SS CH47

Chu Xiwei thoroughly detested the rain, especially when he was completely alone.

Currently, he was curled up inside a mountain cave. Outside, the sky poured down like a vast, seamless curtain, enveloping the entire mountain forest in a shroud of misty vapor that blurred everything from sight. The cold wind swept flurries of rainwater through the cave entrance. Utilizing a large boulder to conceal his figure, Chu Xiwei blew on his fire-stick, producing a flame that barely illuminated this meager square of land and his own deathly pale, bloodless face.

Blood was trickling down from his right temple, staining nearly half his face. Chu Xiwei wiped it away expressionlessly, casually wedged the bottom of the fire-stick into a crevice in the rock, and unfastened his robes. Revealing a firm yet lean upper body, five gruesome finger-holes were starkly visible across his left abdomen. The blood had already coagulated around the wounds, presenting a shocking sight.

“The Shura Hand…”

The fierce light in his eyes gradually settled, but his movements showed no panic. Tearing off a strip of cloth to wipe away the dry blood, he fished out a pill, crushed it into powder, and applied it to the wound. Leaning his back against the stone wall, his breathing became so faint it was virtually imperceptible, making him look like a corpse.

Splitting paths with Ye Fusheng back then had been partly a moment of impulse, but also a choice forced by necessity.

Chu Xiwei had not lived a good life over these years. His current high position, wielding the power of life and death, was merely a state of affairs from the past year or two. Prior to this, he lived a daily life licking blood from the edge of a blade.

Once you enter the Baigui Sect, your body no longer belongs to the mortal realm.

The number of people whose lives and integrity were shattered in this hell was countless. Chu Xiwei was merely a young boy when he first entered; that he could survive to this day was due, on one hand, to a stroke of unfathomable fate, and on the other, to his own daring willingness to gamble his life.

The martial arts he practiced originated from the Qilu Jing (The Scripture of Divergent Paths), the supreme mental cultivation method of the Baigui Sect. It mirrored the sentiment that “all divergent paths in the red dust ultimately lead to the same destination.” It was not constrained by its own internal techniques, yet it could absorb an opponent’s internal energy and assimilate it. Alongside the Taishang Palace’s Wuji Gong (The Limitless Art) and the Zanghun Palace’s Qiandie Gong (The Art of a Thousand Tribulations), it was renowned as one of the three great supreme arts of the jianghu. However, although the Qilu Jing was a martial art that sought common ground while reserving differences, its foundational method required one to thoroughly clear the qi ocean and banish all disparate elements. This meant that any aspiring practitioner had to first abolish their own prior martial arts and start from scratch; otherwise, falling into deviation was exceedingly easy.

At that time, there were nine other successors to the sect leaders studying the first volume of the Qilu Jing alongside him. None were very old, yet when facing supreme martial arts, they could all harden their hearts to discard the old and embrace the new. Chu Xiwei alone refused.

He had begun learning martial arts at the age of eight. Although that person possessed an unprincipled disposition, he had treated Chu Xiwei with genuine sincerity back then, imparting the Jinghong Jue (The Flying Swan Formula) entirely without reservation. Even before the two turned their blades against each other, he had explained the crucial joints and mechanisms of the entire martial art with absolute clarity, deeply afraid that Chu Xiwei might make a mistake in his practice.

Thereafter, affairs changed and people vanished, leaving everything unrecognizable. From a uniquely blessed descendant of the royal clan, he became completely destitute. After falling into the jianghu, apart from the martial arts that sustained him, there was nothing else that belonged to him.

To him, the Jinghong Jue was like a piece of driftwood to a drowning man.

Chu Xiwei refused to abolish the Jinghong Jue, nor was he willing to sit idly waiting for death. Instead, he chose to act despite knowing it was impossible.

