Sword Saint Tianshu, whose real name was Rong Chaoxi, was a disciple of the Rong family of the Northeast Land’s spirit clan. It’s just that he hadn’t mentioned his real name for decades, so gradually, no one remembered him anymore.
“Most of the events the Rong family recorded about the Great Immortal-Demon War were true. For example, Sword Venerable Chang Sheng really did sacrifice his life to kill the demon leader and died in Myriad Dao Academy, incarnating at Hidden Sword Peak, attracting famous swords from all over the world. For example, the Jianmu did cut its own roots, and Puluo Mountain sank and turned into the Tomb of Youshan, thus sealing the location. After several long periods of time, no one could easily set foot on it again.”
Tianshu Sword Saint sighed deeply, took another deep breath, looked at Lin Xuanzhi’s eyes, and then continued, “However, there are some extremely important facts that were hidden by the ancestors of the Rong clan. The hidden parts were about evil Qi cultivators and the Demon Emperor.”
This statement was really subversive. Everyone present had different expressions, but most of them were impatiently curious.
“Why did your Rong family want to do this kind of thing?” An elder couldn’t help but ask.
“What the hell did your clan hide? Tianshu, please say it immediately!” Yaoguang urged.
“I am not the young master or patriarch of the Rong clan, so I am not sure how much had been concealed, as well as the details. It is just that when I was young, I was rebellious. I once sneaked into the clan’s ancestral shrine and saw only a few words from a scroll.”
That year, Tianshu Sword Saint was still an idiot who didn’t know the height of the world and hadn’t entered the Dao. He only knew to be silly and happy every day, and the people of the clan always regarded him as nothing.
He inadvertently broke into the ancestral shrine, climbed onto the altar, knocked off an unknown number of candlestick tributes, and climbed to the highest point. Behind the spiritual throne, made of black sinking wood, there was a scroll hidden. It looked like it had been sealed for a long time, but it had fallen more than one layer. Because of curiosity, he took down the scroll and opened it.
It read: “The Demon Emperor Youshan Lingyu colluded with the outsider invaders to become a traitor, opened the evil Qi acupoints and meridians, and cultivated both evil Qi and demonic Qi simultaneously. Wherever he goes, the corpses became mountains, spiritual plants withered, souls were broken, and pedestrians cried bitterly. This was the biggest disaster in the world.”
When Tianshu mentioned the past, he also looked dazed. He sighed and said, “I didn’t see much at that time, and later I didn’t have the chance to go back and read it again. But from those records, I can conclude three points. One was that the name of the Demon Emperor back then was not Youshan, but Youshan Lingyu. He wasn’t merely a Divine Devil, but a dual cultivator of demonic Qi and evil Qi. Secondly, evil Qi cultivators really existed, and it was the cultivation technique brought by the outsiders who came through Heaven’s Wail. If you want to cultivate it, you need to open your evil Qi acupoints and meridians, and there must be a corresponding method.”
Tianshu Sword Saint paused, his face showing hesitation.
“Tianshu, just say it quickly.” Yaoguang couldn’t help urging again. At the critical moment, his words stuck. This kind of thing was the worst.
Lin Xuanzhi looked at the hesitant Sword Saint Tianshu, but he knew why he hesitated. The record he saw shouldn’t only contain those two paragraphs. After this paragraph, there should be another, the introduction of Youshan Lingyu.
“Third, Youshan Lingyu was once a direct disciple of the Hidden Spirit Holy Sect’s Dao Zu.” In the end, Tianshu still revealed this shocking secret to the public.
What he said was like a splash of water; there was no taking it back. No one in the later generations knew what the real name of the Demon Emperor was. The ‘Youshan’ they were supposed to know was actually the name of the place where the Demon Emperor had fallen. He almost wiped out the world, making the Nine Lands fearful and was extremely powerful. Even fewer people knew that Demon Emperor Youshan Lingyu, who almost unified the Nine Lands, was once a direct disciple of Hidden Spirit Holy Sect’s Dao Zu, the head of the Daoist sects whom later generations admired.
If people knew about this, what an embarrassment it would be for the Spirit Sect! The disaster of the Nine Lands actually came from Hidden Spirit Holy Sect. In this way, how could the Hidden Spirit Holy Sect’s sacred status be preserved? And how would the people of the world denounce the sect that raised the culprit? How could the Spirit Sect dare to claim to be the leader of Daoism and the secular world when it couldn’t even control its own disciples?
After the end of the Great Immortal-Demon War, the survivors of the Spirit Sect concealed the true identity of Youshan Lingyu for the sake of the glory and dignity of the sect. Even his real name never appeared in the later records. People only knew that among Dao Zu’s direct disciples, the eldest martial brother, Sword Venerable Chang Sheng sacrificed himself for the Dao, and all the other direct disciples also died in the battle against the Demon Emperor. All five of Dao Zu’s direct disciples died to protect the world. But who would know that this protracted war, in the final analysis, was actually an internal clean-up of the sect.
Tianshu’s words were really shocking. If what he said was true, the history of the Nine Lands might be subverted and rewritten. However, it was precisely because it was such a major event that one must not just listen to the words of one person and one family. They must ask for evidence in everything, and no one dared to jump to conclusions easily before the hard evidence stood before them.
Therefore, the judge, who was most concerned about the cleanliness of the law, finally spoke up, “Can I go to the Rong family to find the scroll?”
Tianshu said, “You can go if you want. In any case, I won’t go. The Rong family can’t wait to capture me and chop me up. I’m just looking for death if I go back.”
