The Path Toward Heaven

The morning sunlight shone down, and the white pagoda forest near the deep end of the Baotong Zen Temple shimmered like crystals. It was quiet in the vegetable garden at the foot of the mountain.

Tong Lu opened his eyes as he woke. He was bewildered while looking at the dark and gloomy walls and smelling the vegetable oil in the air.

It took him a while before he was fully awake. Finally understanding the situation, he propped himself up with some difficulty.

He suddenly saw a weird man sitting across from him, with a green colored face and extremely chilling eyes.

The weird man was of course Su Ziye.

Su Ziye and Tong Lu sat on the both ends of the bed, eying each other silently. The atmosphere was quite eerie.

Tong Lu’s face suddenly turned a bit pale.

Tong Lu was about to call out his flying sword to kill the other person, but he failed to do so.

Then, he recalled that his flying sword had been broken the night before.

“Do you know me?”

Su Ziye sensed his lethal intent.

Tong Lu said, “Throughout Chaotian, only two of you can be recognized simply based on your faces.”

Su Ziye was born from the demon embryo with the corpse poison in his body, so his face was green. He knew it was easy to be recognized, but who was the other person?

“The other person is Jing Jiu.”

He Zhan walked out from the outside of the room.

“Why?” Su Ziye asked.

He Zhan swept his hand across his face, as he said, “It’s because he has a good looking face. Didn’t you hear of it?”

Su Ziye was taken aback. He had heard of the rumors about Jing Jiu, thinking it was all exaggerated gossips; it turns out that that they were actually true!

He Zhan said to Tong Lu, “You two shouldn’t fight. We only have this one bed for you two patients. What should we do if the bed is broken?”

Tong Lu demanded while looking at He Zhan, “Could you explain to me what is going on here?”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t know how you got here either. It’s truly baffling,” said He Zhan, shrugging.

He felt helpless. He had shrugged so many times over the last two days.

“Do you remember what had happened before you passed out?”

A crisp and arrogant voice rang out.

The three of them looked in the direction of the voice, finding that Tong Yan had been sitting by the window, playing chess.

All this time, Tong Yan didn’t speak or make noise, so they all forgot about his existence.

Tong Lu was startled, because he didn’t expect to see Tong Yan here; then he started considering what Tong Yan had just asked.

It was chaotic outside Haizhou City the night before as the sword lights traveling back and forth, dangers lurking everywhere.

He was in a stupefied mental state at the time, and was nearly injured a few times, but he evaded the attack instinctively.

It was then that his eyes filled with darkness that swallowed him into unconsciousness, this because his old wound had gotten worse or because he was too upset.

Before passing out, he remembered seeing the sword lights everywhere in the night sky like the rainstorm.

Then, the real rainstorm occurred outside Haizhou City.

The broken Cloud Platform fell down toward the ocean in the midst of the rainstorm.

After a long moment of silence, Tong Lu asked Tong Yan, “Have you known this all along?”

Tong Yan replied, “I suspected that the West Ocean Sword Sect was involved, so it was my suggestion to investigate the West Ocean.”

Tong Lu grew very angry. “So all of you hid it from me, didn’t you?” he questioned Tong Yan while staring into his eyes.

Tong Lu had already raised the same question to Guo Nanshan the night before.

Guo Nanshan told him that they had to hide it from him because he was a disciple of the West Ocean Sword Sect, and that they wanted to get rid of the Old Ones, rather than the West Ocean Sword Sect.

Tong Yan’s temperament was different from Guo Nanshan’s, so his answer was naturally different from Guo Nanshan’s. It was more straightforward and sharp.

It was like the changed chess style of his in recent years.

“The West Ocean Sword Sect is the Old Ones. If you were me, would you tell me anything?”

Hearing this, Tong Lu remained silent for a long time. “Where is this place?” he asked He Zhan in a low voice.

He Zhan shrugged one more time, saying, “This is the Baotong Zen Temple, which doesn’t even have the spicy preserved bean curd, just green vegetables, tofu and raw rice.”

“What are you guys doing here?” Tong Lu inquired, feeling surprised.

Pointing to Su Ziye sitting on the other end of the bed, He Zhan said, “He was poisoned by the Old Ones in Yizhou, and this is the only place where he can be treated for that.”

Tong Lu sneered, “As far as I can tell, you two have been in collaboration with this devil man all along.”

The deviant sects had been growing weaker in the last hundreds of years, and the elders of those sects had disappeared one after another; the young master of the Mysterious Dark Sect was probably the most famous deviant Cultivation practitioner in the world.

Su Ziye said to Tong Lu with a mocking tone, “Your status is similar to mine right now; so you’d better get used to it.”

Tong Yan asked Tong Lu, “Do you know who brought you here?”

He Zhan felt somewhat nervous, thinking that he would get the answer that had been bothering him for all these years if Tong Lu could remember something.

Tong Lu shook his head because he really couldn’t remember what had happened in the end that night.

Tong Yan said while looking at He Zhan, “Don’t worry. The other person brought several things in a row, indicating she was in a hurry to get things done; so she should show up soon.”

A voice rang out outside the room.

“I have always thought things like zither, chess, calligraphy and painting are useless, but it looks like playing chess can indeed make the players smarter.”

A young woman in white clothing walked into the room. She didn’t wear the veil that day, and her face that looked ordinary appeared quite bright under the morning sunlight.

He Zhan and Tong Lu were quite astonished to see her. Even Tong Yan felt surprised, exclaiming, “Young Sister Guo Dong!”

Upon hearing this name, Su Ziye’s eyes narrowed slightly. This young woman in white was Guo Dong of the Water-Moon Nunnery, said to be the personal disciple of Lian Sanyue. Why did she show up at the Baotong Zen Temple? Did she have anything to do with what they had discussed?

Guo Dong asked, “Are you three used to living here?”

Tong Yan didn’t answer this question, but staring at her quietly, as if he would like to uncover what was hidden behind that ordinary face.

“How come you are here?” asked He Zhan, perplexed.

Guo Dong said, “The Baotong Zen Temple and our Water-Moon Nunnery hail from the same branch.”

Tong Yan suddenly remarked, “And this place is close to Yizhou, so we must come here to treat the poison.”

Guo Dong commented, “You are indeed smart. My high opinion of you proved correct.”

Tong Yan raised his eyebrows slightly.

Her remark sounded like a senior evaluating a junior.

In the past, Jing Jiu was the only other person who had talked to him in this town, save for his two Masters.

Su Ziye’s brows furrowed even more.

In the past, when he encountered a disciple of the orthodox sect, the other person would want to kill him without hesitation, like Tong Lu having earlier, or he wanted to kill the other person.

The young woman in white didn’t even glance at him after entering the room. This negligent treatment was even worse than hostility.

He Zhan came back to his senses a bit, questioning, “What are you doing here?”

Guo Dong replied calmly, “You guys have been guessing who that person is, right?”

It was still in the room.

It seemed that the morning sunlight that landed on the chess board even made sound.

Su Ziye sneered, “You have cultivated just over ten years; how could you be the person He Zhan is looking for?”

He was born from the demon embryo, so he was extremely sensitive to the energy of the Cultivation practitioners; and he had an amazing ability to evaluate the Cultivation states and the Cultivation length of the Cultivation practitioners.

He Zhan was well aware of his friend’s ability, thinking that Young Sister Guo Dong was still so young, so it would be impossible for her to be his real mother, and she would be at most a stepmother…

Guo Dong suddenly asked He Zhan, “You haven’t used the patch of silk under the stream rock behind the nunnery, have you?”