When Li Yuanping arrived, the entire alley was already cordoned off. Both ends were desolate and empty, the street devoid of passersby, with two lines of clan guards deployed in single files.
A Qi Refinement monster was steeped in demonic qi; mortals of flesh and bone who brushed against it would fall gravely ill at best, or perish outright at worst. As such, not a single townsman lingered.
The fox was sitting cross-legged at a roadside stall, waiting eagerly. It had originally been a wonton noodle stall, but the proprietor had long since fled for his life, leaving behind a scene of disarray.
Chen Donghe stood beside the fox, silently gripping his sword, watching vigilantly with a solemn face. He had already attained the fourth layer of Qi Refinement, ranking among the clan's foremost cultivators.
An Zheyan, on the other hand, sat nonchalantly opposite the fox, cradling a bowl of wontons and smacking his lips. Nearly a hundred years old, he still indulged his worldly palate, eating with shiny lips and savory aromas that made the fox swallow saliva repeatedly.
"Li Yuanping greets Senior!"
Li Yuanping studied it briefly and saw that the fox indeed matched the descriptions in the rumors. He hurried forward to bow with clasped hands. The fox let out a squeak and chattered:
"Where is Li Tongya?!"
Seeing Li Yuanping arrive, An Zheyan set down his bowl and rose, while Chen Donghe gave a nod of acknowledgment. Together they called out:
"Young Master!"
Li Yuanping gave a brief word of response, then addressed the fox respectfully:
"Senior, our Ancestor is cultivating within his cave dwelling. Please accompany me up the mountain to speak!"
The fox's snout twitched, its slit-like eyes scanning the surroundings before lingering on the pale-gold great array over Mount Lijing. Hesitating for a moment, it grunted:
"Let us make this clear first... Your Ancestor and I are close friends, and my name is on record in the Monster Cave. If you trick me into the formation and kill me, Mount Dali will not let the matter rest!"
"Senior, how could you say such a thing?"
Li Yuanping offered a placating smile and waved to dismiss the clan guards, An Zheyan, and the others who had accompanied him. He led the fox along for a while, crossing through the golden barrier into the mountains. The fox muttered gloomily:
"Is he hurt so badly... that he cannot even show his face down the mountain?"
Li Yuanping knew that half of Ancestor Li Tongya’s intelligence had come from this fox, so it most likely knew the secrets behind it all as well. Inwardly, he gave a wry smile, thinking:
*A fox spirit after all—shrewd and calculating.*
Aloud, he merely replied:
"Senior, please wait a little; you will understand once you see him yourself. I only saw the Ancestor once several months ago, when I brought healing and vitality-cultivating medicines up the mountain, so I do not know how he fares now either."
The mountain path wound onward. Man and fox walked the trail until the cave dwelling on Meichi Mountain came into view. Looking at the tightly shut stone door, Li Yuanping paused with slight hesitation and said respectfully:
"Senior, please wait a moment... My elder brother will be here shortly; let him open this cave dwelling."
Although this Bairong Fox was an old friend of Li Tongya for many years, it was a monster after all. Li Yuanping could not completely put his mind at ease. Li Tongya was gravely wounded right now; if this monster harbored evil intentions, there would truly be no way to subdue it.
Li Yuanjiao was in the middle stage of Qi Refinement and carried Foundation Establishment talismans with him, so Li Yuanping preferred to have his elder brother Li Yuanjiao escort it inside. The fox nodded rather blankly. But then came a grating, screeching sound as the stone door groaned open before them.
"Let it in."
Li Tongya’s voice sounded hoarse. Li Yuanping could only nod, making an inviting gesture. Suspecting nothing amiss, the fox scrambled eagerly into the cave dwelling.
The interior was brimming with spiritual qi. Dharmic lamps lit along the walls cast a shimmering white glow. Li Tongya sat cross-legged upon a stone bed, looking at it with a smile.
On the stone table before him lay an assortment of spiritual treasures and elixirs glowing with faint light, most of them untouched, resting on the tabletop exactly as they had arrived.
"Li Tongya!"
