Chapter Ninety-Two: Ancient Azure?

Han Yu was a lone cultivator by origin.

In his youth, he had been taught a cultivation art by an old man. He trained it to completion, and before he had even reached fifty years of age, he had already crossed the first three heavens and attained the middle heavens. He had surpassed the limits of mortal flesh and had entered the realm of the transcendent.

The art he practiced was said to be of a rather high order, sufficient to carry him all the way to the level of a True Person.

As for his Dao arts, they were notably vicious, and among them one particularly uncanny technique had made his name feared.

Once this art struck a man, even if he did not die at once, it would cling like a malignant growth, impossible to remove. It would then slowly eat away at flesh and bone, worse even than poison.

Anyone wounded by it could be said to be doomed.

At least so far, as far as anyone knew, there had been almost no one who had survived after being openly struck by that Dao art.

It seemed Chen Xing had taken just such a blow. Even with a secret technique for saving himself, there was nothing to be done.

"Han... Han Yu..."

Seeing that Chen Xing had not finished speaking and was already breathing faintly, almost gone, Qing Yuan promptly poured out a pill, used the iron staff to press at his lower jaw and force his mouth open, then flicked the pill into his mouth with a finger.

The dim light in Chen Xing's eyes brightened a little again.

Still, he had already swallowed one pill earlier and been kept alive by it. Taking another now, the effect was far weaker than before, and the time it could prolong his life was cut down by a great deal.

Chen Xing knew this well. Unable to hold on much longer, he spoke briefly and straight to the point.

...

"Han Yu has captured several cultivators. It is said he means to use them to scout the way for him."

Chen Xing's voice was weak as he said, "Two of my fellow Daoists have already been seized by him. I myself fled, and was struck by one of his Dao arts."

Qing Yuan frowned. "Han Yu is capturing people to scout the path?"

"Not only Han Yu..." Chen Xing's breathing grew more ragged. "Before I ever ran into Han Yu, I had already heard that the Sun Clan and the Seven Spirits Sect... were also secretly seizing cultivators..."

Qing Yuan's heart jolted. For some reason, a chill of unease rose within him. He asked, "Which direction?"

Chen Xing answered in a low voice, "Southeast."

Qing Yuan's gaze sharpened, his pupils contracting.

The southeast was precisely the direction he intended to go.

Was he to make a detour now?

He thought for a moment, and then suddenly recalled a far more alarming possibility.

Could it be that the arrangement left behind by the Heavenly Venerable of Great Origin and Ancient Works had already been discovered?

He drew in a sharp breath, intending to ask exactly where that place might be and how far away it lay, so he could make his deduction. But when he looked up again, Chen Xing, in that brief instant of his distraction, had already lost his life.

Qing Yuan let out a breath, pulled over the vines at the side, and covered the hollow in the tree.

...

Inside Chen Xing's pouch was a single volume of writings, likely the cultivation manual of the Chen family. As for the secret technique, it should also have been recorded in that same book.

Apart from the bottle of pills, the rest were some seeds of flowers, grasses, and trees. No one could tell what they were for.

From the traces left inside the pouch, there ought originally to have been many more things. Most likely, they had already been used up by Chen Xing.

Qing Yuan kept the pouch, did not look through it further, and paid no heed to the book.

His heart had already begun to stir with alarm.

Had the Heavenly Venerable's arrangement in Great Origin and Ancient Works truly been discovered?

Was it precisely because of that arrangement, so difficult to traverse, that people were being seized to scout the way?

From the map he had obtained, Qing Yuan had a rough understanding of the terrain at the outskirts, and it was for that reason that he had reached such a conjecture.

"The Sun Clan? The Seven Spirits Sect? Han Yu?"

His thoughts were in turmoil, one notion after another springing up. In the end, he relied on the Sixth-Month Pure-Impurity Contemplation to sweep the stray thoughts from his mind before he could regain his composure.

Yet though his heart had settled, the obstacle ahead remained.

