MOF Chapter 32

Chapter 32: Encountering Jiang Yanhua, Little A Si Reveals His True Form – Disciple Orders Master, How Audacious…

“What?”

Traces of warmth still lingered on Nangong Ci’s lips, the tenderness in his eyes hadn’t yet dissipated. He was taken aback by Xie Yiling’s words and didn’t react for a moment.

The three had brought back a lot of herbs, piled together they probably formed a small hill. With such a large pile of herbs, Xie Yiling felt really bad leaving it all to Gu Huanzhi.

However, by the time he confessed this to Nangong Ci, Gu Huanzhi had already picked out all the Huanling leaves.

Xie Yiling was surprised, “Gu Shidi, how are you so fast?”

Gu Huanzhi gave a wry smile, pointed to the herb hill on the ground whose height hadn’t changed much, and then pointed to the handful of Huanling leaves beside it.

Xie Yiling was even more surprised: “How is there so little?”

“Huanling leaves are inherently rare in quantity, having this many is already pretty good,” Liu Weiyuan said, glancing over at them.

Xie Yiling and Gu Huanzhi carefully put away the Huanling leaves. Since they couldn’t be taken directly, they could only ask Liu Weiyuan for help.

Seeing Liu Weiyuan agree, the two thanked him several more times.

Liu Weiyuan had heard the word “thank you” the most these days. He didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded and continued to grind the herbs.

When his master was around, he had said to him, “Mortal affairs are not yet settled, it is difficult to find peace in the mountains.”

Over the years, he had never thought about leaving the mountain. But recently, he vaguely had a premonition, so he took a trip through the mountains.

When he met Xie Yiling and the others, he understood. To resolve his master’s words, he had to leave the mountain.

Liu Weiyuan stopped his movements, “I’ll go cook.”

As soon as he heard “cook,” A Si reacted the fastest.

“Immortal brother, I’ll help you!”

Xie Yiling was unwilling to be idle either, and said to Nangong Ci, “Shizun, let’s go help gather some firewood.”

Gu Huanzhi said, “I’ll clean up here.”

Not far away was the forest. Although the trees here were verdant green all year round, there were still many fallen dry branches.

Xie Yiling and Nangong Ci were very close together. When their hands were almost full of dry branches, he stopped and stared blankly at Nangong Ci, who was working with a cold face.

“What?” Nangong Ci had noticed Xie Yiling staring at him long ago, but he hadn’t said anything. Finally, he couldn’t help but ask, “Are you tired?”

Xie Yiling smiled and took a step forward, touching his lips.

After kissing him, he immediately turned serious and said, “Sixth brother, how could Lu Jinnian collude with Wen Liangchen? What exactly is going on?”

The atmosphere instantly broke away from the ambiguous and romantic. Nangong Ci came back to his senses and said, “The year you…just left, the number of wandering evil spirits in the world increased. Lu Jinnian, bewitched by evil spirits, secretly practiced the way of ghosts, not hesitating to harm his fellow disciples, and was discovered by Wumian.”

“Once this matter was exposed, Lu Jinnian quickly fled from Southern Return Heavenly Pavilion. Brother led people to capture him, but could never find his whereabouts. At the time, I suspected that someone was secretly assisting him, covering for him.”

Hearing this, Xie Yiling understood and couldn’t help but voice a long-standing doubt in his heart, “Have you felt that Yue Gongzi seems…”

He hesitated over his words, “Compared to before, something is not quite the same? It’s like he’s become a different person.”

Nangong Ci nodded: “You’ve seen it too.”

Xie Yiling was immediately very surprised: “Could it be that the current Yue Gongzi is indeed not the original? But I see that whether it’s appearance, demeanor, body, or height, nothing seems strange, and there are no traces of disguise on his face.”

Nangong Ci said, “Brother’s spiritual consciousness is no longer in this world, what remains now is just an empty shell. It is said that there is some kind of unbreakable connection between blood relatives, but a few years ago, this connection between me and my brother suddenly broke.”

Xie Yiling pondered, “During this time, did something happen?”

Nangong Ci thought for a moment and said, “Not long after you left, brother reached the ascension stage and went to the Spirit Platform alone to ascend. For three whole days and nights, no one disturbed him. When he returned on the fourth day, he was extremely unfamiliar.”

Xie Yiling was even more surprised when he heard this: “But how do I feel that he doesn’t look like someone who has ascended and attained the Dao?”

“That’s because,” Nangong Ci said slowly, “his ascension failed.”

If ascension fails, lightly, the golden core will rupture and cultivation will be damaged; heavily, the spiritual consciousness will leave the body and the soul will fly away.