The Qilu Jing was the most bizarre internal energy cultivation method under heaven. It possessed no fixed martial movements of its own; it changed according to shifts and manifested at will. Only by using this kind of zhenqi as the foundation of the dantian could a basis be laid for the subsequent “adaptation and assimilation.” Otherwise, the two would conflict with extreme ease. When Chu Xiwei first began his cultivation, he was tortured half to death by the two currents of zhenqi. Not a single spot within his meridians and bones escaped the agonizing pain. Had he not received the favor of the old Sect Master, who aided him several times, the grass on his grave would probably be taller than him by now.

He clenched his teeth, refusing to abolish his martial arts, and likewise refused to give up on the Qilu Jing. Once he endured the agony until it became a habit, his bitter trials finally yielded sweet rewards, and he managed to grasp a thread of the knack.

It could also be considered that he was not meant to die; the Jinghong Jue was the unpassed internal cultivation method of the Jinghong Blade lineage, characterized by a carefree, swift, agile, and ingenious style. It inherently possessed more “change” than “fixity,” which shared an uncanny similarity with the spirit of the Qilu Jing. After Chu Xiwei adopted a desperate, make-or-break attitude, he simply took the commonalities and discarded the differences, forcibly merging the two types of zhenqi into one. Not only did he stumble his way into practicing it successfully, but the two also complemented each other, making his progress three fractions faster than anyone else’s.

The old Sect Master had once remarked: “A stubborn mind, an unyielding temper. If you can endure through it, you will become an adversary to Yama who refuses to accept fate.”

Naturally, Chu Xiwei refused to accept his fate. Over these years, he had lived as if peering into an abyss or treading on thin ice, not daring to slacken in the slightest. His path of martial arts was more perilous than a single log suspended over a cliff, but by now, he had finally achieved success. Yet a hidden peril remained a hidden peril; the errors from his early years of practice had buried a root of disaster within his body. Once his emotions became highly agitated, the zhenqi would act up—causing deviation at best, and injuring both himself and others unto a state of mad frenzy until death at worst.

Precisely for this reason, the old Sect Master had passed down the “Ice Soul Bead”—originally a gift from an old acquaintance—to him, which could forcibly calm his heart and focus his mind. However, ever since he lost the Ice Soul Bead and crossed paths with Ye Fusheng again, his moments of great joy and intense fury had grown increasingly frequent. Shifting from water as flat as a mirror to surging, tumultuous waves, the zhenqi inside his body felt as though it were suspended by a single hair, liable to plummet and overwhelm him at any moment.

When Ye Fusheng perceived his abnormality in the forest, panic had gripped his heart, causing him to speak without thinking. Upon recovering his senses, he felt an even darker self-loathing. To prevent his emotions from continuing to indulge themselves, Chu Xiwei had chosen to depart a step ahead. He did not enter the underground palace, but instead sought out a secluded spot to hide and regulate his breathing.

Consequently, just as he managed to pacify his breath, he was startled by a massive boom. Believing that something had gone wrong within the underground palace, he hurried inside but found no sign of Ye Fusheng.

Anxious to the point of burning inside, he circled through the underground palace. Seeing that the chaotic situation had dragged the entire jianghu into a mess, he finally caught a sharp cry—the familiar voice belonged exactly to that dead brat of a girl who had run away from home.

Chu Xiwei rushed toward the sound. To his surprise, apart from Xiao Yangu and a handful of lackeys, there was also a white-robed man he had never met before.

To save the girl, he rigidly endured a hit from Xiao Yangu’s “Chanyuan” poison. After heavily injuring her, he seized the opportunity to carry the girl out of the underground palace. His Xiafei steps were as swift as riding the wind, leaving the lackeys scattered who-knows-where. Yet he hadn’t anticipated that the white-robed man would still be able to keep up. Left with no choice, Chu Xiwei could only release the two burdens ahead of time to face the man alone.

“To be able to practice the Qilu Jing to such a realm at your age makes you a rare talent under heaven,” the man had said as his fingers blocked Chu Xiwei’s oncoming palm. His voice filtered through the mask, carrying the playful amusement of a cat catching a mouse. “A pity, you are too green.”

