Editor: Sahloknir
At the same time, the pavilion in the sky…
Xu Shuangtze seemed to sense something. He closed his eyes and probed for a moment, then opened his eyes and looked out the door.
Everyone was frozen by Bai Xian’s move of severing his hand. Only Mu Duozhu, who was sitting one level below Xu Shuangtze’s, glanced from the corner of his eyes and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Xu Shuangtze made no response. But after a moment, he withdrew his gaze. At this time, Ying Kai looked at Bai Xian in surprise, and finally said with difficulty, “…You are not a human?”
Mechanical soldiers were made with soldier silk as their connective tissues and gold as their skeletal structure. These were encased by a body forged from steel, linked at the joints with screws and brass wedges. A mechanical soldier’s face didn’t need or have facial features and was therefore just a flat piece of polished bronze.
With a spiritual nucleus capable of detecting the five elements of yin and yang, all of a soldier’s actions were controlled by the Artefact Sect Master. In other words, it was a gold and steel golem whose combat power had been increased a thousand-fold.
Bai Xian clearly possessed intelligence, and from the exterior, he was also of real flesh and blood. How could he be a man-made entity?
“Yes.” Bai Xian said calmly, “Under my skin, everything is mechanical, and I am indeed not a living person.”
No wonder that when Du Kaixun was eighteen years old, he blasphemed the life-long learning of the previous two generations of Artefact Sect Masters. The mere presence of a mechanical soldier like Bai Xian did not need to compete in battle to turn the entire Changsun family upside down. The ability of Du Kaixun to craft such mechanical soldiers transcended time and was simply amazing!
Mu Duozhu said in amazement, “Chengfeng, how exactly did your brother…”
The Artefact Sect Master sat straight in his armchair. He was born with a casual and laid back temperament and did not seem to take anything seriously. Even when confronted with the interrogation by the great masters just now, he maintained his composure.
However, that was completely gone now. The light of the day could not reach his profoundly contoured side profile, it only cast shadows from the bridge of his nose and the corners of his lips and the faintest glint of cold light appeared in the corners of his eyes.
He lifted his head slightly, and spat out two words coldly, “Evil techniques.”
“…” Everyone didn’t know what to say for a while, and Ying Kai hesitated for a while. “So you sent Du Kaixun to the penal institution seventeen years ago, not because he bullied the disciple of the eldest grandson, but because he abused him— -a soldier made by himself? ”
Changsun Chengfeng added coldly, “Bai Xian is no different from a living person to me.”
—It made no difference to him.
The fact that the nameless cultivation partner of the renowned Artefact Sect Master, the head of one of the most prestigious families, turned out to be a mechanical soldier, was more than just a joke. It was bound to become a scandal that was to shake up the world.
“Are you really a mechanical soldier?” Only Xu Shuangtze asked.
Bai Hao humbly replied, “Yes.”
“But a soldier has no heart.”
Bai Xian answered, “Yes, mechanical soldiers don’t need internal organs, indeed I…”
After speaking, Xu Shuangtze stood up from his seat and disappeared from his position at once.
Ktf ktbif gbbw kjr rajgaifv, jcv lc atf cfza wbwfca, atf Jjcu Tjcu Vfma Zjrafg gfjqqfjgfv lc ogbca bo Djl Wljc. Ktf olnf olcufgr bo tlr ifoa tjcv, ktlmt fwjcjafv jc lms fcfgus rajyyfv abkjgvr atf sbecu wjc’r mtfra klatbea wfgms,
“Ktfc rfnfcaffc sfjgr jub, ktfc Ge Bjlzec wjvf sbe mea sbeg tfjga bea lc ogbca bo atf mbega, ktja kjr la atja sbe mea bea?”
Bai Xian’s pupils constricted, but it was too late for him to step back. The pressure which came from the impending doom of having his heart cut out, swept across.
But just at that moment the Artefact Sect Master stood up at once—qiang!
Bu Qi was half unsheathed and he abruptly blocked the hand that was stretched towards Bai Xian’s chest. Changsun Chengfeng stopped in front of Xu Shuangtze within an instant!
Ying Kai abruptly got up and hollered, “Shuangtze!”
Yuchi Rui and Mu Duozhu also stood up at the same time, and the atmosphere became tense.
“…”
The remaining hint of gentleness on Changsun Chengfeng’s face disappeared. The cold glint of Bu Qi‘s blade clearly reflected the ferocity within the depths of his pupils, like the razor sharp edges of rock appearing only after the tide had ebbed. Changsun Chengfeng articulated each word softly, “Lord Xu, everyone has a bottom line.”
