Estranged - CH 130

Half a shichen ago.

Half a shichen: an hour

Yun Weisi, Jiang Li, Chi Bijiang and Yao Wangnian were still trapped in the courtyard of the yamen. The black fog was drawing closer, brimming with dense ghost energy.

The three golden threads had been laid down in circles around them like three barriers. The fog was crawling around the barriers, before slowly engulfing them. The fog had already broken through the first circle. The second one had also started showing traces of collapsing.

Yao Wangnian tossed three black talismans that turned into skulls in midair, which then threw themselves on the mist with their mouths open. In a flash, the fog disappeared inside them, but soon the skulls started to tremble violently and exploded one after another. The black fog that could not be contained had shattered the skulls, before quickly returning to its original state.

Seeing that Yao Wangnian wanted to use this skill again, Yun Weisi said: “This fog is intended to hurt you. The stronger the ghost cultivation techniques you use, the greater the backlash will be. Stop this if you don’t want to die.”

It was impossible to see Yao Wangnian’s expression under his mask, but he did not seem to be happy and even snapped back: “You also have traces of demonic qi on your body—how are you any better than me?”

Yun Weisi answered indifferently: “I’ve turned into a demon once, but there was a person who wanted to help me even at the cost of their own life, so I came back to my senses. What about you?”

What about me?

Yao Wangnian asked himself the same question.

Obviously, he could not let it go and reconcile with himself in the same way Yun Weisi had. Even though his body had not turned into a demon, he had long since turned into one in his heart.

While he was dying in agony, he could not stop struggling and never gave up. Boiling in purgatory, his soul did not dissipate, and eventually he became a ghost cultivator.

But was it easy to cultivate as a ghost?

His body had perished in a fire a long time ago, and he had pieced it back together because he had not managed to find a suitable vessel. Yao Wangnian was forced to drag his own body along and hide in an inconspicuous, abandoned place to cultivate day after day, year after year—he could not even tell how much time had passed. He felt his body dissolve and decay, before finally fusing together with the ground below him. Yet his resentment only deepened with each year. At this point, he could not even tell what kind of monster he had become.

Even ghost cultivators were not that hideously ugly, despite resembling neither ghosts nor humans.

No matter where he went, he would always catch the scent of something burning in the air. At first, he found it strange and tried looking everywhere for the source of it, but he later realized that this smell was coming from his own body.

He could not even tell what goal he was pursuing by cultivating. Only his resentment and hatred supported his walking corpse and pushed it forward.

He had no tomorrow and nothing to hope for. That was what Yao Wangnian had been before arriving at Hongluo.

“You should rejoice: I still haven’t lost my will. Otherwise, if I saw you, Jiang Li of the Wanjian Immortal Clan, I’d have killed you instead of speaking nonsense here with you.”

Yao Wangnian sneered soundlessly, and it was difficult to guess whether his questions were addressed to Jiang Li or to himself.

“Why is it that you’re still alive and I’m dead? It could have been me standing here and asking you why you’ve become like this, asking what you’ve been through until my throat is hoarse.”

“You say you want to know why I look like this? You don’t actually want to. You’re just concerned with your current predicament. If it wasn’t for these deaths occurring in Hongluo, I wager you wouldn’t have met me and wouldn’t be concerned at all. Clan Master Jiang, is it that you were so dissatisfied with your position that’s too far above the masses that you decided to come here incognito and experience the hardships of the common folks?”

Yao Wangnian was immediately disgusted by Jiang Li’s distressed expression. He wished he could tear the man in front of his eyes to shreds so that he could dispel, to some extent, the deep-rooted traces of hatred in his heart that had been tormenting him.

The more he spoke, the less sane he felt. The eyes under his mask had become bloodshot and the dense ghost qi around his body could go out of control at any moment.

“You’ve been like this since you were little. You never struggle to obtain anything, but in the end, everything goes to you. Yet you dare appear in front of me now—”

Before he could finish the thought, he was hugged.

Chi Bijiang gasped, as if she wanted to stop Jiang Li but it was too late.

Jiang Li hugged Yao Wangnian tightly, paying no attention to the ghost qi that was hurting him.

“I know what I’m saying. You don’t have to forgive me, and I can’t experience the sufferings you’ve been through, but at least I know where you’ve been all these years. That year, when I heard about your death, I should have gotten to the bottom of this, but I didn’t notice anything strange at first glance, so I stopped investigating halfway. If only I knew earlier, if only…”

Jiang Li was in great pain.

The person he was holding in his hands was his fellow disciple with whom Jiang Li had grown up together. In the past, they used to be very close to each other: they lived together, ate together, and trained with each other until they grew up. They were no different from regular brothers except for the fact that they did not share the same blood. It was not that Jiang Li did not try to figure out what happened back then, he just did not follow through with it. Had he known that Yao Wangnian did not die, but instead had to go through so much suffering for a long period of time, Jiang Li would have done his best to figure everything out.

Jiang Li’s pain was coming from the guilt he felt, especially after he heard these words and saw Yao Wangnian’s appearance. Now, he knew that he would dedicate his life to finding justice for his shixiong.

If he could not find justice in the Wanjian Immortal Clan, he would leave it even if he had to punch a hole in the sky.

“Can you tell us what exactly happened back then?”

“And what if the things that I tell you will make the entire Wanjian Immortal Clan your enemy?” Yao Wangnian did not move and only asked coldly.

“I’ll look into all that is right and wrong about this situation. If the Wanjian Immortal Clan actually harmed you, I’ll turn the whole clan upside down to restore your reputation.”

“And what if one of those who harmed me is our shifu?”

Jiang Li froze. He looked up at Yao Wangnian.

The latter’s eyes were coldly mocking Jiang Li.

Jiang Li said nothing.

In his heart, Yao Wangnian said, As expected. He waved his sleeves and pushed Jiang Li away, but Jiang Li dissolved the ghost qi and grabbed Yao Wangnian’s arm.

“If you have evidence, I’ll find the answer even if it’s our shifu,” Jiang Li enunciated each word carefully, “I want to know what happened to you that year.”

The second golden thread was about to break under the pressure from the black fog. Chi Bijiang and Yun Weisi were strengthening it to delay the arrival of the mist.

Yao Wangnian had the time to finish telling his story, but every time he recalled what happened, he felt a chill, and even his heart went cold. Over time, he had even started to forget it intentionally.

“That year—”

That year, he went down the mountains to gain experience. He witnessed a curious occurrence in a small village not far away from the Wanjian Immortal Clan.

Every day after the sunset, several people would die in the village. No one could make neither head nor tail of it, and people were frightened.

Originally, Yao Wangnian had intended to pass through the village, and only wanted to ask for some water to drink. But this case was so strange that he decided to stay and investigate it.

When the sky darkened, the village was submerged into a deathly stillness—everyone fell into a deep slumber, and nothing could wake them up. Only Yao Wangnian was still awake. He concealed himself in a corner and hid away his presence. Then, he noticed black qi flooding the entire village, silently reaching every household and slipping inside buildings through the cracks in windows and doors. It entered the sleeping people through their nostrils and put them into even deeper dreams, until some of them silently passed away.

In the daytime, the black qi disappeared. He sneaked into a well and saw that an entire dimension was hidden inside with a nightmare demon in it.

“I took great pains to kill that demon and looted a Juhun Pearl from its corpse.”

When Yun Weisi heard the words “Juhun Pearl”, his eyes twitched.