This time when Jiang Chen met Zhang Yong, the other party's temperament had changed dramatically.
Such a change was normal after a sudden catastrophe.
But... something felt off.
Just like when he saw him outside the Celestial Residence Secret Realm, although his behavior was restrained and timid, very fitting for the descendant of a declining noble clan.
Yet he inexplicably felt uncomfortable.
This "uncomfortable" feeling wasn't that Jiang Chen had any issue or bad impression of him.
On the contrary, he had a very good impression of Zhang Yong at the time.
It was just that subconsciously he felt it wasn't quite right, not natural enough.
As if there was some disharmony in the person at that time. And now, this gaunt and skeletal Zhang Yong, though grief-stricken, deathly still, wary, and in pain, Jiang Chen strangely felt this was the real him.
No logical reason, just the most direct feeling.
Regardless, since he judged there was no possibility of recruiting Zhang Yong for the time being, Jiang Chen didn't stay here to waste any more time.
The State of Yang was located northwest of the State of Qi, and the driver was skilled, the horses pulling the carriage were fine steeds.
With the Chongxuan family's reputation, the carriage traveled smoothly and steadily all the way.
And Jiang Chen sat upright in the carriage, eyes closed, cultivating.
...
Maple City Domain.
Almost all life had been extinguished, only a faint life fire burned on a person who was as withered as a dried-up ghost.
He didn't know how much time had passed.
Maple City Domain seemed to have lost all meaning of time, the only proof that time was passing was perhaps just the... endless expanse of graves behind this person.
He alone buried everyone.
He remembered this should be the Wang clan estate.
Heh, which place in Maple City didn't he know?
How many years had he lived here?
Memory was truly a torturous thing.
Ling Chuan trudged through the ruins.
The erosion of nether energy should have claimed his life long ago, but for some reason, he always clung to a single breath.
That breath wasn't the breath of respiration, but a wisp of qi floating within the Heaven-Reaching Palace, distinctly two-colored, mysterious yellow.
Ling Chuan didn't know that this was the merit qi he gained from using the Sutra of Salvation to deliver the deceased.
Upper part mysterious, lower part yellow — the colors of heaven and earth.
He only knew he was still alive.
Since he was still alive, he had to do something, finish something.
He was a persistent and tenacious person.
It was precisely this perseverance that kept his cultivation from falling too far behind.
Ling Chuan couldn't count how many corpses he had buried, how many graves he had piled up.
He just kept walking forward, seeing corpses, burying them properly, chanting scriptures to deliver them.
And so, repeated.
He walked to the most remote corner of the Wang clan, probably where the most neglected clan members lived.
But Ling Chuan never cared about such things. He never cared about poverty or wealth, beauty or ugliness — he was what Zhao Rucheng called a "good-for-nothing."
Strangely, this place seemed to have the most dead.
They hadn't died from the earth disaster, but from some powerful force, killed almost instantly, with no resistance whatsoever.
Ling Chuan pressed his dry lips together.
And started digging graves.
Buried them as he went, building tombstones along the way.
There was a small courtyard ahead, surprisingly, in an earth disaster of that scale, most of the houses had collapsed.
Only this small courtyard was still intact.
But it was desolate after all.
Ling Chuan pushed the door open and walked in, first seeing the rotten corpse of the orange cat.
This smell of death was nothing — he had grown accustomed to it these past days.
What disturbed him was the state of the orange cat's death — it seemed to have been dismembered by someone.
This cruelty made him frown.
He thought for a moment, dug a small hole on the spot, buried it, and also chanted scriptures for it.
Ling Chuan continued forward, entering the bedroom, and discovered Wang Changxiang's supine corpse. Because of his successful cultivation, the body had not yet decayed.
The expression he saw on Wang Changxiang's face was one he hadn't seen on anyone else along this entire journey.
That expression... wasn't pain at all, but rather a hint of... peace?
Ling Chuan didn't think much, stepped forward to carry Wang Changxiang's body out of the room, then dug a grave in the courtyard and buried him beside the orange cat.
