Chapter 130: Ill-Fated Affinity

An hour later.

"Taoist Master, Taoist Master! You must save my son! He is my only son!" Zhao Yuan kept pleading incessantly in Jin Xuanzi's ear. Jin Xuanzi, however, remained deep in a frown, his fingers weaving through hand seals as he calculated something.

"Master! Master! Please, say something!" Zhao Yuan scrambled to keep up with Jin Xuanzi’s long, rapid strides as they headed toward the outskirts where Baili Mo was located.

Suddenly, Jin Xuanzi came to an abrupt halt, an expression of disbelief washing over his face.

"How can this be? How?" he whispered to himself, repeating the words over and over.

"Impossible! I must calculate it again! I must have made a mistake!" Jin Xuanzi shook his head vigorously, his fingers blurring as he performed complex, shifting seals, frantically using the art of divination to peer into the unknown.

"Master? Master Jin Xuanzi? Why have you stopped? My son’s life is hanging by a thread!" Zhao Yuan, looking every bit the boorish brute, continued to drone on.

"Shut up!" Jin Xuanzi whipped around and roared at him. Zhao Yuan felt as if he had been struck by a heavy blow; he collapsed to the ground with a thud, his vision swimming with overlapping images.

"How is this possible? Why can I no longer see it? That’s not right—I could calculate it clearly just a moment ago." Jin Xuanzi’s face was etched with confusion, his fingers never ceasing their rhythmic movement.

Suddenly, as if he had pushed his divination to its absolute limit or encountered an insurmountable barrier, Jin Xuanzi let out a muffled groan, and a thin trail of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

"Hah, so someone is interfering with my arts? Who could it be? And what exactly is that boy doing?" Jin Xuanzi wiped the blood away and murmured, his chest heaving. His inner peace had been thoroughly shattered.

"To go to such lengths to block the calculations of an expert at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage... could what I suspected earlier actually be coming to pass?" Jin Xuanzi bowed his head, his heart a storm of indescribable complexity.

With a flick of his hand, Jin Xuanzi hoisted the still-dazed Zhao Yuan and took to the sky, moving with such speed that he left only a blur in his wake.

Not long after, on the outskirts of Chang’an, near a house burned to cinders, a youth radiating malice was busy tormenting a crippled man.

Nearby lay a woman with a graceful figure, though her face was a grisly, unrecognizable ruin of shredded flesh and deep gouges. Beyond that, the ground was littered with gore and bloodstains.

"Mo'er!" Jin Xuanzi gasped in shock at the scene. The disciple he had raised under his own watchful eyes was now acting like a demon, wantonly playing with human life.

"Oh, it fell off again, fell off, fell off, fell off..."

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, just piece it back together, just piece it back together..."

"It’s not enough, not enough, your sins are not enough..."

Baili Mo seemed to have lost his mind, repeatedly severing Zhao Wenshang’s limbs only to use spells to restore them to their original state.

Over and over again, with a gentle smile on his lips, he acted as if he were tireless. His eyes were blood-red, as if they might bleed at any moment, and his face, hidden behind disheveled hair, was twisted, bearing no resemblance to the handsome, graceful youth he once was.

In Baili Mo’s hands, Zhao Wenshang was nothing more than a toy to be toyed with. Foaming at the mouth, his eyes had lost all focus, showing only the whites. His entire body twitched rhythmically as he let out only faint, whimpering sounds.

"Mo'er! What are you doing!" After the initial shock, Jin Xuanzi was overcome with fury. This was the behavior of a demonic creature, yet this was a disciple of the Nanxuan Sect, a sect whose very mission was to slay demons and eliminate evil.

"My son, my son..." Seeing this, Zhao Yuan seemed to collapse, all the strength draining from his body as he fell to his knees.

"Mas... Master? Master?" Baili Mo turned his head stiffly, wearing that same smile—a very faint, very soft smile.

But as Jin Xuanzi stepped forward, he faltered. That smile on the boy’s face was so bitter, so sorrowful, so painful, so helpless.

And so, so pitiful.

These emotions, which should never have appeared in this youth, were now painfully clear.

