Chapter 98

Lin Du did not refuse. She could break the formation, but being purely destructive, she would only end up destroying the village entirely since the vines were almost the foundation of the village.

Moreover… let Wei Zhi take the blame for this one.

As Wei Zhi was about to move his hand, he suddenly seemed to sense something and looked in a certain direction.

Under the moonlight, a hunched old woman appeared abruptly outside the barrier. She looked at the mess on the ground and the two people standing in the midst of it with an unclear expression.

The taller monk was still holding a seemingly ordinary incense board, while the child beside him was a head shorter and looked like he was being scolded.

When the two of them turned their gaze towards her, their eyes suddenly became sharp, like the thin frost under the cold moon, exuding a discernible killing intent.

Lin Du was the first to smile. Holding a folding fan with considerable spiritual energy infused into it, she still showed no sign of fluctuation, only reflecting a cold light under the moon. “Granny Ma, the moonlight isn’t good tonight. What brings you out here?”

The old woman glanced at Lin Du with an indifferent expression. “You’ve caused a big trouble.”

Lin Du still smiled playfully, like a child who was always smiling and behaving improperly. “Granny Ma, it’s not my fault. It’s all that monk’s doing. I only came out when I heard the commotion and saw that monk blowing up the vines.”

Wei Zhi, who had been unjustly blamed, thought to himself:…

At least he had faced many accusations before; this one was not a big deal.

Granny Ma gave Wei Zhi a steady look, sensing the profound cultivation on him. She did not speak further and turned her gaze back to Lin Du. “You’ve been to my courtyard in Phoenix City. You should know something by now. Do you still dare to approach me?”

Lin Du replied with a smile, “Compared to that monk, I’d rather be with someone like you, Granny Ma, who has so much hair. If I had such beautiful hair in my old age, I’d wake up smiling from my dreams.”

Wei Zhi hadn’t noticed Lin Du’s talkativeness before. After thinking for a moment, he found that having her as Yan Ye’s disciple might not be so bad.

Yan Ye’s head of white hair might even be worn out by his little disciple.

Granny Ma, listening to Lin Du’s flattery, even showed a hint of a smile. “If I say that these vines are indeed related to me, but they are not my vines, would you believe it?”

“What’s there not to believe?” Lin Du blinked her unusually bright eyes and said, “You don’t even need to explain to me because I have a request of you. Since you explained, you’re truly a living Bodhisattva.”

Granny Ma looked again at Wei Zhi. Apart from his monk’s robe and bamboo hat, it was hard to tell if he was a real monk. However, Lin Du was a disciple of the Supreme Sect, and although disciples of the Supreme Sect had various characteristics, it was unlikely that one would go so far as to wear monk’s robes.

“But I do recognize this person. He was someone I treated before.”

A dark glint suddenly flashed in Lin Du’s eyes. “Oh?”

“Five hundred years ago, I saved a man who had slaughtered a Gu village. I don’t know the reason, but I noticed abnormalities in him. His body was transformed from a red willow branch, which was on the brink of collapse at that time.”

Granny Ma smiled. “So, I gave him a new body using the spirit vine from that Gu village.”

As Lin Du listened, her smile deepened. With her eyes lowered, she continued to gather spiritual energy in her floating fan.

Fortunately, although the floating fan lacked another companion spiritual treasure, the spiritual imprint left by Lin Du made it hers. Its fan surface reflected the floating life of its owner, so it could temporarily accommodate spiritual energy without any problem.

“So, this spirit vine is his true body?”

“Not quite. It’s a fragment. I just didn’t expect him to actually cultivate a fragment.”

Lin Du responded with a strange excitement. “Granny Ma, what if I said that after he killed the Gu master, he created more Gu masters?”

Granny Ma seemed not to have heard clearly, or perhaps she heard but asked again, “What did you say?”

Lin Du looked up with a cunning smile in her dark eyes. “Among the outer disciples of the Fei Xing Sect, there are many Gu masters that I know of. I even killed one with my own hands.”

“Do you know the origin of that person?”

“I don’t ask about the origins when treating someone. Only righteous sect disciples would obediently report their backgrounds. After I treated him, I never saw him again.” Granny Ma’s face showed rare coldness. “It was only later, when I passed by this village on the way up the mountain, that I found this spirit vine had appeared in the village.”

“The villagers call it Moonlight Vine and say they are blessed by the Moon God.”

She then suddenly reached out, and a flower appeared in her hand. “One morning, a child died, a young maiden dressed neatly, with a smile on her face as she passed away. But the villagers said that it was the Moon God who came to take away his bride.”