Xu Shuangtze stared at him, narrowing his eyes slightly.
“…This junior did not intend to deliberately deceive anyone and seek Lord Xu’s forgiveness…”
Bai Xian’s hoarse voice sounded during the stalemate, and he took a half step back from Changsun Chengfeng, bowed down and said with difficulty, “This junior has a heart in his chest. This junior was not born like this. The second young master refined me from a living person.”
***
Squeak—
The door was pushed open, and Yuchi Xiao paused for a moment before taking a deep breath and crossing the threshold.
The bed curtains draped in layers and swayed like the glistening surface of still water, blocking one’s sight of the bed. Yuchi Xiao stood still and summoned the courage to say softly, “Xiang Xiaoyuan.”
There was no response from inside.
He must still be asleep, he thought.
The warm Qilin blood jade pendant was tightly pressed within his palm to the point where his finger bones were aching. Yuchi Xiao remembered the first time he saw the little Mei demon. The young man stood dully and hid behind the screens in the front hall of the Cang Yang Sect. With his bright eyes, the young man secretly spied at him with a timid and ignorant look within his pupils.
Those same eyes were reflected on the cold and biting blade of Gou Chen again, the corners of his brows and the tips of his eyes were smiling wryly. The young man appeared unconcerned that a blade was held at his throat and that it was bleeding from a nick. The contrast between his blood and his fair skin was startling.
This appearance was truly incomparable, to the point that it dazzled him.
—Are you really just a Mei demon?
The mere thought of it caused a numbness, bitterness and sweetness to emerge from the bottom of his heart, putting Yuchi Xiao in a slight trance.
“Yes, he must be.” He told himself in his heart.
“He must be a Mei demon from the legends.”
Yuchi Xiao closed his eyes and forced them open after a short while. He took a silk ribbon from his sleeves and carefully passed it through the blood jade pendant. He didn’t need to measure it to know what length would be just right for it to dangle from the youth’s waist. He fastened a knot before holding it tightly once again, as if gaining courage from the tingling and aching sensation from his grip.
Then, he finally reached out, his fingertips shaking imperceptibly as he lifted the bed curtain with force—
His movements stopped suddenly.
There was only the outer robe of the Cang Yang Sect Master on the bed, the sheets were messy and there was no one in sight.
“…Xiang Xiaoyuan?” Yuchi Xiao looked around, bewildered, and turned back suspiciously.
“Xiang Xiaoyuan?”
***
At the same moment, Gong Wei poked his head around the corner at the end of the corridor.
This golden ship was huge, even its pavilions on board were fully furnished. A small loft was built on the deck near the stern, with an entrance connected to the cabin. This place was called the Ice Pavilion, which was a morgue to store dead bodies.
At the entrance of that pavilion stood two disciples from the Medical Sect. They were standing straight like spears and looking directly ahead.
Gong Wei shook his head secretly and stretched out his hand. Pop! He snapped his fingers.
The two disciples didn’t even have time to react, and instantly their eyes turned dull and their entire bodies stiffened, staring straight ahead at nothing.
The medical disciples standing guard made no big difference to Gong Wei. He happily walked out of the corner of the corridor, and the two immobilised medical disciples seemingly turned a blind eye, allowing him to push open the gate of the Ice Pavilion and slip in leisurely.
The four walls and the floor of the morgue were lined with thousand-year-old ice blocks. Gong Wei had been here before when he sent in the corpses of demonic creatures to the ship. At that time, he had abundant spiritual energy circulating in his strong body and did not feel the cold at all. But now he shivered as soon as he entered.
A glowing pale-violet spell formation enveloped the ground floor of the pavilion’s rotunda, and where the light converged in the middle of the formation, hundreds of ice blocks were used to form an ice bed. A familiar figure lay quietly on the ice bed. He was naked except for a snow-white outer coat draped over him. A thread of blood-red light could be seen cutting across the middle of his collarbone, gurgling as if it were alive. The thread was connected to another ice block on a mist-shrouded steel plate.
That was the extracted soldier silk.
When ordinary people see their corpses from their previous life, they would definitely feel emotional and be more or less melancholic. Although Gong Wei couldn’t understand where his melancholy came from, in order to behave like his peers, he still symbolically closed his eyes and stood in respectful silence for a moment.
Then, he opened his eyes. Excited, he was about to turn the corpse over and extract his vertebrae, but then he stopped cautiously.
