***
Having had his most vulnerable spot seized by Wu Guanyue, Bai Yunsheng had successfully transformed from an arrogant young master of a prestigious clan into a mentally fragile, perpetually irritable jinx...
But really, who else could he blame?
If he hadn't provoked Chu Yingfeng that day for no reason, perhaps his clothes would still have been intact...
If he hadn't listened to She Wenjie's malicious advice, perhaps he never would have thought of opposing Wu Guanyue... Wait. Come to think of it, what the other man had said wasn't exactly malicious advice...
Bai Yunsheng: “…………”
But Bai Yunsheng couldn't care less! It was all that idiot She Wenjie's fault!
After handing over every last coin he had—having lost both his wife and his soldiers—he angrily made his way back to Verdant Cloud Grotto-Heaven. As fate would have it, he happened to encounter a disciple of the She clan of Mount Mei on the road: Master Chongxu, the personal disciple of the Verdant Cloud Adept.
...Who was also She Wenjie's elder brother.
At the time, Master Chongxu was dressed in immaculate white. A plain veil covered his eyes, ensuring that no one could ever see his expression.
Master Chongxu had been born with an illness. His skin was so pale that it was nearly translucent, and the crisscrossing blue-violet veins beneath it were plainly visible to everyone. He looked less like a living person than a moving jade statue covered in scars.
Hearing the disturbance, Master Chongxu first tilted his head to listen, then slowly turned around and smiled.
“Martial Uncle Bai.”
Bai Yunsheng and Master Chongxu were around the same age, both over a hundred years old, but Bai Yunsheng's seniority was twice that of Master Chongxu's. Whenever he faced Bai Yunsheng, Master Chongxu was always humble without losing his respect.
But when Bai Yunsheng looked at him, nothing about the man's face seemed right to him—not his nose, not his eyes... Especially when he remembered that it had been this man's younger brother who had lured him to Wu Guanyue, Bai Yunsheng found him utterly loathsome.
Bai Yunsheng asked coldly, “Nephew Chongxu, what are you doing here?”
“The final round of the Lotus Grand Tournament is about to begin. I came to check whether anything had been overlooked.”
Bai Yunsheng gave a derisive snort. “You have time to worry about the Lotus Grand Tournament, but none to worry about your good-for-nothing brother? Tell me, why did your brother come to blows with my junior martial brother?”
Master Chongxu's expression did not change in the slightest. He answered just as calmly as before, “My master has already reached a conclusion regarding this matter. This junior would not dare speculate. If Martial Uncle Bai still has doubts, I would be happy to accompany you and report the matter to the Adept, so that he might reconsider it. What do you say?”
Bai Yunsheng: “…………”
Although Bai Yunsheng and the Verdant Cloud Adept were fellow disciples, they had not shared the same master. Moreover, there was a considerable difference in their ages. By the time Bai Yunsheng joined the sect, the Verdant Cloud Adept had already been the head of Mount Mei for many years.
Put plainly, they were not close, and there was a vast gulf between their positions...
Bai Yunsheng stalked off with an angry flick of his sleeve, having suffered yet another wave of aggravation on a day that seemed determined to torment him.
Master Chongxu remained where he was, facing the direction in which Bai Yunsheng had departed. The plain veil at his temples was lifted by the wind, looking almost like two strands of silver hair.
After a long while, a thin trickle of blood slipped from the corner of his mouth, a brilliant red line drawn across his pallid face.
He expressionlessly wiped it away.
Master Chongxu had an incompetent younger brother who was forever causing him trouble... But if that had been all, it would not have been enough to make him cough blood.
His meridians... were in disarray.
The personal disciple of the Verdant Cloud Adept, a scion of the She clan of Mount Mei, was actually someone with disordered meridians. Only a person in such a condition would suffer surging blood and reversed qi circulation whenever his emotions fluctuated too greatly.
But that was not all. An even greater secret lay hidden within him.
