Chapter 74: Revenge Comes Easily |
“My treasures… all those precious items I painstakingly gathered…”
Looking at the now completely empty narrow chamber, Jiang Chongguang felt as though his heart were bleeding.
“Who did this?!”
After his initial fury, it seemed Jiang Chongguang suddenly remembered something. He pulled a paper talisman from his robes and ignited it.
“When Sushu constructed this underground palace, he specially laid down restrictive formations. If outsiders ever intruded and triggered the restrictions, the scene would be recorded.”
Flames flickered as the talisman burned into ash.
Within the drifting smoke, the silhouettes of a group transporting treasures suddenly emerged.
And the person leading them looked strangely familiar to Jiang Chongguang.
“This is… Fang Xun?”
“Why would he be here?”
At this moment, Jiang Chongguang still had no knowledge that Fang Xun had been demoted to Garrison Commander of Dongshan. Seeing his enemy suddenly appear within the smoky projection, he even thought the restriction formation had malfunctioned.
But then he recalled Li Shun, whom he had casually tossed aside earlier, who had also once been a laborer of Lengshan.
In an instant, realization struck him.
“So it really is him?!”
“You damned official! I’ll never rest until one of us dies!”
Jiang Chongguang’s eyes turned bloodshot. Old hatred and new grudges erupted together, his rage reaching its peak.
He was just about to rush out and fight Fang Xun to the death when he suddenly heard Li Shun speak.
“What’s that?”
Jiang Chongguang paused slightly and looked toward where Li Shun was pointing.
The smoky image produced by the burning talisman had yet to dissipate. After churning for a moment, a new scene emerged.
A thin, gaunt figure dragged behind it a massive black vine resembling a giant serpent as it slowly entered the underground palace.
The figure lightly tapped the vine.
The originally lifeless thing instantly seemed to awaken, writhing madly throughout the underground palace like countless snakes tangled together.
The sight was deeply unsettling.
“Sushu? What is he doing?”
At first, Jiang Chongguang was confused.
But he quickly reacted.
“No… that’s not Sushu. If it really were him, the restrictions wouldn’t have been triggered.”
“Who exactly is impersonating Sushu?!”
Jiang Chongguang was both shocked and furious.
The image within the smoke continued.
After wildly thrashing through the air for some time, the vines seemed to find their target. Branches extended into the countless passageways spreading throughout the underground palace.
The black vine itself was exceedingly strange. Even after splitting into thousands upon thousands of offshoots, its main body did not diminish in the slightest, forever maintaining its original size.
The newly grown vines seemed endless.
No one knew how much time passed before they finally appeared to reach their limit, and only then did the expansion stop.
As for the vine’s main body, it slowly sank into the mountain like a phantom before disappearing entirely.
Within the projection, “Han Sushu”, or rather, Shentu Xin, revealed a bizarre smile.
“For something this strange to crawl into the depths of the underground palace…”
“What exactly is it…?”
Jiang Chongguang instinctively felt a trace of unease.
Meanwhile, based on the characteristics displayed by the black vines, Li Shun had already identified their origin.
“Xiangtu Black Kudzu!”[1]
“This Xiangtu Black Kudzu can freely travel through earth veins, and with only the slightest nourishment, it can rapidly reproduce and spread. Most remarkable of all, it can carry a cultivator’s divine sense, making it an unparalleled tool for underground exploration.”
“In the early years of Great Qian’s founding, it was widely used during the construction of official roads. However, perhaps due to the changes in the empire’s earth-vein qi caused by those roads, the Black Kudzu gradually became unable to adapt.”
“As long as it burrowed too deeply underground, it would contract a strange sickness and quickly wither away.”
“Because of that, the Xiangtu Black Kudzu became increasingly rare, and eventually no one used it anymore.”
“I never expected it could still function within Imperial Mausoleum Commandary.”
Li Shun suddenly recalled that during the Second Reflection, while he had been trapped inside that narrow chamber, he had heard Shentu Xin continuously dragging some heavy object outside.
“Perhaps he was the one who uprooted these Black Kudzu vines buried deep within the earth veins.”
