ATEG Chapter 110.1

Karmic threads tangle densely around every living being, pulling at their every action. The self of today has already become a puppet of yesterday — if one cannot cultivate the inner realm, the karma sown today will in turn control the self of tomorrow.

Liang Capital. Within the Royal Palace.

Xu Huan wore a golden crown upon his head and three layers of clothing. The innermost layer had a bamboo-green collar that gathered high around his neck; the middle was a layer of snow-white inner robe; the outermost was a garment of deep azure verging on ink-blue, with dark patterns woven in silver thread of the same color. This solemn set of robes lent him an air of grave dignity. The heavy, draping fabric swayed with measured elegance at his every step, and the silver-threaded dark patterns shimmered with flowing light beneath the sun.

The ministers to his left and right bowed their heads low. The hall was so still that only the sound of breathing could be heard. Amidst the corridor formed by the ministers on either side, Xu Huan stepped forward, one step at a time, ascending to the foremost seat — the seat of the King of Liang.

Xu Chang was dead.

He turned and looked down upon the hall below. The ministers bent their waists in respectful deference. The crisp royal robes spread open across the throne, and together with this solemn great hall, the ministers offering their salutes within it, the royal palace, the capital city of Liang, the land of the Liang Kingdom, and all the people beneath heaven — they gathered around, piled atop one another, and rallied to uphold this supreme seat within Liang.

Xu Huan slowly sat down.

The towering weight of a nation’s collective force pressed down upon this lofty throne, and the bone-deep chill within him finally dissolved, merging with the position of King of Liang into a vast and majestic authority.

……

“You don’t seem happy?” A charming, delicate female voice rang out, soft and melodious — the kind of voice that, heard with ears alone, could make one conjure a face in the mind and feel one’s heart flutter.

In the side hall, the jewel-adorned golden crown had been removed from Xu Huan’s head. He lay reclined with closed eyes upon a couch, his full head of jet-black hair spread across the unfolded robes beneath him. His lips retained their usual pallor, nearly bloodless, and when still, he was as coldly isolated as a jade statue. He opened his eyes, and the dark pupils — like black agate — shifted. The added vitality was there, but unlike his usual chilling manner.

“Aunt Tiao.”

Tushan Tiao stepped lightly to the side of the couch. She reached out and caught hold of Xu Huan’s wrist, pressing her fingers to his pulse.

“I’m fine,” Xu Huan said, allowing Tushan Tiao to read his pulse. His tone still carried its habitual coolness, yet compared to his usual demeanor, this manner of his could almost be considered docile.

Their faces shared seven out of ten features in common. Tushan Yao. Tushan Tiao. This face was nearly identical to the image of his mother in his memories.

Tushan Tiao had found him after Xu Chang released him. At that time, because of Xu Kang’s strange illness, although Xu Chang had no choice but to keep him alive, he had him under strict and close surveillance. Back then he had nothing — facing the power of the King of Liang, he had no opportunity to change anything. If not for Aunt Tiao, he would have had to go on living as Xu Kang’s medicine indefinitely.

Tushan Tiao listened to his explanation, yet still insisted on reading his pulse, and only released his wrist after personally confirming his condition. Once the worry had passed, a commanding fury rose within her — though that anger was not directed at Xu Huan.

“Are there ministers among them who oppose you?” Tushan Tiao asked. Her jet-black pupils faintly showed signs of shifting into vertical slits.

“No. Those who couldn’t be reasoned with were dealt with long ago,” Xu Huan said calmly.

Yet they were still different. The mother in his memories had never displayed such fierce, blazing presence.

“But you’re not happy,” Tushan Tiao said.

“I simply have little interest in the position of King of Liang,” Xu Huan replied, sighing somewhat. “It was still too rushed. If things had gone according to the original plan, there would have been no need to kill so many people.”

The regret in his voice as he said these words was genuine — and the calm with which he had earlier spoken of dealing with those ministers who fiercely opposed him was equally genuine.

Xu Chang was dead. Under normal circumstances, Xu Kang should have succeeded to the throne of King of Liang. He had made arrangements for Xu Kang, yet Xu Kang had vanished right under his nose. This rendered his subsequent plans useless, forcing him to act hastily. And because Xu Kang’s whereabouts could not be accounted for in any convincing way, there were inevitably some old stubborn ministers who were not pleased to see the throne pass from one brother to another. This was understandable — due to Xu Chang’s dislike and wariness, though he had lived within the royal palace, he had very little presence. To those ministers, he was a completely unfamiliar figure.

