IS Chapter 42
by VolareAfter re-packing the bundle, Master Xia scanned the hall once more, pausing slightly on each person, as if counting heads.
After counting, he gestured “three” towards Wei Sheng Xian.
“Ah Xuan is naturally doing well, just busy with many things and unable to return to the mountain. He even sent a letter during the winter asking about the recent situation on the mountain. Please be at ease,” Wei Sheng Xian said.
Master Xia looked at Feng Jiang, then gestured “four.”
“Ah Huai is still sleeping, didn’t wake him. Ah Jiang recently went to see him,” Wei Sheng Xian said.
“Still the same dead appearance,” Feng Jiang said.
After listening, Master Xia made a “six” gesture, but it wasn’t to inquire about the Sixth Palace Master’s situation. Instead, he handed Wei Sheng Xian a small bamboo tube sealed with wax.
“A letter from Wei Yue Jun?” Wei Sheng Xian took it and opened the tube.
After a glance, he smiled and said, “As expected. Is she doing well?”
Master Xia nodded.
Wei Sheng Xian handed the letter to Ye Zhuo.
Ye Zhuo unfolded it, and a few words were written on the bamboo paper.
It said that the Sixth Palace Master had “accidentally” infiltrated the Dao Sect’s secret hall on Upper Purity Mountain, and “accidentally” overheard the name of the Micro-Snow Palace from their mouths.
Although she had to retreat quickly for her own safety, she was certain that the Upper Purity people harbored ill intentions towards the Micro-Snow Palace and wanted to warn them to be careful.
It was indeed as expected.
The death of people from the Martial Sect wasn’t a big deal, but with the incident of the two Supreme Elders of the Dao Sect, the Upper Purity Mountain would not swallow their anger.
The past few months had been calm only because he had been in secluded cultivation throughout the winter, and the Upper Purity Mountain couldn’t figure out his strength, nor could they infiltrate the mountain.
In the end, whether those people lived or died was irrelevant. Having a pretext was good enough.
Ye Zhuo: “Let them be.”
Now that he had undergone tribulation, he also wanted to see the many human immortals of the Upper Purity Sect.
If that dragon didn’t create trouble every day, either engaging in dual cultivation or sparring to hinder him, he might already be at Upper Purity Mountain.
Thinking this, he met the dragon’s gaze.
Li Yuan looked outside and signaled with his eyes: Go out?
Ye Zhuo nodded.
Seeing that the matter here was over, they continued their unfinished body tempering.
Seeing their quietly departing figures, Wei Sheng Xian had no choice but to bring Master Xia to the edge of the scorched earth of the lightning tribulation, informing him of these two people’s heaven-defying actions.
Seeing the power of the heavenly lightning, Master Xia nodded in satisfaction.
He was even more approving of the two under the lightning tribulation.
Finally, Master Xia patted Wei Sheng Xian’s shoulder.
Having reached the middle stage of tribulation, the connection between heaven and man was already very effective.
Mysteriously, Wei Sheng Xian understood that Master Xia was earnestly telling him: Such tempering is very good for their cultivation. Little Wei, you should be happy when cleaning up the mess, as this can also temper your Dao heart.
Wei Sheng Xian: “Master Xia, I’m going to Quiet Grass Cliff for secluded cultivation.”
When their bodies were finally tempered by the lightning tribulation, Ye Zhuo and Li Yuan naturally had a fight.
After the fight, they went into secluded cultivation.
By the time they emerged from seclusion, Master Xia had already finished making several new garments.
The Palace Master Wei Sheng was also in secluded cultivation. With no one planting trees, the large collapsed and charred mountain looked unsightly. Li Yuan directly transformed into a dragon in the area above, using the water-attribute technique to summon rain clouds, mixing the immortal dew that promoted plant growth into the rainwater and pouring it down like a waterfall.
As for what would grow, they would let it take its course.
Clumps and piles of grass and trees spread rapidly across the ground, and the charred earth was quickly covered by a large expanse of lush green. Li Yuan watched this scene and suddenly remembered something.
At this time, Ye Zhuo was calmly wiping his sword under the eaves of the main hall, and Master Xia was not far away, squinting his eyes, intently embroidering. The silver needle embroidered with precision, and all the talisman patterns protecting the Dharma clothes were hidden under the dense stitches of the embroidery, leaving no trace.
Then he heard the dragon say, “Ye Zhuo.”
Ye Zhuo: “What?”
“Your world’s cultivators don’t usually have lightning tribulation when breaking through to the Tribulation stage?”
Ye Zhuo: “That’s always been the case.”