Xie Yiling suddenly understood: “Once the spiritual consciousness leaves the body, the flesh is very likely to be taken advantage of and occupied by other wandering spiritual consciousnesses.”

Nangong Ci said, “That’s right, but it seems a little different. Brother’s flesh doesn’t seem to be repelling the soul that is now possessing the body.”

Xie Yiling frowned in confusion: “Could it be that he willingly let another soul occupy his flesh?”

Nangong Ci shook his head: “There’s no way to know.”

By the time the two returned, A Si was sitting on the stone table, waiting to be fed.

Xie Yiling and Nangong Ci put down the firewood, and the five of them sat around a stone table to eat.

The midday sun was just right, with sparse branches and leaves overhead providing shade. Looking up, you could see large gaps that were as bright as mirrors.

After the meal, Nangong Ci returned to the house to regulate his spiritual power, while Xie Yiling and Gu Huanzhi helped Liu Weiyuan take out the herbs that needed to be dried.

After moving the herbs, Xie Yiling quietly sneaked into the room. He tiptoed close to Nangong Ci, lightened his breathing, and reached out to touch his eyelashes.

Nangong Ci grabbed his hand, moved it away a little, opened his eyes, and smiled helplessly: “Are you done being busy?”

Xie Yiling nodded and sat down next to him, “So tired, my arms are so sore, Nangong Ci, give me a massage.”

For a disciple to order their master around, this was probably the first person in history to do so.

Nangong Ci said “you have no respect for elders,” but still willingly massaged his arms for him.

Suddenly, Nangong Ci stopped his movements. He straightened his back and looked towards the window. A golden butterfly flew in from outside the window.

Xie Yiling noticed him stopping and looked back, seeing Nangong Ci raise his hand and catch a golden butterfly. In a short while, it turned into a golden wind and dissipated before their eyes.

He recognized it as Nangong Yue’s magic and quietly waited for Nangong Ci to tell him.

Nangong Ci withdrew his hand, his expression serious, “Brother sent a Spirit-Sending Butterfly, Shuo City is being invaded by Yin corpses, they have already blocked Cang Ling Du, we need to go and support them as soon as possible.”

“What?” Xie Yiling immediately sat up, “It seems Wen Liangchen and the others have already started the next step of their plan.”

The two of them went out and told everyone about this. Gu Huanzhi was shocked and said, “Yin corpses have surrounded Cang Ling Du? Do they want to repeat the tragedy of Ink City from back then?”

“Hard to say.” Xie Yiling frowned tightly, “We must set off immediately to eliminate the corpses.”

While the group was discussing, Liu Weiyuan walked over and said, “I’ll go with you.”

Xie Yiling’s expression was slightly surprised, and he and Nangong Ci looked at each other. “Since that’s the case, then Gongzi Liu will come with us.”

A Si was diligent at this time, and in the blink of an eye, he moved the herbs that were drying in the yard back inside.

The five of them went down the mountain together. Having walked this path not long ago, they were naturally familiar with it.

After an unknown amount of time, Xie Yiling suddenly stopped.

“Shizun,” he said tentatively, “how do I feel like we’ve already walked this road?”

Nangong Ci stood half in front of him, vigilantly watching his surroundings.

“The mountain mist is strange.” He said concisely, “There are evil spirits nearby!”

A gust of fishy wind came, and Xie Yiling frowned slightly. He glanced at A Si, worried, “A Si, you go down the mountain first, or find a place to hide!”

A Si didn’t want to desert, but seeing that everyone’s expressions were serious, he had to nod and turn to run down the mountain.

Who knew that he hadn’t run a few steps when he suddenly bumped into something like a wall. He was bounced back like a rolling pumpkin, rolling twice on the ground.

A Si nimbly got up from the ground and ran to Xie Yiling in a hurry, “Xie Ci gege, we’re trapped! I can’t get out!”

Xie Yiling protected A Si behind him. The evil thing used the mountain mist to cover its body, and it moved extremely quickly. The biting fishy smell that came with it blew the hair on his forehead into a messy dance.

Gu Huanzhi and Liu Weiyuan stood back to back, not relaxing for a moment.

This monster was not like mountain ghosts and wind spirits, which were transformed from refined souls. Rather, it inherently had three souls and seven spirits, but it had no physical body. It spent years seizing the bodies of others to do evil.

Jiang Yanhua. Xie Yiling suddenly remembered, he had heard of such a strange evil thing before.

The *Record of Strange Contracts* had a record: “Jiang Yanhua, is as famous as the ancient evil beast, Serpent Dragon, both are the most ferocious. It is formless and without god, evil power is boundless, without fear and without dread, also without goodness.”

