Ch. 114 – Moving Clouds
“They did what?” Hao Chen asked, feigning ignorance.
The dragon’s glued shut mouth finally opened a narrow crack, letting two words slip out. Hao Chen intended to use that gap to pry it open further.
But Feng Ye fell silent once more.
These two words seemed to be his entire answer.
Hao Chen thought for a moment, then suddenly took two pearls out of his storage bag and grasped Feng Ye’s hand, placing them into his palm.
Feng Ye was baffled: “?”
Hao Chen explained with an earnest expression: “Fellow Daoist Feng Ye speaks so rarely, and as rarity creates value, each word is worth a thousand pieces of gold. I carry no gold with me, so I can only offer two pearls in its stead. Hoping Fellow Daoist Feng Ye will not look down on them.”
Feng Ye: “…..”
He grasped Hao Chen’s meaning. He was teasing him for being too quiet.
It wasn’t that Feng Ye was taciturn. It was just that…..there were a great many things he didn’t want to discuss with others.
Feng Ye rolled the two pigeon’s egg pearls around in the palm of his hand, saying helplessly: “Ask me something else.”
Something else…..Hao Chen skewed his eyes, and he said without thinking: “Do you…..”
Like me?
He had asked him this question before, but Feng Ye hadn’t had a chance to answer it.
He knew, of course, that Feng Ye had intended to reject him. But he had also noticed that Feng Ye had started to draw closer, only to flinch away as if he’d received an electric shock the moment he stretched out his hand.
This dragon didn’t completely lack feelings for him. Feng Ye’s emotional defenses were simply too fortified. And those budding feelings, having just broken through the soil, were ruthlessly razed to the ground by his own hand.
Didn’t Feng Ye like him just a little bit?
Hao Chen wanted an answer, but he swallowed the words back after the first two slipped out. Forget it. Given Feng Ye’s current attitude, even if he did have slight feelings for him, he was certain to deny it in order to make Hao Chen give up. It was best not to ask.
He forced himself to ask something else: “…..What exactly is the corpse-eating monster under the ground?”
This didn’t seem like something Feng Ye needed to keep to himself, so he honestly shared his thoughts: “It’s not necessarily a monster.”
Before revealing the answer, he asked Hao Chen a question: “Under what circumstances does ordinary soil gain vitality?”
Hao Chen was briefly taken aback by the question, but answered without a second thought: “When it’s fertilized.”
Feng Ye shook his head with a smile. It was the right answer, but lacked a certain distinction.
Hao Chen fanned himself lightly. Linking this to the story Old Uncle Sun had just told, he came to the same realization: “When many people have died in that soil?”
The corpses were digested and decomposed by the soil, and the absorbed nutrients rendered the soil more fertile. There was a saying that went: the more death touches a place, the more vibrant the flowers grow.
Nine-Step Cliff happened to be a place where a great many people had died. Hao Chen didn’t know the exact number, but it certainly couldn’t be low.
This sacrificial rite had to have been performed at least once per year, or at the most, every time a festival was observed. There was also no way of knowing how many sacrifices were presented on each occasion.
And those sacrifices were all living people, pushed onto Nine-Step Cliff and forced to walk those nine steps before falling to their doom. Some corpses were devoured by the venomous snakes, while others were absorbed by the soil, becoming nutrients for the earth.
Since the Living Soil could be found in such a place as this, did that mean that its unending vitality was the accumulation of nutrients built up from all of those unjust deaths?
He looked to Feng Ye for confirmation.
Rather than just giving him a yes or a no, Feng Ye said: “I think that’s probably the case. So many people have died here that it’s turned the soil into Living Soil. But while Living Soil possesses incredible vitality, it also has the ability to rapidly decompose corpses and absorb their nutrients.”
“A corpse buried in normal soil takes many years to break down completely, but the process is drastically accelerated by the vitality of the Living Soil, compressing the process into a single night. That’s how the bodies vanish so bizarrely, leaving behind only metals and jade, which don’t break down easily in soil.”
That actually sounded quite reasonable. So that’s why I didn’t notice any resentful spirits, Hao Chen thought. Because there weren’t any spirits in the first place. It wasn’t a monster devouring people, but the earth itself.
But one point of contention remained. How exactly had the Living Soil come into existence in the first place?
“If the death of a sufficient number of people is enough to transform ordinary soil into Living Soil, then why has it never emerged from battlefields, which are basically mountains of corpses and seas of blood?” Hao Chen asked.
Hao Chen had hit on the key point, something that puzzled Feng Ye as well.
There must be some undiscovered factor that caused only the soil around Nine-Step Cliff to transform into Living Soil.
And it just might be the key to how Jianmu was able to connect to the Emberless Horizon.
“That should become clear to us tonight,” Feng Ye replied.