When he finished all this, he turned and looked around, discovering a scripture book fallen on the ground beneath the reclining chair in the courtyard.
It seemed someone had been reading it halfway, but dropped it in haste.
The owner probably didn't have time to pick it up.
Ling Chuan looked at Wang Changxiang's grave, thinking that the owner of this courtyard probably wasn't Wang Changxiang, but must have been closely related to him.
Ling Chuan stepped forward, picked up this scripture book, and looked at the cover.
The cover seemed to be handmade by the scripture's owner, very meticulous and well-done. On the cover, in neat and calm characters, was written — "Sutra of Deliverance."
Ling Chuan couldn't help sitting down on the reclining chair and began to browse through this scripture.
He was too tired, but physical exhaustion wasn't hard to bear.
What was truly unbearable was the pain in his heart.
Every corpse he personally buried seemed to tell him that those experiences were not nightmares.
But something that had truly happened, and could never be undone.
Perhaps within the Dao scriptures there was a way to solve the heart's feeling of helplessness.
Though the Sutra of Deliverance itself held no supernatural powers or techniques, as a scripture and Dao canon, it was a core classic of the Penglai Isle lineage.
Its full name should be "The Supreme Cavernous numinous treasure of immeasurable deliverance, the wondrous scripture of the highest grade."
This sutra was called the head of all scriptures, the origin of all laws, the source of all dharmas.
Chanting this sutra, it was said, could dispel heavenly disasters, protect and stabilize emperors, ward off poison and harm below, and deliver the multitudes, both men and women protected and delivered, all obtaining long life.
This was a sutra for transmitting the Dao, not a fundamental scripture for cultivation, so it wasn't top secret.
Its original form naturally held immeasurable divine powers, but copies held no supernatural qualities.
The true value lay in the heaven and earth mysteries expounded within the scriptures. Those with wisdom roots might extract something from them.
Since ancient times, there had been no lack of Daoist priests, great Confucian scholars, and Zen masters who spent their lives studying scriptures without cultivating supernatural powers or techniques.
And such profound scholars, when they exhausted the secrets of the classics, often experienced sudden enlightenment, gaining great supernatural powers through great wisdom, ascending in one step to the pinnacle of the extraordinary, becoming legendary tales.
It was said that those who could penetrate the "Sutra of Deliverance" were known as "the Immortal Dao values life, immeasurable deliverance, opening the eight gates above, flying to the heavens with **. Sins and blessings, prohibitions and precepts, the causes and conditions of past lives. Universally received and delivered, dead souls born into bodies. Bodies receive life, the various heavens heard above."
Of course, this was just rumor, and no one had truly witnessed it.
It was the Penglai Isle lineage's fundamental cultivation scripture, the "Supreme Jade Palace Scripture of High Sages," that was truly immeasurable in divine power.
Along with the Yujing Mountain lineage's "Supreme Violet Dao Scripture," Da Luo Mountain's "Primordial Descent Scripture" and "Final Calamity Opening Scripture," they ranked among the most powerful cultivation methods in the world.
The scripture Ling Chuan had obtained was special because of the annotations by its original owner.
In his view, the person should have been an old Daoist priest who spent his life studying scriptures, for some reason living in seclusion in the Wang clan estate. The person had very deep understanding of Dao scriptures, his writing was plain and distant, deeply capturing the essence of the Daoist tradition.
Some of the viewpoints Ling Chuan didn't agree with, but he had to admit they made some sense.
But the further he read, the more he could feel a subtle sense of depression.
"Perhaps, when one reads scriptures to a certain degree, they already sense today's tragedy?"
The thought drifted lightly through Ling Chuan's mind.
He picked up a withered leaf as a bookmark, took this Dao scripture, and left the small courtyard.
He needed to continue the work of delivering the deceased.
He decided to read two pages of scripture each day, explain his understanding, and compare it with the annotations on it.
This would be one of the rare enjoyable things in these difficult days.
If... he could still live.
Le Wen