The fox squeaked. When it saw Li Tongya’s head of white hair, his withered, gaunt face, and his gentle gaze looking back, it turned pale with fright. Darting forward in a few quick bounds, it grabbed his hand to inspect him, its nose twitching rapidly as it cried:
"This... this..."
Li Tongya laughed heartily and replied:
"It is thanks to the news you gathered that I was able to keep my life before that Wrathful Mahasattva!"
"What the bloody hell are you laughing at?"
Where the fox had learned such language was anyone's guess, but it cursed with a sour face and chattered:
"Your path of the Dao is severed!"
"More than that."
Li Tongya pushed up his sleeve, exposing the arm beneath. The arm was covered in cracks, from which trickled droplets of pale-cyan liquid. Touching a finger to the fluid, he said gently:
"My cultivation is regressing."
Pointing toward the spiritual materials on the stone table, Li Tongya shook his head helplessly and remarked:
"I told them not to send these things over, but the juniors were truly full of earnest devotion. Alas, most of them are of little use—a sheer waste."
The fox quietly swallowed a gulp of spit, then squeaked:
"If you ask me... this is actually easy to fix! Your condition comes from shattered viscera and discordant five qis. I have a spell that can harvest people to fashion mock heart, spleen, stomach, lungs, and liver to replace them inside your chest and abdomen. Then have your disciples and descendants harvest qi for a few months to replenish your viscera and bowels one by one. In less than three years, you will be as good as new!"
The more the fox spoke, the more excited it became, chattering loudly and gesticulating wildly:
"As for your severed Dao path, we can hunt down a horned jiao, feed it six thousand six hundred people, and create a blood pool. Do this once every three years, and it can be reconnected..."
Only at this point did the fox snap shut its mouth as though waking from a dream. Li Tongya shook his head and said:
"That art of yours to fashion mock organs—I fear it uses living people, doesn't it? As for harvesting the qi of the viscera and bowels, that too relies on blood sacrifice... And as for reconnecting the Dao path, that is even more of an evil craft."
He raised an eyebrow and smiled:
"I, Li Tongya, was born a peasant, a lowly life to begin with. Though I have killed many in my lifetime, most were villains and cultivators, or killed when lives truly hung in the balance. I have never once entertained the thought of slaughtering common folk... All I sought was merely to survive."
"This is the ancestral rule left by my father... and the bottom line of my family."
As the words 'bottom line' left his mouth, a bright, luminous mirror suddenly flashed across his mind. Pausing, he continued:
"We of the Li family are no saints, yet neither do we need such transcendent arts... Let it be."
"You!"
The fox was stunned, then protested aggrievedly:
"It is merely eating people! Has it not always been so? If you do not eat them, plenty of others will!"
Seeing Li Tongya remain silent, the fox flared with fury. Standing up on the stone bed, it bared its teeth and scolded:
"Stubborn fossil! You don't know a good monster's heart when you see one!"
No matter what the fox said, Li Tongya merely sat at the head of the bed, watching it with a gentle smile. After babbling in frustration for a long time, the fox burst into a wail, cursing:
"I still have over a hundred years of life left! How am I supposed to get through them now?!"
The fox wallowed in self-pity for quite a while before finally stopping. It opened its jaws—stretching a maw as wide as a washbasin—and with a squelch spat out a fruit. Smooth as a jade pearl, it emitted a cool, refreshing luminescence.
The fox prodded it twice with a paw, then cried:
"This is my prized fruit, called the Huashang Fruit. Even among you cultivators, it qualifies as a precious herb. It can bolster dharmic power and vitality. If you take it into your belly, perhaps you can linger on for a few more years and fight a few more times."
Li Tongya was caught by surprise, unsure of how to refuse, but the fox had already flattened its ears. Swishing its tail, it hopped off the bed and grumbled:
"I lost big this time... We agreed to save our own hides, but look at you—you are going to kick the bucket in just a few years!"
Without listening to what Li Tongya had to say, the Bairong Fox bounded forward and scrambled out of the cave dwelling.
This left Li Tongya speechless within the cave dwelling. Looking at the Huashang Fruit shining with white rays in his palm like a luminous night pearl, he felt a myriad of emotions coalesce into a single sigh.
Chapter 307