The Quest for Immortality - Chapter 1120 (Patreon)

Chapter 1120: Temptation

Luo biaotou was momentarily dazed. He stared blankly, neither answering nor returning the salute.

The Sect Master of the Gray Wolf Sect frowned, a trace of disdain rising in his heart. But then he thought, with a cultivator of this level, meeting him would naturally inspire awe and make one forget their manners; he didn’t pursue it.

Besides, for the sake of the monk, one spares the temple.

Even on Mo Hua’s account, he couldn’t bring himself to be harsh with this Luo biaotou.

Mo Hua said softly, “Luo biaotou…”

Luo biaotou slowly came back to himself.

Mo Hua glanced at the Gray Wolf Sect Master, then gave him a discreet signal. “The Sect Master is speaking to you.”

Only then did Luo biaotou jolt awake. He hurriedly bowed and said, “I wouldn’t dare, I wouldn’t dare. The Sect Master’s dignity and bearing are admirable. I lost my composure for a moment—may the Sect Master forgive my offense.”

The Gray Wolf Sect Master nodded, a little more satisfied.

Mo Hua said, “Luo biaotou, you’ve had a hard journey. Why don’t you go home and rest first?”

Go home…

Luo biaotou froze, then looked at the Gray Wolf Sect Master, a little excited as he cupped his hands. “Then, Sect Master… shall I take my leave?”

The Gray Wolf Sect Master nodded.

Joy blossomed in Luo biaotou’s heart.

He had a guilty conscience and feared the Sect Master’s imposing presence; he dreaded exposure and could not wait to leave this place of trouble as soon as possible.

He bowed and prepared to back out of the hall. Who would have thought that halfway out, the Gray Wolf Sect Master suddenly called him back: “Wait a moment.”

Luo biaotou’s heart gave a lurch.

The Gray Wolf Sect Master said, “Luo biaotou escorted Young Master Mo. You’ve worked hard along the way. Someone come—deliver some spirit stones and pills to Luo biaotou.”

Luo biaotou was stunned again.

He had lured the young master into Gray Wolf City and, together with him, killed six disciples and two elders of the Gray Wolf Sect—among them the Sect Master’s own nephew. That was a capital crime.

Yet now the Sect Master of the Gray Wolf Sect not only received him personally and thanked him…

He was even giving him gifts?

Luo biaotou felt the whole thing was absurd to the extreme—brazen beyond belief.

Seeing Luo biaotou’s visibly shaken expression, the Gray Wolf Sect Master could no longer help but knit his brows slightly.

For someone who’d built a Foundation, this Luo biaotou still did things so timidly and awkwardly. Give him a little something and he’s flustered and at a loss.

In times like these, without some breadth of mind, some ruthlessness, some courage—how could one accomplish anything big? Still, for Mo Hua’s sake, he didn’t say it aloud.

Luo biaotou, all tense, cupped his hands to the Gray Wolf Sect Master. “Many thanks for the Sect Master’s generosity.”

The Gray Wolf Sect Master inclined his head.

After that, Luo biaotou and his group took their leave.

Once they left the hall, Luo biaotou’s expression turned grave. He didn’t linger; he led the escorts at a quick pace along the usual streets back to the Luo Escort Agency.

At the agency, he shut the gates. Seeing the surrounding rooms, tables and chairs, the screens and furnishings all exactly as he remembered, Luo biaotou finally exhaled.

“Home…”

He murmured softly, as if in a dream.

Before this, he had already prepared himself to flee for his life with his daughter and disciples, to wander the world, to spend his days hunted by the Gray Wolf Sect, full of thorns at every step.

The foundation he had built in Gray Wolf City—he might never see it again in this life.

Yet who would have thought that now he could actually return “home.”

Luo biaotou sighed inwardly, but he didn’t dare truly relax. He straightened his face and warned everyone solemnly:

“Everything that happened along the way—from this moment on—you must forget it all.”

“Let it rot in your stomachs. No one is allowed to mention it.”

