Chapter 145: Zhurong |
The bold ones climbed up into the Western Wasteland mountains.
When they saw the Wu Clan reproducing and living there, they could not help being stunned.
Their clothing, language, and even way of life were clearly different from the native people of Jing Kingdom. It was easy to think of the barbarians who, many years ago, had supposedly been wiped out by the mountain fire.
So these people went down the mountain to notify the authorities and the military camp.
After learning there were barbarians on the mountain, the authorities sent people to take a look.
Although they were also surprised, they did not take it too seriously.
This mountain forest had been incorporated into Jing Kingdom’s territory for many years. Whether they were the barbarians of the past or the Wu Clan of today, they were all subjects of Jing Kingdom.
Besides, the Wu Clan farmed and planted herbs on the mountain and did not harass others. What was there to manage?
Thus, several more decades passed.
From fewer than a hundred people, it reached around four hundred.
They still preserved their earliest clothing and culture, and Chu Xun had never forced the Wu Clan to change their own habits.
This clan had already formed its own unique cultural system.
Although they seemed unconventional compared to the other people of Jing Kingdom, it was just as Chu Xun had said when he founded Jie Sect.
Under his teaching, there was no discrimination. It was not bound by any form.
Since it could tolerate spirits and monsters, it could naturally tolerate the Wu Clan.
Over these decades, Chu Xun also slowly felt the changes the Wu Clan brought to him.
Their faith was extremely pure and unusually powerful.
The incense value one Wu Clan member brought Chu Xun was comparable to ten ordinary commoners, or even more.
Because their lives contained nothing else, only survival and faith.
To a certain degree, one could even say that they survived precisely so they could serve their god for longer.
And Chu Xun was the only object of their faith.
Every year at the beginning of spring, under Wu Xian’s leadership, the Wu Clan held a bonfire service ceremony.
From their initial fear of flames, they had come to believe that flames brought grain and life.
The bonfire would be built on wooden pillars several dozen zhang tall. Once it burned, it rose more than a hundred zhang high.
Even from dozens of li away, it could be seen clearly.
Thus, many Jing Kingdom commoners also came nearby to watch the spectacle.
Scholars and poets even wrote all kinds of poems and essays based on it.
Some were influenced by the Wu Clan and asked around. After learning that what they worshipped was a Fire God, they also began following the faith.
Because of this, Chu Xun gained even more incense value.
Although he had not yet obtained the Fire Minister status, he could already clearly sense every Wu Clan member’s beliefs and wishes.
Most unusually, Chu Xun could distinctly sense that within his body, a spirit soul similar to the spirit of the Songliu Water God, yet somewhat different, was being nurtured.
At present, it was still very weak, like a spark that had just been lit.
But under the Wu Clan’s power of faith, it was growing rapidly.
The spirit of the Songliu Water God had gradually formed only after many years of incense offerings from the people on both banks of the Songliu River.
But this one was forming so quickly that it even surpassed the Wood God spirit.
And in the unseen world, Chu Xun could sense that after this spirit soul was born, it would likely progress faster than the other statuses.
One had to admit, the Wu Clan truly was a miraculous people.
They not only brought changes to Chu Xun, but also produced fascinating reactions in their own lives.
Especially in herbal medicine. The Wu Clan’s herbal knowledge mixed with ritual culture and was fundamentally different from ordinary physicians.
When they treated illness, rather than saying they used medicine, it was better to say medicine was the bridge through which they communicated with their god.
They relied on medicine to communicate with the god, then relied on the god they believed in to treat the illness.
Whenever such things occurred, Chu Xun could clearly feel a thread of the Wu Clan’s prayerful thoughts pouring into his mind.
As long as he was willing, he could send down a faint trace of divine power from the unseen world and help the Wu Clan complete their prayer.
The reason it was faint was because the Fire Minister status and spirit soul had not yet been born.
At first, the commoners below the mountain only found the Wu Clan’s method of treatment amusing.
Barbarians were barbarians. Beating and banging, hopping and dancing—could that really treat illness?
But when they saw that injured Wu Clan members, or commoners who occasionally came seeking help, were truly healed—
The commoners gradually began to understand that the Wu Clan’s medicine was no worse than that of worldly physicians.
And many strange illnesses that left physicians helpless were instead easier to cure once brought to them.
Thus, many commoners began trusting the Wu Clan’s medicine.
Gradually, word spread that the Wu Clan’s herbs were even better than those sold in medicine shops.
In particular, Wu Xian and the others were now close to a hundred years old.
Yet judging from their appearance, they looked more like they were in their prime.
No one knew who spread the rumor, but it was said that the Wu Clan planted an immortal divine herb. Whoever ate it could live forever and never age.
These words were naturally a kind of praise toward the Wu Clan, but they also brought trouble to this people.
High officials, nobles, and jianghu figures who wanted longevity came to buy the immortal herb.