Tushan Tiao let out a cold snort, making no effort to conceal her contempt. “That Xu Kang… you needn’t worry about him. The Xuanqing Sect is yours — sooner or later they’ll find him. And even if they can’t find him, he won’t live much longer.”

Without his blood — to be precise, without the Tushan bloodline power within him — Xu Kang could not survive long.

But Xu Huan was not a half-demon. When Tushan Yao gave birth to him, she had already crossed the threshold of taking human form and delivered the child with a human body. Even so, the bloodline from Tushan that made up one half of him remained extraordinarily powerful. An ordinary infant would have been unable to endure ten years in that old ancestral shrine — they might have perished within two or three years, never living to see Ah Ci find him, never living to see Xu Kang’s illness come later.

Yet for a Tushan fox who had already taken human form — why had she ended up in the royal palace of the Liang Kingdom, and how had she later come to such an end… this was something Xu Huan did not know. Every time this was brought up, Aunt Tiao’s expression would darken. She was unwilling to speak of it — perhaps she too only knew a part of the story. After all, by the time she finally found her way to the Liang capital, her elder sister had long since turned to dust and bone, leaving behind only a child in a precarious situation.

As for Xu Kang, Xu Huan harbored little hatred toward him. Xu Chang had kept those shameful past events very well concealed, suppressing all traces of Xu Huan’s existence in the process — Xu Kang did not know where the medicine he relied upon came from. Had it not been for Xu Kang’s illness, he would still have been left to endure in the old ancestral shrine. Though after he came out he had been kept under close watch, he at least had the opportunity to come into contact with some people. Without that, even when Aunt Tiao later found him, it would have been far more difficult to scheme his way to where he stood today. Of course, this did not mean he felt any gratitude toward Xu Kang.

Tushan Tiao, however, held absolutely complete contempt for Xu Kang. Treating Xu Kang’s illness required not merely blood — it required the Tushan bloodline power belonging to someone with a blood connection to Xu Kang. Xu Huan’s physical constitution had been nearly destroyed in the old ancestral shrine. Even with careful recuperation, not all of it might ever be fully restored — let alone the fact that his blood-essence power had to be extracted once every half year.

After finding Xu Huan, Tushan Tiao had done everything within her power to make it up to him — teaching him cultivation, helping him obtain the Xuanqing Sect. Yet the methods of a cultivator were not omnipotent. Despite everything Tushan Tiao had done, Xu Huan’s innate gifts were extraordinary and his cultivation had advanced with remarkable speed, to the point of matching many seasoned cultivators — yet traces of prior damage remained in his body. It was as though the roots of a plant had been injured; no matter how much nourishment was provided, it was difficult to absorb.

“I have no concern for him,” Xu Huan smiled faintly, the gentle quality of his gaze deepening once more. “Now that I have obtained the position of King of Liang, the Xuanqing Sect should turn its energies toward spreading its influence. The long-turbulent state of the Liang Kingdom — it is time for that to come to an end.”

With the Luo Sect falling into self-inflicted disarray, Shezhou City had now returned to his hands. This was only the beginning.

……

Shezhou City.

When hidden undercurrents surface, the force they unleash is tremendous. The streets had already returned to quiet. The destitute refugees who had collapsed in the roads were nowhere to be seen — it was only slightly more desolate than before, as though the chaos that had preceded it was nothing but an illusion.

In Chang Andu’s residence, he had left an empty room for Li Shi — but the room contained only a jade pendant and three lit sticks of incense. Li Shi was not in his own room; he was with Chang Andu.

Li Shi’s brow was tightly knitted. Chang Andu, seeing him this way, asked, “Do you feel there is something wrong?”

He had already learned a rough account of events from Li Shi. The Luo Sect’s blood sacrifice plan had now fallen completely through. Though there had been some casualties arising from the chaos, it was far better than what the original outcome might have been. This should have been a satisfying result — yet Li Shi did not appear relaxed. If anything, one could say he was even more tightly wound.

This was strange. Wasn’t the current outcome precisely what Li Shi had been striving to bring about all this time? The careful investigation, the gathering of evidence, the contact with the Xuanqing Sect he had carried out during this period — wasn’t all of that for exactly this result?

He had saved Shezhou City, and countless people in many other places, bringing this horrifying slaughter to an end before it had even begun. Even if this was not the best result he had hoped for, it was no reason to become even more tense.

