The peddler's sudden appearance scared Yu Zhuo out of his wits, nearly sending him tumbling down the mounting steps.
"Careful now! It's a long way down from these steps—whatever you do, don't fall!" The peddler caught Yu Zhuo with a steady hand.
Yu Zhuo opened his mouth to shout for help, only to see the peddler pull an elm wood shaving from his robes.
Shavings were ordinary byproducts of carpentry, usually burned for fire or pressed into composite board. Elm shavings, however, were rich in natural mucilage; steeped in water, they yielded a pomade used to set and style hair, which made them part of a peddler's general sundries.
Holding the damp elm shaving, the peddler tidied Yu Zhuo's hair, and then used the thin edge of the shaving to slice Yu Zhuo's head clean off.
The guards on the qin-carriage watched in utter shock, yet not one rushed forward to protect Yu Zhuo. An invisible force had rooted every last one of them in place.
Carrying a cloth sack across his back, Sun Tiecheng squatted behind Yu Zhuo with his hands tucked into his sleeves, weeping bitterly. "You heartless brute! What in the world are you doing? You went and killed the man, and yet you were worried he might fall? Look at how well the three brothers had it, and you've gone and done away with the eldest just like that! What are the other two supposed to do now?"
The head on the left, Lian Xian, and the head on the right, He Shun, turned together toward the peddler.
A thick cloud of dust drifted down from the sky as the peddler combed Lian Xian and He Shun's hair with the elm shaving. "Hurry along now, go see where your big brother ran off to!"
*Whoosh!*
With another flick of the peddler's wrist, both of those heads tumbled to the ground as well.
Sun Tiecheng wept with even greater despair. "You're far too ruthless! Three brothers, and you wouldn't spare a single one! What are their men supposed to do now?"
The subordinates remained standing nearby, dazed.
Yu Zhuo's faction had indeed been tasked with overseeing the Great Totem—Lu Maoxian had spoken the truth about that.
Yet precisely because their faction was held in low esteem, Yu Zhuo's men had been away from real battle for far too long. Seeing all three of Yu Zhuo's heads rolling on the ground, they still had no idea who these two assassins were.
A member of the New Cabinet shouted, "Quick, protect Lord Yu!"
Sun Tiecheng froze in mid-sob. His sorrow was derailed so abruptly by this fool that the tears wouldn't even come. "I'm telling you, all three of his heads are off! The man is dead as a doornail, ironclad fact! Just what on earth are you still trying to protect?"
Absurd as the order was, the surrounding guards snapped to attention the moment they heard it, charging forward without hesitation to protect Lord Yu.
Sun Tiecheng said to the peddler, "That fellow's words carry weight!"
"Like I need you to point that out? You think I'm blind?" The peddler leapt in front of the New Cabinet official and severed all three of his heads as well.
"Look at you, honestly! Why must you kill whoever crosses your path?" Sun Tiecheng kept crying while keeping his eyes peeled to see who would give the next command.
This was their tacit understanding. Since this crowd had been away from the battlefield for too long, they would focus solely on cutting down their leaders. Falling behind by a single step meant falling behind at every turn, leaving the enemy perpetually unable to mount an organized response.
The next man in line showed a bit of wits, ordering the rest to activate their first-class weapons and prepare for combat at once.
The peddler stepped up and dispatched him too. Sun Tiecheng wailed, "It's all over! The man is dead! Who knows which first-class weapon we're supposed to start up now!"
He was right. With so many first-class weapons, which one were they supposed to activate?
Sun Tiecheng wept with reckless abandon, employing some unknown art that carried his wails across the entire summit, ensuring everyone heard them.
His weeping brought dread and overwhelming inner turmoil. Some clamped their hands over their ears, yet the image of Sun Tiecheng's tear-streaked face lingered vividly before their eyes, impossible to shake.
Utter chaos engulfed the mountain peak. Men scurried frantically back and forth, over ninety percent of them having no idea what they were actually supposed to be doing.
Fortunately, a few retained their composure. Knowing which weapons to deploy, they kept the Demonic Cultivators' first-class weapons running. These instruments were meant to maintain order and prevent the wandering souls from rebelling, ready to be thrown into battle at a moment's notice.
