Chapter 252
Chapter 252
Master’s words startled me.
“1986? Wasn’t that… the year I was born? Master was actually in Shen City back then?”
Shen City, or by its more familiar name… Shanghai!
And in the later age of the internet, it would also be called the Magic Metropolis!
Located on the eastern coast, it had been China’s largest and most economically developed city since the late Qing dynasty and Republican era.
I had seen countless reports about Shen City in books, in the news, and on television…
Perhaps because she had already decided to tell me some things, Master continued.
“I was badly wounded at the time. I had lost all my magical power, my meridians were severed, and my acupoints were shattered. Every trace of qi remaining inside me had to be used to keep my injuries under control. I was even more fragile than an ordinary person. After I reached Wujia Village, the villagers probably took pity on me. They gave me food and didn’t drive me away.”
“So I simply settled down in Wujia Village. I recuperated while withdrawing from the bloodshed and conflict of the esoteric world, taking the chance to rest quietly for a while.”
“Partly to avoid attention, and partly because I had grown weary of my former life, I deliberately pretended to be a madwoman. Every day, I laughed and carried on without a care in the world. I relaxed completely. There was nothing I had to think about and nothing I had to concern myself with. Believe it or not, I was quite happy! My injuries also began healing faster.”
“It was only then that I understood. My great life tribulation was never about techniques or the strength of my cultivation. It concerned the principles and the Way: my state of mind and what I could come to understand.”
“Perhaps being gravely wounded and near death, losing all my cultivation, and finding myself stranded in a remote country village… perhaps that experience of falling from the clouds to the very bottom was itself part of my great life tribulation. It was something I truly needed to face.”
“Once I understood that, I grew even more serene. It was as if I truly were nothing more than a deranged village madwoman. That lasted until… the time you went swimming in the river and were nearly dragged away by that vicious drowned revenant to take its place, and Wang Fei died.”
“I foresaw that his corpse would certainly transform into a corpse-fiend, and I couldn’t bear to watch disaster befall Wujia Village. By then, my cultivation had also begun to recover, so I no longer needed to be as cautious as I had been in the preceding years. That was why I finally stepped forward to help.”
“My good disciple already knows everything that happened after that…”
So that was how it had been!
After hearing Master’s account, I understood a little more of her past.
At least I now knew how she had come to Wujia Village and why she had pretended to be a raving madwoman at first.
My heart ached for her, and before I realized it, I had taken Master’s hand.
“Master, you’ve suffered so much.”
She stared at me for a moment.
Then she smiled, pulled her hand free, and gave me a light smack on the head. Looking me straight in the eye, she spoke in earnest.
“What suffering? For more than ten years, I stayed in Wujia Village, far from the conflict of the esoteric world. My days were peaceful, easy, and wonderfully carefree. I can’t even remember the last time I’d felt so relaxed. Especially after I took you as my disciple, I had delicious food delivered to me every day. I’ve even gotten fat.”
Master finished with a little joke.
I laughed along with her.
“Master, how well have your injuries healed now?”
“It’s hard to say. I’ve used a secret art to seal some of my acupoints. That both prevents too much of my aura from escaping and speeds my recovery. You don’t need to worry about that, Ah-Zhong. I know my own physical condition very well.”
Oh…
I nodded dejectedly.
I knew perfectly well that the gap between Master’s level and mine was simply far, far too great!
It was like comparing the glow of a firefly to the radiance of the bright moon.
So although I desperately wanted to help, I said nothing more, because I knew there was nothing I could do.
I could neither help Master heal nor take revenge on her behalf.
Even so, I clenched my fists and gritted my teeth, then raised my head to look at Master. I spoke in an utterly solemn voice.
“Master! When I grow up and become stronger, I’ll kill every last one of the people who ambushed and hunted you. I’ll avenge you! I swear it.”
“All right! Ah-Zhong is such a thoughtful boy. You’re my good disciple, all right.”
She smiled. Beneath the light, her face, which looked no older than twenty, appeared even more beautiful and radiant.
Clearly, Master still had not taken my words to heart.
I did not say anything else. After all, I knew full well that anyone capable of leaving her gravely wounded and near death, then pursuing her for hundreds of miles, had to possess unimaginable strength! Killing the current me would probably be no harder for them than crushing an ant…
I’m still far too weak. I need to cultivate even harder and become stronger.
I silently made up my mind.
Master handed the Lianghe River-Warding Token back to me.
“Since you promised to give it to that corpse retriever, go ahead. This thing’s sole purpose is to suppress the River God along this stretch of the Chuan River. He’s a corpse retriever, so he may actually have a use for it. In any case, just don’t let it fall into the hands of those rogue cultivators.”
“Mm. All right, Master!”
I put the River-Warding Token away again.
…
On Sunday afternoon, I returned to the coffin shop in Lianghe Town.
When I told Old Cao what Master thought, he clicked his tongue in admiration and said that, sure enough, there was nothing Immortal Lady Qin did not know!
He had only ever heard his master’s master and his own master mention single-purpose ritual implements in passing. Supposedly, refining one was far more difficult than refining an ordinary ritual implement!
And because each had only one use, they were hardly worth the cost and had little practical value. Very, very few cultivators would devote so much effort to refining such a thing. That made single-purpose ritual implements extremely rare.
Most cultivators had never even heard of them!
After that, I went to the market and bought a huge slab of pork. Carrying it in one hand, I strolled over to the little wooden house outside the riverside woods north of town.
Heizi smelled the meat from far away and went wild with excitement. It leaped straight over the wooden fence around the yard, its tail whipping back and forth like the clappers of a pellet drum!
Drool dripping from its mouth, it kept rubbing against my legs and the backs of my hands, even sticking out its tongue to lick me.
What a shameless little suck-up, and one that literally licked me!
“Hahaha! What a good dog you are, Heizi. Here, go eat it over there!”
I tossed the slab of pork belly, weighing some five and a half to six and a half pounds, to Heizi. With a happy woof, it caught the meat in its mouth, wagged its tail, and returned to its kennel to feast.
Seeing how eagerly it ate made both Li Miao and me grin.
I took the River-Warding Token from inside my clothes and handed it over.
“Brother Li, I asked my Master. This really is a River-Warding Token! And someone has already refined it into a single-purpose ritual implement…”
I relayed everything Master had said and explained the intricacies to him.
Li Miao was both surprised and delighted. Naturally, he thanked me over and over, then declared that if I ever needed anything from him, he would walk through fire and water, risk life and limb for me, and never so much as blink!
Once I had settled the matter of the River-Warding Token, it was time for me to head to school for evening study.
…
Time flowed onward like water, neither fast nor slow, but always steady.
In what felt like the blink of an eye, several more months passed.
It was November 2001.
Autumn had arrived, leaving all things bleak and withered.