Chapter 31: Jade

The moment Spirit Physician Ming heard this, he clung to the doorframe and cried out in anguish, “Cousin! Cousin—you can’t be this heartless! It’s only ten thousand spirit stones. Can they really be more precious than the bond between us?”

Bian Chunzhou could hardly believe his ears. What kind of family did this guy come from? Only ten thousand spirit stones? Did he think spirit stones were cabbages growing in a field, ready to be harvested whenever he pleased?

“Cousin, talking about feelings only hurts the spirit stones. Just go in peace. I’ll come up with a passable excuse for Mother.”

To think that a disgrace of a spirit physician had emerged from the Hall of Clear Hearts. Tomorrow, Bian Chunzhou would anonymously report him through every possible channel. Hmph.

Spirit Physician Ming: …

He had never expected the boy to be such a miserly little money-grubber. A grave miscalculation!

“Then I’ll just—”

At worst, they could all go down together.

Bian Chunzhou was not afraid. So what if the investigation mission failed? He could travel to the ends of the earth and still never find ten thousand spirit stones lying around!

“Cousin, no profession is inherently noble or lowly. There’s nothing shameful about working hard to repay your debts. Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone else.”

Spirit Physician Ming: …

“Are you two finished with this little duet or not? Are you paying?”

“No!”

“He is!”

Seizing the opportunity, Spirit Physician Ming contorted himself into an extremely twisted posture that seemed to defy the limits of human anatomy, slipping past every thug trying to surround him. Then he vaulted over the railing and dropped downstairs. After a few leaps, he vanished without a trace.

“Hurry up and chase him!”

But how could they possibly catch him now? No matter how useless the man surnamed Ming might be, he was still a first-level Qi Refining Realm cultivator. Once he had escaped the Jade Pavilion, there was no chance a few ordinary mortals could catch him.

“Since he ran away, you can pay on his behalf. Young Master, you’re dressed in gold and silver, and you can even afford to order the company of one of our immortal maidens. Surely you’re not lacking a mere ten thousand spirit stones.”

…

The Jade Pavilion’s thugs certainly talked big.

Bian Chunzhou immediately stepped back, revealing Chen Zui and the enormous saber strapped across his back.

“You people from the Jade Pavilion certainly have some nerve. ‘A mere ten thousand spirit stones’—I’m amazed you can even say that with a straight face. What’s this? Are you trying to tell this young master how to conduct his affairs?”

“Oh my, oh my. What’s going on here? Young Master, are you dissatisfied with Miss Zanxue?”

The madam hurried over after hearing the commotion. The moment she saw the hostile standoff, she spoke up.

“What’s wrong with the lot of you? An honored guest has come through our doors, and this is how you treat him? If I catch you behaving this way again, you’ll suffer for it! Could a young master like him possibly lack such a paltry sum? No wonder business has been worse lately. So it was because I hired a bunch of useless fools like you!”

“Hurry up and apologize to our guest. You disturbed his enjoyment. Do you understand what you did wrong?”

Bian Chunzhou: …

One played the villain and the other played the peacemaker. Either way, they were trying every possible trick to dig money out of his pocket.

“We apologize. We offended you, Young Master. But the guest who just fled without paying ordered the most expensive wine in the pavilion, Heavenly Fragrance Brew. Madam Li, you know that wine is no ordinary product. We can’t afford to compensate for it ourselves.”

So the madam’s surname was Li.

When she heard that it had been Heavenly Fragrance Brew, she frowned as well. “You didn’t catch him?”

“No. Madam Li, you may not know this, but the guest who fled without paying is this young master’s cousin. They’re relatives, so I assumed there would at least be some affection between them.”

Bian Chunzhou had already cursed that idiot spirit physician ten thousand times in his heart, yet the fury in his chest still burned fiercely.

“Don’t look at me. Which part of me looks like an easy mark?”

