Chapter 63: Greed and Hatred, Mistakenly Entering the Tianji Bureau
Dusk fell upon the Sword Tomb Valley. Lu Qingyang stepped on the rusty sword remnants, making his way to the bottom of the valley. The broken sword spirit remnants crushed under his boots let out faint whimpers.
Three qiankun bags hung from his waist—he had taken the storage Magical Artifacts from the Tianji Pavilion Disciples during the chaos, and now the clinking of Spirit Stones inside the bags was more pleasant than the fierce wind in the valley.
“Fellow Daoist, please stop.”
A female cultivator in purple robes gracefully emerged from a pile of broken swords. The star-patterned stone adorning her hair ornament shimmered, revealing the embroidered Bagua formation on her sleeve.
Lu Qingyang noticed the “Tianji” jade token hanging from her waist and touched his tongue to his upper palate: “Fairy, are you perhaps trying to reclaim these tattered bags?” He shook the stolen goods in his hand, intentionally letting the bag opening loosen by half an inch, revealing half a piece of thousand-year-old cold jade marrow.
A strange glint flashed in the female cultivator’s eyes. With a flick of her wide sleeve, twelve copper coins fell to the ground, forming a formation: “This item clashes with your fate, Fellow Daoist. How about…”
“How about Mr. Lu helps you avert disaster?” Lu Qingyang stepped on a copper coin that had rolled to his feet. The qingmu spirit pearl in his Dantian trembled slightly.
Suddenly, a sword cry pierced the air from the bottom of the valley. Seven broken swords, drawn by the spirit pearl, floated into a formation, their points aimed directly at the female cultivator’s vital spot. “Tianji Pavilion’s divination technique, did it predict that tonight you would lose wealth and shed blood?”
Before he finished speaking, a chilling wind suddenly rose in the valley.
The hairs on the back of Lu Qingyang’s neck stood on end. He instinctively threw the cold jade marrow towards the northwest Xun position.
The jade marrow struck an invisible barrier and shattered into dust. In the ice crystals, an old man with a youthful face and white hair appeared, his bronze abacus clattering loudly: “Little friend, what a sharp eye you have, to recognize this old man’s Six Harmonies Spirit Confinement Formation.”
“Senior’s foot odor can wake up sword spirits from three li away.” Lu Qingyang scoffed, but cold sweat had already seeped into his palms.
The abacus beads floating from the old man’s sleeve transformed into twelve golden-armored warriors, each step shaking the sword remnants in the valley.
He reached for one of the qiankun bags at his waist but felt a sticky sensation—the jade bottle he had pilfered earlier actually contained a red Devouring Spirit Gu.
The moment the golden-armored warrior’s giant palm struck, Lu Qingyang crushed the jade bottle and flung the Gu worm at the old man.
The Devouring Spirit Gu grew rapidly upon encountering the wind, and when its mouthparts opened, it emitted a piercing shriek like a baby crying.
The old man’s expression changed drastically. The broken string of abacus beads condensed into the Big Dipper in the air: “Tian Shu, Greedy Wolf, suppress!”
Starlight poured down like a waterfall. Lu Qingyang took the opportunity to crash into a crack in the rock wall.
The qingmu spirit pearl frantically drew in the essence of plants and trees within a ten-zhang radius, forming a tortoise shell-patterned protective spiritual light on his back.
The moment the Devouring Spirit Gu was pierced by the starlight, he heard the female cultivator’s shrill scream—the beast, in its dying struggle, had plunged half its body into her Dantian.
“Lu! Qing! Yang!” The old man roared, crushing his 본명 abacus. Seven ancient copper coins transformed into Dragon Imprisoning Nails and attacked.
Lu Qingyang pulled out three crumpled substitute talismans, but the illusory figures they conjured as they burned were nailed to the rock wall. The Karma threads entanglement around the tails of the nails pursued his true body like venomous snakes.