“But I suddenly remembered something: Half a year ago, when your sword was forged, eighty-one lightning tribulations descended. I saw it with my own eyes.”
It wasn’t strange to not have lightning tribulation when breaking through, some realms just didn’t have such a thing.
But if there was lightning tribulation when a magic weapon was forged, why was there no lightning tribulation when cultivators broke through great realms?
Ye Zhuo said faintly, “There is lightning tribulation when forming an artifact. Not for people.”
“Then do your human cultivators have lightning tribulation when ascending?” Li Yuan looked into his eyes.
“Yes,” Ye Zhuo said, “Not much.”
“What do you mean by not much?” Li Yuan frowned. “How do you ascend?”
“After reaching the peak of Tribulation, one ascends upon sensing the will of heaven,” Ye Zhuo slowly returned the wiped sword to its scabbard, his eyes calm.
“Then how is a successful ascension determined, and how is a failure determined?”
“If the will of heaven determines that your Dao is complete, you can ascend. If your Dao is not complete, you naturally cannot ascend.”
“Then what realm is the Human Immortal?”
“Some people have reached the realm but don’t want to ascend, or they have too much karma on their body and cannot ascend, so they continue to cultivate in the human world. They are considered to be in the Great Ascension realm, and the world respectfully calls them Human Immortals.”
“Sounds like it makes sense,” Li Yuan frowned.
Where did this dragon get so many questions?
“Which world doesn’t make sense on its own?” Ye Zhuo said. “Be careful not to understand too much, get too entangled with the karma of this world, and be unable to return to your realm.”
“There’s no such thing,” Li Yuan glanced at him. “Just say it directly if you don’t want to talk about it.”
He added, “The Fourth Palace Master sent a voice transmission asking us to go down the mountain to buy some things, are you going?”
Ye Zhuo really wanted to know why Li Yuan could find so many things to do every day.
Coincidentally, Wei Sheng Xian had inexplicably gone into secluded cultivation, asking him to go down the mountain around the Qingming Festival to check if the town was doing well.
Ye Zhuo: “Let’s go.”
“How rare,” Li Yuan said, “Then I’ll take you to eat something.”
Dragon Li Yuan always made things that shouldn’t have happened seem natural.
It was just going down the mountain, how did it involve eating again?
Ye Zhuo walked away with his sword, and Li Yuan followed. Feng Jiang was waiting for them under a tree not far away.
Under the eaves, Master Xia continued his embroidery. His gaze was focused, and the speed at which each stitch and thread fell remained unchanged, as if everything in the human world, and even the conversation that had just taken place not far from him, had never entered his ears.
The peach blossoms down the mountain were indeed blooming.
The town was also bustling.
It had rained this morning, and the stone slab road was permeated with a damp green. People in the market were selling apricot blossoms, tea, fruit dumplings, and paper money.
At first glance, it was quite peaceful.
Currently, not all towns in the human realm are under the jurisdiction of the dynasty. There are also some towns that are too close to the immortal cultivation area, so they actively attach themselves to the immortal sects for survival and no longer pay taxes to the mortal world.
Upper Purity Mountain controls several immortal cultivation markets and over twenty mortal towns.
The Micro-Snow Palace also has such a town.
This town is located on the very edge of the Green Mountains, and the number of townspeople is also very large, totaling four hundred households.
People from the Micro-Snow Palace occasionally walk here, purchasing some materials for making pastries and brewing wine, and resolving some strange things such as mountain spirits and water monsters. Feng Jiang sometimes comes here to provide free medical consultations.
At the same time, the mortal dynasty has also set up a yamen here.
The two sides each do their own thing. The residents symbolically pay some taxes to the dynasty, and also stuff some things to the immortal masters when they meet them.
So, when you think about it carefully, only half of the town is actually related to the Micro-Snow Palace.
Walking on the road, townspeople would occasionally greet, “Second Palace Master, it’s been a long time since you’ve come.”
Some thanked Feng Jiang, saying that their family members had taken his medicine and were much better.
There were even those who recognized Li Yuan and came to greet him.
Ye Zhuo walked while observing the people and things in the town.
For some reason, everything seemed normal, but he always felt that there was something vaguely wrong.
Amidst the clamor of voices, Ye Zhuo walked towards the end of the market, seeing a large crowd gathered on the west side of the market. Walking closer, it was a shop called “Qiongfu Porridge Shop” that was giving out porridge.
This shop has been here for many years, boiling plain porridge every day and giving it to others without charging a penny.
It was heard that many towns in the mortal world have its shops, and everyone said that this was opened by a kind person.
