A proper immortal, and the fellow had carried nothing but an axe and a single storage trinket. The Venerable One's ring-shaped pill-box of a magic tool, together with that slab of an axe, went straight into the Sky-No.4 storage pouch. Li Changshou pocketed the soul-capturing bead and hopped to the cliff's edge, squatting before the three plants of Immortal-Resolution Grass.
He produced two jade boxes prepared long ago, tucked two self-refined antidote pills under his tongue, wrapped both hands in eighteen layers of spiritual force, and with deft, painstaking care dug up the two older, more potent plants—roots and all—sealing each into its jade box. Where one harvests, one must never wipe a species out to the last; for at a seed of fortune, a loss of blessing follows.
Finally... a small smile crept across his face.
He rose swiftly, unwilling to linger here, uneasy that Yuwen Ling might have other accomplices. First he raced to the head of the Three-Eyed Ripple Snake, and from his chest drew the pouch marked 'Earth-2,' bagging the serpent's head, sealing it with talismans, and stowing the lot into the Mysterious-No.4 storage vessel. That thing would yield some fine venom—just the thing for his little junior sister to keep off prowling wolves. It would be a crime to leave it rotting here.
The rolling snake-poison still hung in the air, but the masked men's corpses had long since been burned clean by his three 'combat' paper incarnations. For targets that had never touched immortality, the gloomy cold true flame did its work without effort; the last faint residue of ash had already fused with their general's remains, waiting only for the wind to scatter them.
Then, together with the four paper men, Li Changshou sprinkled two bottles of powder over every surface. Wherever human blood had fallen, ghostly green flame woke, and the stains vanished from sight in the blink of an eye.
Mm. Purifying the wilderness and guarding the ecology of the Northern Jambu Continent—an obligation no human cultivator of qi could evade!
He gathered a few more storage vessels, swept the scene with his eyes, and sent his spiritual sense probing every stirring leaf within ten li, both hands already weaving hand-seals. Certain nothing was missed, the figures around him folded back into paper, scurrying into his sleeve. He closed the umbrella, and his form sank into the rock—Li Changshou slipped silently away.
As the array dispersed, poisonous fog swelled in from every side, carrying a faint breeze. Beneath the cypress there remained only a headless serpent's corpse, a few pools of venomous blood, and a cliff crisscrossed with cracks, at last collapsing...
The old cypress, newly coiffed, swayed what few branches it had left to the wind, as if bidding a mournful farewell to Li Changshou hidden in the earth. After all, he was the first man in all that tree's long life ever to have entered its trunk and roots.
...
Sinking by Earth Escape, Li Changshou crept close beneath the ground where his two junior sect siblings were dueling. The poisonous Youqin Xuanya had her flying swords battering Yuan Qing without pause; the fellow had no strength left to parry, his body littered with wounds, robes soaked through with blood.
This Yuan Qing... Return-to-Void cultivation, was it? Stuffed full of pills, more likely. And this was what passed for the second-ranked among his generation? If the tyros listed in the generation rankings were all of this stripe, then at the sect tournament a few years hence, he need only stock Ling'e with enough pills and self-made tools and she could probably claw her way into the top hundred...
He sneaked up to the perimeter of their fight, timed out Youqin Xuanya's rhythm, and from one outstretched hand toward Yuan Qing hurled a porcelain bottle—the very bottle of top-grade Immortal-Weakening Powder, now spent.
A faint whistle came from behind. Yuan Qing, who had just knocked two of the flying swords aside, flicked a casual sword at the sound, the stroke handsome and dead-on, cleaving the bottle to dust.
Hm? Since when a porcelain... bottle...
Yuan Qing's eyelids rolled up. He had no chance to sheathe his sword; his body listed and staggered, pitching forward as if to fall. At that same moment four flying swords screamed in from ahead!
And Yuan Qing, tumbling onward, all but spread his arms—'willingly' throwing himself onto the blades!
Youqin Xuanya had never meant to kill Yuan Qing here. However base and shameless he seemed to her, he was still a disciple of the sect; he had to be dragged back alive to the mountain for her master and the elders to pass judgment. But now, Yuan Qing had suddenly stopped resisting...
She, exactly as Li Changshou had reckoned, had never truly mastered this sword-manipulation art. Utterly unable to call the blades home in time, the four flying swords punched straight through neck, brow, chest, and belly. Such precision; the three souls snuffed, the dantian pierced—clean, decisive, not a thread of life left.
"This..." Youqin Xuanya froze, then seemed to grasp something, and let out a soft sigh. She dropped from midair, stepped off her sword, and hurried toward Yuan Qing's corpse.
Yuan Qing had departed very peacefully.
Peacefully indeed. He had felt not the slightest threat of death, drifting off to sleep the instant the poison struck; pierced through though he was, he could not wake, and at the corners of his mouth lingered a faint smile. Even a wisp of top-grade Immortal-Weakening Powder was far beyond what Yuan Qing could hope to withstand.
And the smile in Youqin Xuanya's eyes...
"Even one whose heart is evil as yours still knows a moment's remorse? Were you, too, driven by someone's hand?"
A little pity showed in her gaze. She shook her head, and the flying swords wheeled back, fused together, blazing with fire as they melted into that great blade, which hung itself at her back.
Hearing this soliloquy, underground Li Changshou could not help but offer a thumbs-up. Poisonous Junior Sister, truly poisonous—she had this uncanny talent for pouring consolation broth down her own throat! But really, when you've just killed an opponent without even scouting your surroundings, the smart move isn't to stand here mourning and musing...
