Zhang Enning pulled out an oiled paper package from his chest, carefully unwrapping it layer by layer with a grave expression, taking out the small booklet inside. He handed it to Su Zhuyi: “Here, this is it.”
He couldn’t open the book, so guarding a treasure mountain without being able to use it was useless. Better to exchange it for maximum benefit. He understood the reasoning – this was why every March when merchant caravans came through, he never took the book out to ask the cultivators in the caravan, because he didn’t dare take the risk.
Su Zhuyi took the thin book and, after opening one page, discovered it was a magic treasure. The pages weren’t paper but Emerald Stone from the cultivation world, refined and cut thin as cicada wings with a knife, lighter and thinner than paper sheets. Using high-quality Luminous Ink Stone as a pen, characters carved on such Emerald Stone sheets could be preserved for thousands or tens of thousands of years.
Opening the first page, she saw the two characters “Wuxin” and immediately felt joy in her heart.
This booklet was actually left behind by Ji Wuxin whom she was looking for – truly “seeking everywhere with iron shoes worn through, finding it effortlessly!” Su Zhuyi scanned up and down, roughly reading through it, discovering Ji Wuxin had very casually recorded some low-level techniques. He was of the demonic path, opening with corpse-raising related content. Zhang Enning indeed hadn’t lied – this really did contain such records.
Su Zhuyi turned to the second page, which described tomb exploration techniques. Back then, wild histories only said Ji Wuxin was a powerful demonic cultivator with many magic treasures and cultivation resources, without detailing which sect he belonged to. Su Zhuyi now flipped through and determined that Ji Wuxin had happened to deal with the dead – he excelled at tomb exploration, corpse control, and making money from the dead. Those powerful cultivator tombs mostly contained magic treasure inheritances, the secret realm inheritances everyone in the cultivation world wanted to enter and profit from. Ji Wuxin could deduce secret realm locations and opening times – no wonder he was wealthy!
Su Zhuyi knew all the content on the second page. She was also well-read, with considerable skill in tomb exploration and feng shui, otherwise she couldn’t have dug up the Liuguang Mirror. She didn’t read carefully but continued flipping, only to find after two attempts she couldn’t turn the page. She pursed her lips somewhat speechlessly.
“You need spiritual energy in your body to open this book.” She tossed the book back to Zhang Enning. “My name is Wuxin – having no attachments to this world, naturally I won’t accept disciples…” Seeing Zhang Enning’s expression change slightly, Su Zhuyi continued: “But I can teach you a cultivation technique. Once you have spiritual energy, you’ll be able to open this book.”
Zhang Enning had been very composed all along, but being young after all, his joy showed. His eyes lit up as he asked in surprise: “Really?”
Su Zhuyi nodded, then changed her tone, dragging out the words as she said “but”…
“But…” Seeing Zhang Enning’s thick eyebrows knit into a figure eight, Su Zhuyi leisurely continued: “The one who wrote this book was an extremely vicious demonic cultivator. You should know that when cultivators pass down techniques, they usually arrange some tests. The righteous paths are mostly gentle, testing the dao heart. The demonic paths might torture you until you’re neither human nor ghost before granting recognition. There’s another possibility – this might not be an inheritance at all, but perhaps a trap…”
Su Zhuyi wasn’t lying.
Demonic cultivator inheritances were mostly dangerous, the type that wouldn’t rest even after death, still wanting to harm later generations. If Su Zhuyi had lived to a natural death in her previous life, she definitely would have designed a good trap, digging pits for future cultivators to fall into.
“Do you still want to read it?” She raised an eyebrow questioningly.
Zhang Enning snorted lightly: “If it wanted to harm people, after living with it day and night for so long, I’d already be dead.” Born naturally bold, he didn’t lose courage because of Su Zhuyi’s words, but instead said: “Stop with so much nonsense and teach me quickly!”
Just as she was about to speak, another person lifted the curtain and rushed in. He kicked Su Zhuyi’s natal hoe with one foot, forcefully pushed Zhang Enning’s back, and shouted angrily: “Little master already said it’s an evil book – why do you still want to learn?”
The hoe flashed twice, looking pitiful as if kicked and hurt.
Su Zhuyi: “…”
Qin Chuan usually got up quite late, but today he just couldn’t sleep. Before dawn he came out and found a note in the small hole where he and Zhang Enning secretly passed things. Seeing the strange writing, he immediately rushed over, just in time to hear the little master say this was an evil book, demonic techniques. He didn’t expect Zhang Enning would still want to learn!
Zhang Enning hadn’t been paying attention and was pushed into the table corner. He turned to stare at Qin Chuan and asked: “What is righteous, what is evil?”
“Helping people is righteous, harming people is evil,” Qin Chuan said with righteous indignation.
“According to what you’re saying, how many righteous people are there in Changning Village?” Zhang Enning sneered: “When my father was injured on the mountain, not only did they not save him to save their own lives, they even took advantage of his misfortune to steal his weapons, causing him to be devoured by wolves. Aren’t they evil?”
Qin Chuan was stunned: “That was just an accident. The village uncles said they encountered a wolf pack, and your father couldn’t escape.”
“Those people in the village bully us, orphans and widows, seeing my mother’s beauty, they harbor ill intentions. Aren’t they evil?”
The scar on Zhang Enning’s forehead was left from fighting desperately with villagers who had inappropriate designs on his mother years ago.
“Not to mention distant things – they knew Old Lady Lu was suffering, but ignored it. In the end, were they righteous or evil?”
A series of pressing questions backed Qin Chuan into the corner of the room, while Zhang Enning glared with wide eyes and continued: “You don’t think these people are evil, yet you insist on calling a book evil.”
