Nothing to It

The man in black passed on quite peacefully. ... The instant the sword light came down on him, he had in fact put up a struggle. He swiftly condensed a mass of black wind in front of his chest, a wind that seemed to swarm with countless locusts, gnawing madly at the divine sense Yue Wen was using to control the flying sword, trying to strip the sword out of his control. If Yue Wen's divine sense so much as wavered, he could shatter it — the flying sword would spiral out of control, and the sword light would unravel on its own. But to his shock, this young man who had appeared out of nowhere had a cultivation foundation a hundred times more solid than that immortal sect disciple from before! His true qi was dense and consolidated, his divine sense deep and weighty. Essence, qi, spirit — not a single flaw! This was entirely a gap in cultivation methods. To utterly crush a Linjiang Sect disciple like that — could he be from an immortal sect of even higher standing? The man in black thought of those famous top-tier sects of the mortal world, and for the life of him could not work out how he had provoked someone of this caliber into making a move. And someone of this caliber had actually gone to the trouble of playing corpse here all this time, just to ambush him! You want me dead that badly? Fine — go ahead and kill me, then. The True Dragon Dao Method whirled at full speed, and stream after stream of magnificent true essence came surging in; in the blink of an eye the flying sword, with no regard for reason at all, punched clean through the man in black's chest. Pfft— A spray of blood mist burst from the man's back. Like those little demons last night, he had no protection under the law whatsoever. The difference was that those little demons hadn't dared do evil, so Yue Wen hadn't had the heart to kill them. Facing a heretical cultivator with this much evil on his hands, he felt no burden at all. One sword through the heart, and the heretical cultivator dropped. His eyes brimming with bitter unwillingness, he murmured, "I've never seen you before... who on earth sent you..." Yue Wen stepped up the slope and answered coolly, "I'm the proprietor of the Yue Cultivation Agency. The East City Cemetery paid me one thousand yuan to clear out evil entities." "One thousand... one thousand yuan..." The man in black's eyes bulged, blood welling from his mouth, his face full of disbelief. "One thousand yuan, and you... I..." He never finished. The man in black had already lost the light of life. Yue Wen waited a while, and only when the man showed no further movement did he walk up for a clear look at his face. A middle-aged man, deathly pale, the skin deeply sunken over his frame — he looked worn down to skin and bone. Had they met on the street, Yue Wen would have taken him for a frail invalid and never guessed he was a heretical cultivator who killed without blinking. Yet this era was full of such people, hidden in the streets and alleys of the city. Killing a man brought no evil-suppressing coins as a reward, but neither was it entirely without profit. Once he had confirmed yet again that the man was dead, Yue Wen leaned in and began searching him. Heretical cultivators like this drifted from place to place; anything valuable was almost certainly kept on his person. While Qi Dian was still out cold, whatever he found would be his and his alone. Lying on the ground was a long fishing-rod case, empty — it must have held the great banner planted there. This heretical cultivator clearly had no storage magic implement, which was why he had rolled the great banner up and stuffed it into a fishing-rod bag as camouflage. Which, ironically, made searching the body that much easier. The great banner looked like a fine piece, but Yue Wen didn't dare take it. One glance told you it was a dark-path magic implement — heaven knew what it had been refined with. Keeping it for himself or taking it out to sell would both be serious crimes. A heretical cultivator answered to no taboos, but Yue Wen was a respectable man with a home and a business; he couldn't afford to touch this kind of thing. First, from the man in black's waist he turned up a belt pouch. Inside was a stack of cash, forty or fifty thousand by the look of it. "Thank you kindly, boss." Yue Wen voiced his thanks and pocketed the cash without ceremony. Then he fished the man in black's phone out of his pocket. Someone had been sending him messages, but Yue Wen didn't know the unlock passcode, so he could see nothing more. That wasn't a job for supernatural powers — that took technology. He'd leave it for the Supernatural Management Bureau, coming along later to handle the aftermath. Next, from the man in black's chest he dug out half of a skull carved from black gold — exquisitely made, archaic in color, its whole surface covered in fine scale-like patterns. It didn't look like a dark-path magic implement; what kind of treasure it might be, he couldn't say. Yue Wen had no idea what the thing itself was for, but the material looked like Blackwater Dragon-Pattern Gold, an exceedingly precious immortal-grade metal. "I'll have this tested." Yue Wen considered, then pocketed the half black-gold skull as well. He went over the body from head to toe one more time, but there was nothing more to be had. For a rogue cultivator, carrying one or two magic implements already counted as well-off, and Yue Wen wasn't about to complain about a modest haul. Even so, once he'd finished all this, he still didn't hurry off to rescue Qi