Chapter 409: Nocturnal Commotion |
The rain at Wind Crossing Ferry finally stopped at the Zi hour.
On the eaves of Yuelai Inn, residual rainwater dripped from the broken tiles onto the bluestone slabs below, producing a monotonous and heavy sound. The air was thick with a strong smell of earth, mixed with the sour stench of fermented low-quality horse feed.
Inside Room Jia, no lamps were lit.
Su Ming sat cross-legged on the slightly damp wooden bed, his eyes half-closed. The liquid spiritual energy of the Foundation Establishment stage flowed silently and steadily through his meridians like streams of deep blue light. He maintained the Aura Concealment Art at an extremely delicate balance—not appearing too conspicuous, yet perfectly blending his aura into the mundane, worldly atmosphere of this mortal inn.
His divine sense extended outward.
Although in this turbid mortal realm, the range of his divine sense was compressed by a full thirty percent, it was still more than enough to cover this small inn.
In the corner of the downstairs lobby, several drunken martial artists lay sprawled across wooden benches, snoring thunderously. In the stables, the two Yunnan horses snorted restlessly. In the room next door, Elder Qingquan’s breathing was long and even, clearly fast asleep.
Just then, Su Ming’s brow twitched slightly.
From the direction of the inn’s backyard came an extremely faint noise. It sounded like some dry, withered branches being dragged across muddy ground—barely audible, but to a Foundation Establishment cultivator’s ears, it was as clear as thunder.
Under the eaves of the woodshed in the backyard hung several strings of dry flatbreads and roughly-made jerky, kept there to prevent dampness. These were the coarse rations the inn used to fend off impoverished porters passing through.
At this moment, three scrawny, shadow-like figures pressed tightly against the base of the wall, slowly inching toward those rations under the cover of darkness.
They were three refugees.
The oldest looked no more than fourteen or fifteen, while the youngest was perhaps seven or eight. Their clothes had long since become tattered rags, barely covering their vital areas. All three children shivered violently from the cold.
But their eyes, fixed on those dried provisions, glowed with the primal instinct of survival.
The oldest boy gritted his teeth, stepping onto the shoulders of a slightly sturdier child, and tremblingly stretched out a hand covered in frostbite and grime, desperately reaching for the string of flatbreads hanging a bit too high.
Their movements were very light, but their hunger-weakened bodies couldn’t maintain their balance.
“Crash—”
The child at the bottom slipped, stepping onto a broken clay pot, which shattered with a crisp sound.
In the silent night, that sound was amplified infinitely.
“Who’s in the backyard?!”
From the kitchen at the front of the inn, a fierce, spirited shout rang out. Immediately afterward, a rapid series of footsteps, accompanied by the dragging sound of a wooden stick, quickly approached.
The shop assistant had been startled awake. The workers at these border inns often knew a few crude fighting techniques, precisely to guard against these thieving refugees.
“Thieves! I’ll break your damn legs!”
Carrying a thick jujube wood staff, the assistant cursed loudly, kicking open the kitchen door and charging toward the backyard.
The three children in the backyard were terrified out of their wits. The oldest boy yanked down half a string of flatbreads, crashing heavily into the mud from mid-air. Ignoring the searing pain in his body, he scrambled and crawled to grab the provisions, pulling his two companions toward the wooden gate at the back of the yard.
But that rickety wooden gate had already been securely locked by the shop assistant with a thick bolt after nightfall.
The three children pushed and yanked at the wooden door with all their might, but the heavy bolt was like an iron wall to their frail bodies.
The footsteps drew closer. The reflection of the assistant carrying a torch was already projected onto the backyard wall.
A flash of despair crossed the oldest boy’s eyes. He abruptly turned around, shielding his two younger companions behind him, clutching the half-string of mud-stained flatbreads tightly to his chest like a cornered young wolf.
Inside the second-floor guest room.
Su Ming sat quietly in the darkness. The index finger of his right hand curled slightly, and at its tip swirled a strand of deep blue spiritual energy, a hundred times finer than a strand of hair.
With his level of cultivation, he could simply will the shop assistant into a deep sleep with a single thought.
But he didn’t act immediately.
“A cultivator must above all avoid entangling with mortal karma.”
“War, famine, refugees—this is the natural cycle of dynastic change in the mortal world. You can save one, but you can’t save ten thousand. Forcibly intervening will only bring disaster upon yourself.”
Reason rapidly analyzed the pros and cons in his mind. This was the ironclad law of the jungle in the cultivation world, the survival principle he had learned walking on thin ice in the Cloud Hidden Sect over the past five years.
But his divine sense had clearly captured the youngest of the refugee children.
That child clung tightly to the older boy’s clothes, his hunger-emaciated face filled with fear, his lips bitten until they bled as he forced himself not to cry out loud.
Those eyes reminded Su Ming of the villagers outside Qingshi Town, driven to desperation by unpaid taxes all those years ago.
Su Ming took a deep breath of cold air.
Reason told him to stay out of it.
But some corner deep in his heart held an unyielding force, stubbornly pulling at his finger.
The shop assistant had already reached the corner of the backyard. The jujube wood staff was raised high, and the torchlight illuminated the pale faces of the three children.
“You little bastards, stealing from your grandpa?!”
The wooden staff came whistling down with savage force.
Su Ming’s eyes snapped open in the darkness.
That curled index finger—he finally flicked it out gently.
An extremely subtle current of spiritual energy shot out, striking the bolt of the wooden backyard gate with pinpoint accuracy.
“Clack.”
A faint, crisp sound.
That heavy, firmly stuck bolt, as if lifted gently by an unseen hand, slid smoothly out of its groove.
With the bolt removed, the wooden gate creaked open a crack in the night breeze.
The oldest boy froze for a split second. He didn’t even think about why the door had suddenly opened. Survival instinct drove him to slam through the gate, dragging his two companions along like three startled mice, plunging into the pitch-black rainy night outside.
The shop assistant’s jujube wood staff slammed heavily onto the empty ground, splashing mud everywhere.
He raised the torch and chased out through the gate, glanced at the dark, deep alley outside, then looked down at the fallen bolt on the ground, and scratched his head irritably.
“Damn it! Count yourselves lucky, you little bastards, that you got away fast!”
The assistant picked up the bolt, cursing under his breath, locked the backyard gate again, yawned, and shuffled back to the front hall.
Silence fell once more over the second-floor guest room.
Su Ming slowly walked to the window and pushed it open a crack.
The cold night wind, carrying moisture, rushed in against his face.
He looked out at the distant, pitch-black alley. The three scrawny shadows had already vanished without a trace.
Su Ming didn’t know if they would survive this freezing night, or how many more days the half-string of muddy flatbreads they’d snatched would allow them to eke out.
He lowered his gaze to the dull, lusterless Xuantian ring on the middle finger of his right hand.
The ring was icy cold. No reaction at all. Lin Yu was still asleep.