Chapter Ninety-Four: The Heavenly Demon Sect

Red banners gave a soft cry. She had not expected the old man’s halting tale to conceal such a tragic past.

Whoever suffered such a thing would likely be driven half mad by grief and fury, wishing only to be ground to dust rather than stop before the culprit had been cut to pieces.

Lu Yanchang broke the silence. “That female cultivator was very powerful?”

“Beyond fathoming. Even if I had formed my nascent soul, I still would have been nowhere near her match. She could have taken my life with the slightest flick of a finger.”

Lu Yanchang and Red banners were both startled. The old man was already at the nascent soul stage; if this woman truly was as fearsome as he claimed, could she be a spirit ascender? Yet on the mainland of cultivation, only two spirit ascenders were known to exist: Dai Mingchi and Xing Wuyan. This female cultivator had no reputation to speak of, so the only explanation was that she practiced an especially formidable art.

Was it true that, in some hidden corner of the world, there lived a secluded band of cultivators who practiced a powerful school, behaving strangely and striking with ruthless cruelty?

“Then how did you escape? She did not kill you?” Red banners asked with evident concern. She had already begun to believe the old man’s story.

“There was no escaping. She had come to bring me back. Had I known the consequences would be like this, I would have stayed in that village and never come out.”

The man in Room Twelve indeed kept his promise, not uttering a single word while the old man poured out his bitter history.

Of the three listeners, the one with the most knowledge was naturally Lu Yanchang. At once he seized the key point. “It has been hundreds of years since you formed your nascent soul, and that female cultivator was still a child? Was she some stunted dwarf? If she treated you like that, there must have been a reason. Don’t tell me you did something to wrong her in the village? Could it be you seduced her and then abandoned her?”

The old man reacted with extreme violence, suddenly shrieking, “They forced me! Who would want to marry that monster and spend a lifetime with her?”

Lu Yanchang sighed. “Enough, Old Hu. I believe you. The village you mentioned was full of devil cultivators, wasn’t it? I’ve been locked up all these years, and to be honest, I’ve always been curious what devil cultivators look like. I never expected there to be one right beside me. Being able to cultivate so quickly of your own proves that devil cultivation is indeed powerful.”

The old man was silent for a long while. After he seemed to calm himself, he said gloomily, “So you all believe what I said?”

In truth, Red banners and Lu Yanchang had already made their positions clear in their earlier words; this old man merely insisted on confirming it once more.

Red banners gave a hum in answer, her curiosity stirred by the fact that this was her first encounter with a devil cultivator. She was already thinking of asking him more about them later.

When the old man heard Lu Yanchang say he believed it too, he suddenly burst into wild laughter.

After laughing for quite some time, he finally gasped, “Ha! I’ve fooled you all after all, haven’t I? How about that, boy surnamed Lu—am I not still the better one? The older ginger is hotter, hm? Convinced yet?”

Lu Yanchang was rather taken aback. “Explain yourself. Don’t tell me even that devil cultivator village was fake?”

“Of course not. You little fox, how could I hide it from you without giving you something true? That ugly hag still had a shred of conscience; after finding my home, she did not dare lay a hand on my family. In fact, she was rather polite to my parents. She only forced me to display the art I had cultivated before them. Hmph. Once they saw I had learned devil cultivation, they were all so terrified they shook like chaff, and at once insisted on cutting ties with me. The moment I left, they packed up and moved away. Flesh and blood kin amount to no more than that—what was there left for me to cling to?”

Red banners felt that being deceived in this round by the old man was not the least bit unfair. She had truly not expected that, in what seemed like an innocuous wager, this usually understated, even somewhat sleazy old man would joke with the lives of his entire family.

It was simply too much. Red banners felt deeply uncomfortable and thought darkly: as the saying goes, the righteous and the demonic can never coexist. The elders did indeed have their reasons for doing things.

Lu Yanchang spat twice and cursed, “Surnamed Hu, this is not something just anyone could do. I admire you to death. Go on then—let me see how far your damned shamelessness can go!”

The old man said with great complacency, “On the gaming table, only winning and losing matter. Don’t drag in all that useless nonsense. Well? Just this one stretch and you both lost, didn’t you? Let me tell another, and I’ll make you little orthodox juniors bow down in complete conviction.” Since he had already been exposed, he simply admitted openly that he was a devil cultivator.

“Get lost!” Lu Yanchang barked.

The old man laughed heartily, sounding not the least offended. “That old hag was as though she had never seen a man in eight lifetimes. She watched over me tightly, and the more she did so, the more I hated her. I only wanted one day to shake off her clinging, by any means necessary. Later, I tricked her by saying I had a little nephew who studied at a renowned orthodox sect. When I had returned home before, I had not managed to see him, and since I had married such an impressive wife, I must have him meet his aunt-in-law in person.”

