Chapter 2: Spirit Pearl Illuminates Longevity
The rain outside the ruined temple suddenly grew thick, and Lu Qingyang knelt in the blood, staring at the spreading pool of blood. As the Taiyi Pavilion emblem twisted into shape on the altar table, the qingmu spirit pearl in his crotch suddenly grew hot, scorching the skin on his inner thigh with a sizzling sound. The compasses of the three straw-hatted Cultivators simultaneously burst forth with green light, their needles trembling wildly like iron filings drawn by a magnet.
"It really is the qingmu spirit pearl!" The leading Cultivator's straw hat was shattered by spiritual power, revealing a flame pattern drawn with cinnabar on his brow. The immortal binding rope flew out from his sleeve with a whooshing sound, and Lu Qingyang grabbed the incense ash from the altar table, splashing it in his face. The incense ash, mixed with the Old Drunkard's bone ash, ignited with a ghostly blue flame upon contact with spiritual power. The Cultivator screamed, covering his eyes and retreating, knocking over the soul-restraining banner in his companion's hand.
Lu Qingyang seized the opportunity to smash through the window lattice and roll into the rain, the copper pearl in his embrace burning his chest until it blistered. He rushed headlong into the mass grave, the rotten coffin boards bleached white by the downpour, and flickering ghost fires Drilled out from the eye sockets of several skeletons. The whistling shriek of a Flying Sword came from behind him. He ducked into a half-collapsed tomb, his fingernails digging deep into the rusted patterns of the qingmu spirit pearl.
In the darkness, there was the sound of tender shoots breaking through the soil.
When the pursuers' sword light illuminated the tomb chamber, everyone only saw a floor covered in wildly growing vines. Bowl-thick ghost-faced vines wrapped around the Cultivators' ankles, and the sticky liquid of carnivorous flowers corroded their Protective Aura. Lu Qingyang huddled in a corner of the tomb chamber, watching the phantom image appearing from the Spirit Pearl in his palm—a small medicinal field with an hourglass suspended above it, the sand flowing more than ten times faster than outside.
"So it needs to absorb my blood..." He licked his cracked lips and pressed the Spirit Pearl onto the gushing, bleeding wound on his ribs. The hourglass inverted, and the ghost-faced vines instantly withered into ash. The pursuers' angry roars turned into terrified whimpers. When his vision returned to clarity, only three dried corpses, their vital essence drained, remained in the tomb chamber, their Natal Flying Swords rustily embedded in the gaps of the green bricks.
When Lu Qingyang staggered back to the ruined temple, the Old Drunkard's body was already cold. He pried open his master's tightly clenched fist and found half a tortoise shell embedded in his palm lines, with a crooked map of the Eastern Wasteland's ley lines drawn on it in cinnabar. A location marked "Burial Dragon Abyss" had ink so fresh it looked like it had been added just last night.
"So this old bastard planned for me to be a scapegoat all along." Lu Qingyang scoffed, adding firewood to the blaze, the firelight illuminating the red wine gourd at his master's waist. He suddenly remembered when he was seven, the Old Drunkard, drunk, had pulled his ear and said, "There are three things in the Immortal Cultivation World that are the hottest to handle—a beauty's tears, a hero's bones, and Taiyi Pavilion's treasures."
The rain in the latter half of the night was mixed with hail, pounding on the tiles like a death knell. Lu Qingyang buried his master under a crooked neck willow tree in the back mountain, with the chipped medicine shovel stuck in front of the grave. As the first shovel of earth covered the Old Drunkard's grayish-blue face, he pilfered the bulging Storage Pouch from the corpse's embrace—inside, besides twenty-three Low-Grade Spirit Stones, there was also a bronze token engraved with the character "Ye."
"Next life, don't believe in deep master-disciple affection." Lu Qingyang scattered some paper money, taken from the tomb, onto the grave, the sparks flickering in the damp air. He didn't notice a piece of paper money drifting to a treetop, gently pinched by a pale finger extending from the shadows. The cloud patterns on that person's dark Xuan-colored Daoist robe were faintly visible in the rainy night, and the jade pendant at his waist was engraved with the Taiyi Pavilion emblem.
The qingmu spirit pearl vibrated slightly in his embrace, and Lu Qingyang hid in the ruined shrine of the mountain god temple to study the tortoise shell map. When he traced the "Burial Dragon Abyss" mark with his blood-stained fingertip, a phantom image suddenly appeared in the pearl's medicinal field: a Dragon Scale Grass, blood-red all over, flowered and bore fruit as the hourglass inverted, and when the fruit fell to the ground, it emitted a sound like a baby's cry.
"Needs Dragon blood for irrigation?" Lu Qingyang pondered, stroking his chin, when he suddenly heard faint footsteps outside the temple gate. Five burly men holding torches were searching the bushes, the scar-faced leader holding a compass-shaped Magical Artifact—a common "Spirit-Seeking Disk" from the black market, most adept at tracking Cultivators who had been tainted with the smell of blood.
Lu Qingyang held his breath and shrank into the cobwebs behind the idol, pulling out the Bone-Corroding Powder he had stripped from the dried corpses. The moment the burly men kicked open the temple door, he scattered the powder mixed with incense ash towards their torches. Screams erupted from the exploding green flames, and one unlucky fellow's beard was burned to charcoal. Taking advantage of the chaos, he scurried out the window, only to have a cold sword blade pressed against his throat.