Master Chongxu rose into the air on the wind and returned to his residence, the Plum Pool Bamboo Hermitage. Along the way, disciples greeted him one after another. Master Chongxu answered each of them, a faint smile resting on his lips.
After returning to the Plum Pool Bamboo Hermitage, Master Chongxu meditated for a full two hours... Yet this time, the reversed flow in his meridians refused to settle. In the end, he spat out another mouthful of blood.
Just then, an aged voice sounded beside his ear.
“You can’t hold on any longer, can you?”
Master Chongxu said nothing.
“The blood poison cannot be reversed. It will only grow worse... Weren’t you about to lose control and kill that Bai brat just now?”
“But whether you could control yourself or not, the end would be the same. You will become nothing more than a bloodthirsty monster that knows only how to kill. The only person in the world who can stop this process is Wenren Ying, yet you have no way to force the method out of him. Am I right?”
Master Chongxu said coldly, “Shut up!”
“Wenren Ying is truly stingy... You’ve known each other for so many years, yet all he has told you is that he’ll kill you when you can no longer hold on. He refuses to give you even the slightest hint of a miraculous cure... You don’t have much time left. Are you planning to simply wait for death?”
Blood poison... Yes. Master Chongxu was afflicted with an extremely terrifying curse: blood poison.
Three hundred years ago, there had been a place called Donghua City. It was the finest producer of spirit puppets in the entire Yuntai Realm, and people of that era called them “Donghua Puppets.” The finest Donghua Puppets could be worth a thousand gold pieces and were indistinguishable from Adepts.
Yet three hundred years ago, that place suffered an utterly horrifying disaster.
A heretic cultivator had hidden himself in Donghua City and conducted experiments with a terrifying curse technique.
At first, the technique could cure all illness and restore youth. Gradually, however, it devoured the minds of its victims and caused them to mutate. The people of Donghua City consequently became beasts that knew nothing but slaughter, tearing one another apart throughout the city... The bloodshed even dyed the moon red. Thus, the disaster became known as the “Donghua Blood Moon.”
After the Donghua Blood Moon erupted, the Xuantian Sect took action and sealed the entire city of Donghua, along with all the people who had gone mad, inside a barrier formation. Even so, some of them managed to escape.
These people became the blood-poison demonic cultivators of Donghua. For three hundred years, blood-poison demonic cultivators had been targets for extermination by cultivators throughout the world.
Master Chongxu was a member of the She clan of Mount Mei, so of course he could not have been from Donghua. But when he was young, he encountered a blood-poison demonic cultivator while traveling alone. His opponent injected a strange measure of blood into his body, and from that day onward, he too became a blood-poison demonic cultivator hunted by everyone.
As for the aged voice... it belonged to the very culprit who had turned him into what he was: the Blood Demon Ancestor.
Yet Master Chongxu could not kill the Blood Demon Ancestor, because he had to rely on the cultivation method the other had given him to suppress the blood poison in his body.
Wenren Ying had appeared at Mount Mei ten years ago.
When he appeared, he had looked no different from how he did now: bold and free-spirited, wandering the world alone with a saber at his side. His goal was clear.
Master Chongxu himself.
He had come to kill.
The Blood Demon Ancestor told him that Wenren Ying was the strangest blood-poison demonic cultivator in the world.
His spirit palace was shattered, yet he possessed terrifying strength. The blood poison had already penetrated deep into his marrow, yet he had not become a beast that knew only slaughter. Though he himself was an object of fear and rejection to the world, he showed no mercy when turning his blade against his own kind.
When he appeared before Master Chongxu, Master Chongxu was in the Bingyi Secret Realm.
The snow-laden wind whipped at the man’s cloak, making it crack loudly in the icy air. Amid the frost and snow, Master Chongxu clearly caught the scent of the great desert—a bloody tang rising as fresh blood steamed on scalding sand, mingled with… murderous intent.
In that instant, Master Chongxu’s back went rigid. He could feel Wenren Ying’s icy gaze upon him, examining him with utter disregard.
