The marshland and its waters embody the capricious nature of human destiny; it's worth witnessing. ...
Tao Youyan held an old, faded tray in both hands. On the tray were a candlestick covered in wax and an old bowl. The bowl contained a thick, viscous liquid that was blackish-green and had a foul stench.
He himself did not know what was in the bowl. He simply followed his master's instructions and carried the bowl of nauseating-smelling stuff to the deep, damp cellar every day to feed it to the person inside.
To say it was a person is a bit of a stretch, but it does have some human-like features.
According to his master, he was a strange cultivator who had gone astray. In order to improve his cultivation, he devoured many demons and cultivators, and even ate demons, which is why he looked so strange.
Tao Youyan, suppressing his breathing, slowly walked down the steps. A damp and foul stench hit him, and he habitually cursed a few times.
Then I suddenly realized that I was almost a prospective disciple of the Xuanmen sect, and cursing like this was somewhat beneath my dignity.
He coughed twice, freed one hand to straighten his patched clothes, raised his head, adopted a certain air, and strode into the depths of the cellar.
Deep inside the cellar was a prison cell constructed by nailing together rotten wood against three earthen walls.
Tao Youyan picked up the candlestick and peered through the crack in the cell, where he saw a small figure huddled in the corner, scribbling something on the floor.
Seemingly sensing the approach of the light and shadow, it very slowly raised its head and "looked" in his direction.
Even after seeing each other every day for three years, Tao Youyan's heart suddenly tightened, and cold sweat involuntarily broke out on his back.
He tried his best to suppress the discomfort, opened the cell door, and walked to its side.
It has several large, blood-red eyes. Beside its feet are three small clay pieces, round like copper coins, with one side marked and the other side smooth and flat.
Those blood-red eyes stared at him, blinking blankly.
There are several horizontal lines on the ground, some long and some short; that's what it was drawing.
Tao Youyan had seen this kind of horizontal line in his master's book, and also at the fortune teller's stall.
He knew that it was called a divination, but he couldn't tell what kind of divination it was, because his master said that his affinity with immortality had not yet arrived in the past few years, and it was not the time to teach him the Tao.
He, a good young man, could not learn such good things, but this harmful and wicked cultivator learned them and then went around harming people, which made him feel uneasy. He reached out and pulled a water hemlock with white flowers from behind it.
It let out a mournful cry, and the thin roots of water hemlock, along with flesh and blood, fell to the ground, while pus and blood flowed down from the bloody hole on its back.
The flowers and plants on his back, nourished by this water, all swayed and perked up.
Tao Youyan almost vomited. He couldn't imagine what this thing, covered in flowers and plants with deformed hands and feet, looked like when it was a human.
Tao Youyan had once imagined seeing her through the messy black hair in front of her and the Ganoderma lucidum hanging down from her head, but in the end she held back, for fear of damaging the large, blood-red Ganoderma lucidum.
He never liked wasting time here; he felt it was bad luck to stay even a moment longer. So he picked up the large bowl, set up the funnel, and poured the contents of the bowl into her through a thin bamboo tube inserted into her neck.
Perhaps because it was a little painful to be forced to drink so much, it whimpered softly a few times.
The ten fingers, with their white bone tips showing, desperately opened and clenched, trembling slightly in extreme pain, with a drop or two of blood mixed with dust dripping out.
After finishing the serving, Tao Youyan put away the bowl and turned around to get the candlestick, when he unexpectedly saw a pair of black cloth boots.
His eyes lit up with joy. He looked up at the otherworldly man before him and exclaimed happily, "Master!"
The man nodded to him and said, "It is said that today is the day your destiny to become an immortal has arrived, and I have come to congratulate you."
After waiting for three years, this day finally arrived, and Tao Youyan was overjoyed.
He disregarded the fact that he was in a cellar, knelt down with a thud, kowtowed and said, "Thank you, Master, thank you, Master. Master, please accept my bow."
The man said, "There's something I need you to do first. Are you familiar with Yunjing City?"
Tao Youyan bowed again before saying, "Master, my ancestors have been from Yunjing for generations. We used to have a good family background, but now we have declined and are not very respectable. I hope you will forgive me. But I am extremely familiar with Yunjing City."
The man smiled and said, "These are all external things, no need to worry about them. Since you are from Yunjing, do you know Yan Yi and Jiang Yingyun, the couple?"
Tao Youyan immediately perked up and said, "This disciple has naturally heard of the demonic calamity that struck Yunjing twenty-three years ago. It was only after the Yan couple fought to the death that the Tianyan Sect Leader, Pei Hanzhou, came to slay the demon."
At that time, Madam Jiang was six months pregnant. It was she who pulled her disciple and family into the spirit-gathering array, allowing them to survive. However, the madam... the infant in her womb was disemboweled by the demon, and the madam herself perished.
The man glanced at the numb figure in the shadows of the corner and sighed regretfully, "What a pity. Now, the son of Sect Leader Pei is on the verge of death. Sect Leader Pei used his blood to save him, and his hair turned white overnight. His cultivation may also be damaged."
The Heavenly Evolution Sect slaughtered countless demons in the past, and now the remnants of the demon race have attacked the Heavenly Evolution Sect. I'm going to go and see for myself..."
Tao Youyan was afraid that his master would not take him along, so he hurriedly asked, "Master, what do you want to tell me to do?"
The man didn't answer his question immediately, but instead glanced back at the dusty wooden stairs at the cellar entrance and said, "You go stand over there for a bit."
Tao Youyan followed the instructions and walked down the wooden stairs at the entrance. Perhaps his master had not closed the wooden cover of the cellar entrance properly when he came down, because a ray of light shone into the darkness from the middle of the two wooden covers and fell on his shoulder.
