ATAVID CH47

He lowered his head and continued to listen to their discussion.

“What means could he possibly have?” the cultivator in the dark-colored martial attire raised his voice, giving a cold scoff. “Don’t forget, Sword Venerable Wei Lan is his biological father. During the sect tournament back then, who knows if he secretly gave him sword intent or some other heavenly treasures? No one can say for sure.”

“That’s exactly why! Now that Sword Venerable Wei Lan’s cultivation has plummeted, that demonic scoundrel Wei Xun only dares to hide in the cracks of the world; he doesn’t dare to show his face! After all, if the Immortal Alliance truly intended to deal with him, even with his talent, could he really fight a hundred on his own?”

“That’s not necessarily true,” a loose cultivator from another table interjected. “I heard that in the fire at Mirror Lake City, even the Spirit Transformation realm Immortal Venerable Shen couldn’t get close. If Wei Xun could stand in the middle of that fire unharmed, his strength must already be unfathomable.”

“Unfathomable?” A disciple looked puzzled. “But I heard from a friend in the Lingxiao Sect that ten years ago, Wei Xun had his meridians completely destroyed in the secret realm; he couldn’t even lift a sword. Tell me, is the person they saw really Wei Xun?”

“Others might have mistaken him, but Immortal Venerable Shen never denied it. It is likely that the demonic entity is indeed Wei Xun.” Another person continued, “Furthermore, he used the ‘Thousand Frost Break’ in Mirror Lake City. In the entire cultivation world, he is the only one who can use that technique.”

The man lowered his voice, acting mysterious: “And I heard that the massive fire at the Lingxiao Sect years ago and the disciples who died in the back mountains for no reason all had something to do with Wei Xun. I’m afraid that his return now is specifically for revenge.”

Someone asked hesitantly: “Could it be… that he had some sort of grievance back then at the Lingxiao Sect?”

“What grievance could he have? He murdered fellow disciples; the evidence was conclusive…”

Jiang Qunyu stopped listening.

He stood up, grabbed a white silk ribbon at random, and gently covered his eyes. Wei Xun had used his “Black Eyes” in Mirror Lake City, so his vision was temporarily impaired. Fortunately, he could still use his spiritual sense to navigate, so Jiang Qunyu walked steadily enough.

As they passed through the bustling street, the sound of the discussions gradually faded away.

Wei Xun walked side-by-side with him. Seeing that face—which was finally different from his own—he ignored the strange feeling in his heart: “Why use a white silk?” Whether the ribbon was there or not made no difference to him.

“Because it’s ugly,” Jiang Qunyu sighed.

Wei Xun smiled unhurriedly, saying gloomily: “But isn’t this face one you molded yourself?”

Jiang Qunyu felt a rare surge of temper. He stopped, scanned the surroundings with his spiritual sense, and once he confirmed they were in a deserted area, he summoned the Shouhun sword.

He then grinned and said fiercely: “Shouhun, hit him.”

The blade, shimmering with a pearly luster, emerged at the command. It paused for a moment, as if hesitating, before heading straight toward Wei Xun.

“Hmph.” Wei Xun didn’t even dodge. He reached out, grabbed the blade, and scoffed down at it irritably: “Stupid sword.”

As he spoke, he carelessly flicked his wrist, tossing Shouhun onto the ground.

Jiang Qunyu: “…”

Shouhun: “…”

It lay on the ground, its body trembling slightly, as if accusing him of something. Jiang Qunyu had no choice but to recall the sword back into his spiritual consciousness.

Wei Xun glanced at him indifferently. After a long time, he said: “Jiang Qunyu, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t look good.” As long as one of the two of them looked good in the future, that would be enough.

Jiang Qunyu didn’t read into it; he only thought Wei Xun was disdainful of the face he had molded and was furious.

As they rushed toward the Lingxiao Sect, he feared that appearing with Wei Xun’s current face—that of the entire cultivation world’s public enemy—would be too flashy and invite pursuers, so he used demonic energy to temporarily mold a strange face to cover their tracks. He had originally wanted to mold his own previous face, but ten years had passed, and he had almost forgotten what he looked like. The final result was a face that couldn’t even be called similar to his original one; they were entirely different.

In short, he was truly appalled by his own craftsmanship, which was why he simply tied a silk ribbon over his eyes. While such an appearance was somewhat strange in the cultivation world, it was better than walking around with Wei Xun’s face and inviting endless trouble.

“You don’t understand,” Jiang Qunyu said, feeling hopeless. Although he also thought it was ugly, he insisted on keeping up appearances, grumbling, “I spent painstaking effort to mold this face just so we could blend in with the crowd.”

