At the moment, Shi Wuduan was not alone. Banya wasn’t the only one who’d taken advantage of the chaotic martial conference. That evening, when the festivities were at its peak, he’d returned to find that there was someone in his room — a round-faced young girl who seemed fifteen or sixteen at most. She tensed when he entered and suddenly sprang up, wildly gesturing as she explained, “Little shishu, don’t… don’t be afraid, I’m….”
Shi Wuduan merely glanced at her without even slowing his steps. He casually shut the door and replied, “One of Kuruo-shishu’s disciples, I suppose?”
This girl wasn’t very old at all and, from the sound of it, was probably one of Kuruo’s grand-disciples. He’d never met her before.
Though, that was only to be expected. Bitan was keeping close watch on all of Kuruo’s skilled disciples and grand-disciples already. Only a timid and plain little girl like her would be able to sneak in unnoticed. “What’s your name?”
She hesitated before shyly answering, “You can just call me Hui-er, little shishu.”
Shi Wuduan poured a cup of tea for her and explained, “Take a seat, I knew there was someone in here already. When you entered, you triggered the ‘Welcoming Array’ I’d set. I could tell from the visitor’s weight who’s disciple you are.”
A girl’s weight was vastly different from an adult man’s, and the only place for little girls in the sect was under Kuruo’s authority. Shi Wuduan didn’t explain further, he went straight to the point and asked, “Does Kuruo-shishu have any urgent orders for me?”
Perhaps he’d gotten used to speaking in a dull drone, but his voice didn’t sound worried or anxious in the least, and was very soft as well. The young girl who, taking a risk for the first time, had initially been very panicked calmed down unconsciously. She thanked him for the tea and said, “Shizu told me to check up on you to see how you were doing. She also said that if you were… if you were being trapped here by that villainous Bitan, that you shouldn’t act recklessly and that she’d definitely find a way to get you out of here.”
Shi Wuduan smiled and thought, does not acting recklessly mean that there won’t be people after my life anymore? Not to mention that Kuruo herself is already a clay statue crossing a river, does she really have the time to be worrying about others? Still, he appreciated her intent. He nodded, “I really am unfilial, to have made Kuruo-shishu worry about me. Is Kuruo-shishu still well?”
Hui-er’s eyes redded, nearly on the brink of tears. Shi Wuduan silently sighed and had to remind her, “Hui-er, this place isn’t safe, please keep it short.”
Hui-er nodded and forcefully wiped her tears, but she couldn’t resist scrunching her face. She bit her lips to furiously resist her sobs. After a while, she finally said, “Shizu and all the shibo and shishu, and all the shijie and shimei know that the sect master was killed by those two villians, Bitan and Banya, all because he didn’t agree to the ritual to borrow luck. Back then when the imperial edict reached Jiulu Mountain, the sect master staunchly refused to receive it, and then, who could’ve thought that there’d be such traitorous people in our Xuan Sect…”
So it was like that after all — Shi Wuduan had long since figured it out. His expression didn’t change as he silently listened.
“When shizu came here long ago to cultivate, she’d already stopped caring about the strifes and struggles of the mortal world. She said it made no difference whether they borrowed luck or not, but, how dare they…. how dare they defy their superiors and order the murder of fellow sect members?”
Seeing as her eyes were starting to redden again, Shi Wuduan gestured to halt her words, he asked, “Just then at the conference, I saw that Kuruo-shishu’s actions seemed to be constrained, what’s that all about?”
Large teardrops rolled down Hui-er’s cheeks, she sobbed, “Back then, when the clash between the two factions in Xuan Sect got violent, Bitan was already fighting the sect master by the time we got there, because we lived farther away. We saw Banya, that wretched scum, ambush him from behind and shatter his shoulder….”