Li Shi pressed the nail of his thumb into his fingertip, one press after another, and in that mild, stinging pain he organized his thoughts. He did not answer Chang Andu’s question, but instead posed a counter-question first. “What do you think of the Xuanqing Sect — what kind of cult is it?”

Chang Andu’s impression of the Xuanqing Sect was favorable. He did not understand the affairs between those cultivators who came and went like phantoms, but from what he had witnessed since arriving in the Liang Kingdom, at least on the level of ordinary people, the Xuanqing Sect was genuinely saving lives. Their resettlement of refugees, their protection of the people — these were tangible things he had seen with his own eyes. And from those refugees who had nothing, they had demanded nothing in return. They did, of course, gain the gratitude of the common people, and it seemed this intangible goodwill could, through the methods of cultivators, be transformed into some manner of concrete power. Chang Andu did not fully understand this, but even so — so what? To receive help and then feel gratitude: was that not the natural response of any ordinary person?

Throughout history, there had been no shortage of cults that exploited chaos to beguile the people and seize power for themselves. If what the Xuanqing Sect was doing were happening in another kingdom — Lu Kingdom, for example — it would indeed make Chang Andu wary. Lu Kingdom possessed its own capacity for disaster relief and had long been working toward that end. And if some force were growing within Lu Kingdom by exploiting the chaos of a great calamity, one could almost certainly conclude that their goal was not to relieve the disaster but to use it as a means of seizing power from Lu Kingdom — the refugees being nothing more than tools in their struggle for dominance.

But this was happening in Liang — a kingdom already in utter disarray. If one did not save people, if one did not spread one’s influence in the course of doing so and then save even more people — was one supposed to rely on depraved sects like the Luo Sect, which used living people as materials, and a Liang royal court already teetering on the edge of collapse?

Yet Chang Andu had tasted the implication beneath Li Shi’s counter-question, and he could not help but furrow his own brow, asking, “You think there’s something wrong with the Xuanqing Sect?”

Li Shi slowly nodded and said: “The Luo Sect operated in Shezhou City for twenty-three years, and before that, this place had long been the domain of the Xu Clan and the Disciplinary Bureau. Shezhou City is a critically important junction. Neither the Luo Sect nor the Xu Clan and Disciplinary Bureau would have had any reason to loosen their grip on it. But the Xuanqing Sect…”

He did not continue, yet Chang Andu had already understood what Li Shi meant. In handling the Luo Sect’s arrangements in Shezhou City, the Xuanqing Sect had been so ruthlessly efficient as to be frightening — as though this was not the Luo Sect’s long-held stronghold at all, but the Xuanqing Sect’s own home base.

How had the Xuanqing Sect managed to insert its own power into Shezhou City while it had been so tightly controlled? How great were the forces they had concealed in the shadows? Had they truly detected nothing of the Luo Sect’s blood sacrifice plan? And from what point in time had this long-accumulating undercurrent been laid down? With such far-reaching scheming by the Xuanqing Sect — what was its true purpose?

“Perhaps there is no need to imagine the worst outcome. Having ambition does not necessarily mean one is evil. For any faction to grow, deep and far-sighted planning is essential,” Chang Andu said — though his own voice carried no great certainty. “Perhaps the Xuanqing Sect does indeed harbor its ambitions, but after obtaining the power it seeks, the result may not necessarily be a bad thing. At least from what can be seen now, they appear to want to govern properly the territory within their sphere of influence.”

Li Shi pressed at his fingertip for a long while without speaking. He deliberated at length, and finally let out a slow breath, deciding at last to tell his friend certain things.

“Before I approached the Xuanqing Sect, I encountered some other matters…” he said.

Finding the Xuanqing Sect was not difficult — one needed only to enter the territory under their influence, pull aside any low-ranking adherent at random, and through that person, work one’s way upward layer by layer until making contact with a Xuanqing Sect member of sufficient standing. Then one could hand over what one had discovered. But this was not how Li Shi had envisioned it. He had no wish to expose his own existence, and the things he had uncovered could not simply be handed to some minor figure in hopes that they would relay it to someone capable of making decisions — if the matter were prematurely revealed, the Luo Sect would immediately commence the blood sacrifice, leaving the Xuanqing Sect no time to respond.

Therefore Li Shi had to find someone within the Xuanqing Sect with enough standing to be heard — someone who could understand and know how to act upon what he had discovered — and in the process of conveying the intelligence to the Xuanqing Sect, also conceal his own existence.

Though he ultimately failed on that last point, in the course of his cautious attempts to make contact with the upper echelons of the Xuanqing Sect, he first encountered someone else — to be precise, that other person had discovered him first.

