The man suddenly looked up, and after he took a clear look at Lin Xuanzhi’s appearance, a hint of fascination flashed across his eyes–
Even though he was used to seeing all kinds of beauties, both males and females included, this was still the first time he saw someone so flawless.
His temperament was extraordinarily refined, mild and elegant, while he appeared to be standing alone, apart from the rest of the world.
And on the other side, Lin Xuanzhi was also inwardly surprised, because this young cultivator had crossed paths with him in his past life.
This person is called Ji Yunwei, the Ji family’s young master. When Lin Xuanzhi saw him in his past life, Ji Yunwei was being jointly pursued by the Ji family and a few of the large sects in the West Continent.
The reason they pursued him was because Ji Yunwei had gone crazy and killed all of the Ji family’s 1298 demonic beasts within a single night, and had cruelly dug out their demonic cores then refined each one of them before feeding the soul pills to his soul beast at that time – a nine-tailed fox.
The Ji family and all the orthodox sects of Xizhou had suffered heavy losses, so they naturally wouldn’t let Ji Yunwei off so easily.
At that time, Lin Xuanzhi was one of the leaders who had been entrusted by his sect with the task of providing aid. He had thought that someone who would use such ruthless methods to murder demonic beasts must be an insane madman and leaving him alive would just lead to disaster, so he personally defeated the man and imprisoned him.
However, he didn’t expect that when Ji Yunwei was defeated, he had long lost all his will to fight. And the reason for that was because his nine-tailed fox soul beast – in order to save Ji Yunwei from suffering divine punishment – had chosen to scatter its soul.
Ji Yunwei said, “You only saw how I killed the Ji family’s 1298 demonic beasts, but you didn’t see how they allowed those demonic beasts – after they had tricked me into going into the small grotto-heaven1 to slave away for the family – devour Ah Jiu’s meat and gnawed his bones bite by bite, then divided up his demonic core, drank his blood and even tortured him until even his soul couldn’t rest at peace. Tell me, didn’t they deserve death?”
Even though Lin Xuanzhi had felt pity for what he had to go through, but at that time his heart leaned towards his sect, so he said, “The war with the devils is about to start, the demonic beasts that you killed should have been used to resist the combative powers of the devil beasts and demonic cultivators, so no matter your reason, your sins can’t be forgiven.”
“If I can’t be forgiven, then so be it.” Ji Yunwei’s eyes were devoid of emotion, he looked up straight at the seemingly endless water prison, and said in a numb voice, “I’ve already taken my revenge, and Ah Jiu is no longer here. No matter how you want to punish me doesn’t matter anymore. It’s probably better for me to die, then I wouldn’t have to bear this excruciating pain in my heart.”
In the end, Lin Xuanzhi killed Ji Yunwei, but allowed his soul to re-enter the reincarnation cycle.
He had hoped that Ji Yunwei could regain his happiness in his next life.
Hundreds of eyes from the large sects were monitoring him, so Lin Xuanzhi couldn’t have changed Ji Yunwei’s ending, but he could satisfy his own selfish desires.
And in this life, Lin Xuanzhi didn’t expect to meet Ji Yunwei this early on.
On the same day today in his past life, he had just pa.s.sed the money to Yan Tianhen and asked him to come to the demonic beast market alone to redeem the white tiger. He did not make the trip down himself, so he had missed the opportunity to meet Ji Yunwei.
And now…Lin Xuanzhi’s eyes had an austere look, he was determined to not let this talented beast tamer to once again turn into that pitiful madman in his past life.
This wasn’t because Lin Xuanzhi had a compa.s.sionate heart, but rather it was because through Ji Yunwei, he had seen the past him who had been on the brink of despair and sorrow.
“He did sell them to me.” Ji Yunwei smiled carefree, then used his bright and amorous eyes that weren’t obscene to glance over Lin Xuanzhi’s face. He raised his sword eyebrows2 and said, “This kid carried two tiger cubs and hurriedly ran over yesterday. He said that he wanted to sell them for a thousand gold, but not many here could recognise their value so no one was interested for awhile. I took pity on him so I kept one and reserved the other. Is your purpose for coming today to sell the other tiger cub, or to redeem this one?”
Lin Xuanzhi said, “Name your price, I want to redeem both tiger cubs.”
Ji Yunwei blinked, then said, “For 500 gold, you can redeem the one I reserved. I won’t even charge you interest. As for the other one, your brother had already sold it to me, so it won’t be so easy for you to get it back.”
1. Grotto-heavens (Chinese: 洞天; pinyin: Dòngtian) are a type of sacred Taoist site. Grotto-heavens are usually caves, grottoes, mountain hollows, or other underground s.p.a.ces. Because every community was supposed to have access to at least one grotto, there were many of them all over China. ↩
2. Sword eyebrows:
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T/N: My heart ached when I was translating this chapter….. Ji Yunwei won’t appear until much later but when he does, he’s a really great character so knowing his horrible past just made it so much worse ;_;