“What’s more, how can the Rong family admit this? To tell you the truth, the Rong family is very cowardly when handling this kind of matter. Their first aim is to protect the lives of their disciples from being threatened. In those days, the Rong family’s ancestors should have made a solemn oath to someone to never reveal the secrets on the scroll to future generations. It was probably because they were afraid of Ancestor Cang Rong’s wrath that the truth was written on the scroll after all, so it was placed behind our Ancestor’s tablet to reassure our Ancestor. Anyway, so this is the situation.”
Tianshu shrugged and added, “There is only so much I know. I don’t mind if you go to their door and force the Rong family to take out the scroll behind the old ancestor’s tablet to find out, but I won’t join in.”
Would anyone in Myriad Dao Academy really go to the Rong family to demand an explanation about their sins?
Nobody would.
Back then, when the former Hall Master of Sword God Hall accepted Rong Chaoxi, who had killed more than a dozen Rong family disciples and then fled to Myriad Dao Academy, the sect was doomed to break with the Rong family.
If you talk about the relationship between Myriad Dao Academy and the Divine Clans, its relationship with the Rong family was definitely the worst. The people most condemned by the Rong family over the past few years were definitely the mentally disabled elders of Myriad Dao Academy. It was already great if the Rong family didn’t come to seek revenge. If Myriad Dao Academy’s elders actually dared to go to their door and ask about their ancestral tablet, then the Rong family would certainly use their clan’s entire power to kill all these elders who didn’t fear death.
After a long ominous silence, even the judge couldn’t think of a countermeasure for the time being. Lin Xuanzhi was well aware that Tianshu’s words were true, but he also wasn’t able to show any evidence. He did not intend to let people know that he was the Sword Venerable Chang Sheng, yet this identity was the only evidence he had to prove the truth.
Several pairs of eyes looked at Esteemed Fu Ye, hoping that he could prove it, Esteemed Fu Ye shook his head, waved his hand, and said, “I don’t know anything about these past events. This is the first time I’ve heard of it. The reason why I know about evil Qi cultivators is because when I was young, when my master first refined the evil spirit arrays, I asked him, ‘What’s the use of refining these evil spirit arrays?’ Master said, ‘The evil spirit arrays connect us to both past and future worlds. If evil Qi cultivators ever come back one day and if these later generations want to find a solution, they can enter this evil spirit array and see. As for whether they can actually deal with the evil Qi cultivators, it depends on their methods. This is all I can do to help them.’”
That was the first time Esteemed Fu Ye heard the phrase “evil Qi cultivator”. Esteemed Fu Ye was only fifteen or sixteen years old at that time, and he was the age when a newborn calf was not afraid of a tiger. When his master finished refining the evil spirit array, Esteemed Fu Ye was the first one to sneak in.
“…I almost couldn’t return from that trip.” Esteemed Fu Ye mentioned the past hundreds of years ago, but he was still in shock, patting his heart and saying, “I saw that dual cultivator of demonic Qi and evil Qi with my own eyes. Even insects could no longer survive on the land he stepped on, let alone plants and trees. It was full of despair. When I saw his eyes, I wanted to cry and wail, and I wished I could die. If my Master hadn’t noticed in time and taken me out of the evil spirit array, I’m afraid I would’ve died in there.”
Lin Xuanzhi’s heart moved. “Esteemed Fu Ye, dare to ask your Master, when did he refine this evil spirit array?”
Esteemed Fu Ye thought for a while, and answered, “A thousand years ago, I can’t tell specifically when. There are many different sets of arrays within the evil spirit array; there’s not merely a single array. Some were indeed refined for the sect’s disciples to gain experience, while others were for seeing the past or future.”
Lin Xuanzhi asked, “May I inquire about the name of your Master?”
Esteemed Fu Ye said, “Master’s name is not known, but the people of the sect called him Esteemed Yue Wei. Master is an illusion array grandmaster and only stayed in Myriad Dao Academy for a hundred years. In addition to refining the evil spirit arrays, he taught me Daoism. Basically, he never came out to meet other visitors. After he finished refining the evil spirit arrays, he also told the sect elders before leaving not to record his name in the sect register, and just treat him as a passerby.”
Myriad Dao Academy’s eighty-one consecutive series of evil spirit arrays were all Esteemed Yue Wei’s work.
However, such a powerful master of illusion arrays did not leave much record in the history of Myriad Dao Academy. He appeared out of thin air and disappeared like a gust of wind. If later generations didn’t meet his direct disciple, they wouldn’t even know who created these evil spirit arrays.
The words of Esteemed Fu Ye could prove the existence of evil Qi cultivators. However, there was still too little knowledge about the evil Qi cultivators themselves. Besides knowing that evil Qi cultivators were very powerful, so powerful that they were almost invincible, there was almost no other information.
Lin Xuanzhi then asked, “Esteemed Fu Ye, do you still remember the appearance of the dual cultivator of evil Qi and demonic Qi?”
“Naturally, I remember.” It could be seen that the psychological shadow left during Esteemed Fu Ye’s youth was very heavy. He squinted his old but not muddy eyes, his voice was a bit distant as he said, “The dual cultivator of evil Qi and demonic Qi was wearing a dark red robe, with complicated embroideries on it resembling evil spirit arrays. A phoenix was embroidered with gold thread on the back of the wide robe. His hair was very long, almost dragging to the ground, and he was barefoot. He wore a pair of silver bells on his ankles. They clinked as he walked, like they were calling for souls.”
