“Something's off!”
Instinctively, An Jing caught the whiff of serious trouble. Frowning, he muttered to himself, “Surely it's not one of those storyteller's tales, is it—where Gu Yeqi's father falls out with the family, goes off alone to the Northern Frontier to live out his days as an ordinary man under a false name, and then, because of the Frost Calamity, is forced to sell Yeqi to strangers to save his daughter, only to end up swallowing his pride before his parents and borrowing the family's power to get his daughter back.”
“The longer he searches, the bigger the problem turns out to be—those strangers turn out to be the Demon Sect, and then everything spins out of control...”
Shaking his head slightly, An Jing threw this absurd guess out of his mind and grumbled, “Too clichéd.”
Still, connection or none, An Jing wasn't worried about the future of his little friends—Gu Yeqi really was a good girl, and as his deputy, her abilities were quite solid too.
The Demon Sect's selection was cruel, certainly, but it also meant that everyone who lived through it was a dragon among men.
Never mind the rest—just to be sure his closest friends wouldn't be tainted by demonic qi, An Jing, after obtaining the Sword Spirit's consent, had also imparted to Gu Yeqi and Cang Linzu the part of the “Tranquil Sword Contemplation” that steadies the mind and spirit.
Cang Linzu, a genius whose Innate Constitution and Comprehension ranked second only to An Jing's, and who could even trade a few blows with him, naturally learned fast enough. But Gu Yeqi learned this Visualization Method even faster.
In this area, she clearly had a gift.
Then again, that this tiny Suspended Fate Manor could gather so many Children of Destiny, so many hidden prodigies—the people Great Chen had sent over probably hadn't come only to rescue Gu Yeqi. They were likely here to pick the ripe fruit for themselves, too?
That possibility wasn't small, either...
“Your Innate Wisdom actually holds this many storyteller's tales?”
Sensing An Jing's thoughts, even the Sword Spirit grew curious. “Hmm... they're full of clichés, but the plots feel pretty good—An Jing, in your past life, were you a storyteller who roamed the martial world with a sword?”
“Probably not.” An Jing smacked his lips. “Your memory is incomplete, and mine is incomplete too—we're actually quite alike in that respect.”
“Your Innate Wisdom will awaken fully sooner or later—or you'll make peace with your past life, or maybe your past life simply doesn't want to live one more time.” The Sword Spirit sounded rather gloomy. “But my memories were stripped away by an Extramundane Demon... Still, our ways of thinking are fairly close, and that's fortunate enough.”
“Is that so.”
An Jing sighed inwardly and looked around at the Children of Calamity and the Red Armored Guards. “I can't help but feel I don't quite belong here.”
Within the camp, everyone stood beneath the sunlight, as though they had already shaken off every shadow.
Only An Jing still sat in the shade of the trees along the valley's edge, watching it all with a complicated heart.
“My anger—they can't understand it. My thinking, my ideas, my character, they all come from my innate gifts and my Innate Wisdom. They truly don't think eating people is any great matter; they can even shrug off the slaughter of human beings.”
“I keep wondering whether I'm being oversensitive, whether the Frost Calamity has already done some damage to my mind—whether that's why I'm this sensitive, this... paranoid.”
“Maybe this is just how the world is. This age can't feed everyone, so it eats people. Maybe I've been too absorbed in my own fantasy world.”
“I'll never change—that much is certain. But the others...”
An Jing spoke what lay in his heart. He truly no longer had any doubt about the path he would walk, but when it came to whether he should drag others into it, he still felt some hesitation.
“If you were an ordinary man, you'd be right.” Faced with An Jing's somewhat despondent thoughts at that moment, the Sword Spirit answered without the slightest hesitation.
It went on, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world: “What can a single tree branch do? At most it floats on the water and drifts with the current. No one expects it to raise up any hall, no one expects it to serve as a pillar or a beam. Even if you burn it, it does no more than flare up once—it can't clearly light a face in the dark of night, can't break through the barrier of the mist, and it certainly can't heat iron until it glows red and forge it into a sword.”
“But you are a Cultivator. You have an Extraordinary Destiny. You are a genius, and you are my sword bearer. In the future, once you've grown strong, your spine can hold up the halls of morality, your bones can serve as the pillars of the age, and if you light a single flame, even all under heaven will burn.”
“Lost in your own world? Wrong, An Jing... We Cultivators are precisely the ones who take the world within our hearts and—with fist and sword—beat it into something real, carve it into something real!”
“If the age won't allow it, then beat the age until it does!”
“If others can't understand you, then make them live in the world you've forged, generation after generation, until they come to regard it as the Heavenly Dao, as heavenly principle!”
That was simply how the Sword Spirit reasoned—so straightforward that refuting it took no thought at all.
But An Jing needed exactly this kind of straightforwardness.
The youth was dazed for a moment, and then he laughed. “True enough. I don't need to be like them.”
“I really am different from them.”
An Jing closed his eyes.
