Chapter 3
"It seems you know who I am." Shi Zhouyun pulled out a flute from behind his back, stroked the flute, and looked at the people in front of him, saying, "If you release her now, you still have a chance to live."
silence.
Gu Qingci could no longer sense the murderous intent of the person behind her. She looked at Shi Zhouyun, truly afraid that he would kill her as well if he got angry.
After an unknown amount of time, Shi Zhouyun spoke, "I've already given you a chance." He then raised his hand.
The female demon behind Gu Qingci roared, "Aren't you afraid she'll die first?" The female demon then shielded Gu Qingci in front of her.
"She is indeed a problem." As soon as he finished speaking, Gu Qingci felt a damp heat on his back.
She froze on the spot, not daring to turn around. She clearly didn't see Shi Zhouyun, so how could the person behind her be...?
"Are you just standing there waiting for someone to pick you up?" Shi Zhouyun frowned as he looked at Gu Qingci's dazed expression.
Seeing Shi Zhouyun's impatient look, Gu Qingci shook her head: "No...no."
She started walking towards him. Gu Qingci, who had never seen blood before today, was not as afraid as she had imagined.
The black fog completely dissipated, and Zhou Xuanzhi, seeing Gu Qingci's disheveled appearance, looked at his junior brother and said, "Miss, why don't you go upstairs to freshen up? It's safe here now."
Gu Qingci walked slowly, stumbling several times as she climbed the stairs because she couldn't lift her feet properly. She looked back at the two men with grave expressions, wondering what trouble she had gotten herself into. Why did the demons want to kill her?
"It seems I was right." Zhou Xuanzhi said after watching Gu Qingci leave.
"Are you still staying here?" In this situation, why are you still here looking for the murderer? Shouldn't you be sending her to Tianyu Mountain by now?
"Stay."
"reason?"
Don't you want to see other people?
Hearing this, the man was somewhat moved, but quickly concealed his emotions. He said sarcastically, "Zhou Xuanzhi, I've discovered you're even crazier than me." Gu Qingci was a crucial person; it would be difficult for them to protect her until they found out the results.
...
The clothes Gu Qingci was wearing were given to her by Zhou Xuanzhi. She felt a little strange when she put them on, but when she saw the passing cultivators on the road, she finally understood that these clothes should be the clothes of the disciples of Tianyu Mountain.
Zhou Xuanzhi and his master Zhou Yun walked in silence, unaware that the dangerous demon was difficult to capture. They finally arrived at a courtyard, but Zhou Yun stopped a short distance away.
She looked at Shi Zhouyun, and then at Zhou Xuanzhi who had already stepped forward to knock on the door. She wondered what the two of them were thinking. She had felt before that the relationship between the two people in front of her was not so simple.
The door opened, and out came not a relative of the victim, but a woman dressed in the same clothes as Gu Qingci. The woman was beautiful and had an ethereal air about her. If it weren't for the giant sword behind her that could have created Zhou Xuanzhi's three "red swords," she would have been considered the epitome of a female immortal in everyone's eyes.
"Junior Brother Zhou, Master actually agreed to let you go down the mountain?" Only then did she fix her gaze on Gu Qingci, nodding to her as a greeting.
But the way she looked at Shi Zhouyun was very strange; first, it was confusion, then surprise, and finally, tears welled up in her eyes. She walked up to Shi Zhouyun, looked him up and down, and took his hands in hers, asking, "How have you been?"
"It's...it's alright, thank you for your concern, Senior Sister Lao Ming."
“You…you didn’t even say you were coming back to visit. It’s been over two hundred years since we last met…and now…you’ve grown into quite a handsome young man.” She patted the shoulder of the man who was half a head taller than her.
“I…” Mingmo was a disciple of the sect leader Han Wenqing, and also his senior sister. She had taken good care of him back then, after all, Shi Wanqing lived with her disciples on the back mountain of Lingqiu Peak. He hadn’t contacted anyone else for two hundred years, and facing his senior sister, he didn’t know what to do for a moment.
"Alright, it's good that you're back." She pulled Shi Zhouyun into the courtyard.
Watching this scene unfold, Gu Qingci felt that Shi Zhouyun's identity was not simple. She would never believe that he had no connection whatsoever with Tianyu Mountain. She quickly grabbed Zhou Xuanzhi, pointed to the courtyard, and asked, "What is your relationship to Master Shi?"
"Senior brother, he is my junior brother Shi Yunzhou."
"Shi Yunzhou? So when he said his name was Shi Zhouyun, was that... an alias?"
Zhou Xuanzhi nodded.