Granny Ma smiled as she spoke and then looked down. “There was no crying in the village, and some even had smiles on their faces.”

“So, that maiden… is now in your residence?” Lin Du stood in front of her, but her gaze was fixed on Granny Ma’s eyes, not the flower.

Granny Ma’s eyes were not those of an elderly person. Despite her drooping eyelids, she must have had round eyes in her youth. Now, even though she was old, her dark eyes still held a glimmer of water and, for some reason, conveyed a sense of compassion.

“I just happened to need two little maids to serve me.”

As she said this, she couldn’t help but recall the first time she saw that young girl.

At that time, Qinglu Village hadn’t reached such a state of madness. The two young girls were washing clothes by the river, laughing and not in a hurry to return. They picked a few flowers and played with them. When they saw Granny Ma coming down the mountain, they rushed over to help her. Seeing the flowers and herbs in her basket, they thought she was someone who gathered flowers to sell in the city, so they placed a few unopened orchids in her bamboo basket.

She vaguely remembered that on the day by the river, the children were playing and one of them said, “I wonder what Phoenix City is like. I want to go see it one day.”

“What a pity we might not get to the city this year. Last year’s harvest wasn’t enough even for ourselves. This year, the cold came late, and the mountain goods have already been trampled by the wild animals.”

Granny Ma was not a kind-hearted person, but when she saw the entire village rejoicing while only the young girl was crying by the river, she asked her, “Sister has become the Moon God’s bride. The bride price left by the Moon God should be enough for the village to eat well for a while, but can the bride herself enjoy it? Will the Moon God be in Phoenix City?”

The Moon God, of course, would not be in Phoenix City.

Granny Ma looked at the little girl. For reasons unknown, she left a spell mark on the corpse when she passed by the village.

This village, originally a good grave site surrounded by mountains and waters, would not suffer any damage to the corpse even after seven days.

So, after being buried on the seventh day, the village, covered by vines, had an additional young girl in the small courtyard within Phoenix City.

That girl, under Granny Ma’s corpse control technique, entered the city on her own. The city guards, recognizing her as Granny Ma’s maid, allowed her to enter without asking for the spirit stones required for entry.

The girl, like her sister, also became the Moon God’s bride, peacefully sleeping away on a morning.

Thus, the two sisters were reunited in Phoenix City, fulfilling a wish from their lives, albeit a belated and distorted form of completeness.

Granny Ma snapped back from her memories and looked up at Lin Du.

Lin Du was far slicker than those two children. The mountain children were purely innocent, while such a child as Lin Du was shrewd from the trials of the mortal world.

Even if you knew she was playing tricks on you, it was hard to dislike her.

Death was probably not as fun as being alive. Oh well.

Granny Ma couldn’t understand why she was so lenient towards Lin Du. She merely said, “Anyway, it’s just a momentary act of kindness. You mentioned the Fei Xing Sect earlier. Was that person from the Fei Xing Sect?”

Lin Du thought it was probably correct.

The day outside the secret realm, Yin Zhong was present. Yin Zhong’s eldest disciple, Tao Xian, came to rescue him, saying that the elder wanted Shao Fei brought back at all costs.

Tao Xian’s Divine Palace had been tampered with, and coincidentally, this village was involved. Lin Du did not know about the other sects’ masters, but setting aside Yan Ye, just observing Ju Yuan’s tension over Mo Lin’s body, if Yin Zhong were a legitimate master, he would have noticed Tao Xian’s anomalies.

Now, Yin Zhong was one of the most influential elders of the Fei Xing Sect, and the chaos within the outer sect had only been recent.

When all coincidences come together, it is no longer a coincidence.

Mo Lin’s tragedies in this and previous lives were all related to Shao Fei and the Fei Xing Sect. Lin Du needed to settle this account clearly.

Even though she did not yet have solid evidence to pin down the mastermind, Lin Du was best at speaking to people directly. If she wanted to draw Granny Ma to her side, heal Mo Lin, and not obstruct her cleansing plan, regardless of whether Yin Zhong was the mastermind or not, he must now be considered the mastermind.

Or perhaps, after being saved by Granny Ma, the mastermind who indulged the Gu techniques.

Lin Du’s eyes, clear and resolute, revealed a hint of determined darkness, and then she suddenly smiled, her tiger teeth showing. “Although I am young and playful, I am still a disciple of the Supreme Sect. The prohibition against false speech cannot be broken. What do you think?”

Wei Zhi silently turned his face away, pretending not to have heard.