Tens of thousands of wandering souls lingered along the mountainside and down at the base. To a Demonic Cultivator, each of these spirits was viable fighting strength. Six first-class weapons unleashed their respective arts—some ringing bells, some burning incense, some burning paper offerings, others weaving hand seals—summoning the spirits to encircle and suppress the peddler and Sun Tiecheng.
Making no attempt to hide or retreat, the peddler plunged straight into the press of souls. Wrench in his left hand and short knife in his right, he brought both artisan and martial arts to bear, tearing two first-class weapons to splinters in the blink of an eye.
Seeing that the moment had arrived, Sun Tiecheng untied the cloth sack from his back and let Gui Jianchou out.
Rather than attacking right away, Gui Jianchou burst into uproarious laughter. "You poor, wretched souls, our suffering is at an end! That first-class weapon is destroyed! We're rebelling! Let's fight them to the death, wahahaha!"
Sun Tiecheng chimed in with fresh tears: "It's only because you rebelled that the first-class weapon was destroyed!"
The throng of wandering souls on the mountain froze in bewilderment for a long while.
What were these two doing?
This made no sense!
If they said the weapon was destroyed and therefore the spirits should rebel, that made sense.
Now they were saying the weapon was destroyed because the spirits had rebelled—how could that make any sense?
Yet... it almost seemed to make sense too!
Rebelling and then destroying the first-class weapon was perfectly logical!
Once shoved into the Great Totem, only one out of ten thousand survived. How was that any different from being sent to slaughter?
As long as they rebelled, the first-class weapons could be destroyed. If they rebelled all the way to the end, wouldn't every last one of these wretched contraptions be wrecked?
Charge!
Casting all caution aside, the wandering souls threw themselves into a bloodbath against the first-class weapons. Control slipped away completely, and the Demonic Cultivators' instruments were smashed by the peddler one after another.
Sun Tiecheng wept with mounting frenzy, sobbing his heart out until the peddler felt a wrench in his own chest from the sheer sound of it.
Gui Jianchou laughed with uncontrollable relish, bent double in merriment, and the spirits grew fiercer the more they listened.
The two tore across the mountainside, one weeping and one laughing, alternating high and low, intertwining the arts of Fool Cultivator and Demonic Cultivator across the entire peak.
Amidst the bedlam, the peddler reached the Great Totem.
Looking at the battered, scarred ring, he found it hard to believe the thing had truly been seventy percent restored.
Whatever the case, only one task remained: destroy this monstrosity once and for all.
Just as the peddler was about to release A'yi, a man walked out from beneath the Great Totem.
His name was Han Shuangcheng, a Cold Cultivator known to the peddler.
Eight years ago, Han Shuangcheng had reached the peak of the ninth tier and traveled to the inner states to ascend to the tenth. Since then, he had returned to Puluo Province twice without making any waves. As far as the peddler knew, he hadn't even managed to become the local spirit of a newland, and his prospects in the Shang State were nonexistent.
Whether he had come to the Great Totem to gamble on a future or had simply ended up as its sacrificial offering remained unclear.
The peddler smiled at Han Shuangcheng. "What brings you here? Buying sundries? I didn't bring my cart today."
Han Shuangcheng showed a flicker of fear, but after a moment's hesitation, he charged the peddler.
After languishing in obscurity in the Shang State for so many years, he was desperate for a chance to distinguish himself.
The peddler held his ground. Moving rashly right now was unwise anyway; a layer of perfectly transparent ice coated the earth, and a single misstep could send one sliding.
Facing a Cold Cultivator, the first rule was not to panic. Yet someone of Han Shuangcheng's caliber gave the peddler no reason to panic in the first place. Producing his rattle drum, the peddler gave it two swift shakes. The sheet of ice beneath his feet shattered instantly, and a fracture split open across the ice armor encasing Han Shuangcheng's body.
A third shake of the rattle drum would likely blow Han Shuangcheng's body to pieces. What the peddler had not expected, however, was for the shattered ice on the ground to act as if possessed of a mind of its own, surging toward him in an all-out assault.