Their porridge has always been as clear as water. Wealthy families naturally don’t care about it, but poor vagrants can fill their stomachs.
The fragrance of millet filled the air, with a faint hint of meat.
Ye Zhuo stopped outside the porridge shop, examining the people coming and going, and finally his gaze fell on the bowls of white rice porridge in the hands of the townspeople who came to give.
“What’s wrong?” Li Yuan noticed his actions.
“This place is abnormal,” Ye Zhuo said. “Real materials are used in the porridge, including meat. It is not an example of giving alms.”
If porridge was given in this way, most of the people in the town would come toqiǎng – snatch, grab it, and the people who really needed it would not be able to drink it.
Li Yuan was surprised to hear him say this.
“Not bad, Second Palace Master Ye. I always thought you were someone who drank the wind and dew and didn’t understand worldly affairs,” Li Yuan’s eyebrows shone. “It seems that I was wrong this time and should apologize to you.”
Ye Zhuo: “…Isn’t this obvious?”
“It is obvious, but I know the reason why his family gives this kind of porridge. Why don’t you guess? If you guess right, I’ll treat you to rabbit meat.”
Ye Zhuo wasn’t interested in rabbit meat.
Looking at the bustling crowd receiving porridge, he said, “Most of the townspeople have come here, maybe someone wants to take the opportunity to poison them.”
“Wrong guess,” Li Yuan said.
Ye Zhuo: “Then what’s the reason?”
Looking at the dragon’s expression, Ye Zhuo suddenly had a premonition.
Li Yuan: “I came to stroll in the town a few days ago and saw this place. The townspeople told me that since this porridge shop opened, no one has starved to death in the surrounding mountains during the winter. I think this porridge shop is very good, so I donated a sum of money to them.”
Ye Zhuo: “.”
No wonder it was so generous, it turned out that there was a windfall from heaven.
“So there’s no need to worry about anyone not being able to drink it, there’s more than enough. I think the owner of this porridge shop must be a virtuous person. It’s a pity that no one knows who the main family is,” Li Yuan asked, “Do you know who it is?”
Ye Zhuo: “I don’t know who.”
“Then we can only get to know each other if we have the opportunity. There are so many interesting people in your human world.”
This was really what the dragon would say.
Ye Zhuo said faintly, “If you want to get to know good people all over the world, Upper Purity Mountain is full of moral gentlemen. You will definitely be like a fish in water there.”
Li Yuan thought for a long time: “You’re mocking me.”
–Dragon Li Yuan was becoming more and more able to understand human language.
Li Yuan said, “Let’s go, I’ll take you to eat rabbit meat.”
“Okay,” an insidious voice came from behind, “I’m rushing around buying things according to the list, but you two are here mocking each other. Are you going to eat rabbit meat behind my back?”
“Let’s not eat it first,” Ye Zhuo said. “Don’t you two think there’s something wrong with the town?”
Feng Jiang couldn’t be relied on. When he asked this question, he was looking at Li Yuan.
Li Yuan examined the surroundings.
“I don’t seem to notice anything,” he said.
This dragon was useless.
He was so confident when describing the so-called aura on him, now he would only say “I don’t seem to notice anything.”
“Where do you think it’s wrong?” Li Yuan asked him.
Ye Zhuo stopped and felt for a while.
Then he said, “There seems to be injustice.”
He could even sense this. Li Yuan felt that he should also go and study Buddhist scriptures.
Li Yuan: “Then let’s walk around again, or explore separately.”
Ye Zhuo took two steps forward and stopped a mortal old man.
Then he saw the old man looking at his face, his eyes already a little dazed.
–From afar, wearing red clothes and shining brightly, he knew that it was a god from the Green Mountains who had descended to earth, and he dared not look directly at him. But when he got closer, he realized that he was such a gorgeous beauty. That face really made him suspect that he was having a daydream, but that aura made him feel like he had fallen into an ice cave unexpectedly.
“Old man.” The voice as pure as ice and snow interrupted all thoughts in the old man’s mind, and asked a question that he would never have expected.
“Have people died in the town recently?”
“Dead… a little dead.”
“Where?”
“One died of old age in the east, one died from drinking in the west, and in the southwest…it seems that a family had a stillbirth.”
Ye Zhuo: “In the past ten days, have there been any unexpected disasters or strange things involving ghosts and gods?”
“Ghosts and gods…a few days ago, some neighbors in the southwest seemed to be chatting and said that they heard ghosts calling, and…let me think…” The old man pondered for a while, “Oh! Speaking of unexpected disasters, Zheng Niangzi, who sells fish at the end of the street, seemed to have fallen on the ice in the lake in the mountains five days ago and couldn’t stand up right away.”
