Chapter 81: The Mechanism Beast |
In the glow of the lanterns at the courtyard gates on either side, the Jiguren Qu Zhongheng hopped on one leg up to Ding Songyan and asked in surprise, "What are you doing here?"
He recognized Xu Chang’an too, but looked down on him for being a thief and did not deign to greet him.
"I’ve moved here." Ding Songyan pointed at the residence, which had yet to have the "Ding Residence" plaque hung up.
Qu Zhongheng blurted out in astonishment, "Where did you get the money for this?"
"A reward from my master," Ding Songyan answered "truthfully."
With the Accumulated Evil Way already investigating the Zhen household affair, he no longer mentioned to outsiders that the reward was connected to it.
"Right, you are a personal disciple to Sect Master Tao of the Brightnight Sect." A look of realization spread across Qu Zhongheng’s reasonably upstanding face.
The yin eye across his brow remained tightly shut.
Before Ding Songyan could say another word, Qu Zhongheng—clad in a short hemp jacket with a leather belt at his waist—lamented, "How could Little Sister Qingyan, such a pure and delicate girl, be a demoness?"
It’s been this long and you still haven’t accepted it? Ding Songyan said in amusement, "You can’t judge a book by its cover."
Such as myself.
"Alas." Qu Zhongheng sighed.
Suddenly his gaze swept over Frostshade in Ding Songyan’s left hand, and his eyes froze.
"That sword... how did that sword end up in your hands?"
"Why shouldn’t it be? I am the sect master’s personal disciple." Ding Songyan laughed without taking offense. He had long known that Qu Zhongheng wore every emotion on his face and never kept his thoughts to himself.
Qu Zhongheng accepted the explanation, but Ding Songyan read from his expression sentiments along the lines of "pearls cast before swine" and "a treasure squandered."
Qu Zhongheng wiped at his eyes and said, "Has it been named? I’ll engrave it on the blade for you. A sword must have a name to develop a spirit."
"What does it mean for a sword to have a spirit?" Ding Songyan asked with curiosity.
Just then, something stirred in his heart and he turned to look the other way.
Zheng Zhuxi, in her pale green gauze skirt nearly white, was coming toward them with her small pack on her back and Autumnwater in hand. Her figure swayed gracefully, a faint smile on her face, like the afterglow of evening clouds still lingering.
Both Xu Chang’an and Qu Zhongheng looked over, and even though they had both witnessed Ding Qingyan’s peerless beauty, Zheng Zhuxi at this moment left them staring blankly.
"When a sword has a spirit, it responds to your intent like an extension of your arm, can hum softly in its scabbard to warn you, and can even harm malevolent ghosts and evil entities," Zheng Zhuxi answered Ding Songyan’s question for Qu Zhongheng with a bright smile. "But nurturing a spirit in a treasured sword is not something that happens quickly. This Autumnwater of mine was a gift from my father. I’ve used it for four full years and only recently does it feel as though a faint spirit is beginning to emerge."
That sounds worthwhile... Without standing on ceremony with his senior sister, Ding Songyan smiled at Qu Zhongheng.
"It’s called Frostshade. When do you have time to engrave it on the blade?"
"It has to wait until midnight. Once I open my yin eye and can see the flow of heaven and earth’s qi, I can engrave the name without disrupting the sword’s overall aura." When speaking of swordsmithing, Qu Zhongheng wore an expression of complete seriousness.
Why can’t my yin eye see the flow of heaven and earth’s qi? I can only do that when I use the Celestial Heart... Do yin eyes differ from one to the other? Is this a racial talent of the Jiguren? Ding Songyan wondered, his smile unchanged.
"Then I’ll come by at midnight."
Qu Zhongheng had just nodded when a carriage came rolling out from the side gate of his courtyard, driven by a lifeless wooden figure.
"You’re heading out, so why not take the wooden kite flying carriage?" Ding Songyan asked casually.
Qu Zhongheng immediately put on a look of aggrievement.
"The prefectural office is worried the flying carriage might fall and hit someone or damage buildings. They won’t let me use it in the city.
"Alas, I need to hurry and find an expert. One of the wooden beasts at home has been acting strangely. I need someone to get it under control so I can repair it."
Expert? Ding Songyan glanced at his senior sister. "How capable do they need to be?"
"The more capable the better..." Before Qu Zhongheng had even finished speaking, a tremendous crash rang out from inside his courtyard, as though something enormous had come crashing down.
Qu Zhongheng’s expression changed.
"Oh no! Ding Songyan, go report it to the authorities. I need to get my father out of there!"