At this critical moment, the Sword Tomb at the bottom of the valley suddenly trembled.
Countless broken swords soared into the air, forming a partial diagram of the Immortal Slaying Sword Formation under the guidance of the qingmu spirit pearl.
Lu Qingyang bit his tongue and spat out a mouthful of vital blood. The blood mist revealed half a page of sword art he had secretly memorized from the Taiyi Pavilion’s Scripture Pavilion: “Slaying to stop slaying, Greedy Wolf Devours the Moon!”
Sword Qi raged for three thousand li, and the protective heart mirror the old man had conjured shattered into eight pieces.
However, Lu Qingyang felt his Meridians being gnawed by ten thousand ants—forcibly activating Sword Intent beyond the Early Stage of Golden Core nearly shattered his Dantian.
He staggered and picked up the star-patterned stone the female cultivator had dropped. When his fingertips touched the trigrams on the stone surface, a complete view of the Sword Tomb Valley suddenly appeared in his mind. An ancient seal script on a rock carving in a certain spot perfectly matched the rust on the spirit pearl.
The old man, coughing up blood, formed a hand seal, but the Bagua formation appearing on the ground suddenly reversed.
Lu Qingyang had a sudden flash of insight and pressed the star-patterned stone onto the Xun position, the Gate of Life: “Tianji Pavilion calculates all heavenly secrets, but did it calculate its own Ancestral Master’s valley-suppressing inscription?”
The rock carving split open in response, revealing the last prophecy in the inscription, erased by Sword Qi: Greed, hatred, ignorance, arrogance, doubt, the five poisons bury heavenly secrets.
The Sword Intent in the valley suddenly increased tenfold, and the old man’s protective spiritual light melted like spring snow.
Lu Qingyang took the opportunity to dart towards the secret passage behind the inscription. The qiankun bag in his arms suddenly fell to the ground, and the scattered Spirit Stones automatically arranged themselves into the River Luo Numerology.
His pupils constricted as he remembered Tianji Pavilion’s most insidious “Luck Locking Art.” These stolen goods had long been imbued with a tracking secret method.
The sound of flowing water came from the end of the secret passage, but Lu Qingyang froze in place.
The qingmu spirit pearl gave a frantic warning. When his Divine Sense swept over his body, he discovered that every Spirit Stone had grown flesh-like blood threads, which were climbing up his pant legs towards his heart Meridians.
He gritted his teeth and shattered all his clothes. As he leaped naked into the underground river, he heard the old man’s deranged laughter behind him: “Having incurred the Karma of Tianji Pavilion, there is no place for you in the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths…”
The river water suddenly boiled. The moment Lu Qingyang sank to the bottom, he glimpsed that the riverbed, covered with sword remnants, formed a giant trigram.
The hourglass illusion within the spirit pearl space suddenly solidified, and the flow of time outside slowed a hundredfold.
He endured the severe pain in his Meridians and circulated the “Azure Emperor’s Eternal Life Art.” The withered plant illusion in his Dantian regrew sprouts, and each leaf was branded with the half-style of Sword Intent he had just learned by stealth.
When the footsteps of his pursuers approached the underground river, Lu Qingyang emerged from the water, his body already clad in a green robe woven from vines.
With a flick of his finger, the remnant body of the Devouring Spirit Gu on the bank turned to dust. The essence blood floating from the ashes was inhaled into his nostrils: “Senior’s generous gift, Mr. Lu cannot decline.”
The old man, leaning on a broken sword, coughed up blood, watching helplessly as Lu Qingyang stepped on the trigrams and disappeared into the mist.
Tianji Pavilion’s century-long plan backfired due to the poison of greed and hatred, and the Sword Tomb Valley’s inscription was shattered. Yet, that long laugh, imbued with Sword Intent, still echoed in the valley: “Tell Ye Wuchen that the hidden chess piece he buried in the Azure Profound Sect, Mr. Lu will pull it out tonight!”