Perhaps this age really was bloody and backward, corrupt and greedy... but even in such an age, such a Great Chen, even within such a Demon Sect, there were still people who loved their country and cherished the people, people who were honest and upright, people who upheld order and at the very least kept their own integrity, who would never be corrupt or greedy, never cruel or depraved.
That the age was this way didn't mean every person had to be this way. It didn't mean it had “always been this way.”
Nor did it mean he had to be that way.
Besides, he was this strong, this gifted, and he carried a divine sword.
He, An Jing, might just be able to reverse it, reshape it—even smash this age to pieces!
“Not bad—your state of mind shifted quickly. That's very well suited to tempering your Dao Heart...”
Sensing the change in An Jing's mindset, the Sword Spirit had gotten only halfway through its praise when its tone suddenly turned grave, and An Jing—who had just relaxed—lifted his head at once. “This feeling... such dense demonic qi... is it an Extramundane Demon?!”
“An Jing, run!” Its voice rising, it went on in shock and fury, “Among the new batch of Red Armored Guards approaching, an Extramundane Demon is hiding—one of tremendous power! This is aimed at me... I can't let them find me!”
“What's the matter with this mortal dynasty—how has it been so deeply eroded by the Extramundane Demons?!”
“What?!”
An Jing shot to his feet. The motion startled Cang Linzu beside him, and even Gu Yeqi, who had been asking the Red Armored Guards about her own family's situation, instinctively turned to look in An Jing's direction. “Brother Jing, what's happened?”
Then they, together with all the Red Armored Guards, watched in astonishment as An Jing suddenly launched himself into the air, turned into a blur, and raced straight off toward the deep mountains and old forests.
“Get out of here! Stay away from Suspended Fate Valley!” Before he left, An Jing shouted sternly, “There's an Extramundane Demon hidden among the Red Armored Guards who are coming—it means to unseal the Extramundane Demon sealed in Suspended Fate Valley!”
“A-Cang! After I'm gone, you and Yeqi are to teach the Visualization Method I taught you to everyone... You absolutely must do it!”
“What? An Extramundane Demon!” “What proof do you have—fuck it! Hear the order! Form up and fall back!”
Cang Linzu was utterly dumbfounded, and the captain of the Red Armored Guards—the long-bearded martial officer who had earlier been talking with Gu Yeqi—had instinctively thrown out that demand for proof.
But the words had barely left his mouth when he caught himself: this cursed place, Suspended Fate Valley, really did seem to have an Extramundane Demon sealed within.
At a time like this, better to believe it than not!
Besides, as the man who had dealt with the undercover agent more than anyone else, he understood the true weight of An Jing's strength better than any other Red Armored Guard, and he knew that this young genius, so highly favored within the Demon Sect, truly did have something out of the ordinary about him—maybe the boy really was unusually sharp at sensing demonic qi?
As for why the other had suddenly broken from his usual habit of looking after his companions and left alone, there was probably some reason for that too. In any case, they could never catch up with him now, so they could only fall back first.
In an instant, more than a hundred Red Armored Guards moved as one, and—taking the dumbstruck Children of Calamity with them—swiftly quit White Sand Ground and Suspended Fate Valley, withdrawing to the area around the foot of the mountain.
Across their armor, crimson flames spread and billowed upward; gathered around their commander at the core, they linked into a vast formation that sheltered everyone within it.
“Big brother, he...” Cang Linzu still hadn't caught on—why would An Jing, who just moments ago had been chatting and teasing with him and dispelling his gloom, suddenly get up and leave without the slightest thought of bringing him along? But Gu Yeqi turned to look at the forest where An Jing had vanished, and she began to understand.
—Suspended Fate Valley's demonic qi was so dangerous that even the Red Armored Guards didn't dare approach it lightly, yet Brother Jing had dared to bring them inside to hide, coming and going as he pleased... Perhaps Brother Jing really did have some special way of dealing with demonic qi, some secret bound up with the Extramundane Demons—and when that Extramundane Demon drew near, it would surely notice!
He had left so suddenly to keep the rest of them from being dragged into it!
“Oh?”
Just then, within the squad of Red Armored Guards drawing near Suspended Fate Valley, an utterly unremarkable Martial Artist noticed the strange sight of the squad ahead falling back, away from the valley, and couldn't help saying in some surprise, “They actually caught on? What's Jiexin playing at—how could these little runts catch a hint of it?”
“Never mind.” He said rather regretfully, “Pity—such a fine show.”
“Fanjin, what did you say?”
A teammate beside him thought he was being addressed and turned his head in some confusion.
“Nothing.” The Martial Artist called Fanjin answered with a smile, “A pity, but goodbye.”
And then the world plunged into utter darkness.
Within the ranks of the Red Armored Guards, a steaming, putrid, cloyingly sweet and rank stench spread out, and demonic qi—so thick it was nearly like grease—poured from Fanjin's body and the seams of his armor.
In an instant, the demonic qi, like the iridescent sheen on an oil slick, swallowed up the entire company of Red Armored Guards, just as a tide swallows sand and gravel.
Chapter 51