With that, the one-legged Jiguren turned and hopped rapidly toward his courtyard.
Zheng Zhuxi exchanged a glance with Ding Songyan, then calmly instructed Xu Chang’an, "Signal the watchtower. We’ll go take a look first."
If they could handle it themselves, better to do so quickly before anyone innocent got hurt.
Remembering that Frostshade still needed Qu Zhongheng to engrave its name, Ding Songyan raised no objection. He broke into the Southern Dipper Calamity-Averting Steps and followed behind Zheng Zhuxi as they rushed into the Qu residence.
The servants had all retreated to the first compound. The second compound’s courtyard was strewn with the shattered limbs of wooden guards, and a wooden beast 2.16 meters tall, shaped like a fearsome tiger, was sweeping two more wooden figures away with a swipe of its tail.
The wooden beast was assembled from pieces of brown hardwood, its joints all bound with gold and iron. It looked fearsome while its movements were fluid due to a nimble body—entirely unlike the stiff and clumsy wooden guards.
Qu Zhongheng could not get around the wooden beast and was hopping about frantically.
Suddenly the wooden beast opened its jaws and spewed a fierce gout of flame, setting a wooden guard and a green tree ablaze.
"This thing..." Both Ding Songyan and Zheng Zhuxi looked toward Qu Zhongheng.
Qu Zhongheng said through gritted teeth, "There’s a mechanism in its belly loaded with fire oil."
Quite a weapon... Having already observed the wooden beast and confirmed that its performance did not reach the level of the Dharma Realm, Ding Songyan’s heart settled.
He also noticed that as he entered the courtyard, the wooden beast’s movements had slowed noticeably.
Taking advantage of the remaining wooden guards still keeping the beast occupied, Ding Songyan asked thoughtfully, "Qu Zhongheng, this wooden beast seems different from the others?"
Qu Zhongheng hesitated before answering, "The wooden figures and beasts from before were usually stiff and cumbersome, predictable and easy to guard against. They were all driven by mechanisms that stopped when the power ran out, requiring an operator to restart them, which was terribly inconvenient. I wasn’t very satisfied with them.
"I thought, can’t we Jiguren open our yin eyes and see wandering ghosts and spirits? So I tracked down a ghost-binding technique and combined it with mechanisms to create this new beast. As you can see, it moves like a martial artist, is unafraid of blades, and has inexhaustible strength."
"You really are a little genius..." The corner of Ding Songyan’s mouth twitched.
He felt that Qu Zhongheng had an even more relentless drive to dig into things than he did, and even more willingness to put his ideas into practice.
"What?" Qu Zhongheng did not understand Ding Songyan’s "compliment."
"A genius whose talents were born for a purpose," Ding Songyan explained vaguely while opening his own yin eyes.
He immediately saw the underworld and the dark-green tiger spirit bound to the wooden beast.
The ghost was so pale it was nearly transparent, its entire body tinged with an eerie green, its eyes full of undisguised savagery and killing intent.
It had already been suppressed by Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil, but bound to the wooden beast as it was, it could not return to the underworld and could only lash out at the remaining wooden figures, trying to force open a path of escape.
Ding Songyan was not about to let it escape the Qu residence and harm anyone. Meanwhile, as if reading his mind, Zheng Zhuxi had already rushed forward, pivoted to avoid the jet of scarlet flame from the front, drew her sword, and slashed at the joint between two sections of the wooden beast.
A clear ring rang out as Autumnwater cut through three layers of mechanisms like iron through mud, and the warm amber light of the Candlelight Sword Intent pierced through the dark-green tiger spirit.
But the wooden beast was layered with mechanisms, and something concealed within was protecting the ghost spirit. Zheng Zhuxi’s stroke had only disrupted the beast’s movements somewhat to limited effect.
Crash! Crash! Crash! The wooden beast went berserk, lunging high and snapping low. Its front paws slammed down repeatedly, its tail lashing like a whip, entirely without concern for anything else.
Outmatched in raw strength, Zheng Zhuxi could only use the Southern Dipper Calamity-Averting Steps to weave and dodge through the barrage of attacks, circling around it and striking occasionally, not daring to clash with it head-on.
Had Ding Songyan not been suppressing the wooden beast’s spirit and slowing its movements considerably, the young woman’s situation would have been far more precarious.
"Sigh, this wooden beast was built specifically to contend with fighters at the Mortal Surpassed rank..." Qu Zhongheng stood to the side, sighing and lamenting.