Wei Xun hooked his lips and laughed: “It truly was painstaking.”

Jiang Qunyu remained expressionless: “Wei Xun, I’ll f*** you.”

“Jiang Qunyu, you are only saying it with your lips,” Wei Xun said.

Jiang Qunyu: “…” He wanted to retort, but realized he truly had no comeback, forced to swallow this bitter pill.

Lingxiao Sect

Wei Miao had another nightmare.

In the pitch-black, boundless dream, there was always endless falling snow and broken walls. The wind, carrying shards of ice, scraped past his ears, bone-chillingly cold.

A youthful figure stood in the desolation, white robes stained with blood, striking like a Manjusaka flower blooming in the snow. He could only see a lonely, thin back, the atmosphere around the youth sinister and terrifying.

Wei Miao’s heart hammered wildly; the panic in his chest was about to overflow. He couldn’t control his feet as he stepped forward, his fingertips trembling slightly. He wanted to call out to the person, but he couldn’t make a sound.

Until the youth seemed to notice something and slowly turned around.

The face was as handsome as before, the brows and eyes cold and clear, the corners of his eyes slightly upturned, carrying a touch of aloofness.

That face belonged to Wei Xun, who had been dead for ten whole years.

There was neither sorrow nor joy in his eyes, his lips pale to the point of transparency. Surrounded by unmelting frost and demonic energy, he watched Wei Miao silently.

Wei Miao froze in place, his blood feeling as if it had instantly frozen solid.

The next second, he woke up from the nightmare with a start, gasping for air. His forehead was drenched in cold sweat, and his back was already soaked.

Outside the window, the night was deep, and the moonlight of the Lingxiao Sect spilled through the latticework, as cold as the snow in his dream. He was still shaken, but suddenly sensed something—at the bedside, someone had been watching him silently.

The gaze was soundless, as cold as the frost on a mountain peak. Wei Miao stiffened and slowly turned his head.

The cold moonlight penetrated the window, falling upon the robes and profile of the person at his bedside, outlining a familiar yet distant contour.

The brows and eyes were cold, the temperament isolated and sharp. It was Wei Lan, wearing the plain white robes of a Sword Venerable of the Lingxiao Sect.

Wei Miao shrank back in terror, his heart ready to jump out of his chest, his voice trembling: “Father?! Why… why are you here?”

Hearing Wei Miao’s voice, Wei Lan looked at him indifferently. After a long time, he suddenly said something out of nowhere: “A-Miao, did you know that a soul lamp is missing from the Floating Lamp Palace?”

A soul lamp? Wei Miao had no way of knowing. He shook his head, still shaken: “I don’t know.”

Wei Lan simply said: “Very well.” He seemed to have appeared only to ask that one question, before vanishing from Wei Miao’s cave residence.

Long after Wei Lan left, the unconscious Rong Wangshu slowly woke up. He rubbed his eyes and asked softly: “A-Miao, why did you wake up?”

Seeing Rong Wangshu like this, a strange feeling crossed Wei Miao’s heart. Why would Wei Lan go to such lengths just to ask about a soul lamp? Whose soul lamp could it be? It couldn’t possibly be… Wei Xun’s, could it?

“It’s nothing,” Wei Miao suppressed the panic in his heart and comforted him.

At the same time, he couldn’t help but think that ever since Wei Lan emerged from seclusion a few days ago, his entire state had been wrong. He had later asked Sect Leader Jiang and learned that his father had failed in his seclusion. Not only had he failed to break into the Integration realm, but his cultivation had actually plummeted. Fortunately, even so, his strength at the first level of Lian Xu remained a height no one else in the Lingxiao Sect could touch.

Wei Miao never worried about these things. The only thing he feared was the rumors that had been growing more rampant recently—that Wei Xun was still alive, and not only alive, but possessed unfathomable cultivation.

A trace of inexplicable anxiety rose from his heart, and combined with Wei Lan’s extremely abnormal behavior over the past few days, that anxiety was amplified infinitely, almost ready to swallow him whole.

“Are you hiding something from me?” Rong Wangshu acutely sensed that something was wrong and asked softly.

Wei Miao naturally wouldn’t mention Wei Xun to him; he just wrapped his arms around the other, comforted him thoroughly, and they fell back asleep.

It wasn’t until the second half of the night, when the entire Lingxiao Sect had sunk into deep slumber, that total silence descended.

A deep and icy voice suddenly resonated heavily through the night: “Wei Lan! How dare you?! She is but a mere mortal woman! Is it worth turning against the entire Immortal Sect for her?”

“Do you know that for every person you kill, the Immortal Alliance adds another crime to your name? If you stop now, I can still mediate for you; we will say they were corrupted by demonic energy and you were clearing out hidden dangers!”