One glance told him: a girl who'd never tasted life's beatings. Too generous a heart.
At that, Youqin Xuanya lifted her head to the now-silent cliff. She sensed not the least hint of a living man there; even that horrid venomous beast of a serpent had gone still.
'Whatever has become of Senior Brother Changshou? Take Yuan Qing's body along, and hurry to look.'
She took two strides toward Yuan Qing, just beginning to enfold his corpse in spiritual force, when suddenly her eyelids rolled. Her form tilted slowly backward. With a clatter, the great sword hit the ground...
Almost in the same breath, faint ripples disturbed the earth beneath Yuan Qing. Those fragments of porcelain melted silently into the soil; the ripples swept toward Youqin Xuanya, and where they reached her feet a hand thrust out, catching her long hair. The pitiless iron grip gave a sharp tug, and dragged the unconscious Xuanya straight down into the ground...
The ripples trembled once, twice, and vanished, the earth restored to flat, to solid.
A cultivator's defenses, head to toe, were beyond any mortal's; even the follicles of the scalp. Uncouth as the move might be, it was convenient, it held fast, it roused no awkward misunderstanding, and there was no real risk of scalping a Return-to-Void practitioner into baldness. Li Changshou only meant to haul her off quickly and get clear of this cursed spot.
As for Yuan Qing's corpse... he hadn't killed the man, so there was no call to scatter any ashes; clearing away the bottle's shards was enough. The Immortal-Weakening Powder was only a soporific; within two days of death it would disperse entirely, nearly impossible to trace. And later, when the sect's immortals came looking, a complete absence of corpse and mark would only be harder to explain away.
Deep in the earth, Li Changshou towed the sleeping Youqin Xuanya straight for the southeast, two fish gliding by, and on a swift current vanished from sight.
...
"Hah! This wretched array is driving me to—distraction!"
With Jiu Jiu's furious cry the very ground trembled beneath her bare feet, and every venomous insect and beast in the blank mist shivered in dread. Held fast by the great array, the earth held firm, refusing to be shattered by the True Immortal's stamping toes...
Off in a corner, Wang Qi and Liu Yan'er leaned against each other, slump-shouldered and listless. Trapped so long, their spirits naturally flagged; yet it was this very ordeal that had thrust their affection forward by leaps and bounds—they were already each other's 'Sister Yan'er' and 'Junior Brother Qiqi.' (Incidentally, Wang Qi's 'Qi' was not the 'odd' found in 'odd fellow.')
Half of Jiu Jiu's fury was sparked by these two fledgling sweethearts...
Having vented her buried rage a while, Jiu Jiu folded her arms, crossed her legs, and hovered three feet off the ground, mulling over a way out. Liu Yan'er padded over and said softly, "Senior Aunt Jiu, don't fret too much. Heavens look after the good, and who knows—junior brother and sister may already be waiting in the town."
Jiu Jiu sniffed. "At this rate, even their corpses may be gone!"
"Aunt..."
Liu Yan'er pressed on, "Didn't you say yesterday that counting the days, the sect should already have sent people? With any luck we'll be out of here any moment."
"Ah—" Jiu Jiu clawed wildly through her shoulder-length hair. "Who the hell knows if those three are dead or alive! If anything's happened to Li Changshou, how do I explain to his master! And if those two precious immortal seeds wither, a hundred years of my wine money go up in smoke!"
Black lines crawled across Liu Yan'er's forehead. She knew Senior Aunt Jiu's heart said one thing and her lips another, that she truly cared for them deep down—but somehow, she got the feeling that... yes, Senior Aunt Jiu really did care more about her wine money.
Suddenly a shallow breeze stirred within the array, and a sigh rose from every direction at once. Then came that old voice, utterly flat:
"Little Jiu, do you know your crime?"
Jiu Jiu shivered; her slender legs and bare feet dropped to the earth, and she whispered back: "M-ma... master?"
Liu Yan'er started too, astonished: "Has the Venerable Wangqing come to find us in person?"
The white mist began to retreat in haste; at last the three broke free of the trapping array, and their immortal and spiritual senses stretched unimpeded in every direction...
At that very moment, two figures flew in from afar and slammed to the ground before Jiu Jiu. They were two white-haired old men in black robes, both of Primordial Immortal rank, both now heavily wounded and unconscious, each with a sunken palm-print stamped on him.
Wang Qi cried out in excitement: "Senior Aunt Jiu, it's them! The two who attacked Sister Yan'er and me!"
Jiu Jiu hesitated not a second more. Her knees folded, she dropped to the ground, brow touching earth, and said in utter grief:
"Master, your disciple was set up—three young ones have lost contact. I'll accept whatever punishment you see fit, only I beg you to search for those three at once, and see if any still live!"
At that the mist around them had gone; several figures appeared in the distance. The foremost Daoist stood barely five feet tall, and seeing Jiu Jiu kneeling there so solemnly, could not help but look a little awkward. He dipped his head with a cough and laughed:
"Our master didn't come. It's me, ahem—your resourceful and dashing... Fifth Senior Brother..."
"Hm?"
Killing intent!
The short Daoist shuddered, and to salvage the moment, saw his hemp-robed little junior sister stamp hard and shoot at him, hugging the ground like an arrow loosed from a divine bow, trailing a string of sonic booms!