With that, he pointed at the hoe in the corner: “A hoe can till fields or kill people.” Seeming to remember how that hoe had smashed Old Lady Lu’s head open, Zhang Enning’s expression changed slightly. He quickly looked away and continued: “Similarly, techniques can help people or kill people.”
He looked meaningfully at Su Zhuyi: “Little master, don’t you think so?”
This kid could talk.
Su Zhuyi naturally nodded: “What the young benefactor says is extremely correct. The distinction between evil and righteousness lies in a single thought. One righteous thought makes a person righteous; one evil thought makes a person evil. With a righteous heart, even holding evil objects can perform righteous deeds, and vice versa.”
“But I’ve also seen that first page – it teaches making corpses transform!” Qin Chuan still said with some hesitation.
“However, it’s written above that only corpses with deep resentment can be raised,” Zhang Enning smiled. “Punishing evil and eliminating treachery, avenging those who died unjustly by letting them revenge themselves – isn’t that acting on heaven’s behalf?” Originally, because Qin Chuan was full of righteousness and treated him well, Zhang Enning had told him the secret of this book and secretly tested the booklet with his blood. Finding nothing wrong but also unable to open the second page, he now somewhat regretted letting him know.
Qin Chuan was half a head shorter than Zhang Enning. Unable to argue anymore, he turned his head aside: “The New Year is coming soon. After March, the merchant caravan will arrive, and this time, cultivators from the Feihong Sect of Fragrant Mountain Plum Ridge will also come. We agreed that once I enter Feihong Sect, next year I’ll find a way to get you in too…”
Su Zhuyi had some impression of Feihong Sect – it was considered a quite good second-tier sect in the cultivation world, with about ten thousand disciples. But one night, it was completely wiped out by Qinghe, that demon disciple of Luo Ying. Speaking of which, that was not long after Luo Ying had just died…
This incident caused enormous upheaval in the cultivation world. Afterward, the four major righteous sects joined forces to hunt Qinghe, but there was no activity for a long time. Instead, sect annihilation tragedies continued constantly, causing panic, until a hundred years later, they announced Qinghe’s death, with Gujian Sect’s soul lamp for Qinghe as proof. Only after that did the cultivation world stop having so many horrifying annihilation cases.
Qinghe was originally Gujian Sect’s most outstanding disciple, a distinguished figure on par with Qin Jianglan, so Gujian Sect had lit a soul lamp for Qinghe. But that soul lamp could only sense a cultivator’s primordial spirit strength – if a cultivator died and their primordial spirit dissipated, the soul lamp would also extinguish. Qinghe’s soul lamp had indeed gone out, so he was naturally dead.
At that time, Su Zhuyi was only over a hundred years old, not yet famous. Taking advantage of the major sects hunting Qinghe, she secretly went out and pulled a job that she pinned on Qinghe – wiping out that dog-raising small sect. Speaking of which, with so many annihilation cases at the time, who knows how many were done by others fishing in troubled waters?
Because of this, Su Zhuyi had a deeper impression of the Feihong Sect. Even though much time had passed and she’d never contacted that sect, she still understood it somewhat. Looking at Qin Chuan, her gaze gained additional meaning.
If this child stayed in Changning Village, the village would be slaughtered in two years.
If this child followed the cultivators in the merchant caravan to Feihong Sect, Feihong Sect would probably be annihilated within about a year. Whether he stayed or left, he couldn’t escape death – truly tragic.
Looking at Qin Chuan’s clean, fair face, Su Zhuyi felt like the character for “unlucky” was carved on his forehead!
“Feihong Sect has such high requirements for disciples. Unless you work hard to become an elite disciple among them, or have large amounts of spirit stones, bringing someone else in is too difficult,” Zhang Enning said coldly. “That would take three to five years, ten to twenty years? I can’t wait that long!”
He needed to protect his mother, protect himself. He needed strength, needed to become strong.
Qin Chuan lowered his head, clenching his hands into fists. After a long time, he finally said: “Fine, but listen well – if someday you use this to do evil, I, I definitely won’t spare you!” With that, he straightened his back and strode away from Su Zhuyi’s small temple, while Zhang Enning pressed his lips together and said: “Little master, please teach me.”
Su Zhuyi left the small temple, hefted her hoe, and dug up several more tree root sections by moonlight, then went to the well to wash them clean before handing them to Zhang Enning: “Eat these.”
Though puzzled, Zhang Enning still did as told. After eating, he followed Su Zhuyi into the house and sat cross-legged on the ground at her instruction.
Su Zhuyi sat on the bed, using a tree branch in her hand to tap the small table at the bedside: “The first step of cultivation is calming the heart, clearing the heart and settling the mind, embracing the origin and maintaining unity, preserving spirit and strengthening qi. You sit there, and when you can feel spiritual energy in your body, when you’re no longer affected by the outside world and can’t hear any external noise, then I’ll teach you cultivation techniques.”
Zhang Enning nodded in agreement and sat motionless.
Su Zhuyi left the room. Just after lifting the curtain and not walking far, she used the branch in her hand as a whip to backhand strike the curtain with a snap, then snorted coldly: “With you like this, you call it calming the heart?”
Just as she left, Zhang Enning had turned to glance over. He thought his movement was small and Su Zhuyi couldn’t see after leaving, but her hoe was still in the room – how could she not know?
That was her natal magic weapon. Through the hoe, Su Zhuyi could see everything clearly inside the room!
Zhang Enning frowned and entered meditation again, while Su Zhuyi took the spirit-seeking plate and headed toward Zhang Enning’s house. Since his family could discover books left by Ji Wuxin, perhaps she could find his other treasures too – she had to make this trip no matter what.