Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
The retired official’s family name was Sun. He was addressed by the villagers as Master Sun. He moved back to the village from town a few years ago and built a large house in the village. He stayed in the house most of time, and the villagers only saw his caretaker and servants, and seldom met him in person.
A few pieces of information were enough to formulate a story.
This Master Sun must have some special experiences. It was most likely that he came back to the village to escape some kind of trouble.
Jing Jiu thought that he would be able to dig out the truth if he investigated the matter further; but he was not interested in it. He simply shot a few glimpses at the house in the distance and left the village while on his way back to the cave.
On his way out of the village, Jing Jiu took a cloth that was hung outside a family house, tore it into strips and tied the iron sword to his back with them.
It was late at night when he climbed over the hill and returned to the cave.
The starlight illuminated the surrounding mountains and made the cliff look as white as the snow.
A devil animal as big as a small mountain lay in front of the cave, full of blood, devoid of breath. It had died a while ago, exuding a heavy and stinky smell of blood.
The rocks outside the cave had many ruptures, laying broken and everywhere. There were many marks made by the hair of the devil animal that was as hard as steel needles. One could imagine just how strong the devil animal was and how violently and dreadfully it struggled before its death.
Jing Jiu took a look at the devil animal and ascertained that its Devil Pill was not useful, so he walked around the corpse and entered the cave.
The patterns and diagrams on the rock walls and on the ground had become blurry now. The formation was damaged and couldn’t be used again.
Guo Dong said while looking at him, “The formation is not bad.”
What Jing Jiu employed was the Inherited Sword Style, and it was not incorrect to call it the formation.
Smelling the stinky blood outside the cave, Guo Dong arched her brows slightly, asking, “Are we still going to stay here?”
“We’re leaving.”
Jing Jiu walked to the pile of white bones and hauled the cocoon, heading for the outside of the cave.
Under the starlight, Jing Jiu moved in the opposite direction of the ocean and climbed over the hill again. It was almost dawn that they arrived at the village.
Jing Jiu came to the front of that large house located close to the edge of the village while heaving Guo Dong.
The house of Master Sun was built like a fortress. There was a watchtower on the southeastern corner of the house. It would take some effort for the governmental forces to break through the house, let alone those highway men.
The front gate of the house was very strong. The solid wood of three inches thick was covered with the iron sheet. The gate bolt was also very thick and sturdy.
However, all this couldn’t prevent Jing Jiu from entering.
He walked to the front of the gate and waved his right hand; the gate bolt moved out noiselessly.
The large house was very quiet, without light or human voice.
Jing Jiu carried Guo Dong to the horse stable. He dragged out a horse and also found a carriage.
He looked at the carriage and then the horse with the rein in his left hand.
The horse looked back at him with wide open eyes, showing an innocent expression.
“You don’t know how to strap the horse?” Guo Dong asked.
Jing Jiu uttered “hmm”.
“It fits the saying that the disciples are like their masters.”
Guo Dong shot Jing Jiu a complicated glance, and then taught him how to do it.
Strapping the horse and driving the carriage was much easier than cultivating, so it didn’t take long for Jing Jiu to learn how to do all this under the guidance of Guo Dong.
The horse-drawn carriage was driven out of the large house in the darkness of the night. The wheels pressing on the ground gave out a faint noise.
It was the darkest moment right before the dawn, and it was also the quietest moment. Even the slightest noise could wake up those sleeping.
Jing Jiu and Guo Dong hadn’t had the experience of being a thief, and they hadn’t even thought about it. They didn’t realize what was going on until they heard the angry yelling and curses on the mountain road behind them.
Hearing the vulgar words in the distance, Guo Dong arched her eyebrows again and exclaimed, “They’re so noisy. How can I sleep?”
Jing Jiu was aware of her temperament.
After killing tens of thousands of people, she had no more problems killing people. Killing was a simple thing for her.
Zhao Layue called herself vicious. Guo Dong was the one who was truly vicious.