“Otherwise, we all die!”

His tone was chilling.

The other escorts understood how grave this was and dared not be careless; they all nodded.

Yingniang frowned, still worried, and asked, “Dad, Young Master Mo… he’s fallen in with the Gray Wolf Sect. Won’t that be dangerous?”

Luo biaotou shook his head and sighed. “Young Master Mo may be young, but his cultivation and methods are truly terrifying.”

“Someone like that is beyond our concern.”

“As long as we choose our words carefully and don’t cause him trouble, that’s enough.”

“And…” Luo biaotou told everyone, “if there’s a chance, we should repay Young Master Mo for saving our lives. Without him, our Luo Escort Agency would have been swallowed by the Gray Wolf Sect this time. We wouldn’t have met any good end…”

Everyone pondered for a moment, then nodded one after another.

…

Elsewhere, in the main hall.

Mo Hua was still drinking tea and chatting with the Gray Wolf Sect Master.

Though only at Foundation Establishment, he sat with the Golden Core Sect Master of the Gray Wolf Sect discussing the Dao, talking and laughing, utterly at ease.

The Gray Wolf Sect Master was cordial as well.

After a while, the Sect Master extended an invitation. “Brother Mo, would you be willing to join my Gray Wolf Sect?”

Mo Hua seemed “tempted,” but he was clearly still hesitant. “I should think it over more carefully.”

“Of course,” the Sect Master said, then asked, “I wonder if Brother Mo has a place to stay in Gray Wolf City?”

“Not yet,” Mo Hua said.

“In that case,” the Sect Master smiled, “why not lodge at my Gray Wolf Sect for now? It would let me do my duty as host. If you find our sect comfortable, then joining us would be best.”

Mo Hua thought for a moment, then didn’t decline. Smiling, he said, “That would be excellent. Many thanks, Sect Master.”

The Sect Master’s eyes flickered and he returned the smile. “It would be our honor.”

After that, he personally led Mo Hua to the mountain gate of the Gray Wolf Sect.

The Gray Wolf Sect lay to the north of Gray Wolf City, atop its tallest mountain range. The gate rose high, carved with a ferocious wolf’s head.

Along the way, the halls and towers stood in grim ranks: wolf statues here, wolf patterns carved there, bronze wolf heads mounted elsewhere.

All the elders and disciples coming and going wore wolf pelts and wolf robes.

Mo Hua felt as if he had stepped into a “wolf’s den.”

Within the sect, the Sect Master arranged a guest room of very high standard for Mo Hua.

Incense drifted in the room. Wolf pelts lay on the floor. The curtains were a pale gold, exuding a sense of decadent luxury.

“Our humble sect is crude—we must be wronging Young Master Mo,” the Sect Master said.

Mo Hua cupped his hands. “You’re too kind, Sect Master.”

“I won’t disturb your rest,” the Sect Master said. “For these days, feel free to stroll around the sect, or go see the local customs of Gray Wolf City… If you need anything, just tell me.”

“Of course, if Young Master Mo is willing to join my Gray Wolf Sect, that would be more than welcome.”

Mo Hua nodded, face sincere. “With the Sect Master’s favor, I’ll certainly give it serious thought.”

The Sect Master was pleased. “I’m busy with affairs, so I won’t keep you…”

“Please, Sect Master,” Mo Hua said, cupping his hands.

The Sect Master nodded slightly and took his leave.

The room was left to Mo Hua alone.

He flipped over the wolf pelts on the floor, smelled the incense, turned the curtains inside out, and, with golden light in his eyes, peered through the formation lines of the room. After a round of inspection, he detected nothing unusual.

“This Gray Wolf Sect does things rather by the book…”

Mo Hua murmured, but he didn’t dare be careless.

A young man away from home must protect himself.

Alone in a sect like the Gray Wolf Sect, he naturally had to be extra cautious and vigilant.

There’s no harm in being careful in all things.

Mo Hua laid down a pile of formations around the bed and table.

With a Yimu Array, he isolated the scent of the incense in the room.