Han Shuangcheng's cultivation had improved substantially. Having made it through the Great Totem alive, he had clearly reaped considerable gains.
The peddler struck the face of the rattle drum, expanding it from the size of a palm to more than three feet across.
He swung the drum left and right, expecting to bat away all the flying shards. Unexpectedly, the ice proved both tough and razor-sharp, punching clean through one layer of the drumhead and lodging inside the drum cavity.
Using the art of untrammeled freedom to dodge the shards, the peddler stole a glance at the puncture marks on the drum skin.
What kind of ice was this? How could it be so sharp?
He caught a piece of the shattered ice and examined it. The variation between its thin and thick edges was distinct; an edge had been honed into the ice itself.
A Blade Cultivator technique: Hand Rises, Edge Sharpens.
The essence of this technique lay in turning everyday objects that bore no resemblance to weapons into deadly blades. When dining with a Blade Cultivator, one had to watch their tableware with extreme vigilance, for they could employ Hand Rises, Edge Sharpens at any second to turn a chopstick into an awl or a porcelain dish into a dagger.
Potent as the technique was, it devoured enormous amounts of cultivation. Though a Blade Cultivator could fling a storm of blades at an opponent in a single breath, most were crude and shoddy—lacking either sharpness or resilience—with genuine masterwork edges being exceedingly rare.
Even a ground-level cultivator at the ninth tier could only fashion one or two top-tier blades in a short span.
Above the clouds, that number would increase, though it remained strictly limited.
Anything capable of piercing a layer of his rattle drum's skin was undeniably a first-rate blade. That so many shards of ice could penetrate the drum meant Han Shuangcheng had produced a vast quantity of masterwork edges.
Han Shuangcheng had been fused with an expert Blade Cultivator by the Great Totem, and judging by the results, the fusion had been extraordinarily successful.
Yet why would the arts of Blade and Cold enhance one another? What was the connection between them?
While the peddler was still mulling over the question, Han Shuangcheng thrust two icicles toward his chest with both hands.
Lu Qianjiao possessed a pair of Emei piercers crafted for her by the Mother of Many Crafts. During a few of Lu Qianjiao's wilder episodes, she had jabbed the peddler with them several times, and the sensation from these two icicles felt strikingly similar.
First, the ice had been chosen well: hard enough, yet not brittle.
The points were also shaped impeccably, razor-sharp.
Most importantly, the synthesis of Cold Cultivator and Blade Cultivator arts had produced results far beyond the peddler's expectations.
Exerting every ounce of his strength, Han Shuangcheng snapped both icicles in half, yet failed to pierce the peddler's flesh.
The peddler took one of the broken icicles, melted it into water, refroze it in his palm, and with a light touch of his fingers, carved it into an ice awl.
Han Shuangcheng stared dumbfounded. He had never imagined the peddler's command of Cold Cultivator arts would surpass his own.
The peddler tested the tip of the ice awl, a broad smile spreading across his face. "You know, Cold and Blade really are a match made in heaven. Why didn't I think of that?"
*Thwip!*
The peddler drove the awl straight into the center of Han Shuangcheng's brow. The wound hardly bled, and Han Shuangcheng barely felt any pain. He tried to struggle, but his entire brain was already freezing over at terrifying speed.
Sun Tiecheng wept. "Look at your cruel heart, putting down yet another one!"
Gui Jianchou thought Han Shuangcheng was rather unique and had initially intended to take him as a ghost servant. Yet after trying for some time, he couldn't sense the man's soul.
He glanced at Sun Tiecheng. "Stop crying for a second, he isn't dead yet!"
Tears streaming down his face, Sun Tiecheng countered, "You cry! Once we cry, won't he be dead?"
The two wailed a couple of times together, and Han Shuangcheng ceased moving entirely.
The peddler tossed the corpse aside and called out, "Let her out!"
Sun Tiecheng opened the sack and released A'yi.
A'yi was thoroughly disgruntled. "What kind of way is this to treat someone? I went through all that trouble to bring you here, and you shoved me into a sack!"
The peddler had scouted ahead into the Shang State to locate Yindu, while A'yi was responsible for transporting the team, using Hulu Village to bring Sun Tiecheng and Gui Jianchou along.