Tonight, in addition to searching for the Living Soil, they would also have to guard against Ling Yun and the demonic creature. It was highly likely that they would launch another sneak attack.
The outside world may not know how Ling Yun had managed to find the Living Soil, but Cao Zirui certainly did.
And aside from him, there was the original finder himself – Ling Yun.
Ling Yun and the demon had vanished without a trace after leaving the Grand Array, but they couldn’t have gone far. They had come for Jianmu, and the Living Soil was an absolute necessity for its planting process.
If they were successful, they would secure Jianmu and the Living Soil in one fell swoop.
Tonight was destined to be anything but peaceful.
For that reason, Feng Ye closed his eyes again.
His complexion was slightly paler than usual, due to the quantity of blood he had lost. Although he had walked all this way as if nothing was wrong, he was still a little fatigued.
So in preparation for the imminent attack, Feng Ye took this opportunity to rest.
Having seen the weariness in Feng Ye’s eyes, Hao Chen didn’t disturb him again.
Feng Ye reclined against the rough tree trunk, which wasn’t entirely pleasant to rest his head against. He adjusted his position for a while, but couldn’t find a comfortable angle. An irritable frown reached his lips, but before he could adjust himself again, a wave of fatigue suddenly washed over him and dragged him into sleep before he even noticed.
But even in sleep, his furrowed brow didn’t relax.
Hao Chen gazed at Feng Ye’s sleeping face. Then he reached out, intending to rest Feng Ye’s head upon his own shoulder. After all, a shoulder was a much more comfortable headrest than the rough trunk of a tree.
But his hand paused halfway across. He had noticed that as his hand approached Feng Ye, who should be deeply asleep, the other’s eyelids had twitched slightly as if he was about to awaken.
This dragon was on guard even in his sleep, and anyone approaching him would immediately jolt him awake.
Hao Chen withdrew his hand and didn’t attempt to approach him again. He just calculated the angle and shifted his position, placing his shoulder exactly where Feng Ye’s head would rest if he leaned to the side.
Since he couldn’t make the first move, he would wait for him right here.
Hao Chen waited for quite some time, and after idly destroying a few blades of grass, he slowly drifted off to sleep himself.
Although there was only grass and dirt under his rump instead of a bed, perhaps due to the presence of the beauty at his side, he slept exceptionally well. Even when he felt an extra weight against his shoulder, he didn’t awake from his dreams.
Fang Yang and Cao Zirui eventually returned after amusing themselves, intending to speak with Feng Ye and Hao Chen again. But unexpectedly, they found the two of them soundly asleep, Feng Ye with his head on Hao Chen’s shoulder, and Hao Chen with his head tilted against Feng Ye’s.
Hao Chen had a faint smile on his lips as he slept, lost in a sweet dream. And Feng Ye wore no expression at all, his tightly-furrowed brow now smooth and lax.
Fang Yang and Cao Zirui exchanged a glance. Fang Yang then pressed his index finger to his lips with a soft “shh” and took Cao Zirui’s hand, tiptoeing away with him.
As evening fell, tired birds returned to their roosts and the setting sun dipped in the west.
When the last faint glimmer of light and warmth from the human world sank below the horizon, night was upon them.
Feng Ye opened his eyes to darkness. Releasing a yawn, he habitually glanced around to assess the situation.
But the moment he stirred, he found that without his knowledge, he had at some point leaned his head against Hao Chen’s shoulder. And at the present moment, Hao Chen was leaning his head against Feng Ye’s, sound asleep.
Feng Ye stared blankly for a moment. Once he fully returned to his senses, he abruptly sprang up from the ground, and Hao Chen began to tip over sideways.
Feng Ye hurriedly reached down to steady him, and it was at this point that Hao Chen woke up.
His hazy peach-blossom eyes met Feng Ye’s as the other man held him up. There was a moment of silence, and then Feng Ye suddenly released his grip.
Despite being awake, Hao Chen was caught off guard and tipped over anyway.
Rubbing his shoulder, he understood to some extent why Feng Ye had reacted so explosively. Because his patient waiting had paid off: Feng Ye had indeed rested his head on Hao Chen’s shoulder. That sensation had not been a dream.
Hao Chen climbed to his feet, stifling a smile.
Feng Ye glared.
Hao Chen brazenly met his gaze, completely unperturbed.
“Shixiong, come over quickly, ah. The array is set!” Fang Yang’s shout cut between them.
For the time being, Feng Ye set the matter aside and went to see Fang Yang first.
Hao Chen paced along at his side, and the two of them approached Fang Yang and Cao Zirui together.
Cao Zirui was holding a compass in his hand. While Feng Ye and Hao Chen were sleeping, he and Fang Yang had been busy setting up the array, which was now complete. All that remained was to wait for the dark clouds obscuring the moon to drift away, at which point the array would activate.
