Mourning Cultivator

"A Mourning Cultivator?" He had never heard of this pathway. Li Banfeng wanted to get a closer look at the man's face, but Qiu Zhiheng promptly shuttered the window. "Brother, one less glance spares you an ounce of bad luck." "Just what kind of pathway is so sinister? I've never even heard of it." "It's completely normal that you haven't. I've lived in Puluo Province for over forty years, and counting this time, I've only ever encountered Mourning Cultivators three times. Cultivators of this pathway don't usually wander about; they have fixed dwellings of their own. Only when they can find no way to survive or advance their cultivation in their original home do Mourning Cultivators move to another place." Li Banfeng didn't quite understand. "What do you mean by finding no way to survive?" "It means the people where he lived could take no more and resolved to fight him to the death, leaving him no way to stay alive." "And what does finding no way to advance cultivation mean?" "It means he drove all his neighbors mad, drove them away, or even hounded them to death. At that point, he has to move on to another place and keep ruining someone else." As the two spoke, Caoye wept nonstop beside them. The lady of the house comforted her, "Don't cry, don't cry now. That old bastard is wailing a funeral dirge for his own damn ears! Pay him no mind!" She knew in her heart that these comforting words were of little use. Qiu Zhiheng said to Li Banfeng, "This girl was struck by the Mourning Cultivator's Funeral Bell's Endless Toll technique. Every word that old man utters is like a blade plunging straight into the most painful part of your heart. It saps a person's will, leaving them unable to recover for a month or more." After crying for quite a while, Caoye stared at Li Banfeng and stammered, "Y-You're... Brother Baisha?" She had thought Li Banfeng looked familiar from the start, but having been separated for over a year, Caoye hadn't dared to be certain. The lady was startled. "You two know each other?" Li Banfeng gave a slight nod with a faint smile. He thought seeing a familiar face might lift Caoye's spirits, but after their eyes met for a moment, Caoye only sobbed harder. "I'm just a useless cripple... completely worthless and useless. Brother Baisha, you shouldn't have saved me back then. Dying would have been a relief." Before Li Banfeng could speak, that elderly Mourning Cultivator—who had somehow made his way from the front entrance around to the outside of the courtyard wall—overheard Caoye's words and chimed right in: "You say dying would be a relief? Now that, I think, makes total sense! What does a person live a lifetime for? To make something of themselves! And someone like you, what could you ever accomplish? Hauling medicinal herbs from Sanpuzhuang to Ligou, then driving an empty cart back? Does a chore like that even require a human being? Put some proper training into those two donkeys of yours, and they'd do a better job than you! Tell me, what's the point of you staying alive?" The lady could hold back no longer and shouted loudly, "You shameless old cur, quit talking out of your wrinkled ass!" Qiu Zhiheng gave her a tug, signaling her not to be rash. But she had already cursed him, and the damage was done. "Tsk, tsk, tsk—" A series of loud smacks of the lips echoed from beyond the wall. Those three smacks of the lips were the prelude to a Mourning Cultivator invoking a technique. The old man spoke up: "Listen, listen to that! Neighbors, passersby, everyone have a listen! This medicine shop opens its doors for business, and yet they curse people! Did you hear how foul her tongue just was?" The lady yelled back, "Why don't you talk about how foul your own mouth is?!" "What did I say? What did I say?" From his tone to his expression, the old man appeared utterly innocent. "I didn't say anything! I merely said this young girl had a point, and this woman started hurling abuse! Everyone heard it! I came to this medicine shop to buy medicine, and the moment they saw me, they slammed the doors! Before I could even say a word, this woman in their house starts cursing me out!" What to do now? Keep arguing with him? Of course not. First of all, ordinary people couldn't win an argument against them. Qiu Zhiheng understood Mourning Cultivators: "This is one of their techniques, called Mournful Countenance. To master this skill, every Mourning Cultivator undergoes specialized tempering. No matter how the argument goes, a Mourning Cultivator can always twist reason to their side, gaining more of an upper hand the longer the squabble lasts." If the Street-Scolding Crone were here, who knew if she could out-quarrel this old wretch. Monkey Qiu continued, "On top of that, arguing with a Mourning Cultivator gains us nothing. Win or lose, we come out on the losing end. He's just passing through, picking a fight right in front of our doors. It's our reputation and business that get ruined, while he loses nothing at all. And the longer we argue with him, the greater our loss. It's not just about reputation, but feng shui as well. Under the finger-pointing of the onlookers, our medicine shop's feng shui will be ruined by him too." The lady sighed. "Zhiheng, this is all on you. If only you'd listened to Shopkeeper Feng, we could've avoided this calamity." Caoye said with tears in her eyes, "Brother Qiu, Sister-in-law, that old man is after me. I'll just leave. I can't drag you two down." "Silly girl, where could you go? Once a Mourning Cultivator latches onto you, it ends in death." The lady pulled Caoye into the house. The old Mourning Cultivator continued his railing outside the wall. Truth be told, Li Banfeng still hadn't grasped what made these Mourning Cultivators so formidable. Qiu Zhiheng was normally a serious man; otherwise, Li Banfeng would have suspected he was joking. If you don't know, ask. Li Banfeng said, "Brother Qiu, are Mourning Cultivators really good fighters?" Why keep such a shameless old bastard around? Li Banfeng was about to step outside when Qiu Zhiheng rushed forward to stop him. "Brother, you can't!" If that would work, Qiu Zhiheng would have gone out long ago. Li Banfeng said, "Do they have a gang backing them? Are you worried