Chapter 62 Seeking Survival: Xu Qiubai's Memories
To salvage their reputation, someone has to step forward and put an end to this gossip.
Xingxiangtang put Xu Qiubai out at this time to make him a live target and let him bear the anger of the worshippers. In this way, they wanted to divert the hatred and make the worshippers feel that everything would be better as long as Xu Qiubai was gone from the pilgrimage site.
They still have a chance to salvage the situation.
But after Xu Qiubai left, can faith really return?
"Where's the evidence?" Shen Cangyu stood in front of Xu Qiubai, blocking their way, and said coldly, "You say that the incense at Xingxiang Hall lost its power because of Xu Qiubai, where's the evidence?"
She stared at the disciples of the Discipline Hall and said, "Isn't your Good and Evil Hall supposed to value evidence the most? If you want to take people away, then produce the evidence."
“He has killed people; he killed many of his fellow disciples during the assessment,” said a disciple from the Discipline Hall. “Isn’t that enough to prove he’s an evil person?”
"He's a villain, but does that mean the incident at Xingxiangtang is necessarily related to him?"
“Of course.” The disciples of the Discipline Hall found it strange, as this was a self-evident truth to them.
Shen Cangyu found it absurd. In her view, there was no direct connection between Xu Qiubai's wrongdoings and his cutting off the incense offerings of Xingxiang Hall. Just because Xu Qiubai was a bad person, did all the bad things have to be attributed to him? As long as he had done something wrong, was he destined to be interrogated for the rest of his life and never be forgiven?
Who can guarantee that they have never done anything wrong in their life?
Dongtang stared at Shen Cangyu and said, "Xu Qiubai has done many bad things, polluted the incense of Xingxiang Hall, and weakened the faith of Tianxiang Niangniang, so we have to drive him out. This is Elder Xu Mei's instruction. If you have any complaints, go and talk to Elder Xu Mei. We are just following orders."
The disciples of the Discipline Hall chimed in, "If you continue to obstruct us, we will treat you as an accomplice and arrest you along with them."
They pressed closer, but Shen Cangyu's feet seemed rooted to the spot, unwilling to move. Years ago, when she was taken away by the disciples of the Discipline Hall and interrogated in the hall, no one had ever stood in her way.
Now she wants to be the one standing in front of others.
She wanted to save not only Xu Qiubai, but also herself from back then.
Xu Qiubai, who was behind her, stood up and said, "Since it is Master's instruction, then I shall go."
He gently pushed Shen Cangyu's back and said, "Since this is all fate, let fate get back on track."
Shen Cangyu ground his back teeth: "You need to know that if you leave, you may never come back in this lifetime."
“Isn’t this exactly what I wanted?” Xu Qiubai laughed without any clear meaning. “I’ve wanted to leave Kunlun for a long time, but my master kept trying to keep me here. Now that she’s finally letting me go, I should thank her.”
Xu Qiubai stepped forward and followed the crowd outside. Outside, snow was falling heavily; it was a blizzard.
Xu Qiubai stepped into the snow; it was soft and fluffy, almost imperceptible. He looked up at the tall steps in the distance and walked towards them.
The disciples of the Discipline Hall saw his actions immediately and tried to stop him. Xu Qiubai, however, said, "I want to say goodbye to my master."
He knelt down in the snow, kowtowed three times, and without saying anything else, simply shook the snow off his clothes and said, "Let's go."
Unlike Pei Wenjing back then, Xu Qiubai's inner core was not destroyed, nor were his bones removed or his cultivation destroyed when he was expelled from Kunlun. This was probably because he was already weak, and if he had gone through those things, he would not have lived for long.
But now that Tianxiang Niangniang has disappeared and the Taoist magic for peeping into heavenly secrets is gone, Xu Qiubai can no longer use Taoist magic and is no different from an ordinary person.
Shen Cangyu followed behind the crowd, watching Xu Qiubai board the fish-drawn carriage of the Xiaoyao You disciples. The Xiaoyao You disciples would take Xu Qiubai to a place outside the mountains to release him; the others did not need to follow.
Just before leaving, Xu Qiubai suddenly said, "You haven't taken my name tag yet."
The disciple in the Discipline Hall suddenly remembered this incident and quickly reached out to catch the name tag that he had thrown to him.
Name tags are a big deal. Only disciples within Kunlun are allowed to wear them. If a disciple is expelled from Kunlun, his name tag must be taken back and his name removed from Kunlun's roster.
The disciples of the Discipline Hall had almost forgotten about this matter. Fortunately, Xu Qiubai suddenly brought it up, otherwise he would have been punished if the elders had blamed him.
Shen Cangyu stood far away from the crowd, arms crossed, watching everything unfold.
Suddenly, the name tag hanging from her waist vibrated. She took it off and saw that it was a message from Xu Qiubai.
“Hate can indeed be used to cultivate the external elixir. I felt intense hatred and a continuous flow of power.”
When Shen Cangyu looked up again, Xu Qiubai's figure had already disappeared into the horizon with the fish cart.
*
Xu Qiubai realized that his path was difficult. Elder Xu Mei had mentioned that he was a man who deserved to die, and that the change in the fortunes of Xingxiang Hall was also related to him. He knew that his best outcome was to be expelled from Kunlun, and his worst outcome was to be executed on the spot.
He gambled on Elder Xu Mei's feelings for him, and fortunately, he won.