He shifted his feet and looked up, and the sunlight pierced right between his eyebrows.
He could hear the mournful cries coming from the leaking dungeon, but the candlelight there was dim, and he could only see his master's tall figure projected in the corner of the wall.
He saw his master put the huge, blood-stained Ganoderma lucidum into a small brocade pouch, along with many ugly or beautiful flowers and plants, and deformed limbs and strange eyes.
For the past three years, it has been the same. Master would come regularly to remove the spiritual plants from its body, but he never removed the Ganoderma lucidum.
"You said, come here."
Tao Youyan swallowed hard to moisten his dry throat.
The man conjured a sword out of thin air and handed it to him, saying gently, "Since I am going to the Tianyan Sect, the evil and wicked path is also nearing its end. There is no need to waste spiritual medicine to prolong her life. She has absorbed a lot of other people's cultivation. At least this body can be used to refine pills to cure diseases and save people, which can be considered as absolving her sins."
"Take a deep breath, cut off her head, then take her to the Yu family and hand her over to Yu Zhao, saying it's for treating his soon-to-be-married wife."
Tao Youyan took the sword and glanced at the body on the ground, which was covered with large, blurry bloody holes.
He glanced nervously at the blood hole oozing black and red blood on its head, and when his gaze fell on its bloodless face, he realized that it was actually a young woman.
“Master, I am willing to kill this evil cultivator if you ask me to. However, on the night of Yu Shierlang’s wedding to Miss Yan, he eloped with his current wife, and Miss Yan died as a result. I would rather this new wife die of illness.”
The man's face instantly turned cold, probably because he dared to retort.
Tao Youyan immediately changed his words, saying, "Disciple obeys, but I don't know if there will be bloodshed, so please step aside, Master."
The man looked up at the figure in the corner, then glanced at Tao Youyan, who had risen with his sword in hand, and said coldly, "No need to give way... The fate of the world is unpredictable, it's worth seeing."
As Tao Youyan raised his sword, he heard his master standing before the six horizontal lines on the ground, whispering to the person in the corner: "Heaven intends to destroy you, what good is your pure spirit? You are nothing more than a meal from the destiny chart, how many will fight for it? Upper trigram is Dui, lower trigram is Kan, this hexagram is 'Kun' (困), is this what you divined, or is it just to comfort yourself?"
With a single sword strike, blood splattered everywhere.
In a daze, Tao Youyan saw a blurry female figure flash past his eyes, and he vaguely heard someone sigh softly beside him:
"Brother, you've mistakenly worshipped evil spirits; you'd better flee for your life..."
Tao Youyan was momentarily dazed. The sound was not real, faint and distant. He simply did not want to believe the gentle breeze that was drifting past his ears.
But after enduring years of torment, and even in death, she could still persuade the person who killed her to flee as soon as possible. Could she really be the kind of wicked and evil person her master described?
Or perhaps, it was just a tactic used by evil cultivators to bewitch people before their death?
Tao Youyan subconsciously moved away from the corpse, but the next moment he had no choice but to bite the bullet and take the burlap sack from his master to put the corpse in.
However, the words he couldn't tell whether they were true or not lingered in his mind, so after the sack was delivered to the Yu family in Yunjing, he did not immediately return to the courtyard where his master was temporarily staying.
But by the time he asked someone to inquire, his master's courtyard was already deserted.
As night fell, he tossed and turned in his room, his doubts growing deeper. He was planning to set off for Mingdezong the next day to inquire about his master.
Suddenly, he heard a slight noise by the window. Before he could get up to close the window, a long sword cleaved him open from between the eyebrows.
Under the soft moonlight, his wide-open eyes reflected the resentful expression of the handsome young man.
He had admired this young man, and he had also disliked him.
The Fairy of Yunjing, the Twelfth Son of the Yu Clan.
Why would Yu Shierlang condescend to come to this poor man's house? Is he so angry because he's here to avenge the corpse?
So, when his master ordered him to deliver the corpse to the Yu family, it was to send him to his death...
Who was the person who was used as living soil to grow medicinal herbs in the dungeon for three years?
The Yu family wields such power in Yunjing, why didn't they look for her...? It would have saved him from accidentally killing an innocent person...
Yan Huanyue coldly watched as Yu Zhao killed someone to silence them and then rushed back to the Hidden Rain Villa in the suburbs overnight.
Beneath the towering immortal cauldron in the main hall of the secluded courtyard, flames flickered and smoke billowed.
She had initially harbored some illusions about Yu Zhao, but unexpectedly, after receiving the sack, he pretended to the servants that the sack contained only some small toys. However, he immediately turned around and threw her into the immortal cauldron, intending to refine medicine to cure Tan Guiyi's illness.
He went to kill her, claiming it was to avenge her, but it was actually to silence her.
She had been relatively calm because she was completely free, but what she saw today caused her resentment to surge like a tsunami. Suddenly, she saw the smoke flowing from the immortal cauldron swirling endlessly, all rushing towards her.
A seductive voice urged, "Become a demon... After becoming a demon, you will be the strongest person in the world..."
She was nearly suffocating from the smoke, her face contorted with rage, her heart filled with resentment. Yet, she subconsciously thought, "There are heavens beyond heavens, and people beyond people. Where in this world is there the strongest person? How can this seductive voice be more ignorant and arrogant than I am?"
If cultivating demonic arts could make one the strongest in the world, then why would humans bother to cultivate truth, seek enlightenment, and exorcise demons? I have heard of the teachings of three schools of thought, all of which emphasize 'rectifying the mind and actions' as essential to being a good person. If one cannot even be a good human being, how can one be a good immortal or a demon?
Just as she was thinking, Yu Zhao, who was under the immortal cauldron, suddenly raised his head and looked at her.
A note from the author:
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