Shi Wuduan’s brows twitched. After five years of silence, he’d finally heard what’d happened that day with his own ears. He’d thought that his heart was already frozen, but who knew, that a fire seemed to have ignited in his chest. A good while passed before a smile appeared on his placid face. His voice was dangerously quiet as he asked, “So, it was Banya. Did you see it with your own eyes?”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Hui-er nodded, “Everyone and Shizu all saw it.”
Vtf ibbxfv ja Vtl Qevejc jcv revvfcis ofia atja, lc tlr rilutais ibkfgfv ojmf jcv bea-bo-qijmf rwlif, atfgf kjr j afggloslcu wjilmf. Vtl Qevejc’r fsfr kfgf ibcu ilxf j ygertragbxf, yea ecvfg atf ygliiljca lcx kjr jc ecojatbwjyif mtjrw jcv rtf mbeivc’a afii ktja tf kjr atlcxlcu. Vtf yiegafv bea, “Olaaif rtlrte?”
Shi Wuduan asked softly, “What is it that’s binding Kuruo-shishu?”
Kuruo was aloof from petty power struggles and permissive towards her disciple’s disciples. There were many young girls like Hui-er whose cultivation was low. In that kind of one-sided battle, she’d be hard-pressed to escape by herself, let alone bring a bunch of cumbersome disciples and grand-disciples.
On the other hand, Bitan, for the sake of his false “same-sect camaraderie” and for Xuan Sect to not lose face as one of the four great sects by suddenly losing half its people, probably reached some sort of agreement with her. It must’ve been hard on Master Kuruo, with her fiery temper, to endure such indignity for the sake of her disciples.
“Shizu bears the Holy Sealing Mark.”
Shi Wuduan frowned in surprise — he’d heard of it before. It could merge into a person’s body so as to be invisible to the naked eye. It didn’t restrict one’s movements either, it only prevented one from freely using their qi. If they did, the Holy Sealing Mark would emerge from their veins and strangle them to death.
Suddenly, above Hui-er’s head, a small bell suspended from the ceiling began to ring. Hui-er startled, but Shi Wuduan stood up and pressed his index finger to his lips, gesturing for her to remain silent. He said quietly, “There are intruders, don’t make a sound.”
Hui-er’s eyes widened and her face paled with fright.
Shi Wuduan tugged her into the bedroom and opened an old cupboard, yanking out the rabbit, who’d been nibbling on leaves, and shoving Hui-er in, “Hide here, stay quiet.”
Panicked, Hui-er tugged his sleeve, “Little shishu, is this… is this…”
Shi Wuduan acted quickly, but didn’t show any signs of worry on his face. He calmly smiled at her, patted her hand, and said “It’s nothing. I’ve lived too long, there was bound to be people with objections.”
Hui-er slapped her hands over her mouth in shock. Only then did she begin to realize that this little shishu who didn’t seem much older than her was vastly different from her. In these five years, he hadn’t had the protection of a shizu who was willing to sacrifice themselves for him. He could only stay here, all alone, in this tomb-like little courtyard, guarding a dead astrolabe to whittle away his days.
It was like…. he lived in a different world.
Shi Wuduan didn’t pay her any more attention, closing the cupboard as soon as he finished speaking. He stood in the room for a moment and took a deep breath.
“It makes sense that Banya would choose this moment to act as well, opportunities like this don’t come often,” Shi Wuduan thought. He glanced at the cupboard again and mused, “I’d thought I could borrow Kuruo-shishu’s strength, but now it looks like I’ll just have to hope for the best.”
He straightened out his outer robe, leisurely strolled to the outer room, and lit a candle — the candle was very short, merely the length of a grown man’s thumb; its color was eerily red, the wax dripped like fresh blood seeping from a wound. Its scent seemed faintly metallic.
Shi Wuduan covered the candle with a lampshade. The Cuibing bird, which had been sleeping on a nearby shelf, instantly woke up in alarm. Its round eyes sought out Shi Wuduan as it flapped over to his shoulder. The rabbit had detected danger too, sprinting out on its stubby legs and huddling by his feet.