Madam Li could not quite determine what kind of person this young master was. However, Heavenly Fragrance Brew dared command such an outrageous price because it truly possessed corresponding value. The pavilion did not have much in stock, either. There were only three bottles in total, and one had been lost today. They could not simply let the matter go.

“This young master came to the Jade Pavilion today to enjoy himself, not to become your entertainment. You open your doors to conduct business, yet you force unrelated people to settle someone else’s bill? Even blood brothers keep clear accounts. He’s nothing more than a distant relative who comes to sponge off my family. What makes him worthy of having this young master pay for him? It doesn’t matter that he ran. I know where he is. Go find him and demand payment yourselves.”

Madam Li had thought the young master would be easy to fool. Unexpectedly, he was quite shrewd.

The pavilion was bustling at the moment, and she did not want the situation to become too ugly. Besides, the young master clearly had no intention of leaving yet. There would be plenty of time to settle matters later.

With that thought, Madam Li waved the thugs away. She even smiled and ordered someone to bring over fresh pastries and clear wine.

What Bian Chunzhou and Chen Zui did not see was Madam Li respectfully nodding to Miss Zanxue after the two of them turned around. Only then did she sway her hips and depart at an unhurried pace.

By the time they returned to their private room and sat down, Bian Chunzhou was drenched in sweat.

“You truly did not need to do that. If you wished to leave, I could have taken you out,” Chen Zui said in confusion.

Wouldn’t that mean returning empty-handed after paying two spirit stones out of pocket? What an enormous loss!

Bian Chunzhou waved a hand. “What rotten luck. I can’t believe I ran into him even here. He’d better not let me see him again, or I’ll break all three of his legs!”

Chen Zui paused. “You’re so angry that you’ve become confused. People don’t have three legs.”

Bian Chunzhou shot him a sidelong glance.

Oh, right. This one was still an innocent eighteen-year-old university boy.

“You wouldn’t understand. Be good and go play.”

“He doesn’t understand? Do you?”

The speaker was Miss Zanxue.

She had an aloof beauty, and her voice was like ice and snow brushing past one’s skin, cold and distant. She perfectly matched the ordinary person’s stereotypical image of an immortal maiden from the heavens.

“You’re just two wet-behind-the-ears brats. Even now, you still don’t realize—”

“Realize what?”

“That disaster is about to befall you.”

Bian Chunzhou’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What disaster? Explain yourself. Is threatening customers how the Jade Pavilion conducts business?”

“Threatening you? This is no threat. I am merely informing you of a fact.”

Zanxue’s expression abruptly changed. Beneath the faintly suggestive candlelight, the sight of her made Bian Chunzhou’s heart pound with alarm once again.

What was happening?

That weakness in his legs—the same feeling as when a talisman spell had been placed on him—had returned!

“No one who takes my Heavenly Fragrance Brew has ever walked out of the Jade Pavilion.”

Chen Zui’s perception of danger was keener than anyone else’s. The booklet Wen Xu had given him also said that in an emergency, he should never hesitate when the time came to strike.

And now, he did not hesitate at all.

“So you really are cultivators. What a pity. You’re only two greenhorns in the Qi Refining Realm.”

…

By the time Wen Xu left the slums, the moon had already reached the center of the sky.

It was the dead of winter, and the weather was bitterly cold. Although Langyuan City was located in the south, its nights were still freezing.

Fortunately, cultivators were unaffected by ordinary heat and cold. Even though Wen Xu was wearing only a thin padded jacket today, he did not feel chilled in the slightest.

At this hour, there was hardly anyone left on the streets.

He placed the wooden chest inside his storage ring and slowly made his way alone toward the place they had agreed to meet.

The moon in the cultivation world did not look any different from the moon in the Mortal Realm.

Perhaps what he had seen in the slums today had stirred old memories. Wen Xu found himself recalling the more miserable parts of his past.

