Chapter 365 Master, This is the last time I'll call you that.
Yu Sui gazed at the figure ahead. This space was different from the violent filth outside the waterfall; instead, it was peaceful and serene.
Although the water was filled with floating corpses and countless spirits, it seemed to be their resting place, where the howling of evil spirits outside disappeared completely.
Yu Sui called out again to the figure in front, "Senior Brother!"
There was still no movement.
She walked forward, and as she got closer, she could tell from his back that it was Mei Liangyu, but he stood there motionless, as if he couldn't hear her.
Yu Sui mustered her courage and approached the man. Looking at him from the front, she confirmed that it was indeed Mei Liangyu.
The senior brother still had water stains on his face. He looked calm and natural, but he stood still, seemingly in a meditative state, yet Yu Sui felt that something was not right.
Why did the strange fire suddenly stop reacting to my senior brother?
"Senior brother?" Yue Bianyu Sui reached out and touched his face. It was soft and warm to the touch; he was alive.
She had just pulled her hand back when her ankle was grabbed by cold, bony claws.
This time, Yu Sui did not break the other person's hand again. Instead, she looked down and frowned slightly. The other corpses were being carried away by the water, but the one in front of her remained at her feet.
"You..." Yu Sui had a bad feeling and hesitated before asking, "Senior brother?"
The withered claws tapped her ankle, as if in response.
Yu Sui glanced at her other hand, which had been broken by her foot: "..."
"Why didn't you stop me just now?" she said regretfully, bending down to take the skeletal hand and pull him out of the water.
Yu Sui actually managed to pull the skeleton out of the water.
The remains, once removed from the river, became mottled and visibly decayed from a brand-new skeleton. They bore the marks of time, with scars, whether from before or after death, and messy inscriptions etched into the bones.
"It doesn't hurt." Mei Liangyu's reassuring voice rang in Yu Sui's ears.
Yu Sui looked at the skeleton in front of him, then at the flesh beside him, and was dumbfounded: "Senior brother... have you mastered the Ghost Path to Godhood?"
“If you were a ghost who had transformed into a spirit, you wouldn’t be able to hear my voice; you would only be able to receive my consciousness.” Mei Liangyu pointed to his body with his bone claw. “I am currently in a state of spiritual separation, and my energy has entered this corpse that still retains some consciousness.”
Yu Sui was horrified. In her understanding, what was the difference between this and an out-of-body experience?
"What kind of residual energy is this corpse?" Yu Sui asked. "Does it mean that this corpse still possesses vitality and can come back to life?"
"Or is it... that he is the physical body that Master detached after his ghostly transformation?"
“This is a corpse,” Mei Liangyu refuted her guess. “It’s not Master.”
Yu Sui asked in bewilderment, "How do you know it's not Master?"
Mei Liangyu said, "Master is a man, and this is a female corpse."
“Okay, but…” After a moment of compromise, Yu Sui couldn’t help but doubt again, “There is no definite evidence as to whether Master is male or female. His aura is silent, so it is impossible to tell.”
Mei Liangyu added, "There is a portrait in the main hall of the sanctuary. Although the face is not clearly visible, the figure is male."
Yu Sui said "Oh," and complained to someone for the first time: "I've wanted to say for a long time that the portraits in the sanctuary are all in a stream-of-consciousness style. They can only be understood through imagination. You can say they are male or female."
I don't know who drew it so abstractly.
Mei Liangyu seemed to share the same sentiment and nodded.
"Master is also cunning and treacherous, who knows how many false rumors he has spread to hide himself." Yu Sui then touched his skull-like face: "Is this girl who has been dead for who knows how long related to Master?"
“This wisp of consciousness can be confirmed to have been deliberately left behind. I can glimpse her memories from her previous life through this wisp of consciousness.”
Mei Liangyu stood by the river, but looked up at the water: "Her name is Song Dongling. She is from Nanjing. When she was thirteen, her parents died of plague, and she went to the border city of Yan with a distant relative to make a living."
"Song Dongling was a person of the Pingshu. She worked in the kitchen of a restaurant at the age of fourteen; she married the restaurant owner at the age of sixteen; when she was twenty-three, war broke out in the border town, and her husband and children died; after the war subsided, Song Dongling rebuilt the restaurant and hired two seventh-level servants, both of whom were military strategists who were wounded in the war and had to leave the battlefield."
Song Dongling's life story is not particularly special, at least not special enough to involve the struggle between the six kingdoms and the strange fire.
Yu Sui asked, "How did she die?"
