Unsheathed

After leaving the Yang Family’s medicine shop, Chen Ping’an paid a visit to the abandoned school, peering into it from outside the window with the umbrella held above his head.

He felt as if he had returned to his formative years, where he had squatted beneath the window to listen to Mr. Qi’s teachings.

After leaving the school, he traveled to the new school founded by the Dragon Tail Creek Chen Clan, and it was far larger than the old school. Chen Ping’an stopped outside the archway for a while, then turned and departed.

While passing through the crab archway, Chen Ping’an looked up at the four plaques that had been personally inscribed by sages, the Confucian Sect’s “doing my part,” the Daoist Sect’s “comply with the natural order,” the Buddhist Sect’s “refrain from looking outward,” and the Militarian Sect’s “unmatched aura.”

Following the fall of the Jewel Small World, multiple rubbings of these plaques had been made by the Great Li Empire’s imperial court through the use of secret techniques, stripping them of the energy, essence, and spirit that they once contained, and it was unclear who had been the lucky recipients of those blessings.

While looking at the Daoist plaque, Chen Ping’an thought of the contents of Cui Dongshan’s letter again, and a contemplative look appeared on his face.

After that, he also passed by the Iron Lock Well, which had already been purchased by a private party, and a low fence had been constructed around it, prohibiting the local residents from drawing water from the well.

Chen Ping’an was reminded of the young man at the ferry station, who had obtained that iron chain. He was Liu Laocheng’s disciple, a tall, black-robed young man with a gentle personality. Not only did he think that, even Pei Qian was of the opinion that the young man was a good person, so he had to have truly been a good person.

It was only because of him that Chen Ping’an later dared to venture onto Palace Willow Island. He couldn’t help but feel like someone who had raised a disciple like this surely couldn’t have been rotten to the core, and as it turned out, he had been right to take the gamble. However, there was still a sense of lingering fear whenever he thought back to the mind games that he had played with Liu Laocheng.

All of a sudden, an amused smile appeared on Chen Ping’an’s face. For some reason, looking at the well from outside the fence reminded him of back when he was looking at the heavenly gate leading to the Sword Qi Great Wall from afar on Stalactite Mountain.

There had been a sword-hugging middle-aged man seated atop the stone plaque and a child Daoist reading a book while seated on a cushion. Having traveled far and wide, Chen Ping’an felt like Stalactite Mountain was the only place that could compete with the small town when it came to harboring prodigious talents. As the largest mountain seal in the Majestic World, it was certainly an apt reflection of the Daoist second disciple’s power.

He looked up into the sky, then cast his gaze toward the scholarly temple and the martial sage temple where the patriarchs with the Yuan and Cao surnames were being worshipped. One had been constructed at the mountain of porcelain, while the other was situated at the immortal tomb, and the sites for both had been carefully selected.

Chen Ping’an didn’t visit the temple at the mountain of porcelain, which was a place that he had barely ever been to. However, he did explore the newly renovated immortal tomb extensively.

Many of the deity statues of the Bodhisattvas and heavenly officials had been been restored and renewed by the skilled artisans of the Great Li Empire, but the work in the area still wasn’t fully complete, and there were still many artisans busy at work on the lofty wooden scaffolding.

Apparently, the Great Li Empire’s imperial court planned to continue expanding the scholarly temple and martial sage temple, and that at some point, the Bodhisattvas of Buddhism and the heavenly officials of Daoism were going to be worshipped in dedicated temples.

Once that plan came into fruition, the scholarly temple and martial sage temple of this place would still technically only be a county city temple, but they would the most majestic scholarly temple and martial sage temple in the entirety of the Great Li Empire, sure to draw in worshippers of all statuses from far away.

In the beginning, it was actually Chen Ping’an who had supplied the funds and requested Ruan Xiu to help him renovate the deity statues and construct buildings. However, those tasks were quickly taken over by the authorities of the Great Li Empire, and from there onward, no private parties were permitted to play any further role in these matters.

Chen Ping’an had once pledged three gold essence copper coins to three of the collapsed deity statues, and even though he was in desperate need of these coins, he had no intention of trying to recover them. If they were still there, then that was fate. If those coins had been inadvertently stumbled upon and taken by a child or a village resident, then that was also fate. However, Chen Ping’an felt like the latter possibility was more likely.