There were two purple-golden threads infused with spiritual power extending from both sides of the ice bed, tightly binding the corpse’s wrists, but it was extremely difficult to detect it under the burial clothes. As long as the corpse was moved, the silk thread would move along with it, directly warning Mu Duozhu’s primordial spirit.
Gong Wei didn’t expect Mu Duozhu to resort to this trick. He was stunned for a while. For a long time, he could not figure out how to untie the purple-golden thread without alarming Mu Duozhu. So, he withdrew his hand in frustration.
Is this a bad day for me again? So I cannot extract that thing from the spine?
He took half a step back but was unwilling to leave right away.
The radiant glow of the ice coffin illuminated the body and made the already transparent skin completely transparent, as if it were a human form carved out of a block of ice. The broken neck had been stitched up by the transparent purple-golden thread by the Medical Sect Master. If one didn’t look too closely, the head and neck seemed to have never been separated before.
Gong Wei looked up and down at the calm face of the corpse, and a hint of curiosity suddenly emerged in his heart.
It was said that Xu Shuangtze dismembered his corpse in Cang Yang Mountain, and the peach blossoms which were nourished by his blood bloomed throughout all seasons. When Lord Ying personally went to retrieve the body for burial, the Sword Sect’s Yuchi Rui and others who were waiting at the foot of the mountain all witnessed the damage to his body.
Subsequently, word spread across the lands that Xu Shuangtze vented his rage by dismembering the Lotus Immortal’s remains as an act of victory. It was just that no one had dared openly mention it to his face for many years.
Therefore, according to Gong Wei’s imagination, even if he hadn’t been dismembered, his corpse should have been ruined beyond recognition. However, during the short encounter at the Ding Xian Mausoleum, he found his corpse’s face was intact and there was no visible trauma on his body.
So what exactly did Xu Shuangtze dismember?
Gong Wei had always been a man who did not care much about life and death, let alone be interested in the afterlife. But for some reason, once this doubt had emerged, it lingered and afflicted him with an inexplicable discomfort.
Why was he having a hard time with this unexpected move by his arch-enemy?
He didn’t know either.
Gong Wei held his breath and looked back. There was no movement outside, and the two medical disciples guarding the door did not notice the slightest abnormality. He turned his head to face the corpse again, gulped, and finally reached out carefully to lift the corner of the burial coat.
—The corpse was stark naked and he could see every inch of the body at a glance.
The wound left by No Way Out on his chest had turned to a pale green and it was clean to the point of cruelty. Only the edges were flushed with a shade of ash grey and both flesh and blood had been solidified. In addition, the torso was intact, without any trace of being slashed.
“…”
Gong Wei put down the corner of the burial coat and felt suspicious. After standing still for a while, suddenly there was another excited buzzing within his heart, Did he cut off my hands and feet, and they were sewn back by Mu Duozhu before I was buried?
The more he thought about it, the more he believed in that possibility. Gong Wei couldn’t help but lift the burial coat again to check his hands and legs. Unexpectedly, there were no traces of lacerations and stitches on several larger joints. Then, he suddenly stopped when he looked over at the corpse’s arms.
The body was really damaged, and there were horrible pliers marks left on the left and right elbows, each facing opposite directions.
On his right arm was a clear and distinct palm mark, the elbow bone was slightly bent, as if it had been dislocated by an internal force during a struggle. Even when the joint was later popped back in place, the strong force of the assailant still left a slight bend in the bone.
The bones of the left arm were as good as new, with no sign of damage, and only five fingerprints seemed to have sunk deep into the flesh, leaving behind long scratches apparently from a forceful yanking.
Gong Wei’s eyes were fixated on the scratches, his pupils gradually dilated, and the noisy sounds back in the Linjiang City tavern rang in his ears. The old storyteller was reciting something downstairs, and Yuchi Xiao secretly lowered his voice, “…After the death of the Lotus Immortal, Lord Ying came from Dai Mountain on his sword, and rushed to the Xuanji Palace and fought Lord Xu in mid-air. Only then did he manage to snatch back the remains of Chief Gong from Lord Xu’s hands. But the body was already damaged…”
“Lord Xu was actually defeated? ”
“Defeated! Remember not to speak of this indiscriminately back at Cang Yang Sect!”
“…”
Xu Shuangtze lost to Ying Kai, and sixteen years soon flew past.
The five scratches on the corpse’s arms, however, remain sharp and gruesome, arcing from deep to shallow until they trailed off and disappeared as if someone had finally let go of another in a hopeless struggle.