“But if you insist on acting willfully, these thousand years of yours will have been in vain! Furthermore, twenty-seven years have passed, and Yunxi has stayed by your side and even bore you Miao’er. The sect has treated you well—is all of this not enough?”

Sect Leader Jiang scolded him sternly while cursing Hua Zhen thousands of times in his heart. That idiot! Hadn’t he warned him to destroy Wei Lan’s emotional thread? How could he bring up old matters and reignite old grudges at such a time!

Indeed, ever since Wei Lan inexplicably came out of seclusion a few days ago, Sect Leader Jiang had felt that everything was wrong. He had originally assumed Wei Lan failed his breakthrough and his Dao heart was unstable, hence the signs of demonic corruption, but he never expected the root cause to be that woman.

A quarter of an hour ago, every corner of the Lingxiao Sect sensed thick, abnormal demonic energy surging from the direction of the Floating Lamp Palace. Elders and guardians of every peak realized something was wrong and flew there on their swords. As soon as they landed outside the hall, they were frozen by the scene before them.

The floor was littered with fragments of broken soul lamps, glass shards mixed with unextinguished lamp oil—a chaotic mess.

Several corpses of Lingxiao Sect disciples lay scattered at the entrance, blood flowing down the white jade steps in layers, staining the flawless white jade into a striking, vivid crimson. Even the fresh snow falling on the steps was soaked into bright red “blood-snow.”

In the center of the hall, Wei Lan knelt alone among the shattered lamps and pools of blood.

His plain white robes were already soaked through with blood, his messy black hair draped over his shoulders, hiding most of his face. Only his eyes were a terrifying, scarlet red, overflowing with madness and despair.

There was no longer a trace of the aloof Sword Venerable of the past.

Hearing footsteps, he slowly raised his head. Sweeping his gaze over the arriving crowd, he said blankly: “The Floating Lamp Palace seems to be missing a soul lamp.”

Then, he began a one-sided slaughter. He actually intended to wash the Lingxiao Sect in blood.

Sect Leader Jiang’s voice echoed in the night, filled with shock, anger, and threats, along with a trace of fear that was hard to detect.

“Hahaha—”

Wei Lan burst into laughter. He stood in the center of the main hall of the Floating Lamp Palace. Inside the hall, candle flames flickered, but not a single one belonged to his wife, Lin Qing. His black hair turned frost-white inch by inch from the tips, and his eyes, which used to be as clear as a cold sword, were now only a bottomless pitch-black—devoid of any emotion, containing only a deathly, ultimate intent to kill.

As if he had heard a joke, he asked: “Children? Sect Leader Jiang, do you really not know? When you made Jiang Yunxi marry me, she was already six months pregnant. In this life, I, Wei Lan, have had only one son from beginning to end: Wei Xun.”

The only reason he had shown a bit more patience to Wei Miao in the past was that his occasional mannerisms and gestures were extremely similar to Lin Qing.

Sect Leader Jiang’s face changed abruptly, and he barked sternly: “Wei Lan, stop this nonsense!”

Wei Lan didn’t say more. He stood up, his white robes billowing without wind. The originally pure spiritual energy around him surged crazily, distorting into black, transforming into bone-chilling hostility. He didn’t take up a sword; he simply raised his hand and gripped, and the destined immortal sword that guarded the mountain gate of the Lingxiao Sect flew out of its sheath automatically, the sound of the blade ringing across the heavens.

The other Lingxiao Sect elders were terrified, clearly not having expected this turn of events. In their panic, they pushed blame onto each other, betraying one another.

“Sword Venerable! Sword Venerable! I didn’t know about the events back then, he—” An elder shoved the person beside him forward. “He knew from beginning to end; if you want to kill someone, kill him!”

The pushed elder’s face turned pale, and he roared incoherently: “You think you’re anything good? If it weren’t for your disciple framing him, how could Wei Xun have died miserably in the water prison!”

Wei Lan had run out of patience.

The sword light rose, and a sea of blood was born.

In an instant, the Lingxiao Sect, once surrounded by immortal mist and paved with white jade, was reduced to a hell on earth. Screams, pleas for mercy, wails, and the sound of clashing weapons mixed with the stench of blood, sweeping across the entire immortal mountain. The once high-and-mighty elders and sect leaders were now like lambs for the slaughter, unable to resist in the face of absolute power.

Someone knelt, kowtowing and sobbing: “Wei Lan! I was wrong! I was forced back then! Spare my life!”

Wei Lan lowered his eyes, his expression without a ripple, as he drove his sword through the man’s chest.