The white-robed man’s movement techniques were eerie and superior even to his own. After the two maneuvered through five exchanges, Chu Xiwei converted his offense into defense. However, the man pressed close to him; one hand was swift as an illusion as it cloaked over his face, while the other curled into a claw, thrusting toward his dantian. Chu Xiwei used the Qilu Jing to neutralize the force and employed the Jinghong Jue to retreat, narrowly evading the vital points. The two fingers originally meant to gouge his eyes scraped past his face, scratching his temple, while the hand thrusting at his dantian shifted by a fraction, being struck away by him the instant it touched flesh and blood.

The moment they clashed, Chu Xiwei recognized the martial arts this person employed—it was precisely the ruthless technique recorded within the Qiandie Gong: the Shura Hand!

The Shura Hand utilized the fingers and palms as blades, rendering it indestructible. Piercing skin and fracturing bone were mere child’s play. It was said that a century ago, someone had used it to run rampant across the jianghu, killing an unknown number of heroes before finally being brought to justice by the patriarch of the Taishang Palace. Although that demon had died, this sinister art had been passed down, acquired by the heterodox factions of the southwest, and eventually became the primary martial art cultivated by the Palace Master of the Zanghun Palace.

At this thought, Chu Xiwei dared not be arrogant. He exerted his utmost effort to battle him for a time, finally seizing an opening to borrow force and flee. Fortunately, that person’s intent did not seem to be taking his life, as he did not pursue relentlessly.

Chu Xiwei had not tasted defeat for a very long time; this encounter could not be described as anything less than startling.

He carried injuries upon his body, and the zhenqi within him had also been agitated by the grand crests and troughs of his emotions coupled with the uncontrollable combat. Chu Xiwei could not rashly seek out Ye Fusheng and the others to regroup. He planned to first find a way to contact nearby disciples to tend to his wounds. He hadn’t expected Heaven to love robbing a house while it was on fire; encountering this heavy downpour halfway through left him so exasperated he lost his temper entirely. Thus, he sought out this mountain cave to shelter from the rain and adjust his breath.

Before he could rest for long, Chu Xiwei suddenly heard human voices approaching from outside. When he opened his eyes, his expression turned grim. He immediately extinguished the fire-stick, smoothly used dirt to cover the bloodstains and shredded cloth on the ground, and silently shifted his body deeper into the cave. Like a dark ghost blending into the shadows, he pressed against a blind spot on the mountain wall and remained motionless.

Before long, a group of people trickled into the mountain cave one after another. While cursing the “dreadful weather,” they gathered in a cluster to light a fire for warmth. Fortunately, the cave was very deep, and Chu Xiwei had quietly shifted back a bit more, hiding in a place untouched by the firelight to observe these people in secret.

Four men and one woman. The eldest was already covered in a head of white hair, while the youngest female was still in the prime of her youth.

They all carried bulging luggage, appearing to be long-distance travelers meeting by chance at the start of their journey. Their accents varied, and the matters they chatted about differed as well. Listening cursorily, Chu Xiwei heard the elderly man speak of the flood in Changning County to the east two years prior; the government officials had lined their pockets while treating the refugees like pigs and dogs. Now, public resentment had been provoked; some people had left their hometowns, while others raised tattered cloths as flags intending to rebel. The tall man and the thin, small man were presumably brothers; while chewing on mantou, they spoke of the great drought in the south, where many people resorted to exchanging children to eat them, and starved corpses lined the roads. The young girl sighed over the battle at Jinghan Pass two months ago; many men from her village had died, and the womenfolk either degraded themselves into servitude to follow traveling merchants away, or remained in the village to live day by day as best they could…

This sounded like a gathering of refugees competing to see whose misery was greater. Chu Xiwei let it enter his left ear and exit his right, but his gaze landed on the wealthy-looking man who had remained silent the entire time.

The man appeared to be in his forties, donning a brocade hat and marten fur, completely incongruous with the other four. His face was as large as a flatbread, with flesh looking as though it might spill out from beneath the skin. He possessed thick brows and large eyes, smiling like a Maitreya Buddha—the very picture of an amiable merchant who generated wealth through harmony.

