Yin Yang Jade Crane Aquarius Qi possessed astonishing self-healing properties. However, that effectiveness had always been limited to Lu Sheng himself; he had never attempted to heal another through Qi Transfer before.
‘But it seems to work just fine’, Lu Sheng assessed inwardly as he watched color slowly return to Dong Qi’s pallid cheeks.
Within the time it took for a joss stick to burn, Dong Qi’s breathing steadied, no longer ragged or erratic.
Lu Sheng withdrew his hand. He could faintly sense that at some unknown point, Yin Yang Jade Crane Aquarius Qi had woven itself into a subtle web within Dong Qi’s body. As long as she continued cultivating her inner force with diligence, her progress in the future would be remarkable.
That said, the amount of Qi transferred was far too minute to induce any mutation. Dong Qi remained fundamentally unchanged.
“Sect Master!”
With the chaos finally subsiding, Xu Chui and the others hurried over and dropped to one knee. At the sight of the craters and gaping pits littering the ground, their expressions tightened. The sheer devastation spoke volumes of the earlier battle. What kind of clash must have taken place for the Sect Master to leave such ruin behind?
“Clean up the site. Unlaughing Master has been dealt with. Also, take Dong Qi away to rest,” Lu Sheng instructed calmly. “We’ll be making a trip to that village as well.”
“That village?” Ning San and the others exchanged confused looks.
“Hasn’t that village already been dealt with, Sect Master?” Xu Chui asked in a lowered voice.
“Dealt with? Of course not,” Lu Sheng replied, a faint smile curling at the corner of his lips. “What we eliminated was merely an Anomaly, the Unlaughing Master. The true source is still there, untouched.”
His thoughts drifted back to the inscriptions on the stone sign. Part of it pointed toward the true origin of the Unlaughing Master, while another part hinted at the destination hidden beyond the passageway.
They moved quickly. In truth, there was little left to clean. Unlaughing Master had already crumbled into dust, while Chao Long had scattered into the wind. All that remained were traces of bone ash amid shattered stone and collapsed ruins. Aside from Dong Qi and Lu Sheng, no living beings were left at the site.
What followed was the reconstruction of the Tea Sect’s ruined buildings. With the sect’s ample wealth, restoring them was nothing more than a matter of time.
After issuing a few brief instructions, Lu Sheng led Xu Chui and the others straight toward the village, making no stops along the way. By the time they arrived, dawn had already broken.
The village lay steeped in silence, empty and still, without a single living soul in sight.
Lu Sheng halted at the village entrance, his eyes narrowing as his gaze swept across the interior. Even with his heightened senses, he detected nothing out of the ordinary.
Ning San stepped up to the front of a stone house. He squatted down, scooped up a pinch of soil, and brought it to his nose.
“Some people have been here. The numbers… three of them. They passed by this spot separately.”
“Can you track the direction they were heading in?” Lu Sheng asked in a low voice.
“No… if Elder Chen were here, perhaps he could. All I know are a few tricks I picked up from him…” Ning San replied.
Ning San had always possessed an insatiable hunger for learning. Although he had never attended any formal institution, he had mastered many skills through sheer observation and persistence. Elder Chen had once aided Lu Sheng in tracking down the traitor within Martial League and had played a crucial role in the killing of Officiator Bai Jiang. His tracking ability was exceptional. After witnessing that, Ning San had taken the initiative to learn what he could from him.
‘Three people…’ Lu Sheng pondered. ‘Could it be the trio led by Yan Kai?’
“Go in and search.” He waved his hand.
The disciples of Crimson Whale Sect moved at once, fanning out into the village. With only seven or eight stone houses, the search was completed in short order.
“Reporting to Sect Master, not a single person was found inside,” a guard called out.
“There’s really nobody?” Lu Sheng raised a brow.
“No one at all,” the guard replied.
Lu Sheng’s gaze drifted toward the stone house perched on the slope. Subtly, he sensed that something about it was amiss, though the feeling was faint, too indistinct to form a solid conclusion.
‘Three Sacred Mirror… Zhao Jiaojiao and the others are still missing. Could the Three Sacred Gates be involved?’ His eyes narrowed to thin slits.
“Leave men behind to garrison Tea Town. Lock this place down. No one in, no one out,” Lu Sheng ordered.
“Yes, sir!” Xu Chui replied at once.
“Come on. Let’s head back.” Lu Sheng lifted his gaze to the brightening sky. He knew he had reached the end of his trail. Without any extraordinary means, there was no way for him to locate the Three Sacred Mirror. Most likely, Zhao Jiaojiao and the others had already been drawn into the space within the mirror itself.
His thoughts returned to that harvested hay field, to the moment when he, too, had been forcibly pulled into another space.
Though he could not find Zhao Jiaojiao for now, Lu Sheng could still sense her presence through the Yin Crane Web. She was alive.
After a stretch of fruitless searching, the Crimson Whale Sect had no choice but to leave men behind, establishing a temporary base with the Tea Sect’s assistance.
Lu Sheng did not linger. He led his men straight back to the sect headquarters without a single stop along the way. The black pearl remained in his possession, and he could clearly feel something within it slowly dissipating with time.
The moment he returned to Crimson Whale Sect, he entered solitary confinement in his sanctuary.
“Hu!”
A ball of colorless flame flickered to life in Lu Sheng’s palm. He raised it slowly, positioning it beneath the black pearl and subjecting it to searing heat.
The fog sealed within the pearl began to churn violently, and the sensation of dissipation within it grew ever stronger.
Time slipped by.