Someone roared: “You’re crazy! You are the Lingxiao Sword Venerable! How can you slaughter your own sect?”

Wei Lan spoke indifferently, his voice as cold as ice: “When my wife and child died, why didn’t you think about the fact that we were of the same sect?”

A long, long time later, Wei Lan’s white robes were soaked through with blood, from the collar to the hem, all a striking, vibrant crimson. He sat in the mountain of corpses, staring blankly at the falling snow.

Snowflakes swirled down, landing on his shoulders and the pools of blood. White snow and red blood intertwined to form a bizarre, tragic painting.

When Wei Miao, the Jiang family members, and Rong Wangshu arrived, this was the scene they saw.

Wei Miao’s steps came to a sudden halt. His gaze swept across Sect Leader Jiang’s corpse on the ground. That once high-and-mighty Sect Leader now lay in the pool of blood on the white jade steps, his eyes still open, staring hollowly at the sky.

Wei Miao’s entire body went rigid and cold. The bad premonition in his heart had finally come to pass.

Just at this moment, Wei Lan lifted his eyes and cast a faint glance over. Wei Miao suddenly felt the warm, gentle Wei Lan in his memories shatter instantly. He felt icy all over, his lips trembling as he said incredulously: “Father, did some great demon infiltrate the sect? Why… why did so many people die?”

Wei Lan did not speak. Only the expression on the Jiang matriarch’s face was ugly to the extreme.

Wei Miao’s mind went blank. He suddenly had an urge to run, but just as he turned to leave, Wei Lan spoke.

“I don’t want to do it myself; here are three ‘Dust-Silence Pills.’ You will die quickly after eating them.”

As he spoke, he raised his hand, and three pills landed on the ground. Wei Miao couldn’t believe it. He turned his head and asked in despair: “Why? Why, Father? Didn’t you love me the most? Why do you want me to die?”

Wei Lan’s gaze rested on him for one second, then moved away, unable to hide the disgust in his eyes.

“Stop imitating her,” he said, his voice cold as if tempered by ice. “It’s ugly.”

Wei Miao paused.

The Jiang matriarch also paused. She stood there, watching this scene, her expression complex to the extreme. She suddenly remembered that many years ago, after Wei Lan had pulled out his emotional thread, he seemed to have no feelings for anyone. Only with Wei Xun did he bring him by his side and teach him personally.

Later, after Wei Miao was born, the Jiang matriarch was unwilling to accept her lot. She watched Wei Miao grow day by day, watched Wei Lan remain indifferent to him, and felt as if something were gnawing at her heart. She suddenly remembered the woman she had seen while traveling in the mortal realm with her father years ago.

Then, she began to deliberately teach Wei Miao how to imitate that woman’s movements. How ridiculous it was—Wei Lan had pulled out his emotional thread, and the Jiang matriarch had originally thought Wei Lan’s feelings for that woman had long since dissipated. But in reality, when Wei Lan saw Wei Miao, unexpectedly, he still had some patience and tolerance for him. Conversely, because Wei Xun was raised personally by him and carried some of Wei Lan’s own shadow, he was cold and distant toward him.

A sense of desolation crossed Jiang Yunxi’s eyes. She asked: “For so many years, did you truly have no feelings for me at all?”

But Jiang Yunxi didn’t need Wei Lan’s answer. If he had truly felt even a shred of affection, he wouldn’t have gone twenty-seven years without ever visiting her cave residence. She soon accepted her fate, reached out to take a pill, swallowed it, and said: “Is this good? Just… Wangshu and Miao’er are innocent; let them go.”

Wei Lan, however, simply laughed out loud: “Let them go? On the day Wei Xun died, you didn’t think about sparing him either.”

He rose slowly and paced step by step toward Wei Miao and Rong Wangshu. Blood dripped from his hem, dragging a long red trail on the white jade floor. He lowered his eyes, his long fingers pinching Wei Miao’s cheeks with irresistible force, forcibly pushing a pitch-black pill into his mouth.

His fingertips brushed against the bloodstain on the corner of the opponent’s lips, cold and without a trace of warmth.

Wei Miao shivered, but he didn’t even have the strength to resist. He could only watch helplessly as the face overlapping with his memories was covered in hatred and demonic energy.

“Father…” he cried out.

Wei Lan shook his head, correcting him: “I have only one son, Wei Xun.”

Wei Miao’s tears fell, but this time, Wei Lan would never show him pity again. He swallowed the pill and felt the life force inside him fading away bit by bit.

Wei Lan, meanwhile, turned and walked step by step back into the chaotic mess of shattered lamps and blood. The soul lamps were all broken, yet he still knelt in the blood, obsessively searching for the missing lamp of his long-departed loved one.