How could the Wu Clan produce such a thing?
What they planted were merely the herb seeds Chu Xun had brought.
Even with Chu Xun’s help, these herbs were indeed more effective, but they were far from being immortal medicine.
But why would outsiders believe that?
If there was no immortal medicine, why did the original Ten Wu still look so young despite being in their eighties or nineties?
They did not practice martial arts and were not immortals, yet they could live so long. There had to be a reason!
On a rainy night—
More than a dozen uninvited guests came to the mountain.
There were jianghu figures who came on their own, and bandits hired by powerful officials and nobles.
Every one of them possessed at least second-rank martial strength, and several were first-rank.
They knew the Wu Clan was not skilled at fighting and had no martial arts to speak of.
After arriving here, they did not take the matter too seriously.
If the Wu Clan obediently handed over the immortal medicine, fine.
Otherwise, they might truly have to wipe the clan out completely!
What they could not obtain, no one else could think of obtaining either.
Inside one stone house, Wu Xian, who had long since divined that calamity would come tonight, sat upright.
Outside the house were several dozen young Wu Clan members. Each held sharpened wooden sticks, or sticks tied with ropes and stones.
When swung and thrown, a stone weighing two or three jin could smash a person’s head open.
Wu Luo and the others accompanied Wu Xian.
As the ten oldest and most qualified members of the Wu Clan, they did not need to go out and fight.
They only needed to sit like Wu Xian and silently chant to the god they believed in.
They believed their god would protect the Wu Clan.
When the dozen or so bandits arrived and saw the wary Wu Clan members shouting at them, making gestures to drive them away.
Their eyes were full of disdain.
Such crude weapons could not even be called weapons.
How could these be their match?
A first-rank martial artist, an old man only one step away from becoming a Innate Grandmaster, stepped forward and said in a deep voice, “Hand over the immortal medicine, and I will spare your lives. Otherwise, all will be killed without mercy!”
Although the young Wu Clan members were nervous, they were not afraid.
They had never experienced war, but they had learned about war from the Ten Wu.
Death and fear had once covered the entire mountain range and burned their clan almost to extinction.
Yet these things had not crushed the Wu Clan. Instead, they had become the powerful motivation of the younger clansmen.
They did not fear any external threats, not only because of the Ten Wu’s existence, but also because their god was beside them.
The young Wu looked toward the mountain peak, toward the source of the Cold and Warm Waters, where a stone house stood.
There lived the god they believed in, the one who had brought them fire, grain, and life.
The old first-rank martial artist seemed to understand something.
Was the immortal medicine on the mountain peak?
He immediately leapt into the air, intending to rush toward the mountain peak.
At that moment, a great hand was born from the ground out of nowhere.
Hard mountain stone formed its bones, rainwater formed its meridians, and leaves transformed into flesh.
It was over ten zhang large, and thunder rumbled through heaven and earth.
This great hand came down fiercely, directly swatting the dozen bandits who had come to steal the immortal medicine to death.
Blood mixed with rainwater and flowed down the mountain.
It added a faint redness to this charred black mountain range.
“Wu!”
“Wu!”
The young Wu Clan members raised their arms and cheered, kneeling to worship in the direction of the mountain peak.
Wu Xian walked out from the house, looked at the mountain peak, then looked down the mountain.
He took out a piece of animal hide and picked up a bone from the ground, left behind by some bandit.
After wrapping it in the hide, he bit open his fingertip and drew several strange patterns on it.
Then he picked up a stone and smashed the animal hide and bone together until they shattered.
At the same time, inside Liaoyuan City—
An official with a thin mustache and an imposing presence sat indoors, sipping tea.
This time, he had spent a great sum hiring multiple jianghu experts to climb the mountain and seize the immortal medicine.
His father was already over seventy years old, with little life left.
If his father’s life could be extended, their family’s official rank might rise another step.
As for whether the Wu Clan lived or died, he did not care.
Those who accomplished great things did not concern themselves with minor details.
The Chen family had weathered a hundred years of hardship from the female emperor’s era until now. They could not simply lose their competitiveness like this.
Therefore, the immortal medicine was something they had to obtain!
Holding the teacup in his hand, he inhaled the fragrance of tea.
The delicate blue porcelain lid lightly brushed across the cup.
A faint smile appeared at the corner of Chen Qifeng’s mouth, and a trace of disdain appeared in his eyes.
Many people knew about the immortal medicine, but very few could disregard reputation and come seize it like him.
Which minister at court did not want immortality?
Yet they all had misgivings, leaving a golden mountain right before their eyes untouched while insisting on chasing empty reputations.
Chen Qifeng looked down on such people.
Reputation?
No matter how great your reputation was, could it compare to the founding dukes of old, or later Duke Ming, Duke Protector, Duke Wei, and the others?
Yet after a hundred years, how many people beneath heaven still spoke of them?