With a Thunder-Magnetic Array, he screened yuan-magnetic signals to ensure he wouldn’t be eavesdropped on or surveilled.

He also set a few defensive formations to protect himself against a sneak attack.

Once everything was in place, he sat at the very center of his formations and finally felt at ease.

After days of wind and dew and suppressing baleful qi, he was a bit tired. He sat cross-legged on the wide bed to rest, calming his mind and spirit.

Night gradually fell. Incense misted through the room.

About two hours later, there came a soft knock at the door.

Mo Hua opened his eyes, his expression slightly odd. He rose and opened it.

Two graceful young women stood outside, not very old, similar in looks, clothed in thin gauze. Their fragrant shoulders were half bare; their lithe figures emerged and disappeared between veils.

The two women bent their knees, saluted Mo Hua, and said softly:

“Young Master, by order of the Sect Master, we sisters have come to warm your bed.”

The pair had pretty faces—pure, yet with a teasing allure that tugged at the heart.

Mo Hua, however, asked in puzzlement, “In weather this hot, what bed is there to warm?”

The two froze.

The older sister—more experienced in such matters—blushed and whispered, “We sisters are here… to serve the Young Master…”

Mo Hua shook his head on the spot. “I have hands and feet. I don’t need serving.”

The two women were left speechless.

Mo Hua waved a hand. “You can go.”

The younger sister’s eyes reddened. A crystal tear slipped down her fair cheek as she choked up:

“Please, Young Master, pity us. We came on the Sect Master’s orders. If we don’t serve the Young Master well, we won’t—”

Bang—

Before she could finish, the door closed.

Mo Hua was out of patience.

Only a fool would believe such pitiful lines.

He cultivates, comprehends the Dao, studies formations—he’s very busy. Where would he find time to dally with these pointless women and waste his time?

Women only delay his cultivation.

Mo Hua shut the door.

Outside, the two women looked at each other and could only leave to report everything back to the Gray Wolf Sect Master.

In a grand hall of the Gray Wolf Sect.

The Sect Master was discussing matters with a burly elder whose chest bore deep claw marks and whose single eye gleamed coldly.

The two sisters knelt and told them everything.

The Sect Master said nothing.

The one-eyed elder let his remaining eye roam over the sisters’ gauzy, curving silhouettes and chuckled lightly. “He could resist that? The kid… maybe he’s a pure fledgling who’s never tasted the marrow-eating, soul-melting pleasure—hasn’t awakened yet…”

“Or is it…” The one-eyed elder’s face turned lewd. “He doesn’t like ‘pure’—he likes ‘wanton’?”

The kneeling sisters trembled.

The Sect Master only waved a hand. “You may go.”

“Yes.”

The sisters rose and slipped out quietly.

The one-eyed elder stared at their swaying figures until they vanished completely, still a little reluctant.

He turned his head and asked, “Big Brother, since the kid doesn’t want them, why not reward them to—”

The Sect Master shot him a cool glance.

The one-eyed elder gave a sheepish grin.

“Great matters require patience,” the Sect Master said gravely. “We can’t rush it.”

“That’s true,” the one-eyed elder nodded. “He’s a greenhorn after all. He can hold out for a while, but can he hold out a lifetime? He’ll bite sooner or later…”

The Sect Master said nothing, sinking into thought.

Since Mo Hua had arrived at the Gray Wolf Sect, things would be easier.

There were some things he wouldn’t do now that he would never escape later anyway.

Only…

The Sect Master frowned.

In recent days, he felt uneasy, as if something unexpected had happened—something he still didn’t know.

…

In the decadent guest room.

Mo Hua sat at the desk with array paper spread out, drawing formations in a posture both proper and elegant, his bearing calm and unhurried.

After painting for a while and soothing his mood, and once he was sure no one would disturb him, Mo Hua put away pen and paper and began to operate the Seven-Soul Blood Prison Eye and the True Manual of Demonic Path Baleful Transmutation to digest the backlash of baleful qi.