Because they hadn't known the true strength of Yindu's defenses, the peddler hadn't let A'yi strike first. He had gone in himself, followed by the relatively stable-minded Sun Tiecheng and Gui Jianchou.
As it turned out, the peddler had vastly overestimated the defenders of Yindu. Relying on the Great Totem's secluded location and the fact that Yindu was exceedingly hard to find, their defenses had been laughably lax. Had he known their true mettle from the start, he would have let A'yi blow up the Great Totem straight away.
Sun Tiecheng said, "It's not too late to let you at it now. Just make it quick."
A'yi carried the explosives up to the Great Totem. Knowing the blast would follow almost instantly, the peddler grabbed A'yi and bolted the moment she set the charges down.
*BOOM!*
With a deafening roar, the colossal ring collapsed entirely.
At the center of the ring, a patch of profound darkness remained.
The peddler produced a jar of vanishing cream, scooped some out, and smeared it over the dark void. The cream spread rapidly, turning into a thin membrane that enveloped the entire mass of darkness.
*Clack!*
The peddler tapped the jar. As if answering a summons, the vanishing cream gathered the bundle of darkness and plunged wholesale into the jar.
Tightening the lid, the peddler slipped the jar into his pocket and turned to A'yi. "Withdraw!"
Head down, A'yi was busily collecting rocks, having already filled an entire sack with fragments blasted off the Great Totem.
"Hurry up!" the peddler urged repeatedly, worried that Yindu might hold further traps.
Greedy for more, A'yi wasn't satisfied with one sack and filled two more.
Just as expected, an abundance of first-class weapons suddenly surfaced on the hillside. Yindu might have been lax in its watch, but that didn't mean it was unprepared. Housing the Great Totem and having once served as the Shang State's royal capital, how could its reserves be shallow?
The peddler grabbed A'yi and ran back, while Sun Tiecheng hauled Ah Gui along in retreat.
Ah Gui rang his bell and burned incense as he fled, claiming who knew how many wandering souls along the way.
By the time they reached the entrance of Hulu Village, Sun Tiecheng cursed, "You lucky bastard, you made out like a bandit!"
Gui Jianchou laughed uproariously. "In a few days, I'll go show off in front of Song Qianhun and see who has more ghost servants!"
He truly had struck it rich; Sun Tiecheng estimated he had gathered at least ten thousand.
A'yi sealed the entrance to Hulu Village and promptly relocated the village. She hadn't done poorly either, having hauled back three full gunny sacks of rubble from the Great Totem.
With the Great Totem eliminated, the peddler was in high spirits. "A'yi, call Old Seven over. Let's have a few drinks together."
Preoccupied with studying the stone fragments, A'yi brushed him off. "Li Qi isn't that easy to find. His cultivation is high now; seeing him isn't so simple."
The peddler frowned. "If you can't find him, can't your mother?"
"You silly girl, when you're told to fetch someone, go fetch him! Don't ruin the mood," Sun Tiecheng barked, glaring at her.
A'yi stuck out her tongue and scurried up into the clouds to find A'yu.
Upon hearing the news, A'yu pulled the golden hairpin from her hair and stroked it gently. "Not bad. He's not inside Little Train, or else even I might not have found him."
After a brief wait, A'yi established contact with Li Qi. Utilizing Extending the Wide Bridal Chamber, Li Qi arrived at Hulu Village.
Relieved to see the peddler safe and sound, Li Banfeng was overjoyed. A'yi laid out the wine, and everyone drank with merry hearts. With Li Banfeng's permission, A'yu also descended from the house in the clouds.
Seeing the peddler invited to the table made Qiu Luoye's eyes go wide.
A'yi gave a smirk. "Follow me and you'll eat well, drink well, and have plenty of face. What more could you ask for?"
Bai Xinsheng glanced at his master, Bai Wusong. "How about we just stay? Being a wife here in Hulu Village seems pretty nice!"
Bai Wusong glared at him. "Mind your tongue! You're a disciple of the White Crane Gang—don't go disgracing our sect!"
