I Have a Sword That Can Sever the Celestial River
“What a brilliant idea. Just like me!”
The owner of this diary in the underground palace—Shu Fu had no idea what to call him. But in honor of that memorable line, she decided to address him as “Brother Worthy,” or “Worthy” for short.
After hearing only a few scattered remarks, she understood that Brother Worthy was a straightforward young man with a one-track mind. His actions were three steps ahead of his thoughts, and his mental processes ran along a perfectly straight six-lane highway, with none of those winding twists and turns. In his eyes, debts had to be repaid and murderers had to pay with their lives. Such things were only right and proper—and anything right and proper was a “good deed.”
His goal was to do good deeds.
All in all, Brother Worthy’s writing skills left much to be desired. His story lurched from one subject to another, his command of language was mediocre, and his writing was saturated with personal emotion. Every so often, he had to drag Lord Yinglong out and curse him a few times, seriously affecting the reading experience.
Even so, from his fragmentary records, Shu Fu was able to draw upon the excellent reading-comprehension skills she had developed in her previous life and piece together the cause and effect surrounding the Flower Children.
There was nothing new under the sun. From the tale recounted by the descendant of the Azure Phoenix beside that desolate, bleak Dragon God Temple, she had already vaguely guessed the truth behind the tragedy of that year.
Just as she had suspected, Yao and Wei had suffered a devastating drought a thousand years ago. Corpses littered the land, and the desperate common people, unable to appeal to Heaven or Earth, had nowhere to vent their despair and resentment.
In the end, their eyes fell upon two children whose seven apertures had yet to open.
Those who are not of our kind must have different hearts.
But conversely, were those unlike us truly members of “our kind”?
Taking sides with one’s own and persecuting outsiders had existed since ancient times.
They needed a reason.
They needed an enemy.
In the face of disaster and misfortune, they needed a scapegoat.
So, after several heated disputes, everyone decided to drive out the two children—“reincarnated demonic cultivators”—and throw them into a demonic cultivator’s lair, firmly believing that doing so would buy them peace.
Or perhaps, given the circumstances at the time, no matter how absurd or even cruel a course of action might be, as long as it appeared to offer a way out, they had no choice but to believe in it.
Shu Fu had no intention of judging their choice. She knew that, from childhood to adulthood, she had never truly gone hungry for even a single day.
The terror of famine and the madness of exchanging children to eat were distant, unreal legends to her.
As a staunch successor to socialism, she naturally believed that “driving out demons” and “sacrifice” were utterly absurd and backward practices. But now that she was caught up in this situation herself, it would seem rather arrogant to stand apart and pass judgment from the perspective of modern values.
The affairs of the cultivation world ought to be settled in the manner of the cultivation world.
The “Worthy” who had left behind this diary had clearly intended to bring this tragedy to an end.
But he had arrived too late. By the time he entered the underground palace, the two children who had been thrown inside had already breathed their last.
So he fulfilled his promise. He gathered the children’s bones, set up an array to prevent mortals from accidentally entering the demonic lair, and then entered the cities of Yao and Wei alone with his sword. He slaughtered the thirty-six ringleaders and hung their heads from the city gates, leaving everyone trembling with fear.
Under his “coercion,” the ancestors of Yao and Wei had then nervously agreed to build a shrine for the Hua brothers and repent their sins.
Perhaps that would somewhat appease the wrath of the wronged souls.
“…That is how the Flower Children Temple came to be. But things did not go as planned. The vengeful ghost still appeared—and it was extraordinarily powerful.”
At this point, Shu Fu could not help raising a hand to press against her brow. With a hint of icy anger, she said slowly, word by word, “I think I probably know why.”
Because it had been altered.
The ancestors of Yao and Wei had paid lip service while secretly going against the agreement. After the great cultivator left, they quietly replaced the Hua family shrine’s signboard with one reading “Flower Children Temple.” Then, through carefully selected wording and historical embellishment, they wove a false legend about the Flower Children repaying their hometown’s former cruelty with kindness and benevolence.
The temple was meant to be a place where later generations would worship them, rather than one where they would reflect upon their own guilt and shame.
The great cultivator traveled throughout the world. He might pass through the city gates three times without entering, see only that the Flower Children Temple was flourishing and crowded with worshipers, and never bother to distinguish the subtle difference.
In the end, the ancestors of Yao and Wei had still been unwilling to make their wrongdoing known to the world and pass it down to future generations. Instead, they had clung to a sly, almost cunning hope: that they could deceive the righteous hero who had intervened on their behalf, deceive the innocent souls who had died unjustly—
deceive their own consciences, and deceive Heaven and Earth.
“No matter how carefully they plotted, they could never escape the consequences of their karma.”