“What happened later?”
“Their son-in-law, does Immortal Master know him…oh, Immortal Master probably doesn’t know him. It’s Zheng Niangzi’s husband, that Song scholar. He looks thin and weak, but when he heard the news, he was so anxious that he immediately hitched a cart and traveled dozens of miles to invite a doctor. Then he took care of her while praying to the gods and ancestors day and night, his head was broken from kowtowing. Somehow, his wife gradually recovered after two days–the town said that it was sincerity that moved the heavens. Immortal Master, look, isn’t this a divine thing?”
“Anything else?”
“If you ask about these days, I haven’t heard of anything else.”
“I understand, thank you.” Ye Zhuo nodded slightly and returned to Li Yuan and Feng Jiang. “Go see them one by one.”
No one objected.
Ye Zhuo’s suspicion came inexplicably, but no one questioned his opinion, as if everything this person did was always right.
Feng Jiang had done similar things before. The local yamen had a good relationship with the Micro-Snow Palace. If there were any strange events, they would accumulate and report them to them, and they would naturally send someone to investigate.
What the townspeople said about monsters and ghosts were mostly unfounded things: Those who claimed that there were water ghosts in the river often found that there were undercurrents in the river that entangled people. Those who claimed to hear ghosts crying were often the night cries of livestock. When the ghosts and charms were investigated, they were mostly human relationships that had turned upside down.
What the old man said this time didn’t seem unusual at first glance.
–But Ah Zhuo felt that something was wrong, there must be his reasons.
Li Yuan also felt the same way.
Perhaps because he had been with this person on the mountain for a long time, he unconsciously regarded him as a bright pearl and immortal dew that was not close to human fireworks, but that was not the case.
When dealing with things down the mountain, this person was as decisive as his swordsmanship.
What a strange person.
His eyes seemed to have nothing, but he actually understood everything.
So he quietly followed Ye Zhuo, maintaining his existence. This person didn’t seem to need help from others.
The town was too small, and before long, the three of them had seen two corpses, one grave, and figured out the ins and outs of the three deceased.
The drunkard died cleanly and neatly, there was nothing to say. The atmosphere at home after his death was relaxed, and they greeted the immortal master with smiles.
The old man in the east who was said to have died of old age, it seemed that his children and grandchildren couldn’t bear the suffering of serving him, and cut off his food and water for a few days, which led to this matter. Such incidents were not under their control and were reported to the authorities.
The neighbors in the southwest who heard ghosts calling actually heard people crying. The child’s mother had already cried, but the child’s father couldn’t shed tears in front of others. In the end, he secretly cried in a place in the middle of the night, unfortunately, he was still heard by others.
This matter was also clarified. Ye Zhuo saw Li Yuan watching all this not far behind him, quietly.
His heart had five obscurations and six poisons, and he was in the mortal fire prison. The small mountain town of only four hundred households was still like this. He didn’t know if this dragon still found the human world interesting.
After leaving this place, they went to the end of the street.
“Ye Zhuo,” Li Yuan suddenly called him, “I feel it, the town’s aura is indeed a little strange, like gloomy turbid air.”
“Gloomy turbid air? Have you seen it?” This word seemed to describe the strange feeling in Ye Zhuo’s heart.
“I’ve seen it when I went to the ghost realm, it’s a bit like it.”
Ye Zhuo couldn’t help but say that sentence again: “…You can really run around.”
Feng Jiang heard them talking and didn’t know why he always wanted to laugh.
He had to start another topic.
“I know Zheng Niangzi at the end of the street. She and her father catch fish every morning and sell them when they return. Their business is good and their family is considered well-off,” Feng Jiang said while walking. “If there are yellow bone small fish today, we’ll buy some and raise them, and when Wei Sheng comes out of seclusion, we’ll have him help us make them to eat.”
As he spoke, he walked in.
The store was clean, and different fish were placed in different large urns. The freshly caught fish were still alive.
“Zheng Niangzi, do you have that kind of yellow bone small fish that is more than one finger long today?” Feng Jiang said.
“Yes, I just caught a big net today–oh, Immortal Master Feng! Who are these two?”
After a burst of cordial words, a woman with a round, slightly fat face and a strong body came out from the dim counter to the sunlight in the center of the hall.
The three of them looked at her face and fell into a slight silence.
…Looking left and right, this seemed to be a dead person, right?
A strange thing, there was actually a corpse selling fish at the foot of the Green Mountains.