He held a mantou, chewing it leisurely, treating their grievances like pickled vegetables to be chewed and swallowed together. Waiting until the other four people all looked over, he finally said, “Finished speaking?”

The elderly man let out a slight cough. The fat man patted away the broken mantou crumbs on his hands and said, “Since you all are finished speaking, then it’s my turn.”

Pausing, he first cast a glance deeper into the cave. Chu Xiwei sharply concealed himself further. The man failed to detect anything amiss, so he turned his head back, his gaze sweeping across the faces of the four people one by one as he said, word by word: “Ruan Feiyu has left the mountains. You lot… are you afraid of death?”

Hearing the three words “Ruan Feiyu,” Chu Xiwei’s brows knit closely together. He watched as those four people stopped speaking entirely; their breathing abruptly grew heavy, as if suppressing a violent storm.

“Afraid of his mother’s bear!” Suddenly, the tall man spoke through clenched teeth, his gaze sharp as lightning. “That old scoundrel has clung to life for so many years simply because Heaven hasn’t opened its eyes! If it weren’t for his ability to act like a hiding turtle, I would have harvested his head long ago to appease my ancestors!”

The elderly man also spoke: “Previously, I wondered why you suddenly sent a secret letter to summon us. So it was for this matter… However, Boss He, Ruan Shen’s whereabouts are a mystery, and he bound to have court hidden guards and the running dogs beneath his hand protecting him. To move against him? Difficult.”

Before the voice could fade, the thin, small man had already sneered: “Old Zhang, could it be you’ve grown increasingly afraid of death? If you don’t dare, then go home to raise your sons and hold your grandsons; there’s no need for you to be here.”

“Must not speak in such a manner!” The fat man addressed as “Boss He” lightly chided. His voice was not loud, nor was his tone heavy, and he even maintained a smiling face, yet no one dared to act impudently.

The young girl hesitated for a moment, reaching out to tug at the edge of Boss He’s sleeve, asking, “Master, is the news reliable?”

“News leaked from the capital, and the scouts I dispatched to inquire have returned with identical circumstances. Furthermore…” Boss He stroked her hair. “That person also left a secret message. It cannot be wrong.”

Upon hearing this, the breathing of the three men grew increasingly heavy. The thin, small man asked impatiently, “Time, location?”

“In three more days, he will arrive at Anxi Mountain.”

Chu Xiwei narrowed his eyes. The moment the words “Anxi Mountain” emerged, apart from the young girl, the remaining four individuals all had bloodshot eyes. The elderly man said with hateful resonance: “Serves him right! Retribution! For him to die at Anxi Mountain is for the best!”

Boss He’s gaze looked over each of them, speaking slowly: “If we do not succeed this time, we will have no further opportunity to kill this treacherous villain in this lifetime. If the news leaks, the implications will be widespread. Have you all truly thought it through?”

“What is there to fear?” The tall man’s eyes were entirely red, his voice hoarse. “If that old scoundrel does not die for even a single day, I shall absolutely never close my eyes in peace!”

They spoke no further. Boss He unfurled a sheepskin map, crowding together with the other three men to trace it with their hands. The young girl retrieved a pipa from her bundle, sitting on a stone to pluck and sing. Her voice was neither rounded nor pleasant to the ear, and her skill in plucking the pipa could not be considered highly advanced either, sounding rather unpleasantly like a funeral dirge:

“A hundred miles of green mountains bury desolate bones, a generation of new graves replaces the old tombs.

The frost is cold, the remnant candle has none to weep for it; yellow flowers blanket the earth, obscuring the path.

The grass atop the grave grows lush and green, the deep pool gleams clear and blue; where have the heroes of a thousand ages gone today?

Alas, the mountains and rivers are entirely built of stacked bones! Facing the dusk, the setting sun mimics blood, reflecting the evening clearing…”