“It was a wrathful great ghost who carried an infant girl in her arms. At first I thought she meant to harm someone; later I came to understand that the infant had been abandoned, and she was raising her,” Li Shi said, his brow still furrowed, speaking as slowly and clearly as he could.

Chang Andu could not suppress a strange sense of absurdity. In this day and age — people were killing people, while a ghost was raising a fragile infant girl.

“She had always been drifting at the outer fringe of the Xuanqing Sect — not drawing near, but not leaving either. She had been watching the Xuanqing Sect all along, and that was how she discovered me. After observing for a while, she took the initiative to draw me into a conversation,” Li Shi continued.

From the great ghost called Qingfu, he had learned of the enmity between her and Feiying, as well as some other old matters connected to Feiying. Feiying was the Xuanqing Sect member Li Shi had selected as his point of contact after careful observation — one who appeared to be a cultivator of imposing bearing and considerable standing within this small Xuanqing Sect outpost.

“Feiying is not a good person,” Qingfu had told him at that time. “Given that the Xuanqing Sect can accept someone of his kind, do you think they are some righteous faction?”

If what Qingfu had said was all true, then judging from what Feiying had done, calling him merely “not a good person” was far too mild — one might almost say he was vicious and malicious. A person like him would have fit right in with the Luo Sect, presiding over such cruel blood sacrifice rituals without any incongruity whatsoever.

“But why did you choose to come find me?” Li Shi asked.

“Because I am not only Qingfu — I am also the green cash bug,” Qingfu said.

She could not be considered a purely human-formed ghost. Within her was also concentrated the resentment of the green cash bug mother and child. From Qingfu’s own perspective, she bore no personal grudge against Feiying — when Feiying had once, on a passing whim of kindness, given her the green cash bug coins he had no use for, it had counted as a kind of beneficence toward her. After she had slain the reincarnated form of the man who had drowned her daughter, the resentful energy that had sustained Qingfu’s existence as a ghost had already begun to dissipate. But from the perspective of the green cash bug mother and child, it was Feiying who had exploited the bond between them and caused their deaths — and he was their enemy.

The green cash bug wished for Feiying’s death. But after the missed opportunity in Taiwu County, Feiying had attached himself to the Xuanqing Sect. Though Qingfu, by means of the bond of causation that linked them, had never lost track of Feiying’s whereabouts, she had never again found a new opportunity for retribution.

What is more…

Qingfu lovingly played with the infant girl in her arms. Afraid of hurting the baby, she had restrained every trace of her ghostly aura to nothing, looking in that moment just like an ordinary, doting mother.

She had this child as an attachment — she could no longer go about seeking vengeance without regard for anything, as she once had. Her mind was now clear enough to govern her own actions, and beneath the green cash bug’s bone-deep resentment lay something deeper still — the love between mother and child. They could understand and accept holding back for now, for the sake of this frail and tiny infant girl.

How extraordinary. Such a fragile and soft infant — even the most ordinary of people could effortlessly take her life — yet she commanded the actions of a wrathful great ghost, causing her to willingly restrain her entire aura of resentful malice for her sake, even temporarily setting aside an enemy who was within reach.

Qingfu had continued to trail close to Feiying — she had not abandoned her hatred. It was one of the most fundamental reasons she had become a ghost, and whatever small kindness Feiying had once shown Qingfu with those coins could not counterbalance the resentment of the green cash bug mother and child.

“Though I have no intention of confronting him head-on right now, I have no objection to making trouble for him,” Qingfu said.

And regardless of whatever reason had led Feiying to conceal his true nature, she was perfectly willing to expose his true face to anyone who had been deceived by it.

Qingfu’s words had indeed planted seeds of doubt within Li Shi’s heart. Yet in the end, he still chose to approach Feiying. In truth, he had no other choice — if he did not want the Luo Sect’s blood sacrifice to become reality, if he did not want the Liang Kingdom, already a scene of devastation, to become a sea of blood, he had no option but to seek out the Xuanqing Sect and have them stop the Luo Sect’s mad plan.

But now, with the matter concluded, and having combined that with the hidden power the Xuanqing Sect had revealed in the course of these events, Li Shi could not help but feel anxious.

The shadow the Xuanqing Sect concealed beneath the surface was already so immense — and he had just helped the Xuanqing Sect deal a heavy blow to its greatest enemy, the Luo Sect, removing yet another layer of restraint upon it. What consequences would this lead to?