Jing Jiu untied the iron sword. He used the sword to cut down some branches from the tree beside the road, scattering them in a random manner on the ground.
The branches were thrown on the road one after the other. There seemed to be a system regarding the distance between the branches.
This was a simple Blocking Formation.
The morning fog came out from inside the mountain, blocking the road.
The servant guards of the Sun house were trapped in the fog. No matter how hard they tried, they had failed to get out of the fog. All they could do was watch the horse-drawn carriage disappear in front of their eyes.
The vulgar words and curses suddenly stopped, because they felt scared in the fog.
“You’re a bunch of cowards! This is nothing but fog. Let’s go back. We’ll go to the village again after the dawn to search for it, house by house!”
One caretaker swore loudly, “If we hadn’t killed a few of these dirty peasants, they wouldn’t know what the rules were.”
…
…
Hearing the reproach in the fog, Jing Jiu didn’t turn his head around.
But he was aware that Guo Dong was gazing at him.
…
…
The caretaker suddenly let out a dreadful scream
Those servant guards of the Sun house saw clearly from nearby that the caretaker screamed wretchedly while flailing his hands wildly in the air, as if he was trying to hit something with his hands.
In the next moment, the flesh on the caretaker’s face had visibly dried up, as if it was sucked by an invisible force, until little more a thin layer of skin was left on his face.
A moment later, the caretaker stopped breathing and fell onto the ground heavily, turning into a dehydrated corpse.
“It’s a ghost!”
“It’s a zombie!”
Seeing the scene and thinking of the fog blocking the road, the servant guards were so scared that they shrieked with pale faces and fled back to the Sun house.
…
…
Now that it was a ghost, or even worse, a blood sucking ghost, the one that stole the horse-drawn carriage was not a human.
Even if Master Sun were not scared away, he wouldn’t trouble those innocent villagers.
They came to a patch of wild field not long after they had left the village. Jing Jiu put down the rein and entered the carriage, letting the horse move forward on its own.
Guo Dong shot him a glance and asked, “What devil method did you use?”
“It’s only a magic trick,” said Jing Jiu.
It was rather bumpy when the wheels of the carriage pressed on the hard earth and harder rocks. The bumpy carriage made Jing Jiu reminisce the horse-drawn carriage of the Gu Clan.
Guo Dong’s body was wrapped in the cocoon, which acted as the natural cushion to absorb the force; so she didn’t care that much about the bumpy carriage, falling asleep.
She spent most of time in sound sleep, like what Bai Zao did in the snowland.
The difference was that Guo Dong would wake up once in a while and talk to Jing Jiu a bit, asking where they were.
A few days later, the carriage arrived outside a city.
This city was not Dayuan, the city they intended to go to.
Jing Jiu thought the city was populous enough that he drove the horse-drawn carriage into the city.. He stole a conical hat on the way, and finally saw a medical house after a while.
The carriage parked outside the medical house. Jing Jiu took off the conical hat and stepped down from the carriage. He lifted his head to look at the plaque of the medical house and entered it.
He didn’t come to the medical house to have Guo Dong treated here, because the doctor who could treat Guo Dong’s wound didn’t yet exist.
After exchanging a few words with the assistant, he was brought in the far end of the medical house.
The formation was activated, and the quiet room was noiseless.
Jing Jiu said to the doctor, “I’m aware of the situation at the West Ocean. What I want to know is the information about Guo Dong.”
The doctor looked at him with suspicious eyes, asking, “You are…”
Jing Jiu took off the conical hat and showed his face.
The doctor was astounded by his face and inhaled some cold air, so much so that he felt a toothache. “You…you…don’t even bother concealing yourself,” he exclaimed.
Jing Jiu said, “I don’t have any new information, except for the golden leaf, which I believe you don’t want.”
The meaning of this statement was clear.
Jing Jiu meant to tell the Curtain Rollers that they needed to judge how much his face was worth.
The doctor clutched half of his face and said, “Immortal master, this isn’t about the money. We really don’t have any information about her.”