Editor: Sahloknir
At the same time, the pavilion in the sky…
Xu Shuangtze seemed to sense something. He closed his eyes and probed for a moment, then opened his eyes and looked out the door.
Everyone was frozen by Bai Xian’s move of severing his hand. Only Mu Duozhu, who was sitting one level below Xu Shuangtze’s, glanced from the corner of his eyes and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Xu Shuangtze made no response. But after a moment, he withdrew his gaze. At this time, Ying Kai looked at Bai Xian in surprise, and finally said with difficulty, “…You are not a human?”
Mechanical soldiers were made with soldier silk as their connective tissues and gold as their skeletal structure. These were encased by a body forged from steel, linked at the joints with screws and brass wedges. A mechanical soldier’s face didn’t need or have facial features and was therefore just a flat piece of polished bronze.
With a spiritual nucleus capable of detecting the five elements of yin and yang, all of a soldier’s actions were controlled by the Artefact Sect Master. In other words, it was a gold and steel golem whose combat power had been increased a thousand-fold.
Bai Xian clearly possessed intelligence, and from the exterior, he was also of real flesh and blood. How could he be a man-made entity?
“Yes.” Bai Xian said calmly, “Under my skin, everything is mechanical, and I am indeed not a living person.”
No wonder that when Du Kaixun was eighteen years old, he blasphemed the life-long learning of the previous two generations of Artefact Sect Masters. The mere presence of a mechanical soldier like Bai Xian did not need to compete in battle to turn the entire Changsun family upside down. The ability of Du Kaixun to craft such mechanical soldiers transcended time and was simply amazing!
Mu Duozhu said in amazement, “Chengfeng, how exactly did your brother…”
The Artefact Sect Master sat straight in his armchair. He was born with a casual and laid back temperament and did not seem to take anything seriously. Even when confronted with the interrogation by the great masters just now, he maintained his composure.
However, that was completely gone now. The light of the day could not reach his profoundly contoured side profile, it only cast shadows from the bridge of his nose and the corners of his lips and the faintest glint of cold light appeared in the corners of his eyes.
He lifted his head slightly, and spat out two words coldly, “Evil techniques.”
“…” Everyone didn’t know what to say for a while, and Ying Kai hesitated for a while. “So you sent Du Kaixun to the penal institution seventeen years ago, not because he bullied the disciple of the eldest grandson, but because he abused him— -a soldier made by himself? ”
Changsun Chengfeng added coldly, “Bai Xian is no different from a living person to me.”
—It made no difference to him.
The fact that the nameless cultivation partner of the renowned Artefact Sect Master, the head of one of the most prestigious families, turned out to be a mechanical soldier, was more than just a joke. It was bound to become a scandal that was to shake up the world.
“Are you really a mechanical soldier?” Only Xu Shuangtze asked.
Bai Hao humbly replied, “Yes.”
“But a soldier has no heart.”
Bai Xian answered, “Yes, mechanical soldiers don’t need internal organs, indeed I…”
After speaking, Xu Shuangtze stood up from his seat and disappeared from his position at once.
Ktf ktbif gbbw kjr rajgaifv, jcv lc atf cfza wbwfca, atf Jjcu Tjcu Vfma Zjrafg gfjqqfjgfv lc ogbca bo Djl Wljc. Ktf olnf olcufgr bo tlr ifoa tjcv, ktlmt fwjcjafv jc lms fcfgus rajyyfv abkjgvr atf sbecu wjc’r mtfra klatbea wfgms,
“Ktfc rfnfcaffc sfjgr jub, ktfc Ge Bjlzec wjvf sbe mea sbeg tfjga bea lc ogbca bo atf mbega, ktja kjr la atja sbe mea bea?”
Bai Xian’s pupils constricted, but it was too late for him to step back. The pressure which came from the impending doom of having his heart cut out, swept across.
But just at that moment the Artefact Sect Master stood up at once—qiang!
Bu Qi was half unsheathed and he abruptly blocked the hand that was stretched towards Bai Xian’s chest. Changsun Chengfeng stopped in front of Xu Shuangtze within an instant!
Ying Kai abruptly got up and hollered, “Shuangtze!”
Yuchi Rui and Mu Duozhu also stood up at the same time, and the atmosphere became tense.
“…”
The remaining hint of gentleness on Changsun Chengfeng’s face disappeared. The cold glint of Bu Qi‘s blade clearly reflected the ferocity within the depths of his pupils, like the razor sharp edges of rock appearing only after the tide had ebbed. Changsun Chengfeng articulated each word softly, “Lord Xu, everyone has a bottom line.”
