Huangfu Jin gritted his teeth together and said angrily, “Damn! They dare to beat us down together. It seems that our lives are nothing in the eyes of Sect Master Ren. Ren Fuyao even ignored our friendship of being in the same sect. The support I gave him before was in vain.”
Leng Jixue sighed slightly.
With dozens of people, he came together to look for Ren Fuyao. Unexpectedly, they found Ren Fuyao, but those senior and junior brothers had already died in the Myriad Beasts Demonic Forest, and even he, himself was completely entangled as well.
Throughout this journey, he didn’t know whether Ren Bulin let them come to die on purpose, or if their luck was really bad.
Ji Yunwei patted his ass and stood up, “This Ren Fuyao is quite a tragic character ah.”
“Why do you say that?” Yuan Tianwen asked.
“When he was a child, his father and mother had already died from unknown causes when they were out traveling. Thus, Ren Fuyao was given to a good friend of his mother’s.” Ji Yunwei often dealt with Sky Peak Sect so he had a good understanding of some secret affairs of the main figures in the sect. He continued, “Later, Ren Fuyao was somehow found back by Sect Master Ren, and since then, his good days had come to an end.”
Duan Yuyang was a little puzzled, “Sect Master Ren is his family. He was brought back by a family member who was even the master of a sect. What’s wrong with that?”
Ji Yunwei shook his finger, “Young Master Duan, you don’t know anything about it. Although Young Sect Master Ren’s name holds considerable weight, how could it be compared to the freedom of traveling outside?”
Speaking of this, Ji Yunwei raised his brows toward Leng Jixue, “Gentleman Leng and Young Master Huangfu should have the most say in this point.”
Leng Jixue nodded, “I don’t know if he’s free or not. However, after Young Sect Master Ren came back, he rarely had any free time.”
“The Sect Master ignored all administrative matters. All the big and small matters of the sect are all decided by Young Sect Master alone.” Huangfu Jin was indifferent as he explained, “In this way, Young Sect Master Ren’s power is very large.”
“That’s not his own either.” Yan Tianhen said, “His power is given to him by Sect Master Ren. If Sect Master Ren wants to take it back one day, it’ll be easy. Why do I feel more and more that Young Sect Master Ren is a puppet who has been tied up?”
As soon as he said so, Leng Jixue and Huangfu Jin’s complexion’s slightly changed.
However, they couldn’t even take care of themselves. There’s a mess left behind that they have to handle, so they had no energy to care about other people’s affairs.
Lin Xuanzhi fixed his mindset and looked around. He asked Xiao Linfeng, “Hero Xiao, where are we?”
Xiao Linfeng replied with a sigh, “Maybe, he didn’t want to recall the past.”
Yan Tianhen asked, “Hero Xiao, how did you escape when you were here?”
Xiao Linfeng’s face looked unreadable as he stared at Yan Tianhen. “Little brother, I think it’s better if you didn’t know this kind of thing.”
Yan Tianhen touched his nose, “But if we don’t know, how can we go out of here?”
Xiao Linfeng answered with a smile, “We’ve already reached this point. Even if there’s no way out, we’ll always have to find one, not to mention…”
Having said that, he stopped.
Qing Zhu curiously asked, “Not to mention what? Don’t talk halfway.”
“Not to mention, we’re not one or two people, but eight with two tiger cubs.” Xiao Linfeng seemed to remember something as he mentioned, “You will never be driven crazy.”
Listening to this, it felt a little strange.
Lin Xuanzhi held the fire torch and looked at the mountain’s wall. It was very ordinary, with smooth moss vegetation and a lot of gravel on the ground.
Lin Xuanzhi tried to touch the mountain with his hand, only to find it very slippery, with no grips that he could hold onto.
After a while, Lin Xuanzhi saw a protruding rock with stains similar to dried blood. He paused and raised his hand to touch it, making sure it was indeed blood.
“Have there been people here besides you?” Lin Xuanzhi asked.
Xiao Linfeng came over and looked at the eye-catching brown stone. His expression changed a few times and he sighed, “If a person is trapped here for a long time, they will go crazy.”
Lin Xuanzhi’s eyes did not lift. “When did you fall down?”
Xiao Linfeng said, “How can I remember this?”
“I mean, you didn’t come down until a few years later after Liu Mengchen right?”
Xiao Linfeng stilled and gasped, “Young Master Lin, you really are a little scary.”
Turns out that his guess was indeed correct.
Lin Xuanzhi narrowed his eyes, “I guess you didn’t come down of your own initiative.”
“Since you guessed it, I won’t hide it.” Xiao Linfeng nodded and said with emotion, “Yes, I was sucked down by a strange force that day. At that time, Liu Mengchen had almost gone crazy.”
“How could he be crazy?” Qing Zhu asked in consternation.
Xiao Linfeng was in a complicated mood as he answered, “Didn’t I tell you before? It’s very mentally trying here. If a person was trapped here, he couldn’t get up to the sky, and there was a devil under him. If you opened your eyes, it would still be dark. There is no sound nor light. You wouldn’t know when you can leave. Sooner or later, you’d go crazy from it. When I came down, Liu Mengchen had been here for fifty years.”
“Fifty years!?” They gasped at the same time.
The number of years was too terrible. It was quite different from the fifteen years Liu Mengchen mentioned before.