about revenge? Don't worry, I'll clean up after myself." Qiu Zhiheng shook his head. "If it were a gang matter, I wouldn't fear him at all. I've spent years tumbling through the underworld, after all." The lady said, "Brother Li Qi, you don't know the old saying: 'Better to drink a bowl of soup from a Gold Cultivator than leave the slightest wound on a Mourning Cultivator.'" A bowl of soup from a Gold Cultivator? Li Banfeng was stunned for a moment. "Sister-in-law, the Gold Cultivator's soup you're talking about... it couldn't be that...?" "That's exactly it! The stuff from that bucket! Drink a bowl of that, and at most you'll suffer for two days." Li Banfeng waved his hand. "Two days wouldn't cut it. That would make someone miserable for days on end." The lady said, "If you harm a Mourning Cultivator, you'll suffer for a lifetime. A Mourning Cultivator will haunt you forever." "Then kill him." "Kill him, and his soul will still haunt us." "Then claim his soul too." "Capture his soul, and other Mourning Cultivators will sense it and come to torment us in turn." "Then kill them all—wipe their whole pathway off the face of the earth!" Listening to the curses outside the wall, Li Banfeng grew increasingly infuriated. Qiu Zhiheng shook his head. "Mourning Cultivators ruin a person's fortune. If we spend an entire lifetime fighting Mourning Cultivators, how can we live our lives? Let me think of a way to deal with this." Li Banfeng glared at the wall, gritting his teeth slightly. "If only my General Genzi were here to feed this old bastard a few ladles. Let's see how arrogant he'd be then." *** Ma the Fifth got off the train at Kudaikan. Two flamboyantly dressed women in their twenties immediately came up to greet him. "Sir, have you found a place to stay? Our inn has the best rates in town." "A single room is one hundred and fifty, and a communal bunk is only fifty." "Look at you, have you no eyes? Just look at this gentleman's clothes; you can tell he's not someone who stays in a communal bunk! Our inn has premium suites, three hundred a night, and my sister and I will warm the bed together for you." Ma the Fifth politely turned down the two ladies. If he didn't refuse, he'd never get his real business done. Someone had once loitered near the Kudaikan train station for an entire month without ever managing to leave. Leaving the station, Ma the Fifth hailed a rickshaw. The rickshaw puller asked, "Sir, would you like to find a place to rest up before having a go, or find a place to have a go first and then rest up?" Ma the Fifth chuckled. "Is there a place where I can have a go and rest up at the same time?" The rickshaw puller nodded. "Of course! Plenty of them!" Ma the Fifth loved the atmosphere of Kudaikan. He could come to this place a hundred times and never get tired of it. "Take me to a cinema first." The puller was taken aback. Guests who went to watch a movie right off the train were few and far between. "Which cinema would you like to go to?" "Recommend one." "Then do you want to watch lying down or sitting up?" This was a special local rule in Kudaikan. Watching a movie lying down meant lying in a large bed inside a private booth, with someone accompanying you. Ma the Fifth was here on business, so naturally, lying down was out of the question. He had the puller take a spin around town first before choosing a cinema where you watched sitting up. Before long, Ma the Fifth arrived at the cinema, bought a ticket for Bloodblade Detective, and took his seat. Then a girl came over and sat right on Ma the Fifth's lap. This was what watching a movie sitting up meant. In Kudaikan, attendance for Bloodblade Detective was mediocre at best. There were fewer than ten people in the whole theater, which gave the girl plenty of room to do her work. On the other hand, Bloodgun Detective was selling remarkably well; tickets for both the afternoon and evening showings were completely sold out, and anyone hoping to buy had to wait for the midnight screening. Halfway through the film, Ma the Fifth glanced into the girl's eyes from time to time, but saw no emotion root. This was somewhat different from the situation in Heishipo. In Heishipo, as long as you entered the theater, an emotion root would definitely take hold in your eyes. However, three to five hours after leaving the theater, that emotion root would slowly fade away. In other words, Bloodblade Detective only harvested money from a single wave of audience members. Under the influence of the emotion root, those viewers watched screening after screening inside the theater. Yet once they left the theater, they felt it was utterly dull and meaningless—just like Ah Qin and Huo Ling, who had no desire to return to the cinema the very next day. But what was the purpose of doing this? Just to rake in a bit more ticket revenue? Come to think of it, the extra money made was indeed substantial. According to Ma the Fifth's information in Heishipo, Bloodblade Detective had sold three times as many tickets as its predecessor. According to Ma the Fifth's deduction, Bloodblade Detective 6 was likely the first time they had implanted emotion roots into a movie. Who were "they"? What kind of massive risk were they taking? If word got out that they had tampered with the movies, could their business even survive? Was there a way to break it? While Ma the Fifth was deep in thought, the girl on his lap wiped her lips and abruptly got up to leave. Her departure suited him fine; Ma the Fifth was just beginning to find her tiresome, so he turned his attention to watching the film in earnest. Moments later, another woman settled onto Ma the Fifth's lap, speaking with a playful smile, "Wulang, coming to my turf for some fun without even letting me know?" Ma the Fifth smiled. "Taking that lap around town was precisely my way of letting you know." He passed the bloodstained handkerchief to Feng Daiku before him and lowered his voice. "Take a look at this. Do you recognize it?" Feng Daiku chuckled, initially assuming the blood was from a bed. "Which poor girl did you ruin this time?" Once she caught the scent of the blood, however, Feng Daiku's smile vanished in an instant. "Wulang, this is a pseudo-emotion root. Where on earth did you get this?"