Since Serpent Dragon was destroyed by Cangnan Daoren at the cost of his own life, for many years, no one could match Jiang Yanhua.

But Xie Yiling didn’t expect that it would disregard the Immortal Sects and be so bold as to appear in White Bone Mountain in broad daylight.

“Shizun!” Suddenly, Xie Yiling realized that apart from A Si, everyone else had disappeared without a trace.

“Shizun, where are you?” He was a little flustered, “Nangong Ci, Nangong Ci!”

A Si tightly clutched the hem of Xie Yiling’s clothes, his eyes closed, his face pale with fright.

Although he was a Five Ghost, when he encountered the ancient fierce beast Jiang Yanhua, his whole body was suppressed and extremely uncomfortable, and it was difficult to use his magic.

Xie Yiling’s eyes were full of vigilance. He summoned a chain of talismans, his hand faintly showing blue veins, and said coldly, “Stop playing tricks, show yourself, reveal your true face!”

The mountain mist, which had been traveling as fast as the wind, stopped not far from Xie Yiling when it heard these words, and gradually transformed into a human shape.

Without a face and without a body, there was only a single figure standing.

“It’s been so long,” the human-shaped mountain mist opened its mouth, dragging out the sound. A large amount of foul gas rushed straight into his face, causing Xie Yiling to retreat several steps. Then it slowly added the second half of the sentence, “Since I haven’t smelled human flavor.”

Xie Yiling looked the monster up and down, muttering, “What kind of ghastly appearance is this, if I look at it, I’m afraid I’ll have nightmares for three days.”

“Xie Ci gege, don’t anger him!” A Si whispered a reminder, “If he gets angry, today, wouldn’t the two of us have to explain ourselves here?”

Xie Yiling said in a low voice, “What are you afraid of? You are a dignified Five Ghost.”

After speaking, he raised his head again and pretended to be foolish to the human-shaped mountain mist in front of him, “What is Your Excellency’s origin? We have no grievances or hatred with you, why block our way?”

Jiang Yanhua heard Xie Yiling’s words and seemed to be humiliated, “You mortals, you don’t even recognize this venerable one! This venerable one comes and goes freely in the Six Realms, no one can subdue me, and it’s your turn to ask?”

Xie Yiling accepted it when he saw a good opportunity, “So it’s Jiang Yanhua. I’ve long heard that you are some kind of ancient fierce beast, and no one in the world can subdue you. Seeing you today, you are indeed incomparably fierce. Why don’t you let this little ghost out, and I’ll fight you.”

As long as A Si found Nangong Ci and the others, they should have a good chance of winning if they dealt with this thing together.

The Jiang Yanhua opposite him roared twice in a low voice, and then a sneeryì overflowed from his throat.

“Ants, are you worthy of talking to this venerable one about conditions?”

He waved his hand and sent out a powerful force, striking towards Xie Yiling. Azurefall’s whole body was as bright as a pearl, shining through the heavy mountain mist and flying towards him, blocking in front of Xie Yiling.

But he never expected that the evil force would powerfully penetrate Azurefall and still strike out.

Xie Yiling only felt a sharp pain in his chest. His whole person was like a withered leaf, flipping twice in the air before finally falling heavily to the ground.

A Si’s drooping eyelashes trembled, and he called out in a trembling voice, “Xie Ci gege.”

Xie Yiling frowned tightly, containing an unconcealable look of pain. The spiritual power that had just recovered and condensed was scattered again by this damned Jiang Yanhua with one palm.

Fortunately, the golden core in his body was still intact.

Xie Yiling gritted his teeth and slowly stood up from the ground.

He didn’t know where Nangong Ci was, but he should be near them. It was just that this evil thing was secretly causing trouble, separating them.

Azurefall didn’t block Jiang Yanhua’s damage to Xie Yiling and was summoned back by its master.

His tongue tasted a trace of blood. Xie Yiling suppressed the bloody sweetness in his throat and a fierce aura gradually arose between his brows.

“You can still stand up?” Jiang Yanhua was a little surprised. He approached Xie Yiling, the mountain mist was like an iron arm, imprisoning Xie Yiling’s neck, forcing him to have to raise his head.

“Not a mortal?” Jiang Yanhua seemed to be looking down on him, and laughed with interest, “Remolding the golden core? It seems you are a member of the Immortal Sect. Before you die, this venerable one will give you a chance to report your sect.”

Xie Yiling met the mist-like face, unwilling to show weakness, “What are you, that you deserve to know where my master came from?”