Jiang Xuesheng’s cool, indifferent voice echoed through the dark, endless tunnel like drifting ice.
“It is only a pity that the consequences ultimately fell upon ignorant descendants who knew nothing of the past.”
Shu Fu thought back to those children.
Imprisoned inside the Flower Children statues, surrounded by the noisy darkness, inching toward death one second at a time.
They were exactly like the “Flower Children” of a thousand years ago, who had slowly died after being corrupted by demonic energy in that lightless underground palace.
The irony was that, through the Yao and Wei ancestors’ deliberate whitewashing, a lie repeated a thousand times had been treated by later generations as an immutable truth. Passed down and transformed over the centuries, it had even become the city-wide celebration known as the Flower Festival.
The fated flowers discovered by the two children back then had also become prizes for which cultivators competed.
The same spring wind brings two different fates: the southern branch turns toward warmth, while the northern branch remains cold.
In the desolate underworld, bones melt into the mud; beneath the splendor of the human world, flowers cover the heavens.
With such a stark and powerful contrast, how could their hatred possibly be dispelled or the dead appeased?
After a thousand years, the vengeful ghost had finally reached full maturity.
And it was during this period that Ling Fengqing discovered the gradually forming ghost. He then fanned the flames, turning it into a tool for realizing his own ambitions.
Calling him a scumbag would only provoke more than half the scumbags in the world to rise up in protest, claiming that such a description was a grave insult to their entire profession.
…
Just as Liu Ruyi finished reading the diary, Shu Fu and the others, guided by Jiang Xuesheng, successfully made their way through the perilous arrays in the underground palace.
For some reason, the moment Jiang Xuesheng stepped into the array, he moved through it as casually as if he were strolling around his own home. He was like a traveler returning after years away, pushing open the wooden door of his cottage on a snowy night after a long journey, carrying an air of serenity and elegance.
Shu Fu watched him but did not question him aloud. She merely made another silent note in the notebook in her mind titled How Many Secrets Does My Master Have?
For the record, the various obstacles placed within the array were not deadly, but they were truly maddening.
Not only maddening—some of them were downright ball-crushing.
Along the way, Shu Fu sometimes had to spin in place more than thirty times. Sometimes she had to repeatedly hop from side to side to avoid traps. Sometimes she had to crouch down with her arms over her head to dodge a giant hammer descending from above.
Worse still, at times chunks of earth rained down from the ceiling like droplets of water. One misplaced step would send her sinking into a pool of mud. The walls on either side would suddenly slam together. Even Shu Fu, whose figure was slender, had to suck in her stomach and hold her breath as hard as she could to squeeze through.
Most infuriating of all, as she struggled forward, she could hear Liu Ruyi loudly reading aloud:
“I’d originally intended to set up a simple formation, but the moment I thought of Lord Yinglong, I got so irritated that I couldn’t help using all the tricks he usually employs to torment me.”
“Don’t be fooled by how respectable he looks on the surface. Behind closed doors, he has a terrible temper. Every time I cause trouble, he can scold me for three whole days without repeating himself—and beat me in three hundred different ways…”
“…”
By the time they reached the formation’s core—the stone chamber where Liu Ruyi was—everyone except Jiang Xuesheng was covered in dust and disheveled. Even the sleek, glossy sable had its fur standing on end, as though they had just passed through a sandstorm.
Liu Ruyi looked somewhat better than the others, but even his normally immaculate hair had several unruly strands sticking up at odd angles, resembling a crude bird’s nest.
“My goodness, it’s finally over.”
Shu Fu cast a cleaning spell on herself and hastily tied her loose hair back before stepping forward to ask, “Senior Brother, are you all right?”
“Of course. I was merely caught off guard at first and lost a little fur.”
A smile played at the corners of Liu Ruyi’s lips, but his eyes—tinged with a hidden grievance—shifted toward Jiang Xuesheng.
“Sir, what do you intend to do now? The diary makes everything perfectly clear; the truth has come to light. There’s no point staying at this crime scene any longer.”
The sable exclaimed in delight, “Then let’s find a way out already! Ninglu could come after us at any moment. We have to get out of here!”
The very next second, however, Jiang Xuesheng neatly bent him into the shape of a “C” and stuffed his fluffy tail into his own mouth.
The sable: “Mmph! Mmph-mmph-mmph!!!”
“Fu’er, what do you think?”
Holding the sable—now bent into a closed loop—in one hand, Jiang Xuesheng turned back to Shu Fu. His gaze was as clear and focused as ice and snow.
“Breaking the formation would be effortless for me, but you were the one who decided to interfere in this matter. You should be the one to decide what happens in the end.”
“…”
Shu Fu raised the lantern in her hand and surveyed the stone chamber.
She knew this was the answer she had been searching for all along.