He had suffered from hunger and cold, with barely enough clothing to cover himself. He never knew where his next meal would come from. Every night before falling asleep, he worried that he might not wake the following morning. Yet whenever he did wake up, he would immediately begin worrying about where he could beg that day to avoid starving to death.

Chunzhou had said that demonic cultivators might capture beggars and implant evil seeds in them, but how could that be possible?

Whether they lived in the cultivation world or the Mortal Realm, beggars were already wretched enough. Cultivators did not even think highly of ordinary people, much less beggars reduced to skin and bone.

The Jade-Bone Silk Tree was something Wen Xu had deliberately asked about two days ago. It was one of the demonic objects most commonly used by demonic cultivators.

Although it was called a tree, it was actually a type of vine. Only after reaching maturity would the vine’s tendrils grow as thick as the branches and trunk of a great tree.

The Annals of Cultivation recorded that several thousand years ago, a Jade-Bone Silk Tree had appeared and devoured every living creature and plant across tens of thousands of hectares.

An entire forest had become smothered by the Jade-Bone Silk Tree, stretching from earth to sky. From the outside, it had looked like a perfectly ordinary forest. But anyone who entered found themselves in an endless hell.

It was said that five ancestors in the Tribulation Transcendence Realm had been mobilized to destroy it. Even then, they had only barely managed to annihilate the vine with lightning and fire.

Afterward, the Jade-Bone Silk Tree became a forbidden object throughout the cultivation world. No proper cultivator would ever touch something so wicked.

To demonic cultivators, however, it was their precious little darling.

The Jade-Bone Silk Tree took a long time to mature, but demonic cultivators had discovered many other “wonderful uses” for it.

For example, it could be used as an ingredient in an aphrodisiac powder specifically designed for harvesting yang to nourish yin. It ranked first on the list of medicinal substances most hated by male cultivators throughout the cultivation world.

Furthermore, when the vine passed from infancy into its growth phase, it shed a layer of bark. That bark was an essential material for crafting the demonic artifact known as the Human-Head Drum.

This time, what they had encountered was a evil seed from the Jade-Bone Silk Tree.

It had also undergone special preparation, allowing it to parasitize the human body directly and drain a person’s vital essence.

Wen Xu had never dealt with demonic cultivators himself, but even from what he had read, he could tell that they were vicious, merciless people utterly devoid of any concept of right and wrong.

The Introductory Cultivation Jade Slip described demonic cultivators this way:

Most possessed twisted personalities and fed upon blood and malice. They harbored intense ill will toward cultivators and ordinary people alike, treated life with complete indifference, and delighted in manipulating the boundary between good and evil.

Therefore, upon discovering a demonic cultivator, one was to execute them on the spot.

Wen Xu made a rough comparison.

In the Mortal Realm, demonic cultivators would be like ruthless bandits who murdered and robbed without restraint. But demonic cultivators possessed far greater abilities, which meant they could cause far greater harm.

At present, they knew there were handsome young men in Mist Mountain Village suffering from the “old sickness.”

People could not age without reason.

So had they been poisoned by aphrodisiac powder made from the Jade-Bone Silk Tree?

Or did those parasitized by a evil seed rapidly grow old during the later stages of infestation?

“Hey, hey! Aren’t you that disciple from Yonglu Mountain? You aren’t wearing your blindfold, so I nearly didn’t recognize you. Are you really blind?”

Wen Xu frowned instinctively. “Who are you?”

“It’s me! The Mystic Physician! The pregnant man! Don’t you remember?”

Wen Xu decisively shook his head. “No. What do you want?”

Spirit Physician Ming thought to himself that Yonglu Mountain’s disciples had certainly been growing more rebellious lately.

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember me. But those two companions of yours may be in grave danger.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Jade Pavilion isn’t a place just anyone can enter. I risked my own neck to barge inside earlier, and I even caused a little trouble for the two of them. I don’t know whether they understood what I was trying to tell them, but I imagine—hey! Why are you running? Do you even know where the Jade Pavilion is?”

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