Xu Shuangtze stared at him, narrowing his eyes slightly.
“…This junior did not intend to deliberately deceive anyone and seek Lord Xu’s forgiveness…”
Bai Xian’s hoarse voice sounded during the stalemate, and he took a half step back from Changsun Chengfeng, bowed down and said with difficulty, “This junior has a heart in his chest. This junior was not born like this. The second young master refined me from a living person.”
***
Squeak—
The door was pushed open, and Yuchi Xiao paused for a moment before taking a deep breath and crossing the threshold.
The bed curtains draped in layers and swayed like the glistening surface of still water, blocking one’s sight of the bed. Yuchi Xiao stood still and summoned the courage to say softly, “Xiang Xiaoyuan.”
There was no response from inside.
He must still be asleep, he thought.
The warm Qilin blood jade pendant was tightly pressed within his palm to the point where his finger bones were aching. Yuchi Xiao remembered the first time he saw the little Mei demon. The young man stood dully and hid behind the screens in the front hall of the Cang Yang Sect. With his bright eyes, the young man secretly spied at him with a timid and ignorant look within his pupils.
Those same eyes were reflected on the cold and biting blade of Gou Chen again, the corners of his brows and the tips of his eyes were smiling wryly. The young man appeared unconcerned that a blade was held at his throat and that it was bleeding from a nick. The contrast between his blood and his fair skin was startling.
This appearance was truly incomparable, to the point that it dazzled him.
—Are you really just a Mei demon?
The mere thought of it caused a numbness, bitterness and sweetness to emerge from the bottom of his heart, putting Yuchi Xiao in a slight trance.
“Yes, he must be.” He told himself in his heart.
“He must be a Mei demon from the legends.”
Yuchi Xiao closed his eyes and forced them open after a short while. He took a silk ribbon from his sleeves and carefully passed it through the blood jade pendant. He didn’t need to measure it to know what length would be just right for it to dangle from the youth’s waist. He fastened a knot before holding it tightly once again, as if gaining courage from the tingling and aching sensation from his grip.
Then, he finally reached out, his fingertips shaking imperceptibly as he lifted the bed curtain with force—
His movements stopped suddenly.
There was only the outer robe of the Cang Yang Sect Master on the bed, the sheets were messy and there was no one in sight.
“…Xiang Xiaoyuan?” Yuchi Xiao looked around, bewildered, and turned back suspiciously.
“Xiang Xiaoyuan?”
***
At the same moment, Gong Wei poked his head around the corner at the end of the corridor.
This golden ship was huge, even its pavilions on board were fully furnished. A small loft was built on the deck near the stern, with an entrance connected to the cabin. This place was called the Ice Pavilion, which was a morgue to store dead bodies.
At the entrance of that pavilion stood two disciples from the Medical Sect. They were standing straight like spears and looking directly ahead.
Gong Wei shook his head secretly and stretched out his hand. Pop! He snapped his fingers.
The two disciples didn’t even have time to react, and instantly their eyes turned dull and their entire bodies stiffened, staring straight ahead at nothing.
The medical disciples standing guard made no big difference to Gong Wei. He happily walked out of the corner of the corridor, and the two immobilised medical disciples seemingly turned a blind eye, allowing him to push open the gate of the Ice Pavilion and slip in leisurely.
The four walls and the floor of the morgue were lined with thousand-year-old ice blocks. Gong Wei had been here before when he sent in the corpses of demonic creatures to the ship. At that time, he had abundant spiritual energy circulating in his strong body and did not feel the cold at all. But now he shivered as soon as he entered.
A glowing pale-violet spell formation enveloped the ground floor of the pavilion’s rotunda, and where the light converged in the middle of the formation, hundreds of ice blocks were used to form an ice bed. A familiar figure lay quietly on the ice bed. He was naked except for a snow-white outer coat draped over him. A thread of blood-red light could be seen cutting across the middle of his collarbone, gurgling as if it were alive. The thread was connected to another ice block on a mist-shrouded steel plate.
That was the extracted soldier silk.
When ordinary people see their corpses from their previous life, they would definitely feel emotional and be more or less melancholic. Although Gong Wei couldn’t understand where his melancholy came from, in order to behave like his peers, he still symbolically closed his eyes and stood in respectful silence for a moment.
Then, he opened his eyes. Excited, he was about to turn the corpse over and extract his vertebrae, but then he stopped cautiously.