“That old hag was actually rather stupid. A few sweet words and she was skipping along after me, overjoyed. When we reached a town near that sect, I told her to find a high-level cultivator skilled in alchemy first. I told her that, first, one should not visit a junior empty-handed, and our things were surely not something the orthodox cultivators would dare accept anyway, so it would be better to gift him a few excellent pills. Second, among orthodox cultivators there were rumors of someone who could refine a youth-preserving pill; taking one could keep one’s appearance forever young. She was deeply tempted, and without another word she went off. Ha! I knew she would definitely set her sights on that great sect. I could not deal with her, but within a major sect there were plenty of experts who could. Perhaps she would never come back.”

“As it turned out, that old witch had remarkable luck. She was beaten so badly that she suffered grievous injuries, yet she still escaped back. Not only did she return herself, she even brought the pursuers with her. She handed me the stolen pills and told me to flee at once. Damn it all—just a few rotten pills, and they made me reveal myself before the orthodox cultivators. I fled with all my might, hiding here and there, yet I still could not shake off those few cultivators.”

“At the time I thought that if I were caught, it would mean death. You can’t imagine how much I hated that vile woman. I did not care about anything else and swallowed all the pills in one go. As for that vile woman’s technique, I could not let anyone else profit from it. I had originally intended to destroy it. But just then, a pair of orthodox cultivators happened to pass through the place where I was hiding. I felt a visceral disgust at the sight of their sweet, loving manner, so I quietly left behind the final jade slip, which I had not yet destroyed, along with a herbal compendium for the two of them. I knew that from the moment they laid hands on those two things, the pair would never again have a peaceful life, ha ha.”

“You... the Heavenly Demon Sect... the Classic of a Thousand Herbs and a Thousand Methods!” Red banners suddenly cried out.

“How do you know that?” the old man exclaimed, clearly shocked.

Before Red banners could answer, he pressed on in a flustered rush. “Who are you? Are you also of the Heavenly Demon Sect? Do you know that couple?”

Startled by her single accurate guess, the old man lost his composure, his voice even trembling slightly.

Red banners thought to herself, So that is how the two items in Jian Hui’s possession came to be. I only wonder what relation that couple had to him—could they have been his parents? She ignored the old man’s barrage of questions and simply said, “I am from the Danya Sect.”

The old man choked, clearly remembering the unpleasant experience of being hunted by Danya Sect cultivators in the past.

But Red banners did not let him off there. After carefully considering what he had said earlier, her mind suddenly stirred. “Actually, your surname is not Hu. It is Jing. You are my senior grand-uncle Jing Baixi’s uncle.”

Jing Baixi’s uncle was a devil cultivator, imprisoned in the Demon Refinement Prison, and yet this devil cultivator old man claimed to have a nephew in a famous orthodox sect. How could the world have such a coincidence?

“You, you said your senior grand-uncle was who?” The old man could hardly speak coherently.

By now Lu Yanchang had caught on and cut in with a laugh. “Ha! Old man, you’ve been exposed now, haven’t you? You damn coward, you don’t even dare to give your real name—trash who can never live in the light.”

“What the hell do you know!” The old man roared back at Lu Yanchang, then turned to press Red banners again. “Little girl, how did you know? Who else knows about this?”

Red banners sighed. “Wasn’t it you who let it slip? After the elder surnamed Ji in the Demon Refinement Prison seized that handle, he slandered my senior grand-uncle, saying he had bribed the guards and colluded with you from the inside and out, and that they would imprison my senior grand-uncle as well. On the way here, my senior grand-uncle was ambushed and his whereabouts became unknown. I’m afraid he was already killed long ago.”

The old man murmured, “I never said it. Even after those wood-aspect cultivators from Danya Sect captured me, I never said it. When they sent me here, I only said my surname was Hu. The demonic and the orthodox walk different roads. My life was already ruined; why should I drag him down with me?”

Red banners fell silent. If he had not said it, then it must have been Ji Youyun’s insight technique.

Yet this old man had left far too poor an impression on her. If what he said was true, then everything that had befallen him was entirely of his own making. She dared not believe a single word he said. Only, it was a pity for the innocent senior grand-uncle Jing Baixi and Elder Shui, who had been implicated without cause.

If the two of them were still alive, the water cultivators of Danya Sect would not have declined entirely, and the patriarch would not have died clutching the inheritance jade slip, unable even to find a nascent soul cultivator to entrust it to, only to leave it finally to Chen Zaizhi, who had just established his foundation. She did not know what Danya Sect had become now...

The more Red banners thought, the farther her mind wandered, until Lu Yanchang called her several times before she awoke with a start and realized she had drifted off.

Lu Yanchang smiled. “Sister Fang, it’s your turn.”

When Red banners had addressed the old man’s nephew as senior grand-uncle just now, Lu Yanchang had roughly gauged her age. Astonished that she was so young, and moreover from a great and renowned sect, and that she too had been imprisoned in the black prison just like himself, he also found it rare to be speaking to a little sister, and so his tone became doubly courteous.

Red banners still had many doubts about the past, and this was the perfect chance to lay them out, so these clever people, whether righteous or wicked, good or evil, could help her analyze them properly.

So she thought for a moment and began to tell her story. The first part she spoke of was about Yao Zhen.