Bai Xinsheng shook his head. "Master, you worry too much. Both the inner and outer chiefs of the White Crane Gang have become someone's wives. Our sect lost its face long ago..."
Qiu Luoye and Bai Wusong kicked Bai Xinsheng at the same time. Amidst the laughter and banter, A'yu suddenly let out a soft sigh. "Who would have thought the matter of the Great Totem could be resolved so easily?"
Sun Tiecheng looked at her. "Resolving it is a good thing. What are you unhappy about?"
The peddler shared A'yu's sentiment. "When I broke the Great Totem back then, it cost me more than half my life. I never expected it to be so effortless this time. Those in charge of the Great Totem were utterly pathetic."
Li Banfeng had been thinking the same thing.
Both the Great Totem itself and the Shang State's attitude toward it felt somewhat farcical.
Sun Tiecheng considered it perfectly natural. "If that Great Totem were still intact, taking it down wouldn't have been nearly so simple. But the thing was broken. Guarding a useless piece of junk for so many years, naturally they wouldn't care for it the way they used to."
A'yu scoffed. "What do you mean, useless? With the Great Totem, the local spirit seals can form a resonance. Now that it's destroyed, the seals can't gather vitality, so how are the local spirits supposed to ascend? The inner states took a massive hit this time!"
Sun Tiecheng grinned. "Their loss is our gain. As long as we don't lose out, who cares? The City of Fools has plenty of ways to gather vitality."
A'yu looked at him with disdain. "Guarding a plot of oldland, how much vitality could you possibly gather?"
Sun Tiecheng waved a hand dismissively. "The City of Fools is different now. Soon it won't be oldland anymore. Old Seven, didn't I ask you to go back and take a look last time? When are you heading over?"
"In the next couple of days," Li Banfeng replied, glancing at the peddler. "Now that the Great Totem is handled, I ought to enjoy a few peaceful days."
The peddler shook his head. "You can't slack off. I have pressing business to attend to; you still have to keep an eye on matters in Puluo Province."
Li Banfeng was taken aback. "What pressing business?"
With absolute gravity, the peddler said, "I'm going to see my sweetheart!"
Li Banfeng stared. "That counts as pressing business?"
The peddler's face fell. "You spend every day wrapped up in bliss with your wives—what would you know of my suffering!"
A'yu was displeased as well. Fixing her gaze on the peddler, she asked, "There's a sweetheart right here in Hulu Village. Aren't you going to see her?"
A hush fell over the table. The sweetheart A'yu referred to was the Heavenly Maiden.
The peddler kept his head down, drinking in silence. Sun Tiecheng shot his wife a look. "Why bring that up? Weren't we just talking about the City of Fools? I'll take you back to see it too. The people in the city have flesh and blood now; we don't have to deceive them anymore, and they all know they're alive!
"The only headache is their appetite—they can really eat! Before, eating was just to hold onto a memory, but now it's genuinely to fill their bellies. I've been buying grain all over the place lately, but buying alone won't cut it. I have to get them farming. There's plenty of land outside the City of Fools!"
A'yi cheered up. "Brother, I want to go back and take a look too! I heard the Profound Birth Red Lotus is in your hands; I'd like to borrow it."
"Who's your brother?" Sun Tiecheng snapped at her. "The Red Lotus is gone!"
The room froze. A'yi asked, "You lost it?"
"Didn't lose it!" Sun Tiecheng took a swig of wine. "Old Train modified the Red Lotus into a little smelter!"
A'yu flared up. "What right did he have to modify it? The Red Lotus was created by the Heavenly Maiden and the peddler together!"
The Red Lotus held extraordinary meaning for the peddler and the Heavenly Maiden; it stood as a testament to their bond.
The peddler set down his cup. "I told Old Train to modify it."
A'yu's face darkened, and she said nothing more.
Sun Tiecheng said, "If we hadn't modified the Red Lotus, where would the flesh and blood for the City of Fools have come from? I'll remember this debt of gratitude, and what happened in the past can stay in the past."
A'yu looked at Sun Tiecheng, her temper flaring. "How generous of you! You say it's in the past and it's just past? An entire city's worth of lives, just swept away like that?"
