Chu Wanning’s voice dropped several degrees in temperature. “Then why do you keep coming after my disciple?”
“I’m not planning anything too important. I just so happen to need your little disciple’s spiritual core to do it,” the child said, beaming. “He has only himself to blame for having such a fine core. It’s even better than yours, and by far. I noticed back at Jincheng Lake that he’s a superb spiritual essence of wood. If not for that, I might have been more interested in you, Chu-zongshi.”
Mo Ran was about to gag—the child spoke in a young voice, but greasily, and with such an adult tone. “If I’m ever so goddamn unlucky as to get caught by you, I’ll immediately self-destruct my fucking core,” he snapped. “So don’t even think about touching me!”
“It’s not like I want to touch you,” the child continued in that infuriatingly honey-sweet tone. “I’m only chasing you around because I have to. All men love beauties, and your shizun is much prettier than you. I’d rather touch him.”
“You!” Mo Ran bristled. “Some ugly thing like you, hiding behind white chess pieces all day long, too afraid to show your ugly mug—you think you have any right to touch my shizun?”
The child rolled his eyes at Mo Ran, as if tired of acknowledging his existence. He returned his attention to Chu Wanning. “Chu-zongshi, back at Jincheng Lake, I advised you to leave things alone, but you wouldn’t listen. I’m so very hurt, you know.”
“Now that this matter has come to my attention, even if you stopped hounding Mo Ran, I would still intend to get to the bottom of things.”
“Pfft, I knew you’d say that.” The child was quiet for a moment, then grinned again. “Why are you righteous zongshi types all so stubborn?” He paused again. “Fine, since Chu-zongshi won’t leave well enough alone, we’ll have to wait and see. I wanted to figure out which was stronger anyway: your Tianwen, or my forbidden techniques.”
Chu Wanning’s brows furrowed. “Must you slaughter so many innocents to further your ends?” he asked darkly.
“The people of the world are like the oranges from Huainan.”20
“What do you mean?”
“Sour.” The child started giggling. “Super sour. All these worthless people are sour. I hate them, I want to crush them—step on them.”
Mo Ran was at a loss for words.
Chu Wanning’s voice filled with killing intent. “You truly are irredeemable.”
“Zongshi deems me irredeemable, but I think Zongshi is just as incurable. Our justice differs at the root. Why sweat the small stuff?” The child tilted his head to and fro. “Just think of our little spat as a game of chess. You won the match at Jincheng Lake. As for this one here at Peach Blossom Springs, since Zongshi has found the Ancestral Abyss and seen my white chess piece—and I’ve run out of tricks by which to acquire your little disciple—let’s just say you won this one too.”
He paused, then his eyes crinkled with a smile. In so doing, he squeezed more blood from them. “You better watch out. You may have protected him this time, but I wonder if you can protect him his whole life?”
Chu Wanning did not reply.
“As for the secret down here, I suggest you keep it to yourselves,” the child said, holding a red and gold feather between his fingers.
“Is that one of the golden feathers used as currency here?” Mo Ran asked, alarmed.
“That’s right.” The child smiled. “These feathers have circulated everywhere by this point. If the two of you keep quiet and leave of your own volition, then nothing will happen. But if you don’t behave and try to expose me… These feathers are imbued with the resentful energy of the feathered tribe. They won’t kill those cultivators, but they would dissipate the better part of their cultivation.”
“You planned this from the start?!” Mo Ran said with anger in his voice.
“Well, of course,” the child said, incredulous. “Do you think everyone is a dumb brute like you?”
Mo Ran fell silent.
He was so! Pissed! Off! He was willing to admit that he was rather straightforward about the way he did things, and that he didn’t know much about schemes and strategies. However, being so overtly called out by this little bastard made him really want to summon Jiangui and give him what for—to teach him what it meant to be a real dumb brute.
“Chu-zongshi, I’m sure you know what’s best for everyone involved. Even if the others learned the truth, if their cultivation were greatly damaged, I’m afraid they wouldn’t thank you for your integrity.”