He’d only killed one person, so the backlash wasn’t intense.

Before long, that bit of baleful qi was refined into his Blood Prison Eye and the baleful-transformed spiritual power.

Finished, he quieted his mind and meditated, sensing the causes and effects within the baleful qi and weighing them in his heart.

He now carried baleful qi from two people.

One was the young man in the wolf robe—the Sect Master’s nephew.

The other was the Gray Wolf Sect’s Elder Sun.

The wolf-robed youth was killed by Mo Hua’s own hand.

Elder Sun, after Mo Hua crippled his right leg and arm, was decapitated by Luo biaotou’s great ring saber.

One was a direct kill; the other, indirect.

Direct killing brought far stronger baleful backlash.

But indirect killing, because he didn’t directly shoulder the cause and effect, was much weaker.

This was one reason Mo Hua had wanted Luo biaotou to kill Elder Sun.

He wanted to compare the relationship between direct and indirect killing in terms of cause and effect and the degree of baleful backlash.

This question was crucial.

It directly affected how he would control his killing karma from now on and how he would eliminate the hidden danger of baleful qi.

Mo Hua’s killing karma was too heavy and his baleful qi too deep—an extreme exception with no precedent to consult.

So he could only research on his own and find his own way.

Between killing and not killing, fortune and grievance, merit and fate-killing, righteous path and demonic path—he needed to find a subtle balance.

If he could avoid killing, he wouldn’t kill.

But if he had no choice, he would still find ways to minimize the backlash.

For now, the best way was to let others kill for him.

Be the hidden hand behind the scenes. Play chess in the dark. Manipulate others to do the fighting and killing while he himself took on as little cause and effect as possible and used his hands as little as possible.

“Play chess…”

Thinking of those words, Mo Hua suddenly recalled the old man with superb chess skill he had met in Cloud-Ferry City after leaving the Qianxue Province border.

Mo Hua guessed the old man had to be a master.

How high, he didn’t know, but definitely very, very strong.

You could see it from his chess.

To fight him to a draw in chess, even losing by a bit—only a master among masters could do that.

He also carried a faint, unfathomable aura—somewhat similar to “Grandpa Kui.”

When they were playing, Mo Hua hadn’t thought much of it.

Later, he pondered carefully… still gaining no clarity, yet by karmic intuition he could almost be certain:

That old man was absolutely connected to the blood-sacrifice calamity in Qianxue Province.

In fact, that old man should be one of the hidden “pushers” behind the scenes, quietly and subtly influencing the cause and effect of events.

But such a figure—he’d never even heard of him before, let alone seen him.

If not for their chance meeting before parting, he might never have met him at all.

Mo Hua mused.

This meant that the true “experts” were hidden behind the curtain.

If he didn’t give you the chance to see him, you might never in your life discern the true faces of such experts. You’d only be trapped in their chessboard, reduced to a pawn, fighting to the death without knowing why.

“If one would cast off the identity of ‘pawn,’ even jump off the board and become a player, a hand behind the scenes…”

“Then one must first learn how to retreat ‘behind the scenes’…”

Let others do the tasks.

Let others do the killing.

Touch as little cause and effect as possible.

The less cause and effect, the harder it is for others to calculate you, the harder it is for them to grab your handle, the harder it is for you to become a pawn at others’ mercy.

Mo Hua nodded slowly.

This matter of baleful qi was a timely warning—and an opportunity.

Back in Qianxue Province, he had no choice. Many things could only be done by his own hands.

But now it was different. He was “free.”

No more provincial restraints, no sect binding—alone on the road, the sky high and the sea wide.

More often than not, others didn’t know him.

He could do more and entirely bide his time, hiding behind the curtain.

This was both for “self-preservation” and for “pulling the strings.”

After all, his master had said: the beam that sticks out rots first. Learn to hide yourself, and you can live well in the perilous, unpredictable cultivation world.