"Little Fellow Daoist, where are you off to?" The Xuan-robed Cultivator strolled out from the tree shadows, the moonlight illuminating the seven-petaled lotus embroidered with gold thread on his sleeve. Lu Qingyang recognized this pattern—the Old Drunkard had once drawn it on a table when drunk, saying it was the exclusive mark of Taiyi Pavilion's Enforcement Elder.
The qingmu spirit pearl in his embrace suddenly trembled violently, and Lu Qingyang felt a hot current surge from his Dantian. He feigned fear and took half a step back, then suddenly grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it at the other party's face. The Cultivator sneered and waved his sleeve, but the dirt, upon touching his Daoist robe, instantly transformed into vines, their poisonous thorns piercing the Protective Aura with a brittle, teeth-grinding sound.
"I underestimated you." The Cultivator used two fingers to sever the vines, and the Protective Aura spewing from the sword tip ploughed deep furrows in the ground. Lu Qingyang, using the Spirit Pearl's sensitivity to plants, moved through the dense forest like a swimming fish. When he circled back to the same lightning-struck tree for the third time, he finally realized he was trapped in a Formation.
The Cultivator's footsteps grew closer, and Lu Qingyang gritted his teeth, injecting all his spiritual power into the Spirit Pearl. The moment the hourglass phantom appeared, he clearly saw a withered leaf floating at the eye of the Formation—it was the most vulnerable 'Life Gate' of Taiyi Pavilion's "Nine Palace Spirit Lock Formation." Sacrificing his back to a wind blade, he lunged in the direction where the withered leaf was tumbling, his nose almost grazing the sword tip as he rushed out of the Formation.
The darkness before dawn was the thickest. Lu Qingyang hid in the turbulent river, flowing downstream. The tortoise shell map in his embrace suddenly grew hot, guiding him to climb ashore into a moss-covered cave. After confirming there were no Soul-Chasing Marks, he tremblingly took out the qingmu spirit pearl, discovering that the spiritual mist within the pearl's medicinal field was actually feeding back into his own injuries.
"So I have to exhaust all my spiritual power to trigger healing..." He licked the blood foam from the corner of his mouth and crushed three Low-Grade Spirit Stones into powder, sprinkling them on the pearl's surface. The hourglass inverted again; ten days inside the pearl was equivalent to one day outside. As the morning light pierced through the vines at the cave entrance, Lu Qingyang looked at the Dragon Tooth Grass, ripened in his palm, with a bitter smile—this Spiritual Plant, which should have taken three years to form, was now rapidly withering due to excessive growth.
Suddenly, the sound of arrows piercing the air came from outside the cave. He pressed against the rock wall and peered through a crack. Seven Cultivators riding Dragon Blood Horses were pursuing a merchant caravan, and Talismans and Magic Treasures were continuously thrown from the gold-trimmed carriage. The moment the carriage curtain was lifted by a sword wind, Lu Qingyang's pupils constricted—the richly dressed young girl holding a bronze box was eight parts similar to the portrait the Old Drunkard had hidden under his bed.
The qingmu spirit pearl hummed at this moment, and a new phantom image appeared above the medicinal field within the pearl: the mottled patterns on the bronze box's surface perfectly matched the pearl's rust. Lu Qingyang pulled out the Storage Pouch his master had left behind, finding that the "Ye" token was also slightly warm. As the caravan guards fell one after another in pools of blood, he, as if possessed, threw out a corpse-binding rope—a low-grade Magical Artifact bought from the black market, but at this moment, it wrapped around the young girl's slender waist.
"Let go if you don't want to die!" He dragged the young girl into the cave amidst her screams, then scattered a handful of paralyzing vine seeds with a flick of his wrist. By the time the pursuers crashed into the suddenly wildly growing vine wall, Lu Qingyang had already dragged the young girl more than ten feet through the secret passage. Amidst the sound of the bronze box bumping against the rock wall, he heard the young girl's tearful threat: "I am Su Gu Niang of the Central Plains Su Family... Mmph!"
Lu Qingyang stuffed her mouth with a smelly sock, and incidentally, took the Spirit Stone pouch from the box's inner compartment. When he smelled sulfur at the crossroads, he decisively pushed open the stone door disguised as a rock wall. Hot steam rushed out, and an underground dark river formed a hot spring here, with the rock walls embedded with glowing fire-attribute Ore.
"Fellow Daoist, a good calculation." The young girl had, at some point, spat out the smelly sock, and her fingertips held a Thunderstorm Talisman, "Using Sunstone to interfere with the pursuers' tracking spell is indeed better than those hypocrites who preach benevolence." The hidden Restriction mark of Taiyi Pavilion was vaguely visible on her collarbone, which she had deliberately exposed when she suddenly lifted the carriage curtain.
Lu Qingyang toyed with the bronze box and sneered, "Since Su Gu Niang has Taiyi Pavilion's Soul-Chasing Mark on her, why don't we make a deal?" He deliberately slid the Spirit Pearl against the box, and the green light that erupted when they touched illuminated the young girl's suddenly changed expression. The low roar of a Yao Beast came from deep within the dark river, and a few drops of lava fell from the dome, creating crimson ripples on the water's surface.