Shi Wuduan pushed open the door of the outer room, straightened out his sleeves, and primly bowed in salute to the people standing in his courtyard, “I hadn’t known you all would be arriving, Wuduan is lacking in hospitality, do forgive me.”
Zhao Chengye and the others had hardly even set foot in the courtyard before a white mist began to enclose them from all sides. Instantly, they’d seemingly sunk into the heavy fog of a mountain in a cloud. Zhao Chengye lurched, thinking, just then when I received shishu’s orders, I’d thought killing off this brat would be a piece of cake, who knew there’d be traps like these in the courtyard — could it be that all these years, it was as shishu suspected, this brat was biding his time and playing dumb?
“It’s an array,” said Jian Chongwhen, who was following behind him. He considered himself to be proficient in illusions, or else he wouldn’t have risked making a fool of himself demonstrating them on stage. But there were subtle similarities between illusions and arrays, so he did dabble a bit. Jiang Chongwen looked around, did some finger calculations, then pointed at the stone path, “I think this mist looks like the ‘Blood Candle Array,’ which isn’t a very complicated array. Everyone, follow me closely, don’t take the wrong path.”
But just as he finished speaking, they suddenly heard a door slam. Shi Wuduan stood nonchalantly in the doorway, a perfectly welcoming smile on his face. The confusedness and muddledness from earlier in the day was nowhere to be seen.
He slowly swept his gaze across the group, shook his head, and sighed calmly, “Really, Banya-shishu has overestimated me.”
Jiang Chongwen sneered, “Brat, are you reckless or ignorant, to think you could use a measly Blood Candle Array to trap us?”
Shi Wuduan modestly replied, “Your criticism is entirely correct, shixiong.”
Jiang Chongwen, “……”
Shi Wuduan shook his sleeves out, smiling, “I really don’t have much to entertain guests with in my humble abode besides a few short candles and these spirit stones in the courtyard, shabbily made out of whatever materials I had on hand, do forgive my impoliteness.”
He’d rarely smiled in these last few years, but in that moment his grin was a little reminiscent of his childish self, a hint of canines, and a dimple on his left cheek hinting that he was brewing up trouble, it really made one…. want to beat him up.
Zhao Chengye gritted his teeth, “Jiang-shixiong, stop wasting time talking to him.”
Jiang Chongwen didn’t think much of Shi Wuduan either. To show off his knowledge about arrays, he unhesitatingly started walking forward.
But then…. strange things began happening.
Zhao Chengye felt like the six meters difference between him and Shi Wuduan, who was standing there with the Cuibing bird on his shoulder and a mocking smile on his face, seemed even longer than the span of the sea and the space between mountains, a distance he couldn’t cross no matter how far he walked. He looked doubtfully at Jiang Chongwen, only to notice that he was sweating.
Shi Wuduan had only studied arrays for a few months, he didn’t know a fraction of the arrays that Jiang Chongwen did, but what he learned from rogue cultivator Jiang Hua was the foundation of arrays — which was mathematics.
To ordinary people, accounting was mathematics and astronomy was also mathematics. But really, arrays, despite their thousands of types and categories, were really all variations of the same theme — there was simply a spiritually attuned object acting as an eye and an array caster acting as an intermediary, all of it following some sort of algorithm. As long as one understood the calculations, then in reality ‘arrays’ couldn’t count as a discipline in and of itself. Even if someone went and memorized a thousand arrays, the array caster could change any variable in the array and turn it into its one thousand and oneth variation.
Shi Wuduan was grinning confidently, but he knew the limits of his own array. Even though Bitan never shorted him on anything, he’d never let him get close to anything with spiritual properties aside from the astrolabe he’d brought back himself.
That short length of blood candle was made from his own blood and a strand of star silk from his astrolabe fuse into wax. He’d experimented countless times and had only succeeded in making one small stub. Once it burned out, there’d be no more.