Only by learning from the true “experts,” concealed in lofty and shadowy places, could he better grasp the overall situation—planning in the tent while winning victories a thousand miles away, predicting the enemy through heavenly mechanism and defeating them outside cause and effect.

Only thus could he become a true “expert.”

In his mind, Mo Hua recalled the image of the old man at the board and made up his mind to take him as a model and learn well.

“Bide my time, shun cause and effect…”

Having untangled this knot, Mo Hua nodded, and another problem surfaced in his mind.

Divine sense.

His divine sense problem had become severe.

That big-headed idiot pixiu was incredibly stingy—wouldn’t give him any chance to “sneak a bite” of the evil god.

Mo Hua was very annoyed.

But after some days and careful thought, he forgave the pixiu.

After all, that was a divine beast’s nature. Since they were friends, he couldn’t make things too hard on the dummy.

Besides, after taking one bite of the evil god’s “flesh” last time, Mo Hua realized that the Divine Embryo of the evil god was far too “lean.”

In the blood-sacrifice battle, the Divine Embryo had just been born and was besieged by Zhenren Situ and a group.

He himself had pummeled it, hacked it into eight pieces, swallowed it, and pinned it beneath the pixiu’s paw.

The divine beast’s majesty also suppressed it, preventing its evil thoughts from growing.

As a result, the Evil God’s Divine Embryo had become a rack of “bone with marrow but no meat.”

The “marrow” was precious, yes, but what Mo Hua needed more right now was “meat.”

The degree of his divine thought’s Dao transformation was already very high. What truly bottlenecked him now was the “quantity” of his divine sense.

If his divine sense wouldn’t grow, he couldn’t forge his lifebound formation, couldn’t form his core—then everything else was moot.

Aside from that, methods to increase divine sense were very few.

In the past, Mo Hua could temper his divine sense by studying “absolute arrays.”

But now that trick had very little effect.

Not that it was useless—just painfully slow.

He figured that after Foundation Establishment and the Dao transformation of his divine thought, his divine sense had become extremely “tough.”

At such a time, drawing formations barely stimulated or honed it.

Even absolute arrays that could “sharpen” him during Qi Refining did very little after Foundation Establishment.

He faintly suspected that only those rarer, harder-to-learn absolute arrays that pressed the divine sense far more brutally—with greater torment and heavier load—could grind his godlike-strong divine thought.

Only torment could strengthen his divine thought.

But absolute arrays were rare to begin with—things of fortune and chance.

To find such “divine-thought load–type” absolute arrays was like searching for a single grain in the sea—hope very slim.

“Absolute arrays are a long shot…”

“There’s no ‘meat’ left on the evil god…”

“And I can’t find evil fiends, either…”

Mo Hua couldn’t help but sigh.

But one can’t eat hot tofu in a hurry. With opportunities scarce now, there was nothing he could do.

At midnight, he practiced the Reverse Spirit Array on the Dao stele through the night.

Then he derived on his own and studied the Four Symbols Azure Dragon Diagram for a while—until dawn.

After tempering, his divine sense strengthened a little, but the next realm still seemed out of reach.

Mo Hua suppressed his impatience and sighed softly. “Take it slow… As long as I cultivate diligently, one day, I’ll reach twenty-one patterns…”

Sunlight spilled into the room.

Facing the morning light, Mo Hua performed his daily cultivation.

But partway through, the mountains suddenly trembled. A savage wolf’s howl erupted within the Gray Wolf Sect—majestic and domineering.

The howl rang across the sky and reverberated through the forest, shaking the soul.

Gray Wolf Sect disciples, hearing it, looked excited and knelt to the heavens.

Mo Hua was stunned.

He stood at the window, dazed for a long moment. Then he sniffed, and his eyes lit up in an instant.

“My Twenty-One Patterns… are here?!”

Thanks for reading! Today’s chapter was all scheming smiles and hidden knives—Mo Hua keeping his cool in the wolf’s den made my day. If you’re enjoying the ride, I’d be super grateful if you could drop a quick rating or review on NovelUpdates; it really helps new readers find us.

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