Living was what mattered most.
Once the immortal medicine was in hand, one portion would go to his father, and one to himself.
With father and son united, Jing Kingdom’s future should belong to the Chen family.
Chen Qifeng smiled faintly and set down the teacup.
He was just about to call a maid to prepare some pastries, as he felt a little hungry.
Before the teacup could be set down properly, he suddenly felt a tremendous force attack.
It was as if someone had taken a heavy club and smashed it straight into his face.
Chen Qifeng screamed in pain, blood covering his face.
His heart filled with terror. Before he could speak, he was smashed again and again by the following waves of force until he no longer looked human.
In the end, he was forcibly crushed into a paste of flesh.
When the guards and maids heard the commotion and rushed over, the bloody scene before them horrified them beyond belief.
Chen Qifeng was not the only one who died this way.
All those who had gone up the mountain that night had their instigators found by the Wu Clan’s curse arts.
If it had been personal action, their families were implicated.
No one knew how they had died, let alone why they had died so miserably.
Only Chu Xun, sitting inside the stone house and studying formations, glanced down the mountain and shook his head slightly.
Over these years, he had also given the Wu Clan his insights and experiences so they could possess the ability to protect themselves.
After obtaining crude formations, the Wu Clan had not understood them the same way Chu Xun did.
Instead, after combining them with their own cultural system, they created “curse” arts.
They used the way formations drove the laws of heaven and earth, combined it with the target’s belongings, then traced the root back to the source.
Even if separated by several hundred li, they could easily curse-kill you.
This kind of curse art differed from Five Elements Dao arts. It was another manifestation of the laws between heaven and earth.
Chu Xun had once carefully observed it. The Wu Clan’s use of curse arts was more like making a prayer with divine power.
Prayers had never been divided by distance, nor by whether they could be accomplished.
As long as the god’s power was strong enough, in theory, they could accomplish anything.
A person like Chen Qifeng deserved death.
As for those implicated by personal actions, one could call them innocent.
But one could also say they were not innocent, and that heavenly mandate was difficult to defy.
Chu Xun had no intention of stopping the Wu Clan from retaliating with curse arts. The Wu Clan had their own rules of conduct.
They did not actively provoke trouble or commit outrageous evils, but they also had the right to use fierce methods to protect the peace of their people.
To others, jianghu was about favors and worldly dealings.
To the Wu Clan, it was killing and violence.
Moreover, at its root, this matter had been a calamity caused by rumor.
The Wu Clan had no immortal medicine, yet they had been coveted for no reason.
Greed was the hardest root of sin in this world to resolve.
After this incident, quite a few people were indeed intimidated.
For many years afterward, few dared climb the mountain to cause trouble.
Occasionally, a few blind fools came, only to be curse-killed by the Wu Clan below the mountain.
Over time, rumors spread that the Wu Clan did not allow mortals to climb the mountain, lest the immortal medicine be lost.
As the rumor spread wider, and as Wu Xian and the others remained lively despite being over a hundred years old, more and more people developed greed.
After the Wu Clan’s population exceeded one thousand.
In the thirteenth year.
Chu Xun sensed a change in his body.
A brand-new spirit soul was being born.
Unlike the spirit of the Songliu Water God, it could possess a true physical body according to Chu Xun’s thoughts.
Or it could remain in a special state between real and unreal.
After considering for a while, Chu Xun did not let this spirit soul remain in that state.
He wanted to know what would happen when such a spirit soul truly existed in the world.
Thus, that year, monstrous flames ignited on the mountain peak.
Five-colored flames burned through the dome of heaven, melting the mountain peak into a dazzling land of colored glass.
Even Wei Youyou ran down to the mountainside and stayed with Wu Xian and the others.
Wu Xian, whose temples had finally gained a trace of white, bowed to Wei Youyou, revealing a questioning expression.
Wei Youyou shook her head. She did not know what had happened either.
After thinking for a moment, she answered, “Old Master might be breaking through, yo.”
Wu Xian and the other nine Wu looked at one another, then shouted loudly and knelt toward the mountain peak.
The many Wu Clan members also knelt and kowtowed one after another.
On the mountain peak, flames surged as though they would never extinguish.
They burned for a full seven days and seven nights before a heavy pressure swept down from above.
All the Wu Clan members trembled.
They sensed the aura of their god.
It was a clear sensation brought by the faith deep within their souls.
Every Wu Clan member knelt on the ground and did not dare rise, speak, or even raise their heads.
Only Wei Youyou opened her eyes wide, her little mouth forming a circle.
“Wowza!?”
A flame giant one hundred zhang tall, cloaked in divine fire, stood atop the mountain peak.
Like a god looking down upon the world, he gazed below.
He looked at the Wu Clan and spoke in a world-shaking voice.
“My name is… Zhurong!”
(End of Chapter)