Cao Zirui craned his neck to stare unblinkingly up at the sky, too distracted to explain it all to Feng Ye and the others.
Fang Yang took it upon himself to explain to the confused Feng Ye, who had slept all afternoon: “The array is ready. Now we just wait for the moonlight.”
Feng Ye nodded in understanding, glancing up at the sky. The conditions tonight were actually rather poor, heavy clouds crowding the sky so thickly that the moon’s light had no hope of touching the earth.
But those clouds were slowly drifting along, and would eventually part to allow the light to shine through. All they had to do was wait.
The wait was a little tedious, and Fang Yang wasn’t the sort to sit still. He proceeded to regale Feng Ye and Hao Chen with the marvels of Cao Zirui’s array, the details of which Cao Zirui had explained to him that afternoon while he was setting it up.
Fang Yang gestured to the compass in Cao Zirui’s hand and said: “This might look like just an ordinary compass, but it’s actually a magic tool capable of detecting vitality.”
“It’s also the key to this locating array. It was obtained by a member of our sect a long time ago, and it’s the only one of its kind in the sect’s treasury.”
Fang Yang wasn’t wrong. Not only was the compass of a high grade, but its function was rather unconventional. Magic tools were usually designed for offense or defense, and it was rare to encounter one capable of detecting something like vitality.
Lingxiao Sword Sect only possessed one such item, and the total number of them out in the world likely didn’t exceed a mere handful.
When he was done explaining, Fang Yang rambled on about various other things, namely the fun things he and Cao Zirui had come across in the woods that afternoon.
What was fun for them struck the two adults as childish and silly.
But neither of them said anything, and just let Fang Yang ramble on. Without the sound of someone’s voice in the air, this night would have felt strangely lonely.
However, despite Fang Yang’s talent for chatter, he eventually ran out of things to say. He tilted his head back and gazed at the sky. The dark clouds had not drifted aside, and although the occasional bright sliver of moon would peek through, it was swiftly obscured again each time.
The wait began to make them restless, and Feng Ye tapped his fingers against his arm.
Seeing this, Hao Chen said out of the blue: “Does Fellow Daoist Feng Ye wish for the clouds to step aside?”
Obviously. Feng Ye sent Hao Chen a look that said exactly that.
Hao Chen held his fan against his lips, the corners of which curved up slightly as he said: “Fellow Daoist Feng Ye, try saying ‘move, clouds!’ When you say it, they might just start moving.”
How can that be, ah? Thought Fang Yang and Cao Zirui, who were listening in.
Feng Ye didn’t really believe him either, but…..
“Give it a try,” Hao Chen said, his voice laced with anticipation.
Feng Ye stared at him for a moment, then did as instructed. Gazing up at the sky, he murmured softly: “Move, clouds.”
Hao Chen smiled at him, tucking the hand holding his fan behind his back. The power of a single avatar was insufficient, and a crow was simply too small.
So this time, every single one of the folding fan’s ribs spontaneously detached, transforming behind him into drifting feathers that vanished into a night as pitch black as his true form.
Then, under the cover of night, the feathers gathered and transformed into a Peng bird shrunk several times in size. It was small relative to a true Peng, but dwarfed the stature of any ordinary bird.
The giant bird, with a wingspan tens of meters in length, rose from the forest and soared straight up toward the heavens.
“How could two words possibly make the clouds move…..” When the clouds didn’t immediately shift, Fang Yang couldn’t help but poke at Hao-dage and Useless Shixiong’s childishness.
However, the instant the words reached his lips, a fierce wind surged up from behind.
The force of the wind nearly knocked them off their feet, and Fang Yang staggered briefly before gripping Cao Zirui’s shoulder to steady himself. They managed to stand firm with their combined weight, and looked up at the sky together.
The gale had swept everything away, clearing the sky of its heavy cloud cover to make way for the bright, pure moonlight that spilled down from above.
The clouds had actually moved.
Fang Yang and Cao Zirui stared, their mouths hanging open.
Feng Ye had his head tilted back as well, the bright form of the moon reflected in his eyes. As if he had sensed something, he turned his head to look at Hao Chen.
The strong wind had yet to subside, and Hao Chen stood in the midst of it, a few loose strands of hair fluttering across his face. Standing with his hands clasped behind his back, he gave Feng Ye a light, easy smile.
Feng Ye experienced a brief moment of disorientation where he seemed to hear the cry of a bird, like that of the great Peng bird in his dream, which had dispelled the darkness with a beat of its wings.
The cry traveled from his ears to the veins beneath his skin, and his blood surged in response, throwing the rhythm of his heartbeat into chaos.
Consider donating via Kofi here.
Chapter 113 << Table of Contents >> Chapter 115