Goodness, Shi Wanqing is quite a character. These two brothers have such different personalities, they're developing in completely different directions. It's hard to believe they were taught by the same master.
Several female cultivators were in the courtyard, and they were clearly very excited when they saw Shi Yunzhou. They surrounded him and asked him about his recent situation.
Standing to the side, watching her fellow disciples reunite, Gu Qingci suddenly thought of her parents. She hadn't yet sent them a letter to put their minds at ease. For a cultivator, sending a letter shouldn't be difficult, right?
"Master Zhou, I'd like to ask, what methods do you all use to send messages? How fast are they? Could you help me send a letter to my parents? They'll be worried about me since I've been missing for so long."
“I should have some of my fellow disciples in the capital right now. I’ll ask them to pass on a message.” Zhou Xuanzhi almost forgot whether the person in front of him was an ordinary person or someone of status: “Is there anything you want to say to your parents?”
While Gu Qingci and Zhou Xuanzhi were delivering a message, the fellow disciples gathered together noticed the mortal woman.
Who is that woman?
"I met her on the road. She... accidentally entered Guancheng." Although he hadn't seen these people for two hundred years, the inexplicable trust made him reveal some things: "Senior Sister Ming, don't spread this around."
Seeing Shi Yunzhou's earnest pleading expression, Mingmo was puzzled, but still nodded and agreed to Shi Yunzhou's request.
"No one else will know," she assured Shi Yunzhou.
When Zhou Xuanzhi returned, he saw a group of people already waiting for him.
"We didn't come down the mountain together; we just bumped into each other while searching for clues." The speaker was a cute-looking girl named Lin Jichen.
“We’ve been stationed in Yunzhou when suddenly a man went missing. At first, the authorities didn’t pay much attention, so we didn’t investigate,” Mingmo explained. “Junior Sister Lin and the others had been in Songzhou, where two people died a violent death. They tracked them down all the way to Yunzhou. Once they arrived in Yunzhou, we started investigating together.”
“After we met Senior Sister Ming, we heard about what happened here and examined the body. The method was exactly the same as the two cases in Songzhou, so we suspected that the cases in Songzhou and Yunzhou were committed by the same person. But he disappeared and we couldn't find him, so we stayed here, and now someone else has died.”
“The deceased all had their life essence drained, and it seems they were with women before they died.” Mingmo said, looking at Zhou Xuanzhi and Shi Yunzhou sitting opposite him. “We are all women, and she had no interest in us.”
This courtyard was no ordinary place either; an unclaimed corpse lay in the backyard. Shi Yunzhou and Zhou Xuanzhi carefully examined the bluish-gray body. Its emaciated appearance made it impossible to tell it was a healthy person. But if it had been drained dry by a demon, that would be understandable.
This was also the first time Gu Qingci had seen the corpse of a human killed by demons. Respect for the dead is paramount, and this corpse, in its current state, truly lacked any dignity.
However, there were also several men present, and they, along with Zhou Xuan's master Yunzhou, should be able to help.
"They've been resting here for the past two days, and we brought them here to help," Mingmo explained, noticing Gu Qingci's slightly puzzled look.
"What were the identities of the deceased?"
His gaze was unfocused at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and he hesitated several times before speaking.
Looking at Mingmo's appearance, Zhou Xuanzhi guessed something, but he wasn't sure. Mingmo was indeed very strong; among the younger generation of female cultivators, she was one of the top. Anyone who could silence her must be someone shameful.
Lin Jichen finally couldn't stand it anymore. She shook her head and said, "They're all lustful bastards, there's not a single innocent one." She lowered her voice and said, "When I was inquiring about the news, everyone around me said it was good that they died."
Hearing this, Mingmo rolled her eyes at Lin Jichen. She was very indignant about being treated like this by her senior sister and continued, "That's right. Aren't they the ones who forcibly abducted women? There isn't a single good person among them."
Mingmo looked at his junior sister helplessly and said, "It's good that you know, but don't say it out loud."
Lin Jichen pursed his lips. Yes, Tianyu Mountain had such a rule: even if the victim was a heinous villain, they could not discuss it.
"Senior sister, you're not going to make us lure her out, are you?" Most of the people here are female disciples, and usually, when something like this happens, male disciples will act as bait to lure out the female monster. Shi Yunzhou's expression was rather unpleasant.
“It’s no use. We asked the Qingxu Sect disciples for help when they were here before,” Mingmo said, shaking his head.
Lin Jichen added, "That female demon is very clever. Even though she stayed in the brothel for more than ten days in a high-profile manner, it didn't lure her out."