And yet, Master Chongxu had not killed anyone.
Driven mad by the torment of the blood poison, he had charged into the Bingyi Secret Realm, intending to use the blood of lone wandering cultivators to ease his suffering. In the end, however, he had managed to restrain himself and had done nothing.
And so, Wenren Ying spared him.
His voice was low and coldly ruthless. “Your kindness has not yet died. I’ll allow you to live a few more years. But remember this: the day you lose control, your head will be mine.”
After that, Wenren Ying remained on Mount Mei for ten whole years.
Master Chongxu knew that Wenren Ying was merely waiting for the day he would make his move.
That day… was drawing near.
Over the past ten years, Master Chongxu had not given up on getting closer to Wenren Ying. He had even asked Wenren Ying how he could avoid losing control. Wenren Ying’s answer had always been exceedingly brief.
—Destroy your spirit palace.
As long as he destroyed his spirit palace, he would no longer be able to store spiritual energy. At most, it could circulate through a single Lesser Heavenly Cycle within his body. The blood poison would then be unable to spread and deepen continuously through his meridians.
The first time Master Chongxu heard this answer, he was utterly shocked… and then furious!
There was no way he could believe such nonsense!
Destroying his spirit palace meant that his future, his identity, and everything he possessed would all turn to ash… There was absolutely no way he could accept such a method!
Perhaps this was simply human nature. Even if one could extend their lifespan to a thousand years through cultivation, people would still refuse to hear truths they could not accept.
And so, Master Chongxu began searching for reasons, one after another, to convince himself that Wenren Ying was lying to him.
Those whose spirit palaces were shattered were not the same as ordinary people… Even breathing was painful for them. Wenren Ying had suffered that fate himself, so naturally, he wanted to turn everyone else into the same kind of person.
In truth, people with shattered spirit palaces found it even harder to resist an attack of the blood poison. When the poison flared up, it felt as though countless ants were gnawing through one’s bones… Even the Blood Demon Ancestor had told him that he had once tried giving blood poison to people whose spirit palaces had been shattered. In the end, they had all exploded and died.
Therefore… Wenren Ying was still hiding a secret—the secret to alleviating the blood poison.
He was running out of time. How could he make Wenren Ying reveal that secret?
The Blood Demon Ancestor’s voice slid past Master Chongxu’s ear like a cold snake.
“Wenren Ying is a man who values loyalty and affection. As long as you give the blood poison to someone he cares about, he won’t be able to stand by and do nothing…”
A small glass vial suddenly appeared in Master Chongxu’s hand. The blood inside was vivid and glaring.
At the same time, Wu Guanyue’s inn had leveled up!
Originally, because of the limited number of rooms, it would have taken Wu Guanyue a very long time to accumulate 10,000 Tongxuan silver in revenue… But who could have expected that Bai Yunsheng, that fool with more money than sense, would show up?
One must never forget that when Wu Guanyue first chose the direction in which to run her inn, she had specifically chosen the black inn route. Therefore, extortion, blackmail, and even selling shorts all counted toward the inn’s revenue!
[Inn Level: LV.4]
[Inn Popularity: 10,001 (Your inn is widely known throughout the city)]
[Inn Revenue: 10,050 (Money is flowing through your hands like water)]
[Innkeeper Details]
[Innkeeper: Wu Guanyue]
[Level: LV.4 (Your strength is inseparably linked to the fate of your inn)]
At the same time, Wu Guanyue’s quest panel updated with a new main quest—
[Quest · Main: Black Inn Superstar!]
[Quest Description: Your inn has become a wildly popular establishment in Meishan City, so sought-after that every room is occupied. But you—Wu Guanyue!—have a dream in your heart: to become a black inn superstar! You must make your inn mysterious and dangerous, so that every person who walks through its doors does so with the utmost caution… Collect intimidation points from high-level guests! Use those intimidation points to raise your inn to an even higher level!]
[Quest Reward: [Awarded according to evaluation rank]]
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