Hearing this answer, Jing Jiu was quite satisfied, though this didn’t show on his face. He got up and left the medical house.
As he walked out of the door of the medical house, he saw a wheelchair by the wall. After some thought, he pushed the wheelchair out of the medical house and left a piece of golden leaf behind.
When Jing Jiu returned to the carriage, Guo Dong opened her eyes. As she saw the wheelchair he brought, she asked him curiously, “What have you done?”
Jing Jiu said, “I have sent a message.”
The Curtain Rollers had been treating him very well. Jing Jiu didn’t understand why, but he didn’t mind it, so long as they were willing to help him. And he could test and ascertain something at the same time. So far, he was certain that nobody knew that Guo Dong was alive; and he also wanted to know how much the Curtain Rollers were willing to help him.
As the horse-drawn carriage moved away from the medical house, the wheel ruts of the carriage were left on the grass in front of the medical house.
The doctor sat in the quiet room at the far end of the medical house, deep in thought with furrowed brows for a long time. He mulled over what he should write the information.
The assistant walked in the quiet room with the golden leaf, telling the doctor that Jing Jiu had taken the wheelchair.
The doctor paid no attention to the matter, nodding in response.
Seeing the doctor in furrowed brows, the assistant asked, “Who was that person? What has happened?”
The doctor didn’t answer his question, and waved his hand to gesture for him to leave. The doctor began writing the report.
As he wrote the report, he said helplessly, “We are not the messengers.”
It was true. The main purpose for Jing Jiu to talk to the Curtain Rollers was to send a message.
Many sects and forces in the Cultivation circle had been concerned about where Jing Jiu had been the last few years.
Though few people knew that Jing Jiu had reappeared in Zhaoge City, the Curtain Rollers did.
And they even knew that Jing Jiu had appeared in Jiuye City as well; but they didn’t tell anybody.
The reason he came all the way to the medical house that day was to let the Curtain Rollers know where he was.
Even though the Curtain Rollers might not tell those who asked about his whereabouts, what if the people who wanted to know about his information were those on Shenmo Peak?
Jing Jiu simply wanted the Curtain Rollers to send a message to Shenmo Peak. The message was rather simple: he was still alive.
…
…
The horse-drawn carriage continued its way to Dayuan City.
On the way, Jing Jiu changed the carriage, but he didn’t change the horse.
He was not in a hurry to get to the destination; but he didn’t want anybody to discover him. The carriage traveled slowly in the late spring. More than ten days later, they had finally arrived on the outskirts of Dayuan City.
There was an important official road leading to Yu County in the southeast of Dayuan City. The carriages and people were traveling back and forth on the road, with endless dusts rising up. The road was indeed crowded.
In comparison, the official road passing through the Jue Ridge on the northeast side of the city was a lot quieter; one could barely see one carriage in a long time.
The water in the stream by the road was clean enough to see the bottom. All sorts of houses were scattered in the mountains, with the pine trees like the umbrellas and the bamboo forest like the sea. The sceneries here were marvelous.
Traveling on the road of stone slabs in the shadows of the pine trees could make anyone feel cool and comfortable.
The large houses by the official road were mostly the vacation residences for those wealthy businessmen in the city. There were a few famous restaurants and brothels without signs, where both the food and girls were very expensive.
The horse-drawn carriage traveled on the official road till an intersection of two streams. The carriage turned to the right and got on a quieter road till the end of the stream. There was a nunnery located there.
The nunnery had no name, hiding among the forest; there was a stone bridge in the rear of the nunnery.
As the carriage arrived in front of the stone bridge, they could see an old rock lying on the ground.
The old rock was covered by the moss, and two words “Three Thousand” could barely be seen on the rock.
Did the “Three Thousand” mean the “Three thousand worlds” or the “Three thousand bowls of water”?
When the old nun came out from the nunnery to meet them, Jing Jiu realized that the “Three thousand” probably meant the “Three thousand worried hairs”.