Mei Liangyu said, "I haven't seen it yet."
Yu Sui then asked, "Is she pretty?"
The skull turned to look at her and said slowly, "I'm not very good at commenting on other women's appearances."
Yu Sui: "What about me?"
Mei Liangyu said, "Of course you are the most beautiful."
"It's cliché, but I still enjoy hearing it from someone I like," Yu Sui sighed. "What kind of connection do you think she has with Master? To spend time and effort hiding a small tavern owner in a place where Ghost Daoists take pride in corpses sinking into the Green Mud, does Master like her? Or is her existence very important to Master?"
“If it weren’t important, the remains wouldn’t have been hidden here,” Mei Liangyu said. “The reason I felt it was out of place before… might be because she wasn’t a sorcerer or a Taoist priest.”
"This is the River Styx, which only sorcerers of the Ghost Dao can enter. Those sorcerers who slumber here can find peace."
It is completely different from the filthy mud and the violent, bloody deathly aura outside.
"I don't want to come here after I die," Yu Sui said with disdain. "It's dark and cold, and I have to float around in the water with so many other people."
Mei Liangyu couldn't help but chuckle: "Those floating in the water are all veterans."
"What if there are their enemies in here? I can't bear to see them floating in the water with people they hate." After saying that, Yu Sui suddenly asked, "Senior brother, how many years ago was Song Dongling?"
"I don't know, we have to go outside to investigate," Mei Liangyu said. "There's more than just this one corpse here that possesses consciousness."
Yu Sui was taken aback; she hadn't expected this.
“I’ve only read Song Dongling’s biography so far, and I haven’t finished reading it yet. Your coming in here means that things outside are out of control?” Mei Liangyu asked.
He could not perceive the passage of time within the River Styx.
Yu Sui nodded and briefly told Mei Liangyu what had happened outside.
Mei Liangyu never expected that Yu Sui could control Ruoshui Qingni within the Qianchi Cliff area. His junior sister kept her word and truly became his support.
This plunged Mei Liangyu into a long silence.
Yu Sui asked, "If we were to find all the skeletons in the River Styx that possess consciousness, and then investigate their past one by one, how long would it take?"
Mei Liangyu replied, "It's impossible to find all the remains now; Master will be here soon."
"Master?" Yu Sui muttered softly, "Is Master going to take you away to erase your memories again?"
Mei Liangyu stretched out her sharp claws and gently poked her face, finding it quite novel: "I'll give you Song Dongling's memories."
The sharp claws touched Yu Sui's brow, and an invisible energy flowed into Yu Sui's body.
Yu Sui couldn't even sense what kind of low-level technique he was using.
"Is it the Star Origin Curse?" she asked uncertainly.
Mei Liangyu said, "It hasn't been named yet."
"Senior brother, you created this yourself?" Yu Sui looked up in surprise.
Mei Liangyu explained calmly, "I modified the Star Source Spell using the Heart of the Mechanism, so the memory won't disappear within the time limit."
Yu Sui: "Then let's call it the Enhanced Star Origin Curse."
Mei Liangyu seemed amused by her, and his paws trembled slightly.
Yu Sui realized that Mei Liangyu's "soul astral projection" in the River Styx was also a technique created using the Heart of Mechanism. She had previously asked Zou Qian whether the terrain changes after the start of the Hundred Schools Night Parade at the academy were due to an array or an illusion.
Zou Qian said that it was the real terrain resulting from the cooperation of the four major mechanical schools, not an illusion or a formation, but rather that two different Taiyi Academyes actually existed.
Although the mechanics were forced to retreat to Taiyi and not emerge from it, people still cannot do without them, whether outside or inside Taiyi.
Before Yu Sui could even look at the memories after gaining them, Mei Liangyu urged him to leave the River Styx, lest the Sage Chang Gen discover that both of his disciples were in the River Styx when he arrived.
Yu Sui also knew that this was a conflict between her senior brother and her master, and that only they could resolve it themselves; no one else had the right to interfere.
After Yu Sui left, the skeleton returned to the river.
Mei Liangyu sank to the bottom of the icy river, and in the pitch black, he saw a scene of spring warmth and blooming flowers in March:
The apricot tree in the backyard of the tavern was in full bloom. The proprietress, dressed in an indigo blue dress, stood under the apricot tree, patiently explaining the upcoming tasks to the two servants.
The tavern was bustling with people and business was booming.
The proprietress picked up a jar of apricot blossom wine and called out to the man in the blue robe who was about to leave, "He Hanxing! Hey! You forgot your wine!"