I know you’re straightforward, but saying something like that at a time like this is genuinely off-putting... Ding Songyan had found no weakness in the wooden beast through his yin eyes and was considering whether to step in himself, using his senior sister as cover to finish the fight quickly, when he suddenly recalled that Qu Zhongheng had earlier mentioned the flow of heaven and earth’s qi.
To bind a ghost, to fuse a ghost spirit with mechanisms, you would certainly need to draw on the workings of heaven and earth’s qi... Ding Songyan quickly transferred the hazy "seed" back into his sea of consciousness, and while the yin eyes were still active, used his Presence-Absence Myriad Forms Qi to derive the Celestial Heart.
An instant later, he had the sensation of looking down over this stretch of heaven and earth, commanding the flow of its qi.
He turned his gaze toward the wooden beast and saw dark green and scarlet red circulating ceaselessly upon it, flowing together to the side of the beast’s head and from there spreading outward in all directions.
"Senior Sister, strike one inch below its left ear," Ding Songyan called out clearly.
Zheng Zhuxi had no time to think and chose to trust him.
With a crash, she sidestepped the wooden beast’s right paw as it came slamming down, shattering the gray stone slabs underfoot into pieces.
Immediately after, she touched her sword lightly against the sweeping tail, used the momentum to vault into the air, and flipped nimbly to the left side of the wooden beast.
As she came down, her sword light flashed, like the gleam of autumn water catching the last rays of sunset.
The stroke landed with uncanny precision one inch below the wooden beast’s left ear, and a warm amber radiance lit up.
In Ding Songyan’s eyes, the dark green and scarlet red briefly shattered apart, and the Candlelight Sword Intent seized the moment to envelop the tiger spirit, causing it to cry out in silent agony as it gradually dissolved.
On top of that, stripped of its protection, the remnant spirit now faced Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil directly, and in the blink of an eye it was utterly obliterated.
Crack! Crack! The wooden beast made a strange disintegrating sound and came crashing to the ground in a heap of flying parts.
Zheng Zhuxi sheathed her sword and landed, her posture light and graceful.
The moment she steadied herself, her gaze shifted to Ding Songyan, candleflame and starlight still lingering in her eyes, as though many words lay hidden within, none of them spoken.
Qu Zhongheng stood there blankly for a moment, staring at Zheng Zhuxi, and blurted out, "You actually managed to destroy the wooden beast..."
"Qu Zhongheng, at a time like this you only need to say thank you," Ding Songyan said with resigned patience.
Before either Zheng Zhuxi or Qu Zhongheng could say a word, the county constable chief Xue Zhangjian and his men came running into the courtyard.
Seeing the wooden beast collapsed in a heap and Zheng Zhuxi standing composed and upright, they paused for a moment, then let out a collective breath of relief.
Qu Zhongheng, still in a daze, continued, "That wooden beast is on par with a fourth-rank Mortal Surpassed fighter. It would take at least a third-rank Form Transfigured powerhouse to reliably overpower it. Aren’t you at Anomaly Manifested? How did you manage it..."
Hearing Qu Zhongheng’s words, Constable Chief Xue looked toward Zheng Zhuxi with considerable surprise.
"You destroyed it with a lone sword by yourself, Heroine Zheng?"
Zheng Zhuxi’s expression became complicated at once. She glanced at Ding Songyan, then answered in a low voice, "Yes."
She disliked lying, yet lately lies had come often. The last time was to observe her junior brother’s unusual traits, claiming she also happened to be heading to the prefecture city. The time before that was to cover for him in the killing of the Accumulated Evil Way’s Feng Zhengning.
While it was true that she had been the one to destroy the wooden beast, Zheng Zhuxi knew full well that she deserved at most 30% of the credit.
Constable Chief Xue Zhangjian was moved with admiration.
"Heroine Zheng, you entered the Great Proliferation Realm less than a year ago, yet not long ago you fought and killed Feng Zhengning of the Accumulated Evil Way. Even though he was also at Anomaly Manifested, he had committed many evils and killed multiple fighters at his own rank. His official grading next year would likely have been raised to Profound Discerned.
"I had assumed it was because you were in Alpine Lake Town with plenty of support. But seeing this, I realize I truly underestimated you, Heroine Zheng. To think you could destroy a wooden beast equivalent to a Mortal Surpassed fighter. Heroes do emerge young. At next year’s ranking evaluation, you will be placed no lower than fifth rank, Profound Discerned."
Hearing this, Zheng Zhuxi’s expression grew even more complicated, and she shot Ding Songyan a covert glare.
Comments 1