slippery stone wall.
In the falling wind, past scenes suddenly exploded in her mind: the ruthlessness of her grandmaster when he held up his staff and wrapped it around her wrist, the greed when the Bronze Sparrow Dagger pierced her back, the resentment of the Qinglang Mountain disciples when they cursed her as a "jinx," and... the determination of Mu Han when he stood in front of her, his moon-white Taoist robe stained with blood.
"If I could do it all over again..." In her hazy state, her fingertips still clutched the warm elder's token, "I must protect my master and expose those people's true colors..." At the bottom of the cave, there was a shallow pool of water. When she fell into the water, the water suddenly shimmered with golden light.
Golden light enveloped her body, and the wound on her back no longer hurt. Even the chaotic spiritual energy within her body gradually calmed down. She closed her eyes, letting the golden light envelop her. The disappointment, grievances, and resentment of the past slowly faded away as her consciousness dissipated—it turned out that the palpitation she felt earlier was not a pull, but the power of rebirth within the earth, echoing her unfulfilled obsession.
The pool water at the bottom of the cave shimmered with golden light, and the moment it enveloped Su Qing, the excruciating pain from her back wound vanished abruptly. However, her consciousness was as if it had been drawn into a vortex—the firelight of Qinglang Mountain in her past life, Mu Han's blood-stained Taoist robe, and Tongque's dagger were finally nailed to a scene etched into her very bones: when she was ten years old, Yin Yi led her into the sacrificial cave.
The sunlight outside the cave was completely blocked by the heavy stone door, with only the flickering candlelight on the walls casting distorted and eerie shadows on the two figures. The air was filled with the strange smell of burning herbs, and the bluestone slabs underfoot were covered with an unknown, slippery slime, making each step feel like walking on cold snake scales.
She gripped Yin Yi's clothes tightly, her fingertips turning white from the force, and pleaded softly, "Father, I'm scared, can we not go in?" But Yin Yi didn't turn around; the temperature of his palm was as cold as ice. He simply held her hand and led her deeper into the cave.
He stopped beside a stone platform covered with strange patterns and placed her hand on the cold stone surface.
The stone platform had been hidden for countless years; the chill seeped into her bones through her fingertips. She could even feel the dried, blackened marks remaining in the tiny grooves of the platform. "For the peace of the Silver Prince's Mansion, you must stay." His voice was devoid of warmth, and the hem of his dark brocade robe brushed against her instep, much like the cold vines hanging from the cave wall.
After saying that, he turned and left. No matter how much she cried and cried out, no matter how hard she reached out to grab him, she could only see his resolute back and the moment the last bit of candlelight was swallowed by darkness as the stone door slammed shut. She was left alone in the cave. The candlelight crackled, and her shadow flickered on the wall like a menacing ghost. She huddled in a corner of the stone platform, listening to the faint, sobbing sounds coming from the depths of the cave. She didn't dare to breathe loudly, biting her lip tightly until she tasted blood, which barely suppressed the sobs in her throat.
The fear of being abandoned by her loved ones and trapped alone in the darkness was like countless cold hands gripping her heart, causing her to be awakened by that darkness in her dreams even years after escaping the Silver King's Mansion.
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