“Could it be that Shentu Xin relied on the power of these Black Kudzu vines to so quickly ignite the human clay effigies throughout the Imperial Mausoleum?”
Countless thoughts flashed through Li Shun’s mind in an instant.
Meanwhile, Jiang Chongguang had already made his decision.
“Forget all that. First, we find Fang Xun and settle the score!”
“We kill that dog official, then regroup with Sushu.”
He grabbed Li Shun once more, and with the speed of a gale, returned to the outskirts of Dongshan Town in mere moments.
Jiang Chongguang glanced at Li Shun, immediately finding himself troubled.
For a time, he truly did not know how to deal with this so-called “benefactor” of his.
Just as he hesitated, Li Shun suddenly spoke.
“You’re planning to seek revenge against Fang Xun, aren’t you? But now that I have acknowledged Fang Xun as my master, if you wish to take revenge…”
“Then kill me first!”
“You…” Jiang Chongguang raised his hand in fury, yet in the end, he lowered it unwillingly.
“You really are loyal. Protecting your master to the point that you don’t even care about your own life. What a pity. You simply followed the wrong teacher.” Jiang Chongguang sneered.
Li Shun instead lifted his head proudly.
“My master studied beneath one of the Three Excellencies of the current dynasty and belongs to the orthodox lineage of the Confucian school. To enter his sect is the fortune of three lifetimes. How could that possibly be called following the wrong teacher?”
“On the contrary, you…”
“You’re nothing more than a fugitive rebel skulking in hiding. You’re not even worthy of carrying my master’s shoes!”
Hearing this, a nameless fury instantly rose within Jiang Chongguang’s heart.
But Li Shun was, after all, his benefactor, so he could not truly bring himself to harm him.
“Do you remember back then…”
He was just about to reveal the connection between the two of them when his words abruptly halted.
Because at that exact moment, he spotted Fang Xun on the streets of Dongshan Town.
It seemed Fang Xun was leading a group of constables in the midst of some search operation.
The words Jiang Chongguang had been about to say were immediately swallowed back down.
Instead, he burst into wild laughter.
“Today, I’ll show you whether or not I’m worthy of carrying his shoes!”
Before his words had even finished, Jiang Chongguang’s figure shot forward like an arrow released from the bowstring.
The hatred of his uncle being captured.
The resentment of his treasured artifact being stolen.
And Li Shun’s mocking ridicule.
All the fury Jiang Chongguang had been suppressing could no longer be contained. It erupted like a volcano.
“Dog official, die!”
Carrying a force akin to crashing thunder, Jiang Chongguang arrived before Fang Xun in the blink of an eye.
Seeing the shock that surfaced on the other man’s face, a trace of satisfaction rose within Jiang Chongguang’s heart.
Yet the movements of his hands did not slow in the slightest.
The pair of massive hammers in his grasp emitted shrill screams as they tore through the air.
Then smashed down directly overhead.
Boom!
Perhaps because the ambush had come too suddenly, Fang Xun failed to react at all and was instantly smashed into a heap of mangled flesh.
“Hm? That easy?”
Splattered with blood from head to toe, Jiang Chongguang could not help feeling surprised.
The entire town of Dongshan was stunned by the gruesome scene before them.
Then, piercing screams and alarm cries instantly rang throughout the streets.
“Capture the rebel!”
“Avenge the Lord Garrison!”
Although the death of their superior filled the constables of Dongshan Town with visible shock, they did not completely lose their composure.
Streams of radiance continuously lit up across their bodies. In the span of moments, they had already formed a battle formation, surrounding Jiang Chongguang from every side.
“Troublesome.”
Jiang Chongguang frowned inwardly.
The strength of these constables could only be described as mediocre, but with the augmentation of Great Qian’s official seals, killing them would not be so easy.
And on top of that…
Out of the corner of his eye, Jiang Chongguang caught sight of a streak of blood-red light rapidly cutting across the horizon toward this location.
“The Imperial Mausoleum Blood Guards…”
[1] Xiangtu Mystic Kudzu (相土玄葛): The name literally means/translates to “Earth-Phase Black Kudzu.” with Kudzu (Pueraria montana) being a fast-growing, climbing, woody vine native to Asia