Chapter 95

Lin Du stepped out the door and glanced up at the sky.

The moon in the mountains always seemed to be veiled in a layer of mist, casting a pale, sparse light on the ground.

As she fished a mirror from her pocket, she raised her hand and knocked on the door. “It’s me, Lin Du.”

The door opened quickly, and Xia Tianwu looked down at the mirror Lin Du was holding. “What’s that?”

“It’s something my second senior brother and I recently modified based on my master’s design for a secret realm’s ‘Heavenly Eye.’ I call it ‘surveillance.’”

Lin Du smiled. “We made some adjustments to my master’s Heavenly Eye blueprint—reduced its range, cut down some functions, but added a sound transmission feature. The only downside is the limited distance, so it requires sensory connection to work.”

Voices were already coming from inside, but Lin Du seemed distracted. She glanced into the room, where a black-gold sword staff stood upright in the middle of the bed. Mo Lin had already lain down, seemingly having slept for a while, but now he was groggily struggling to lift his head, trying hard to open his eyes, even furrowing his brow in the effort.

Huai Min has yet to sleep.jpg

Mo Lin, unable to use spiritual power and exhausted from the day’s events, was clearly worn out.

Lin Du paid him no mind, found herself a stool, and sat down, listening to the sounds coming from the mirror.

Xia Tianwu had no idea why her Uncle Junior Master insisted on testing a new magical device in their room in the middle of the night. But soon, the conversation inside made her frown slightly.

“Could it be that so much time has passed that you’ve forgotten?”

“This Qinglu Village—we villagers can’t leave. Although we lack for nothing in terms of food and clothing, our people have been trapped here for generations. If a girl is born, she will never be able to leave this village. She will either become the wife of one of the village men or the Moon God’s bride. Only boys—only boys have the chance to be chosen at the age of adulthood to leave the village.”

“I’ve heard the village chief say that boys selected by the envoy to leave the village have a mark at the base of one hand’s palm. The envoy says it’s the Moon God’s mark, so they’ll always remember their origins. Even if they never return, they won’t forget. Taoist, how did you come back? How could you have forgotten?”

“If you were able to return, doesn’t that mean you could take someone out with you?”

Lin Du lowered her gaze. Fifteen years old—no wonder they had to wipe the memories.

Xia Tianwu’s cold voice rang out, “If it’s at the base of the palm, then it’s the Shenmen acupoint.”

Lin Du nodded, “Yes, the Shenmen acupoint. I’ve checked.”

“Uncle Junior Master, weren’t you studying medical texts? What’s the Shenmen acupoint related to?” Xia Tianwu suddenly asked, like a teacher quizzing a student in class.

Lin Du, feeling slightly aggrieved, recalled her master, who once criticized her poor handwriting as chicken scratch. Determined not to let her junior nephew spread rumors about her ignorance of basic medical knowledge, she answered, “It’s related to the heart and mental state. It mainly treats conditions like anxiety, memory loss, insomnia, dementia, and madness…”

Suddenly, Lin Du’s voice trailed off. “Tao Xian is already a cultivator at the Cloud Ascension level and has undergone two tribulations, essentially reborn. Yet, that scar still remains, meaning the Shenmen acupoint was thoroughly damaged?”

Xia Tianwu nodded in agreement—indeed, Uncle Junior Master’s thinking was sharper than Mo Lin’s.

Lin Du glanced at the bewildered man in the water mirror. Tao Xian was so confused, he even began to suspect the woman was some kind of ghost trying to deceive him. He stood there, covering his ears, with a look that said, “I won’t listen, I won’t listen.”

“I have no choice. The Granny Ma said I’m carrying a girl. Do you understand what that means? There are only two fates for her: either she becomes a perpetual child-bearer after adulthood, or she’s chosen by the Moon God to be his bride. Either way, she’s doomed to die.”

Tao Xian was clearly startled, “That’s impossible, absurd! You could simply refuse to have children. Is there really someone who can control you?”

“We don’t have a choice. We must conceive every spring… every spring, without fail.”

“We are a village blessed by the Moon God. We can only follow the Moon God’s rules.”