Sun Tiecheng held his cup. "Their lives have been restored. If we don't move past it, what else can we do? Don't we have to go on living? Though that said, I haven't forgotten the debts that need to be settled."
The atmosphere around the table grew heavy. Li Banfeng asked A'yi, "What did you want the Red Lotus for?"
A'yi went on eating and drinking, paying no mind to the tension. "The Great Totem shattered, so I collected some of the stone rubble. I wanted to see if I could smelt it in the Red Lotus."
Li Banfeng asked, "The Great Totem was made of stone?"
A'yi thought for a moment. "I don't know what material it is yet. It looks like stone. I'll study it for a couple of days, and once I'm ready, I'll head over to the City of Fools."
Li Banfeng nodded. "I'll need to do some preparations too."
Once they had eaten and drunk their fill, the peddler spoke with Li Banfeng in private, first inquiring about recent events in Puluo Province.
Hearing about Bei Xianzhong, Lu Xiaolan, and Haolian Shen, the peddler agreed that things felt abnormal.
"Yu Zhuo was never the brightest, so pulling stunts like this isn't surprising. But Qiao Yi shouldn't have left the Great Totem completely unguarded. I can't shake the feeling he still has something up his sleeve."
Li Banfeng recalled Lu Maoxian's description of court politics in the Shang State. "Qiao Yi is losing influence in the Shang State. Perhaps he wanted to use your hands to get rid of Yu Zhuo."
The peddler nodded. "Doing that would make sense, but the stakes are awfully high. Without the Great Totem, the Shang State's hold over the realms will be vastly diminished. Do you really think Qiao Yi would swallow such a loss?"
Li Banfeng said, "I'll find out when I go to Chaoge to scout for information."
The peddler added, "If you can, try to find a way to bring Critic back."
Li Banfeng hesitated. "I went to see him, but he wasn't willing to return."
The peddler sighed. "We're refined folk; if he doesn't want to come back, we shouldn't force him. A'yi made a rope for me a couple of days ago that works quite well. Take the rope and tie Critic up to bring him back."
After departing Hulu Village, Li Banfeng contacted Ba Suan and Pineapple. For some time, they had been gathering intel around Chaoge. The epidemic in the city had been contained, and Qiao Yi was fully occupied vying for administrative control, showing no other movements of late.
The destruction of the Great Totem presented an opportunity for Qiao Yi, and he would likely remain busy for a while. Li Banfeng instructed Pineapple and Ba Suan to pay close attention to any developments in Chaoge over the coming days.
With matters settled, Li Banfeng decided to visit the City of Fools. He didn't want to arrive empty-handed. Turning oldland into proper land required not only human vitality, but also giving the people something to look forward to in their daily lives.
He contacted Xiao Yeci to have goods prepared, then went to Ye Songqiao and bought out every piece of furniture in the shop, nearly packing all thirty-three railcars full.
Furniture wasn't the only thing the City of Fools lacked. As Sun Tiecheng had mentioned, they were short on grain. Li Banfeng visited the Orange Grove and bought a large quantity of prime seeds from the old man.
Food alone wasn't enough; they also needed clothes to wear.
Li Banfeng headed to the Yu Family Cloth Shop.
It was late into the night, and the clerks had long retired. Yu Nan sat alone at the counter, checking the accounts.
A discrepancy had cropped up in the books, and she had recalculated it several times. Hearing footsteps enter through the doorway, she didn't bother looking up, asking simply, "What can I get for you, sir?"
Li Banfeng said, "Clothes."
"What kind of clothes?"
"Ready-made ones. I'll take all the ready-made garments you have."
Yu Nan paused for a beat, though she still kept her head down. "Only ready-made clothes?"
"Fabric as well. Tomb-pattern satin, tribute satin, Ning silk, colored-thread spring, patterned gauze, Hangzhou luo, Hangzhou textile, Hu silk—I'll take the lot."
Yu Nan lifted her head with a smile. She hadn't expected Li Qi to remember so many varieties.
She asked him, "Any cigarettes?"
"I'll take some," Li Banfeng said, taking a seat before the counter. "Two packs of Grand Fairy."
Chapter 806