Thus, he had to act quickly. After confirming that the crowd had been entrapped, he politely saluted them and said, “I do apologize to all you shixiong, it’s just that you guys came at a bad time. I was just planning on leaving the mountain to roam around a bit, and don’t have time to receive guests, so I’ll be on my way. You guys can help yourselves to the tea and snacks.”
Shi Wuduan turned and left, seeming to disappear before their very eyes.
Which path had Shi Wuduan taken? Of course it was the path that Banya had quietly cleared for the sake of getting rid of him. Zhao Chengye did count as an elite, however barely, and his work was thorough, letting Shi Wuduan run undisturbed all the way to the first guardpost on the road leading down the mountain.
Shi Wuduan hid in the forest, observing the sentinels. He thought — now this is troublesome, it looks like I’ve forgotten where the checkpoints were after being stuck on the mountain for so long. Since when were people standing watch here?
He frowned, knowing that the blood candle wouldn’t last very long. He’d already let the Cuibing bird fly on his own, so he scooped the rabbit into his arms and stuffed it into his baggage. But the rabbit was really too “colossal,” and was too big to fit into his tiny bag. Shi Wuduan was a bit miffed. He poked the rabbit in the head and muttered, “Are you really a yao? Why are you so….”
The rabbit blinked at him cutely and nudged his finger with its head, twitching its little mouth. Shi Wuduan sagged in defeat. He’d grown attached to the only two living beings that had accompanied him for these last few years; he couldn’t abandon them no matter how dumb they were.
He squatted down as his mind churned furiously. Glancing at the lush grass all about him, he suddenly had an idea. He pulled out a few and in short order whipped up a pile of little animal figurines. Shi Wuduan silently recited an incantation, then the small animals shakily stood up and scattered in all directions.
Shi Wuduan chuckled softly, snapped his fingers, and the little grass totems simultaneously burst into flames, scattering sparks and embers everywhere. With all the vegetation on the mountain and all the wooden buildings, fire was a serious hazard. It didn’t take long before things started catching on fire.
Since there was smoke everywhere, no one knew where the fire had started from. The guards at that checkpoint were half drunk already when they smelled the acrid stench of smoke and leapt to their feet, rushing outside and yelling, “Fire! There’s a fire!”
As the chaos began to spread, Shi Wuduan tapped the rabbit on the noggin and ordered, “Play dead!”
The rabbit looked dumbly at him. Shi Wuduan reiterated, “You’re dead if you don’t play dead!”
Immediately, the rabbit’s eyes rolled to the back of its head as it toppled over and stopped moving.
Shi Wuduan grabbed it by its ears, then he made a cut on his finger and smeared it on the rabbit’s fur. In the fire-lit night, it looked like he was carrying a wild game. He kept his head down, messed up his hair, and slipped out in the chaos.
As he caught sight of the fire in his peripheral vision, he remembered how he once wove crickets out of grass to make Bai Li smile, and couldn’t help but think those memories were from a lifetime ago.
Little Bai Li was finally mentioned!~
Thanks for the chapter<3
I miss the ML. Hope he’ll come back soon🥺
Typo?
Since there was smoke everyone,[everywhere?] no one knew where the fire had started from. The guards at that checkpoint were half drunk already when they smelled the acrid stench of smoke and leapt to their feet, rushing outside and yelling, “Fire! There’s a fire!”
Missing a word?
As he caught sight of the fire in his peripheral vision, he remembered how [he?]once wove crickets out of grass to make Bai Li smile, and couldn’t help but think those memories were from a lifetime ago.
whoops x.x
fixed now, thanks for pointing it out
💙💙💙
Oh my godd I’m crying IM CRYING he just lay there then suddenly remember the time where he would court Bai Li… In amidst of the ensuing chaos he just lay there… suddenly thought of the person who first capture his heart…
IM NOT CRYING MY EYES ARE 😭😭😭
also the little rabbit is so cute, ur dead if u don’t play dead 😂
ok now this chapter is making me feel
😂 ➡️ 😭
Thank you for the Food Translations!!!