The man in the blue robe turned around, his face handsome and refined, his gaze towards the proprietress gentle and kind. He smiled and stepped forward, taking the wine jar from her hands, and politely said, "Thank you."
The springtime scenery suddenly vanished, and a wisp of ink-like mist emerged from the dark River Styx, arriving before the youth's motionless body.
"come out."
The silent and invisible aura invaded the entire space, filled with majesty and awe.
A wisp of ink-like energy precisely located Song Dongling's remains among the millions of corpses floating in the river, intimidating the young man who possessed his energy within them.
Mei Liangyu separated from the corpse and returned to his body. The young man, who had remained motionless in the river, trembled slightly with his eyelashes and slowly raised his head to look at a certain point in the void. A faint golden light appeared in his dark eyes.
He smiled at the dark cloud in the void: "Master, you really did come."
The Sage Changgen asked, "When did you regain your memories?"
The intimidating atmosphere spread outwards, showing no mercy whatsoever.
“Just now,” Mei Liangyu said slowly, his expression defiant.
The familiar yet unfamiliar expression and attitude of his eldest disciple caused the Sage Changgen to fall into a brief silence.
In the silence, an incredibly powerful force attempted to invade Mei Liangyu's body, preparing to reseal and refine his memories. However, the young man reached out and grabbed the hidden curse characters within his body, crushing them on the spot.
“Master, if I don’t improve after being used the same tricks on me once or twice, then I will be too sorry for my mother who died at your hands.”
The young man spoke in a cold tone, uttering shocking words.
The river was clear and icy cold, and the spirits of the dead drifted along, watching and listening silently. The surface reflected the floating, indistinct ink-like mist, like the clouds of a setting sun, yet it only aroused fear.
The Sage Changgen said, "You shouldn't remember this."
Mei Liangyu said, "You shouldn't have sealed my memories, nor should you have told me I had no parents when I asked you countless times."
"My father is Dong Lanxun, and my mother is Gongsun Xi."
"These memories, no matter how many times, you can only seal them away, but you can never erase them."
When Mei Liangyu uttered those two names, all the unseen eyes on the Taiyi Sky Canopy and the ears lurking on the ground shattered. The sound of shattering was both a signal that the surveillance had been broken and a warning that the target was regaining his memory.
All the saints of Taiyi heard the sound of the barrier personally set up by Saint Changgen, which covered the entire Taiyi, shattering.
The first thing that came to their minds was the phrase "a rift between master and disciple".
Still in the outer city, Wu Huaiwei looked in disbelief toward the direction of the academy. Mei Liangyu had actually remembered?
Standing at the entrance to the Wujian Mountain Abyss, Zou Qian reached out and scratched his neck.
Mei Liangyu actually remembered this? I need to ask him how he did it so I can try it too.
Those who realized that Saint Changgen was in the Abyss of Wujian Mountain rushed to this place.
Within the River Styx, the Sage Changgen gazed at the youth before him from the void. No one could guess what he was thinking, nor could they know the expression and tone with which he released each message.
"A simple seal is enough."
Changgen Saint did not give up; it still wanted to continue sealing Mei Liangyu's memories.
Mei Liangyu said, "Master, this is the last time I will call you that."
The wisp of ink-like energy rushed towards him like lightning, but the young man neither dodged nor avoided it, only displaying an unusual indifference: "I did not find you in the River Styx."
"But now, it's your turn to come to me."
The ink-like aura passed through Mei Liangyu's body, and only then did Sage Changgen realize that the person in front of him was just a phantom.
Mei Liangyu had already integrated his Five Elements Qi into the deathly Qi within the River Styx, becoming one with it, making it impossible to detect the location of his true body.
That's why Yu Sui couldn't sense Mei Liangyu's presence from the strange fire before.
The strange fire cannot sense inanimate objects.
Those who merge with the deathly aura can avoid the shadow of light and fire.
After remaining silent in the River Styx for a moment, the Sage Changgen disappeared and arrived at the Thousand-Foot Cliff. The dark mist in the sky transformed into a howling wind and lightning, forcibly pushing back the Weak Water and Green Mud that had overflowed into the Thousand-Foot Cliff.
In just two instants, Sage Changgen's aura spread throughout the entire Taiyi Academy, searching for Mei Liangyu's figure.
The Sage Changgen only paused for a moment in front of Yu Sui inside the Thousand-Foot Cliff.
"Master!" Yu Sui called out, and Saint Chang Gen responded without hesitation.
Just as Yu Sui realized, no one could interfere with the feud between them.
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