In the blink of an eye, two days passed. Lu Sheng remained seated on the sanctuary floor without moving an inch, his gaze fixed unwaveringly on the pearl.
Throughout those two days, he had been carefully sensing the changes within it. More precisely, he was observing the aura it emitted.
And in these two days since his return from Tea Sect, he had grasped a faint yet consistent pattern.
“At the Zi hour every night… soon… it’s almost time…” Lu Sheng calculated in silence.
At Zi hour, the pearl would undergo a subtle yet wondrous transformation, one that became far more pronounced when subjected to scorching inner Qi at that moment. This was the conclusion he had drawn from observation alone.
Now, it was time to put that conclusion to the test.
Time slipped by, and the moonlight filtering into the sanctuary grew colder and more distant.
Lu Sheng remained unmoving, his gaze locked onto the pearl as though he had turned to stone.
“Hooo…”
Without warning, a gust of wind swept past him.
Lu Sheng’s eyes flickered with surprise. He turned left, then right, yet could not discern where the wind had come from. Narrowing his eyes, he scanned the surroundings once more. Almost immediately, he found the source of the disturbance.
It was the pearl.
Under the sustained burning of inner Qi, the pearl was expanding.
From the size of an egg, it slowly lifted into the air, swelling larger and larger until it reached the height of a man. Within it, the hidden passageway continued to stretch outward, unfolding fully before Lu Sheng’s eyes.
“Szz… szzz…”
The sound of rushing air poured forth from the pearl. This was the origin of the gust he had felt earlier, the flow of air surging through the passageway concealed within.
“This is incredible…” Lu Sheng reached out toward the pearl.
With a soft splat, his hand passed straight through its surface, as naturally as if he were pushing through a thin layer of soap bubbles.
‘Should I enter?’ Lu Sheng questioned inwardly. ‘This is the passageway Chao Long was searching for.’
He examined the passageway carefully. It was shrouded in dense fog, stretching forward into unseen depths, as though it extended endlessly.
Having made his decision, Lu Sheng stepped forward.
“Splat.”
His entire body vanished into the pearl. In the next instant, he was standing at the entrance of the passageway, surrounded by fog.
He turned around.
Behind him lay the sanctuary, yet it appeared distant and distorted, as if separated by a transparent layer of glass.
Ahead of him stood two stone signs, one on each side of the passageway. Previously hidden by the fog, they now stood clearly within his sight.
The stone signs were fashioned from ordinary grayish-white stone, with words carved deep into their surfaces.
On the left was carved: Troubles, Sorrow, Loneliness, Heartache, Pain.
On the right was carved: Grief, Jealousy, Emptiness, Rage, Calamity.
The script was ancient Song writing. Their age was impossible to determine at a glance, and the carvings themselves appeared crude and unrefined.
Lu Sheng stood before the stone signs, gazing through the fog that filled the passageway, then turned his eyes back toward the sanctuary behind him.
The sanctuary now felt like a doorway, a threshold leading back to reality. The passageway ahead, in contrast, was a road into an unknown world.
Lu Sheng hesitated.
The urge to explore tugged at him relentlessly. Yet, recalling Chao Long of the Wandering Heart Society and his unwavering determination to seize this passageway, Lu Sheng knew that whatever lay beyond was anything but ordinary. Had he been a demon or a Nobleman, he would have stepped in without a second thought.
But he was not. He was purely human.
What benefitted demons and ghosts might very well spell danger for him. Moreover, merely standing before the passageway, he could already feel an inexplicable, unsettling aura.
It resembled the damp, clinging chill carried by a crashing waterfall, heavy and sticky, trying to latch onto him as though it possessed a will of its own.
Every instinct within him sounded a warning. Whatever awaited beyond this passageway held nothing good for him.
He remained before the stone signs for a long while, weighing his options. At last, he slowly stepped backward until he stood once more at the edge of the sanctuary.
“Since the Three Sacred Gates possess a passageway like this, there will surely be another opportunity in the future. Charging in blindly, without knowing what lies ahead, would be courting disaster.” Lu Sheng never engaged in battles without a reasonable assurance of victory. Aside from his very first fight, when he had no other choice, every move he made afterward was done from a position of advantage.
That was his principle. His cardinal rule.
Casting one final glance at the enigmatic passageway, Lu Sheng clenched his jaw, turned away, and stepped out of the pearl back into the sanctuary.
“Szzzz…”
The instant he emerged, the black structure and the passageway warped like a sudden mirage. Within a few short breaths, it shrank rapidly, lost its color, and faded into nothingness.
“Crack!”
With a sharp, brittle sound, the black pearl vanished completely, leaving not a single trace behind in the sanctuary.
Lu Sheng remained where he stood, replaying the sensations he had felt earlier. That aura of mystery, of the unknown intertwined with danger, had been carved deep into his memory.
“I’m not ready yet. I’m not at my strongest. His thoughts were calm, methodical. And who knows how long I might be trapped inside that passageway. If I rush in recklessly, given the longevity of demons and ghosts, I could end up spending decades within before emerging again. By then, all my efforts in the Northern Lands would be rendered meaningless. Worse still, there are unknown dangers hidden inside. I can’t afford that risk.”
Lu Sheng felt no regret over his decision.
There were still countless matters demanding his attention in the Northern Lands. He sought to establish an absolutely secure nest, a powerful family, a stronghold where he could retreat and recover whenever he suffered grave injuries.
Yet building such a refuge in this chaotic world would require immense power and formidable forces.
‘Next time, perhaps. Once I understand what this Three Sacred Gates truly is, my chance to enter will come again.’
Lu Sheng stared silently at the now-empty sanctuary.
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