Dian. Instead, he went to the corpse of "Zhang Wei." ... The Cult Master of the "Meow Meow Cult" was looking for him. So was the Boss behind this heretical cultivator. And this Zhang Wei, dead in an accident, had been nothing but an antique shop employee with no cultivation at all. Why? The man in black had let slip just now that Zhang Wei had once stolen something from that antique shop. It had to be connected to that item. If all these people wanted his corpse, the thing was most likely hidden on his body. He had the chance now anyway — there was no loss in seeing what it was. Many of Zhang Wei's bones were broken, as though he had been in a rather gruesome car accident. Yue Wen gave the body a quick pat-down and found nothing. Bodies of people who died in accidents were surely searched before burial; personal effects were sealed away to await the family. Since the corpse had already been buried, of course nothing would be left in plain sight — no surprise there. And those people still wanting to dig up his corpse likely meant they had already examined his sealed belongings by every means they could. To no avail. But Zhang Wei had been an ordinary person; he couldn't have used a storage magic implement. If the item hadn't been lost somewhere out in the world, then where was the deepest hiding place a man like him could manage? Yue Wen didn't bother racking his brain — he simply activated the spirit-probing needle. Precisely because Zhang Wei was an ordinary man, everything on him was mundane. If anything on the body carried a fluctuation of spiritual nature, it had to be the treasure they were all hunting — there were no decoys in the mix. This was exactly the spirit-probing needle's moment for treasure-hunting. The needle wreathed in a hazy disc of light spun rapidly twice, then pointed straight at the crown of Zhang Wei's head. "Inside his head?" Yue Wen's eyes narrowed. "No — in his hair!" He reached out and gave a hard pull — and sure enough, a chunk of Zhang Wei's center-parted hair came off in his hand. It was a wig, fitted on with astonishing tightness! Beneath the wig was a kiwifruit-like head, sparsely covered with follicles, and from between the wig and scalp slipped a thin piece of purple cloth. So this Zhang Wei had started losing his hair young? Talk about a hard-luck life. Sighing over it, Yue Wen picked up the cloth. It was torn on all four sides, its shape irregular, as if ripped from something larger, and to the touch it felt like sheepskin. The front was purple-gold, the back black, and both sides were blank. In the lower left corner of the purple-gold side, an intricate, eerie snake-and-tiger emblem had been engraved: countless long snakes with flicking tongues coiling around a fanged tiger, as if locked in battle — or perhaps in fusion — woven together into a single round emblem. The instant he saw it, Yue Wen's eyes went sharp, the light in them deeply shaken! He had seen this emblem before... And he would never forget it. So the item this man had stolen was actually connected to that place. No wonder it had drawn the covetous eyes of so many. Yue Wen dared not linger over it. He hastily tucked the purple silk scrap into his shirt to study carefully after getting back, then set the wig back on the corpse. As if nothing had ever happened. ... Only after finishing all this did he saunter, quite at ease, over to Qi Dian's side. He channeled true qi into his fingertips and pulled the four steel needles out of his body. "Ah!" The moment the needles left him, the sealed Qi Dian snapped awake, let out a startled cry, and sat bolt upright. He blinked, saw Yue Wen before him, and said at once, "Yue Wen? Run! Go get the Supernatural Management Bureau — I'll cover the rear! This heretical cultivator is most likely a Flame Ghost Hall disciple. His cultivation level is formidable — you can't match him!" "Easy, Brother Qi." Yue Wen patted his shoulder twice, reassuringly. "That heretical cultivator is dead. I killed him." "You?" Qi Dian froze, as if he couldn't believe it. "You killed him?" "There." Yue Wen pointed at the corpse at the top of the slope. The night was deep and dark, but Qi Dian's eyes, strengthened by his cultivation, had no trouble; one look and he saw the state the heretical cultivator had died in. Qi Dian's eyes filled with astonishment. First — Yue Wen could actually manage it? Even with Yue Wen two minor realms above him, Qi Dian hadn't thought the man's combat strength could surpass his own. After all, he was only a rogue cultivator. In the stereotypical image, a rogue cultivator lacked cultivation methods, supernatural powers, magic implements... and even setting the stereotype aside, that really was the case. Second — he was actually willing to do it? Old Man Huang had said hiring Yue Wen cost just one thousand yuan. Killing a few Lantern Wraiths, fine — but was slaying heretical cultivators part of the man's job? What kind of life do you risk for one thousand yuan? After standing stunned for a while, Qi Dian finally asked, "How did you do it?" "Just..." Yue Wen mimed a sword stroke. "...one move, like that." He had no intention of revealing that he knew anything about the "Zhang Wei" affair, so he boiled the whole story down: he had seen Brother Qi in trouble, hurried over, and cut the heretical cultivator down in passing. "That's all it took?" Qi Dian's expression had gone slightly slack, his shock beyond words. "He was only a Union Realm heretical cultivator. How hard could it be?" Yue Wen shrugged, perfectly composed. "It was nothing."