“Sorry, our small nunnery is so shabby; we don’t receive any guests here.”
The old nun said this to Jing Jiu apologetically.
Guo Dong’s voice burst out from the carriage, “It’s me.”
The old nun’s body shivered a little, but her face showed an expression that indicated she didn’t believe what she had just heard. Yet, a moment later, she came back to her senses and exclaimed excitedly, “Are you Lady Dong?”
Guo Dong said, “I came to the nunnery to recuperate from my injuries. Don’t tell anyone about this, and don’t come over to bother me either.”
These words were very harsh and impolite; but it seemed that the old nun hadn’t taken it to heart. She led the horse-drawn carriage to the deep end of the nunnery.
Jing Jiu untied the bridle and handed the rein to the old nun, saying, “Take good care of the horse.”
The old nun nodded reverently, asking, “How long do we have to take care of the horse?”
“Until its death,” Jing Jiu said.
The horse shot Jing Jiu a look of innocence.
The old nun brought the horse to the front yard of the nunnery. The horse would be taken good care of for sure.
From this moment on, the old nun and other three nuns had been guarding in the front yard all day long. They only came to this side of the stone bridge to kowtow a few times at dusk every day.
Though the nunnery was rather small, the scenery was quite good.
The best scenery could be seen from a meditation room.
There was a round window on a wall of the meditation room. There was a small lake lined by the trees outside the window, and a few branches of the trees grew sideways.
Sitting in the meditation room and looking out through the window, the round window looked like a round fan, and the scenery was like the painting on the fan.
The breeze blew over from the lake. Jing Jiu sat in the meditation room with a cup of tea in his hand. He drank it slowly now and then, remaining silent.
This was the fourth day since they had been in Dayuan City.
On the opposite wall, Guo Dong opened her eyes and woke up.
She fell asleep and woke up at a regular interval now. She would wake up after sleeping for a few days; but she couldn’t stay awake for too long yet.
“Do you trust the nuns in the nunnery?” Jing Jiu asked while looking at the scenery outside the window.
Guo Dong said, “Back when I built this nunnery, I only liked the scenery here. Nobody knows who I am.”
“The scenery here is indeed very good,” Jing Jiu remarked.
Guo Dong said, “When it’s autumn, the leaves all turn red. The scenery is even better then.”
Jing Jiu put the teacup on the table gently, and said, “It looks like you really know how to enjoy life.”
“There is no point in living otherwise,” said Guo Dong.
Jing Jiu said, “There are more sceneries in other places; and they might be even more marvelous. At least they are new and maybe more interesting.”
“I’m not yet bored of watching the scenery here; why bother going to other places?” Guo Dong explained.
Jing Jiu asked, “Why didn’t you inform the Water-Moon Nunnery so that they can send someone to bring you back?”
“It’s a nunnery there, and this is a nunnery as well. There is no difference,” Guo Dong replied.
“Don’t you worry that they might think you are dead?” Jing Jiu asked again.
Guo Dong said calmly, “They always think that I’m a troublemaker. Maybe, they will feel relieved to know that I’m dead.”
The two of them didn’t say anything more. They sat against their respective walls and turned to the window, looking at the lake and trees outside the window.
The wind suddenly rose up; the waves formed on the surface of the lake, and the tree branches swayed slightly.
It seemed as if the painting on the round fan started moving.
It was hard to tell if the wind came from the fan or outside the fan.
Time went by slowly like the water in a stream was flowing away.
The setting sun was descending to the horizon.
Jing Jiu looked at Guo Dong.
She was in sound sleep.
The lake water reflected the twilight into the meditation room.
The room was filled with the golden color.
Yet, the golden color of the natural worm silk wrapping her body grew lighter and whiter.
Jing Jiu recalled what she had said earlier.
The Water-Moon Nunnery Master and her Big Sister indeed had this attitude back then.
It was true.
It was not easy for everybody.
Now that the life was like this, why shouldn’t they just enjoy looking at the scenery as long as they could?