Elder Xu Mei did not intervene directly, but instead sent someone to expel him from Kunlun. Those with the knowledge of divination always believed that variables were undesirable. Unable to find a way to restore the incense offerings of the Heavenly Fragrance Goddess, Elder Xu Mei had no choice but to expel Xu Qiubai, the variable, but she was unsure whether the outcome would improve.
Xu Qiubai had long anticipated Elder Xu Mei's plan, so he created a stir outside, spreading the bad things he had done in his early years to incite the anger of other Kunlun disciples, guide public opinion, and make more and more people hate him.
He had planned his escape route well in advance.
He had not forgotten the external alchemy techniques that Shen Cangyu had told him.
Since he was leaving, he would make the most of his remaining time to drive people's disgust towards him to its peak. He wanted to see if this external alchemy was truly inspired, and if he could truly gain power through people's disgust and hatred.
Experiments have proven that Shen Cangyu's conjecture was correct.
With each additional person who dislikes Xu Qiubai, he can clearly feel his internal energy increase. If someone hates him to the core, the power that hatred brings him could even rival ten opponents.
He had never felt such intense hatred before. In the past, he would have felt worried and sad, but now he only felt incredibly happy.
As Xu Qiubai sensed the continuous flow of power, he guessed that someone hated him to the core, that the mere thought of him made their teeth itch with rage, and that the thought of him before bed kept them awake with hatred. Thinking of this, he couldn't help but feel smug.
It's quite an ability to make people hate him so much.
Since both love and hate could give him strength, he no longer worried about other people's opinions and evaluations as before, only thinking about how to attract attention. Whether it was love or hate, as long as it brought him popularity and allowed him to cultivate his external elixir well, he didn't care about anything else.
Thinking about this, he felt so relaxed. For the first time in his life, he experienced a sense of ease and freedom.
But before being driven out by Kunlun, he had to continue to play the role of someone who was bitter, resentful, and unreasonable, so that those who loved him would continue to pity him, and those who hated him would find a way to get rid of him.
Xu Qiubai never expected that Shen Cangyu would come looking for him, nor did he expect that she would stand in front of him and stop the people from the Discipline Hall for him.
These were all unexpected.
Just like back on Mount Nanke, Xu Qiubai never expected Shen Cangyu to return.
It seems that every time he encounters disaster, she always comes to his rescue again and again.
Xu Qiubai's act was initially flawless, but before leaving Kunlun, he hesitated for a moment and decided to leave a message for Shen Cangyu. He knew that Shen Cangyu would understand what he wanted to say.
After all, among the people of Kunlun, only these two were clear-headed and unaffected by the protagonist.
After Shen Cangyu told him about the novel, the time traveler, and the rebirth story, he used the Soul-Guiding Incense to enter his dream and slept day and night. He dug into his dream countless times and almost burned all the Soul-Guiding Incense before finally finding some memories of the past.
In the dreams of the Soul-Guiding Incense, he died countless times on Nanke Mountain. It seemed that in those stories, being buried on Nanke Mountain was his inevitable end.
After his death, Xu Qiubai was taken back to Kunlun by Pei Wenjing. His body was dead, but his scattered soul still wandered in Kunlun, watching the magical stories that happened there between lucidity and chaos.
In the story, he died, and Elder Xu Mei, overwhelmed with grief, stepped down from her position as head of the Xingxiang Hall.
Shui Linglong took over from Elder Xu Mei to support the entire Xingxiang Hall, struggling to maintain its stable operation.
It wasn't until Shen Qingyan appeared that the half-dead Xingxiang Hall was revitalized.
Elder Xu Mei was deeply moved the moment she saw Shen Qingyan, because he looked remarkably like her deceased son, Xu Qiubai. Elder Xu Mei then took Shen Qingyan in as her godson, becoming his protector.
From then on, there were far fewer people in the inner sect who bullied Shen Qingyan.
So everyone turned to worship Shen Qingyan, indirectly saving the incense offerings of Xingxiang Hall.
Shui Linglong initially disagreed with this view, but as they spent more time together, she gradually became moved by Shen Qingyan's genuine nature and secretly fell in love with him.
When Xu Qiubai saw those images, he was so angry he almost came back to life, but unfortunately he died.
As he floated in the air, he thought countless times, "You brat, you're dead when I come back to life."
But when he was reborn, Xu Qiubai forgot his past and died again on Nanke Mountain.
The plot repeats itself again and again, but fortunately, Xu Qiubai survived this time and regained his memories from those previous lives.
Xu Qiubai finally understood why the Xingxiang Hall couldn't tolerate him and insisted on driving him away. It turned out that his existence was hindering Shen Qingyan, the protagonist, from saving the Xingxiang Hall. He affected the protagonist's highlight storyline, and Heaven had to eliminate him so that the story could continue smoothly.
Xu Qiubai, being a disciple who peered into the secrets of heaven, naturally knew the power of the Heavenly Dao. He did not intend to confront the Heavenly Dao head-on; instead, he planned to go with the flow of the plot and counter each move as it came.
But Shen Cangyu is different from him; she only confronts the Heavenly Dao head-on and only stops killing with killing.
Xu Qiubai thought that he had never seen Shen Cangyu in the memories of the past lives he had recovered, and perhaps this was the reason.
Only if Heaven completely crushes her into the earth, forever denying her the chance to return to Kunlun, will she cease to resist.
Otherwise, if given even a glimmer of hope, she would fight desperately to make a comeback.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