Lin Du furrowed her brows slowly. “No wonder she’s so young, yet she already looks worn out.”

Constant childbirth is immensely harmful to the body.

“This so-called Moon God is probably some sort of evil entity,” Mo Lin’s brain finally kicked into gear.

“Calm down. It’s not your time to play the hero,” Xia Tianwu swiftly shut down Mo Lin’s eager anticipation.

Mo Lin deflated, curling up with his blanket on the bed, closing his eyes to avoid seeing anything more.

“Could that Granny Ma have some connection with the Moon God?” Xia Tianwu voiced her concern. “She allowed us to come here—doesn’t she fear we might uncover the truth?”

Lin Du tapped the table thoughtfully, “Where’s that wandering Taoist we know in Yunnan?”

Mo Lin opened his eyes again, “I’ll contact him.”

That was about the only use he had left, and if he didn’t get involved somehow, he wouldn’t be able to sleep from the frustration.

Lin Du returned her attention to the water mirror, suddenly noticing that Tao Xian’s posture seemed off. She grabbed Xia Tianwu with one hand, swiftly summoned her Fusheng fan with the other, and bolted out of the room. In the blink of an eye, she was in front of another room. She kicked the door open and snapped the folding fan open, sending a brilliant streak of white light sweeping across the room.

Her movements were fluid and precise. The two inside didn’t even have time to react.

“Don’t move.”

Lin Du held the fan, pointing it at Tao Xian. “I warned you, if you came again, I’d kill you. No matter how many bodies you have, I’ll kill every one.”

A fine layer of frost had already crept over everything in the room, growing inch by inch, as if the room had been transported to the frozen North. The temperature dropped rapidly.

Tao Xian’s spiritual power flared, breaking the ice that clung to him. He stood there, staring at Lin Du. “Lin Du, if you want Mo Lin to live, you’ll have to follow the rules.”

“Rules are made to be broken,” Lin Du retorted, suddenly producing several short blades. “I don’t follow rules, so don’t bother trying that with me.”

As the eight blades soared into the air, the ice mist that Tao Xian had just broken through began to shimmer with faint light. The blades linked together, forming a complex array pattern, like eight shooting stars falling straight down. They formed a huge bell-like structure that landed on Tao Xian with a heavy thud.

The blades struck the ground with a resonant clang, embedding themselves firmly in the stone, arranged perfectly in the positions of the eight trigrams.

Despite her tough words, Lin Du had set up a trap formation, not a killing formation.

“If you reveal the village’s secrets to outsiders, you’ll face the Moon God’s punishment. Don’t you know that?”

Tao Xian glared at the woman on the ground, summoning a long sword in an attempt to break the formation.

The woman, who had just been freed from the frost, clutched her stomach and looked at Tao Xian in panic. “What… what? Are you the Moon God’s envoy?”

“But your mother and sisters lived in this village like cattle, dying in forms that could hardly be called human. Don’t you feel any sorrow? Now, you’ve been chosen to leave by the Moon God, so you refuse to help me?”

“This isn’t right—none of this is right. The world outside—you know it better than I do. You should know… humans aren’t supposed to live like this…”

“I might be able to bear this, but my daughter—my daughter can’t go through this again…”

“She should marry someone she loves, and who loves her. She should have the chance to choose…”

Tao Xian’s sword scraped against the edge of the formation, spiritual power colliding with the array and creating a burst of dazzling light. The eight short blades began to tremble in the ground, their blades vibrating against the stone, producing faint ringing sounds.

The woman’s sobbing drowned out the faint noises. Lin Du infused more spiritual power into her folding fan, locking eyes with Tao Xian.

In that moment, Tao Xian suddenly snapped out of it. Staring at the golden barrier and the shadowy figures beyond it, he blurted, “Master Lin, what are you doing…? Did… did I just get caught cheating?”

Lin Du: …

She raised her hand to rub her forehead and turned around, only to be met with the glaring stares of the men gathered outside the door. Armed with farming tools and clubs, they were led by the village chief. They looked between the sobbing woman inside and the outsider cultivators.

Well, this was going to be hard to explain.