Shi Yunzhou grasped the key point: "How did you manage to get the Qingxu Sect members to stay in a brothel for over ten days? Could those people even stand it? And Junior Sister, how do you know what those people did inside? What if they didn't help you?"
Upon hearing Shi Yunzhou's words, Lin Jichen immediately retorted, "Do you think it's all you, saying one thing to my face and another behind my back?"
Shi Yunzhou waved his hand, and said with a half-smile, "Of course I am not as good as my junior sister. All I do all day is talk."
"Junior brother, it's been so long, you're still as annoying as ever!"
Mingmo sighed helplessly. These two always argued the moment they met, not because they disagreed at all, but because they just couldn't stand each other. Even after not seeing each other for so long, this "good habit" hadn't changed at all.
The Qingxu Sect and Tianyu Mountain are roughly equal in strength, except that the Qingxu Sect only accepts male disciples and cultivates both sword and talisman techniques. Their rules are extremely strict; they had previously joked privately that all the disciples of the Qingxu Sect were monks, bound by numerous rules, abstaining from women, and rarely smiling.
"The senior brother from Qingxu Sect is quite responsible and has indeed helped us a lot." Mingmo didn't want the two of them to continue arguing. They had even fought before, and if they fought again now, Tianyu Mountain would lose all face.
Zhou Xuanzhi, having once joked with a member of the Qingxu Sect, understood what his junior brother meant. He coughed and changed the subject: "They were in a brothel, and they probably only stayed for about ten days." Making these people stay in a brothel was truly putting them in a difficult position. "Didn't you ever think of seeking help from mortals?"
As expected of someone from the late Ming Dynasty, she blushed and realized why the female demon hadn't taken the bait.
"That's right, the people from the Qingxu Sect concealed their presence and were protecting those... wealthy young masters," Mingmo explained.
Gu Qingci, who was listening from the side, didn't quite understand either, but she still understood a little: "They are having fun in brothels, so it's not convenient for your people to be with them all the time, right? Besides, judging from the way you've described the Qingxu Sect disciples, they don't seem like the kind of people who would stay in brothels. You've probably alerted them."
Shi Yunzhou glanced over, his gaze towards Gu Qingci somewhat unfathomable: "What she said is not wrong. They don't fit in at that kind of place. They must have been discovered."
Ming Mo clearly hadn't considered this point; "It was my mistake."
Lin Jichen already had a plan in mind, but she still pretended to be nonchalant and said, "Then what should we do?" She glanced at her two senior brothers and continued, "These fellow disciples must be familiar with that monster!"
Faced with Lin Jichen's eager gaze, Zhou Xuanzhi disregarded everything else. He moved his body slightly backward, exposing Shi Yunzhou fully to everyone's gaze.
“Junior brother, you must have seen many scenes like this in the Illusionary Sea!” Lin Jichen said, looking at him.
The terms "junior sister" and "junior brother" can be used on anyone, but for these two, such terms are not seen as respect, but rather as mockery.
Shi Zhouyun then looked up, realizing that he had clearly been hiding behind his senior brother, so how did he end up like this...?
After so many years as fellow disciples, everyone knew what was going on. Facing Zhou Xuanzhi's unrepentant face, he said, "I can go, but I need someone to help me."
He raised his hand and pointed to his junior sister, Lin Jichen, "I need your help, senior sister."
Mingmo glanced at his junior sister's multicolored face, nodded without hesitation, and asked, "Do you need my help?"
Gu Qingci watched from the side and always felt that the relationship between these senior and junior brothers and sisters was not so harmonious.
"No, but I need my senior's help." Since I've already dragged myself into this mess, then no one else should get away with it. What's the point of going to that kind of place alone?
Zhou Xuanzhi raised an eyebrow at his junior brother and asked with a smile, "What do you need me to do?"
Not only Gu Qingci, but even the Tianyu disciples around her were shocked by Zhou Xuanzhi's actions. Logically speaking, this person shouldn't have acted this way; truly worthy of being fellow disciples!
"No need, change your clothes, let's go out." This was said to Lin Jichen.
"I don't think it's appropriate for me to go. Shi Yunzhou, you should find someone else! Don't start ordering me around as soon as you get back," Lin Jichen retorted. She seemed to have forgotten that she was the one who had just started the trouble.
Unfortunately, no one around seemed to see it and didn't respond to her.
"What are you planning to do?" Mingmo ignored this farcical situation.
"I'll go to the biggest brothel in Yunzhou and become a lecherous glutton."
Lin Jichen had a bad feeling.
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