Xiao Linfeng heaved a heavy breath, “He was sometimes good and sometimes bad. When he was crazy, he’d hit his head on the wall. This blood is from Liu Mengchen himself. When he was all right, he’d look like a good young master. Although his clothes were worn out, he still sat cross-legged and was very proper.”
Qing Zhu seemed to be a little moved. He secretly glanced at the vast reddish-brown area and curled his mouth.
Lin Xuanzhi concluded, “You and him must have sacrificed a person after all.”
Xiao Linfeng caught a glimpse of Lin Xuan and nodded, saying, “We’d been trapped together for more than ten years. I didn’t know if the devil sealed here really existed or if it was just Liu Mengchen’s imagination. He always talked to an invisible devil, but I couldn’t hear the devil’s voice at all. But after ten years, Liu Mengchen told him that there was a small core of the array in the center of this land. As long as one of them drained the blood from his body, he could temporarily open the barrier and let the other escape.”
Qing Zhu couldn’t help but clench his fist, and his heart was beating faster for a few minutes. Judging by the current situation, Liu Mengchen owed Xiao Linfeng his life!
Xiao Linfeng looked at Qing Zhu’s tense appearance and couldn’t help but laugh, easing the atmosphere. “At that time, Liu Mengchen did have the idea of killing me and running away on his own. Such an idea had already existed since the first time he saw me because, at that point, he already knew how to escape. But in the next ten years, he never laid his hands on me and was of good character. In the end, he really couldn’t stand the loneliness below, so he told me after thinking about it.”
Xiao Linfeng fell into the memory and sighed, “But he didn’t let me kill myself. He wanted me to kill him instead.”
Liu Mengchen was too lonely.
When he fell into this place, he was still a teenager with an immature mind, and for the next fifty years, no one paid any attention to him.
On this cliff, where was there a beautiful shining nebula hovering overhead? It was total darkness without any light.
Nothing could be seen; there was no light or sound. In this environment, Liu Mengchen never committed suicide — his mind was firm enough.
Before he realized it, the rim of Qing Zhu’s eyes had gone red. He felt that Liu Mengchen was really too pitiful. Although he was not a human being before, only drinking dew in the same place, but he could bask in the sun every day and hear the sound of all things growing. He had many friends swaying together with him, but Liu Mengchen turned out to be in such a dark place, having been ignored for fifty years.
He couldn’t help but feel annoyed. What did those Liu family members do at the crucial time? Their young master was missing but not one came to look for him!
Poor thing.
Qing Zhu suddenly felt that Liu Mengchen wasn’t so annoying.
Bei Shitian suddenly said, “So, after that, you died, and he lived?”
Xiao Linfeng nodded, “That’s right. Because back then, I thought that even if my blood ran out, I still wouldn’t die. My true form is bamboo, so I had no human blood, to begin with. As long as I take root in a place full of spiritual Qi, I could still recover. It’d just take a little longer.”
“You’re lying!” Qing Zhu was in a terrible mood and accused Xiao Linfeng, “Although we are the spirits of grass and trees, the blood of the human body is our juice. After running out, we will become dry and die. We can’t be saved at all!”
Xiao Linfeng laughed and there was no embarrassment at his lie being uncovered, “So, you, who is also a plant spirit, could see through my lie at a glance. However, Liu Mengchen, as a human being, naturally didn’t know whether what I said was true or not. So later, I died and he lived. At that time, he and I actually ran out of the seal together. But I was already dying, so I thought of going back to the place where I grew up and take a look at the little Inquiring Immortal Spirit Grasses near my home. Liu Mengchen was following me as I passed all of my skills to you. It was also then that Liu Mengchen knew where the Inquiring Immortal Spirit Grasses grew, and the first time he saw you.”
Qing Zhu had already burst into tears. He looked at Xiao Linfeng, and his hands trembled slightly. “It turns out that you are the purple bamboo elder brother who passed all his skills to me. I wondered why Liu Mengchen always said that I owe you karma. So… that’s it!”
He really did owe him a lot. Even though Xiao Linfeng volunteered to do it at the beginning, this kind of karma would always be branded.
Inquiring Immortals Spirit Grass was a kind of herb that was extremely difficult to transform into a human. None of the Inquiring Immortals Spirit Grass in the whole of Myriad Beasts Demonic Forest had ever gained a spirit since the forest’s existence.
If Qing Zhu had not been taken care of by Xiao Linfeng and absorbed all of his cultivation methods, it would have been impossible to obtain sentience in just a few hundred years and even take human form.
Xiao Linfeng gave him life. He only gave Xiao Linfeng his spiritual core, which was nothing at all.
Xiao Linfeng also had some redness in his eyes. He rubbed Qing Zhu’s head and said with a smile, “I took care of you at that time, but at first it was because your color was very similar to mine. Seeing you is like seeing my own brother. Later, I found that every time I talked to you and fed you, you seemed to enjoy rubbing my palm with your head and I liked you more. Before I died, I also remembered the only brother in my family; I was afraid that you would be bullied in the future, so I gave you all of my cultivation, but I didn’t expect that after a few years, Mengchen would be with you and have such fate. Although sometimes, you will think that this is a doomed love since it is Liu Mengchen that deceived you and calculated against you. But the root of everything is on me, all because of me. If you have to hate someone, then you should hate me.”