A cultivator of the three heavens.

An upper-man of the four heavens.

And it seemed there was more than one?

"Could the Heavenly Venerable's arrangement truly have been discovered?"

Qing Yuan took a deep breath.

If that were indeed the case, then to go forward and seize the treasure would be no different from an ant trying to halt a chariot.

"Am I to simply stand by and let the treasure be taken by others?"

Qing Yuan stood where he was, gripping the iron staff tightly. Unnoticed by him, scarlet light flickered over the staff, while the power of thunder flowed ceaselessly through it, like molten lava.

With his present aptitude, if he endured and cultivated in silence, perhaps he might truly be able to cultivate into the middle heavens and attain the upper-man realm before the hidden disaster in his body erupted.

But the other party was already an upper-man of the middle heavens; his path of cultivation lay far ahead, and now that he had also obtained the treasure of the Heavenly Venerable of Great Origin and Ancient Works, there was no reason he would still remain where he was.

"May it not be the worst of my guesses..."

Just as this thought arose, movement suddenly came from afar.

And it was drawing closer.

Qing Yuan turned his head to look.

It was the two upper-men battling one another, and the aftermath of their fight was already sweeping this way.

"Why are they coming in this direction?"

When Qing Yuan had earlier avoided the clash between the two upper-men, he had not retreated, but moved to the side. By reason, the direction in which those two were shifting during their struggle should not have reached this place.

But the two were fighting with all their might, with no thought of drawing the other to any particular spot. Thus the direction of their movement was not fixed, and instead kept changing with the course and danger of the fight.

And now, the direction into which their battle had drifted happened to be this very way.

Qing Yuan took the pouch in hand, too late to put it away, then seized the iron staff with one hand and ran toward the front to avoid the two upper-men's battle.

...

"Who are those two upper-men, exactly?"

"They can't be from the Righteous Dao Gate or the Washing Flowers Pavilion. Then it must be the Sun Clan, the Seven Spirits Sect, or those three lone cultivators."

As he sped away into the distance, Qing Yuan cast one look back and saw that the aftershocks of the two upper-men's fight had already reached the place where Chen Xing lay.

The tree that had served as Chen Xing's burial place had been shattered into fine splinters, and Chen Xing within had been dyed crimson amid countless shards of wood, leaving not even bones behind.

When immortals contend, mortals suffer.

And this was only a fight between upper-men, not true immortals.

...

Qing Yuan had moved far from the range of the upper-men's battle. From what he had just seen, the two were roughly evenly matched, but after fighting for so long, one side was already weakening. It would not be long before the outcome was decided.

Which of the two won or lost had nothing to do with him.

What Qing Yuan worried about now was the location of the treasure.

He continued along the route, still heading toward the place marked on the map, but his pace had slowed, and his mind was inevitably lost in thought.

Then, all at once, a booming sound rang out.

The ground beneath his feet trembled.

The mountains answered with a heavy shaking, dull as thunder, or like boulders rolling down the slopes.

Qing Yuan's expression changed slightly, and a thought rose in his mind: could the direction of the two upper-men's drifting battle still be toward this side?

He leaped onto a treetop and scanned his surroundings, but saw no sign of the two upper-men.

At that moment, the earlier sound came again, this time from the west.

Qing Yuan looked toward the western side.

There was a valley there.

The sound had come from the far side of the valley.

The echoes rang through the empty gorge, unbroken and long.

"Take it down!"

"Cut off its retreat!"

"Force it into the valley!"

Shouts sounded out, and they were quite familiar.

They were the same cultivators named Fan, Guo, Xu, and Feng, who had earlier been discussing in the cave how to encircle and kill the spirit creature and seize the divine thunder.

And there was another voice as well, roaring in rage and killing intent, like a tiger or wolf's howl, deep and heavy, reverberating far and wide.

Though it was only a single roar, Qing Yuan knew it even more clearly. His whole body shook as he said in disbelief, "Gu Cang?"