“As I’m sure you heard earlier, when you were eavesdropping,
I wasn’t planning to alarm them to begin with,” Chu Wanning said coldly. “For the time being.”
“For the time being? Ha ha, so Zongshi was planning to tell them later, then. Although there’d be no point in doing that either.” The child beamed. “Once these people leave, I’ll destroy Peach Blossom Springs, just like I did Jincheng Lake. Good luck getting anyone to believe you with no evidence.”
Chu Wanning’s gaze was icy. “I’m impressed that you have the nerve to call Mo Ran a dumb brute when you conduct yourself thus.”
Chu Wanning’s derision washed right over the child. He got up and twirled in place a couple times, at which point a flame flared to life at his feet and slowly burned through his flesh and bones. “Why don’t you save that for when you catch me? Chu-zongshi, out of respect for your character, I’ll remind you one last time: stay out of this. If you still refuse to listen, then we…will certainly meet again…”
The flames exploded and roared into the sky.
The feathered tribe child who had been used as a puppet was burned into nothingness. A translucent white chess piece fell from the sky, spun a couple times on the ground, and stilled.
For a while, there was nothing but silence.
Mo Ran knew the perpetrator wasn’t spouting empty threats, but he also didn’t want to take this sitting down. So at length, he asked, “Shizun, are we really going to leave like this? Do you have any other ideas?”
“Best not take any chances for now. Let’s depart Peach Blossom Springs first.” Chu Wanning’s expression was dark as well. “If he went to the trouble of erecting a Soul-Locking Array to prevent anyone from noticing his use of the Zhenlong Chess Formation, he still wants to keep things under wraps—at least for now. I will send word to the sect leader to take Xue Meng and Shi Mei and leave as soon as possible, without alarming the enemy. As for you…”
Chu Wanning paused. “Both times, he was after you. This time around, he planned to frame you with the hopes of isolating you from help. There’s no need for you to do anything further with regard to this matter; the sect leader will step in and take care of it.”
“What should I do, then?” Mo Ran asked. “It wouldn’t be right to make others take care of my mess while I sit on my hands and do nothing.”
“What are you trying to prove at this juncture? It’s obvious what that man is after. The tree spirit at Jincheng Lake fell, so he’s looking for a replacement. You are a spiritual essence of wood, suitable for his purposes, but if he can’t get to you, then he’ll go for the next best thing and look for some other substitute.” Chu Wanning paused again. “And once he finds that something, it will be another massacre. He must be stopped.”
“That’s not wrong, but Shizun, it’s not like spiritual essences are all that easy to find. If he wants to find a substitute, he’ll have to…” Mo Ran suddenly stopped talking and lifted his head. He stared at Chu Wanning for a while. “If that little bastard wants to find other spiritual essences, he’ll have to check sect by sect. Even so, cultivators don’t expose their spiritual roots for any old reason. They only do so when choosing a new weapon or a refinement crystal, in order to check their compatibility. So the simplest way to test for a spiritual essence would be to sell weapons and spiritual stones. Which means, if we keep watch on the weapon markets near the sects in the coming days, we’ll have a pretty good chance of sniffing the bastard out.”
After Mo Ran had said all this, he realized Chu Wanning was looking at him thoughtfully, and he couldn’t help but second-guess himself. “Uh…I guess?”
“It’s a good guess,” Chu Wanning said slowly. A moment later, he got the feeling that Mo Ran was a little too informed, and his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Mo Ran. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Wh-what could I possibly have to hide from Shizun?” Mo Ran said, but the hairs on his back stood on end, and he felt as if Chu Wanning’s eyes, clear as glass, were staring right through his reborn body and directly at the soul cowering within.
A moment passed in silence, and Chu Wanning thankfully didn’t press the subject. Lowering his eyelashes, he said, “Starting now, you will come with me to covertly investigate the major sects. For the time being, we will not be returning to Sisheng Peak.”