Chapter 102
Chapter 102
Elder Long wasn’t alone in Pojun Hall. Several other elders Yun Xi recognized were standing there too.
As she entered, they all looked at her.
People often said most sword cultivators from Dingtian Sword Sect looked as though they had been cast from the same mold. Wherever they went, everyone knew where they came from.
Now these identically cold, stern sword cultivators all turned their eyes to the young disciple, wanting to speak yet holding back.
It was a deeply unsettling sight.
Yun Xi quietly clenched her fists and asked calmly, “Elders, what did you need to see me about?”
Elder Long, who stood at their head, was a white-robed sword cultivator with an upright bearing and a perpetually expressionless face.
He stared at Yun Xi without blinking. “I’ve received some news. Prepare yourself.”
“Senior Brother Long, is that any way to talk to someone?” The female sword cultivator in green beside him frowned. She tried to soften her expression as she looked at Yun Xi. “Don’t be afraid. The sect will protect you and avenge you.”
Yun Xi: Huh?
Her unease reached its peak.
What did she mean, avenge her?
She struggled to keep her emotions under control. “What exactly has happened?”
Surely her master hadn’t…
“We’ve received word that something has happened at your home.” The green-robed sword cultivator looked distressed when Yun Xi’s face abruptly went white, but she still told her the truth. “We suspect a demonic cultivator seeking revenge. Someone placed a barrier around your home and burned it to the ground. Including…”
“The people inside.”
Crack.
The elders looked down. Cracks were spreading through the floor beneath Yun Xi’s feet, revealing just how violently her emotions were surging.
“Impossible!” Yun Xi said flatly. “My master never made enemies with anyone. We lived in Nandu. The only people we ever dealt with were the neighbors. We never even saw any cultivators.”
A hand settled on her shoulder, and cool spiritual power swept over her mind. “Calm down.”
Elder Long said, “It’s not uncommon for cultivators to wait decades before taking revenge.”
Yun Xi gritted her teeth. “Could the news be wrong?”
She refused to believe a single word of it.
“The news has only just reached us, but it happened months ago,” Elder Long replied. “That is indeed possible.”
He exchanged a glance with the others. They all knew perfectly well that, in a major sect like Dingtian Sword Sect, any news that reached their ears would already have been investigated and verified.
But looking at Yun Xi’s face, they silently agreed to leave that unsaid.
Yun Xi was quiet for a long time. She looked so dreadful that Elder Long worried she might lose control of her spiritual power.
She didn’t. She simply said in a calm voice, “I need to go home.”
Elder Long nodded. “Of course. I’ll accompany you to Nandu.”
Something was suspicious about this.
After taking in a disciple with innate sword bones, Dingtian Sword Sect had thoroughly investigated Yun Xi’s background.
Whether Dingtian Sword Sect or the Dao Sect, either sect would certainly investigate Zhu Yin’s identity in detail when accepting a disciple who would, barring any mishap, eventually enter its inner circle.
Yet however they investigated, this woman truly seemed to be an ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivator. The only unusual thing about her was that she was a ghost cultivator who always had two ghost servants with her.
Those two ghost servants were perfectly unremarkable too. There was nothing special about them.
She really did seem to be an exceptionally lucky Foundation Establishment cultivator whose greatest achievement in life was raising two outstanding disciples.
It was perfectly natural that their investigations had uncovered nothing, because that was precisely the background of the original person whose identity she had assumed.
But now, just after her two disciples had entered cultivation sects, someone had come to their master’s home and brutally killed her.
Nobody would believe there was nothing suspicious about that.
Elder Long looked at Yun Xi. The young girl’s reaction to the sudden terrible news was much better than he had expected.
She could even remain calm enough to say, “Elder, I have a senior brother studying at the Dao Sect. His name is Yun Lie.”
Elder Long nodded. “I know. The Dao Sect received the news too. Your senior brother should have been informed by now.”
.
The next day, the two disciples met again after a year apart.
Neither had imagined their rare reunion would take place under these circumstances.
Neither could smile.
Yun Xi spoke calmly. “I don’t believe the news.”
Yun Lie nodded. “Neither do I.”
Their master was so powerful. From his earliest childhood, she had been the mountain standing before him and his junior sister.
How could she fall?
How could she… die?
When the two of them had traveled from Nandu to the Eastern Continent by cloudship, it had taken more than a month.
Traveling at her own expense with a cat in her arms and her ghost servants beside her, Zhu Yin had lacked a high-grade artifact like the cloudship. Her journey had taken nearly four months in all.
Now, with high-level cultivators carrying the two children on flying swords, the trip from the Eastern Continent to Nandu took only three days.
They made no attempt to conceal their arrival. As soon as they entered Nandu, a streak of sword light flew toward them from afar.
The sword light landed, revealing a young man both disciples knew well.
“Mr. Gongyi!” Yun Xi had studied the sword with him and was closer to him than Yun Lie was. “My master…”
The young man’s voice was calm. “Go and see.”
Elder Long and the other elder from the Dao Sect, however, both greeted him as “City Lord Gongyi.”
City lord?
The two disciples were startled. They had known Mr. Gongyi for years without ever realizing he was the legendary city lord of Nandu.
But there were more important things weighing on them now, and they had no attention to spare for such details.
They saw a home they no longer recognized.
It could no longer be called a home. The two large residences where they had lived for over a decade were nothing but a charred ruin.
The demonic cultivator responsible had been outrageously brazen. Nearly a year had passed, yet extremely dense demonic energy still lingered over the scorched earth.
Shrouded in demonic energy, the site remained barren after a whole year, without a blade of grass.
The neighbors didn’t seem to have been affected. Even so, over the past year, everyone in Huai’an Lane with any means of doing so had gradually moved away.
The once-bustling lane was now half empty, silent and deserted.
Yun Lie and Yun Xi stared blankly at it. Only after a long while did they ask, “Then… where’s our master?”
“It already looked like this when we discovered it. The demonic fire was very strange. As for the people inside…”
City Lord Gongyi frowned. “Only traces of spiritual power remained in the air. A cultivator’s physical body was indeed burned here.”
He had doubts himself.
He, too, had known Zhu Yin for several years.
He had never truly forced her to fight, but various signs suggested she was far more than she appeared to be.
Yet the perpetrator… wasn’t an ordinary demonic cultivator either.
Nandu had a protective array, and his divine sense covered the entire city.
In other words, the perpetrator had evaded both the array and his perception, set up a barrier within Nandu, brazenly killed to silence the victims, and left without a trace.
Only when the barrier vanished had it all been revealed to the public.
If the perpetrator could do all that, who could claim with certainty that they would escape such an enemy unscathed?