"Mo'er." Jin Xuanzi looked at his favorite disciple with complex eyes, whispering his name. "Let’s go. Let’s go home."

"Master, I’m so sad. I can’t stop. Why can’t I stop? I am a disciple of the Nanxuan Sect. I shouldn’t be torturing mortals like this. Isn’t it our duty to protect them?" Tears, tinged with blood, welled up in Baili Mo’s eyes. He was in agony, yet he could find no direction.

The child who had spent years in quiet cultivation on the mountain felt lost for the first time.

Troubled, confused, and suffering, he could find no answer.

"Yes, that is the mission of everyone in the Nanxuan Sect," Jin Xuanzi said, looking at him with calm, pitying eyes.

"But, but why! Why must we protect trash like this! Why must we protect such lawless waste! I want to kill him! I want him to wish he were dead! I want him to pay for the sins he has committed!" Baili Mo screamed into the night, screaming at an unfair world.

"Kill him! Kill him! There is a voice in my head! It wants me to kill him! No matter the cost!" Baili Mo tilted his head back, tears streaming down his face.

Kill him! Baili Mo drew his sword again. He wanted to end it! This was the disaster Zhao Wenshang had brought upon himself!

"Enough. Truly, enough." There was no scolding, only a whisper as gentle as a father’s. Jin Xuanzi suddenly appeared by Baili Mo’s side, pinching the blade of the descending sword between two fingers with effortless ease.

"Master?" Baili Mo looked at his most revered master in pain.

"Sleep for a while. You will feel better when you wake up." Jin Xuanzi tapped Baili Mo’s forehead. The boy’s eyes drooped, and he collapsed into his master’s arms.

"Truly, what a troublesome disciple," Jin Xuanzi sighed, waving his horsetail whisk. Baili Mo was slowly lifted into the air by an invisible aura of spiritual energy.

The wrong path, the wrong decision; one step toward the cliff's edge, falling into the abyss. But was this his own choice? And if it was, was it truly wrong?

"Son! Son!" Zhao Yuan, seeing that his son hadn't been killed by the sword, scrambled desperately toward him.

"Your son’s spirit has been shattered beyond repair; he is left with nothing but his life. But that is the price he had to pay." Jin Xuanzi looked at the worried Zhao Yuan, his voice cold. "Zhao Yuan, look to yourself."

Jin Xuanzi glanced at the unrecognizable Lu Qinglian nearby and sighed deeply. He waved his whisk again, and Lu Qinglian floated up to follow behind him.

"All pitiful children. Hmm? This girl?" Jin Xuanzi looked closely at Lu Qinglian, and a look of confusion appeared on his face. He performed a quick calculation, and after a long moment, let out a long, heavy breath.

"Goodness, what exactly has my disciple done? A lost treasure found without effort—such twisted karma."

Jin Xuanzi finished his calculations, but the result left him startled, and he shook his head incessantly.

Suddenly, Jin Xuanzi’s expression turned stern. His face grew grave as he turned his head and stared deeply into the distance.

"Ah, I’ve been discovered. It seems this little ant has some skill."

In the dark night, on a distant mountain peak, the wind howled. Two figures shrouded in black cloaks stood quietly, watching the dramatic scene unfold below.

"Time to go. It’s time for the next step," one of the black-clad figures said in a hoarse voice, the tone sounding as if it had endured the passage of countless ages.

Long years, a vast world—this was the essence that radiated from him.

He turned and began to walk away slowly. His hunched frame looked thin and fragile in the night wind, as if a single gust might blow him away, and every so often, he let out a few coughs.

"Honestly, at such an age, to still be in such a hurry," the other black-clad figure said with theatrical exaggeration, drawing out the words before sighing, suddenly finding it all a bit dull.

"Oh well, well. Little Baili Mo, until we meet again. I look forward to seeing what you grow into in the end." He spoke softly, then turned and strode away into the shadows, vanishing from sight.

"Who exactly are they?" Jin Xuanzi muttered, but he pushed the matter aside for the moment and departed with the two figures trailing behind him.