This was the end of the Hua brothers—and the beginning of the Flower Children.
The countless tiny, mottled bloody handprints she had once seen on the statue of the Flower Children covered nearly every wall within her sight.
Every dried smear of blood, every weathered scratch, was a recording of the cries from a thousand years ago.
—I want to get out.
—I want to get out.
—Let me out!
Shu Fu placed her palm over those silent recordings. In her heart, she had already made her answer.
“I’m going to open this underground palace.”
Her voice was decisive.
“I’m going to bring everything inside back into the sunlight.”
The past could not be undone.
But at the very least, she could not allow the perpetrators to whitewash their crimes.
Whether they were withered bones or rotting sludge, she would drag everything up from the darkness below and expose it openly beneath the sun.
That was where so-called “new life” ought to begin as well.
“…”
Shu Fu looked up at the ceiling, which admitted not even a sliver of light. She knew they had already gone deep into the heart of the mountain, at least several hundred meters beneath the surface.
“Sir, lend me your strength.”
She offered no explanation, and Jiang Xuesheng asked no questions.
He merely leaned forward and silently, gently wrapped his arms around her from behind, his chin coming to rest against her slightly disheveled hair.
He said, “All right.”
In an instant, Shu Fu felt a vast and surging spiritual power pour into her limbs and meridians like a rising tide, gathering in her right hand, the one gripping her sword.
“W-Wait a moment!”
The sable finally managed to spit out his tail and shrieked in panic, “Are you two insane?! You’re inside a mountain—the middle of a mountain! How are you planning to open the underground palace?!”
Before he had even finished speaking, Ye Shusheng picked him up and pressed him against his rock-hard chest muscles, tucking him inside a protective aura that was even harder than his chest.
“Don’t worry. Nothing will happen.”
The sable: “…”
Oh no. Why did this sudden feeling of attraction come over him? .jpg
“Yes, don’t worry. I’m not acting on a whim, nor am I simply carried away by youthful enthusiasm. I’m long past that age.”
Shu Fu turned her head and gave him a mischievous wink before flashing a brilliant smile.
Her eyes remained as clear and bright as ever, like the first star to light up the sky in the deepest darkness before dawn.
“Before we entered the tunnel, I sent another signal to City Lord Wei. Judging by the time, they should be here soon.”
“Demon Lord Ninglu thinks she has us trapped, not realizing that she’s the one who’s walked into the snare. Let me sound the opening note of this campaign to exterminate the demons.”
“Of course—for Ninglu, I’m probably more of a suona player.”
Then Shu Fu cast aside every distracting thought and circulated her spiritual power to its absolute limit. Together with the power Jiang Xuesheng had “transferred” to her, she poured it all into the incessantly humming Guhuang Sword.
With a sword in her heart, she advanced without fear.
At the very end, she noticed two flowers carved out of broken stones in an inconspicuous corner of the chamber, at the end of a trail of tangled, winding bloodstains.
—I will take you all outside.
She said it silently in her heart.
The next instant, surging sword energy erupted like a monstrous wave, instantly engulfing the entire dark stone chamber.
…
At the same time, Wei Zhi was leading a group toward the barren mountain when she heard a deep rumbling. The trees shook wildly on all sides, and startled birds burst into flight.
Before she had time to prepare herself, a fierce sword beam shot into the sky from the valley opposite them. It was like a river of stars turned upside down, piercing the vast and boundless night sky, with the might to split mountains and sunder seas and the power to sever the celestial river itself.
—No, it wasn’t merely “like” that.
That sword had truly cleaved a fissure through the solid mountain, sweeping away trees, earth, and stone alike and allowing the scattered starlight to shine into the underground palace that had been hidden within the mountain’s depths.
“That’s… Shu Fu’s sword?”
Wei Zhi halted abruptly, muttering in astonishment, “No, this isn’t the sword energy of a Foundation Establishment cultivator. Did Immortal Jiang help her? But he’s only a fragment of his spirit, and his cultivation is probably not even at the Nascent Soul stage. The force behind this strike is far too astonishing. Just as Mother said, Immortal Jiang’s identity is extraordinary. He’s no ordinary cultivator…”
But the situation left her no time to think it through.
With the cavern breached and its entrance thrown wide open, the subordinates of Demon Lord Ninglu instantly fell into disarray and surged out in a panicked swarm. Wei Zhi made a decisive call. At her command, the cultivators of Wei City surrounded them in orderly formation from three directions, pinning the enemy in the mountain hollow and beating them senseless.
Old grudges and new hatred made them especially vicious.
The first clash between Wei City and the demonic cultivators—and likewise the first full-scale battle between Shu Fu and Ling Fengqing—had begun.
—Though, to be fair, it was more or less a one-sided massacre.