There were two purple-golden threads infused with spiritual power extending from both sides of the ice bed, tightly binding the corpse’s wrists, but it was extremely difficult to detect it under the burial clothes. As long as the corpse was moved, the silk thread would move along with it, directly warning Mu Duozhu’s primordial spirit.
Gong Wei didn’t expect Mu Duozhu to resort to this trick. He was stunned for a while. For a long time, he could not figure out how to untie the purple-golden thread without alarming Mu Duozhu. So, he withdrew his hand in frustration.
Is this a bad day for me again? So I cannot extract that thing from the spine?
He took half a step back but was unwilling to leave right away.
The radiant glow of the ice coffin illuminated the body and made the already transparent skin completely transparent, as if it were a human form carved out of a block of ice. The broken neck had been stitched up by the transparent purple-golden thread by the Medical Sect Master. If one didn’t look too closely, the head and neck seemed to have never been separated before.
Gong Wei looked up and down at the calm face of the corpse, and a hint of curiosity suddenly emerged in his heart.
It was said that Xu Shuangtze dismembered his corpse in Cang Yang Mountain, and the peach blossoms which were nourished by his blood bloomed throughout all seasons. When Lord Ying personally went to retrieve the body for burial, the Sword Sect’s Yuchi Rui and others who were waiting at the foot of the mountain all witnessed the damage to his body.
Subsequently, word spread across the lands that Xu Shuangtze vented his rage by dismembering the Lotus Immortal’s remains as an act of victory. It was just that no one had dared openly mention it to his face for many years.
Therefore, according to Gong Wei’s imagination, even if he hadn’t been dismembered, his corpse should have been ruined beyond recognition. However, during the short encounter at the Ding Xian Mausoleum, he found his corpse’s face was intact and there was no visible trauma on his body.
So what exactly did Xu Shuangtze dismember?
Gong Wei had always been a man who did not care much about life and death, let alone be interested in the afterlife. But for some reason, once this doubt had emerged, it lingered and afflicted him with an inexplicable discomfort.
Why was he having a hard time with this unexpected move by his arch-enemy?
He didn’t know either.
Gong Wei held his breath and looked back. There was no movement outside, and the two medical disciples guarding the door did not notice the slightest abnormality. He turned his head to face the corpse again, gulped, and finally reached out carefully to lift the corner of the burial coat.
—The corpse was stark naked and he could see every inch of the body at a glance.
The wound left by No Way Out on his chest had turned to a pale green and it was clean to the point of cruelty. Only the edges were flushed with a shade of ash grey and both flesh and blood had been solidified. In addition, the torso was intact, without any trace of being slashed.
“…”
Gong Wei put down the corner of the burial coat and felt suspicious. After standing still for a while, suddenly there was another excited buzzing within his heart, Did he cut off my hands and feet, and they were sewn back by Mu Duozhu before I was buried?
The more he thought about it, the more he believed in that possibility. Gong Wei couldn’t help but lift the burial coat again to check his hands and legs. Unexpectedly, there were no traces of lacerations and stitches on several larger joints. Then, he suddenly stopped when he looked over at the corpse’s arms.
The body was really damaged, and there were horrible pliers marks left on the left and right elbows, each facing opposite directions.
On his right arm was a clear and distinct palm mark, the elbow bone was slightly bent, as if it had been dislocated by an internal force during a struggle. Even when the joint was later popped back in place, the strong force of the assailant still left a slight bend in the bone.
The bones of the left arm were as good as new, with no sign of damage, and only five fingerprints seemed to have sunk deep into the flesh, leaving behind long scratches apparently from a forceful yanking.
Gong Wei’s eyes were fixated on the scratches, his pupils gradually dilated, and the noisy sounds back in the Linjiang City tavern rang in his ears. The old storyteller was reciting something downstairs, and Yuchi Xiao secretly lowered his voice, “…After the death of the Lotus Immortal, Lord Ying came from Dai Mountain on his sword, and rushed to the Xuanji Palace and fought Lord Xu in mid-air. Only then did he manage to snatch back the remains of Chief Gong from Lord Xu’s hands. But the body was already damaged…”
“Lord Xu was actually defeated? ”
“Defeated! Remember not to speak of this indiscriminately back at Cang Yang Sect!”
“…”
Xu Shuangtze lost to Ying Kai, and sixteen years soon flew past.
The five scratches on the corpse’s arms, however, remain sharp and gruesome, arcing from deep to shallow until they trailed off and disappeared as if someone had finally let go of another in a hopeless struggle.