After all, the local residents had scoured the entire place from top to bottom some years ago in order to search for treasures to be sold at the Cloth Wrapper Shop on Ox Horn Mountain, thereby giving them the funds to purchase grandiose houses in the Dragon Spring Prefectural City.

Everyone was dreaming of leading lavish lives with more servants than they knew what to do with and more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes, and it was highly unlikely that the gold essence copper coins had been left untouched.

Chen Ping’an wasn’t of the opinion that what they had done was wrong. The only thing was that if they were to sell those treasures, he felt like he should’ve waited until a little later to sell them, and that would’ve secured them even greater profits. If they had just waited several more years, the same immortal artifact could’ve easily been sold for several times the price.

Why had the Cloth Wrapper Shop on Ox Horn Mountain moved out of the Dragon Spring Prefecture, abandoning an immortal ferry station that had taken exorbitant funds to construct?

In the beginning, Chen Ping’an had thought that the Cloth Wrapper Shop had placed its eggs in the wrong basket, preferring the Luminous Vermilion Empire’s chances over the Great Li Empire’s.

However, looking at it now, there was a very good chance that the Cloth Wrapper Shop had purchased too many treasures from the small town for ridiculously low prices, profiting so much in the process that even they felt like they had gone too far.

Hence, after the situation was clarified in the central region of the Eastern Treasured Vial Continent, the Cloth Wrapper Shop weighed up its options, then decided to hand over the immortal ferry station in exchange for protection for all of its shops. In doing so, they had established positive ties with the Imperial Song Clan, and in the long term, that would perhaps earn them even greater profits.

Chen Ping’an felt like this was most likely the truth of the matter.

When it came to making illegitimate deals with the authorities, money was prone to going just as quickly as it came, and it was ultimately not the right path to pursue. As for how one was supposed to make legitimate deals with the authorities, that was something that Chen Ping’an didn’t know how to pull off.

He presumed that the likes of Sun Jiashu and Liu Chongrun would be more familiar with the rules involved, and he could inquire them on the matter if the opportunity arose.

The layout of the immortal tomb had changed significantly, and there were many places that he wanted to go but were off limits, while other places that had been off limits in the past now featured pergolas and observation decks.

Chen Ping’an took a rest in one of those pergolas.

Among the helpers assigned to the artisans working on the renovations were many former citizens of the Lu Empire that had moved to the Dragon Spring Prefecture in the wake of the empire’s collapse.

Chen Ping’an had seen many fugitives in the past constructing the mountain god temple on Downtrodden Mountain, and compared with the fugitives from back then, these former citizens of the Lu Empire that were working on the immortal tomb were mostly boys and young men.

They were still very quiet and withdrawn, but there was no longer the same air of despair hanging over them. It seemed that a tiny flame of hope had been ignited in their hearts over the course of these years of manual labor.

Yu Lu was a former prince of the Lu Empire, while Xie Xie was a cultivation prodigy, and it couldn’t be said that they had slipped through the cracks. Instead, they were pawns that had been picked out by Cui Chan and the empress of the Great Li Empire. After a series of deals that transpired behind the scenes, both of them had become students of Mountain Cliff Academy in the Great Sui Nation.

Yu Lu was on very good terms with Gao Xuan, perhaps because their situations were a little similar, with one a former prince that had been forced out of his home, while the other was serving as a glorified hostage in an enemy nation.

As for Xie Xie, she had been horrifically abused by Cui Dongshan over the years, but just as Cui Chan’s grandfather never interfered with Pei Qian’s training, Chen Ping’an didn’t denounce Cui Dongshan’s treatment of Xie Xie just because he was Cui Dongshan’s teacher.

Instilling kindness into the hearts of others was no easy task, and it was certainly not something that could be done simply by denouncing one’s unkind ways.

The layout of the place where he had once battled Ma Kuxuan had been significantly altered, and it was no longer accessible to the public. Wei Bo had told him that one could freely explore the immortal tomb and the mountain of porcelain during the day, but at night, Naturalist and Mohist cultivators would arrive in those two places to set up formations that drew upon mountain and water fortune, making those places unfit for nightly visitations.

Chen Ping’an was a little disappointed not to have been able to return to his and Ma Kuxuan’s former battlefield. He slowly strode along a familiar route that often appeared in his dreams, and along the way, he crouched down to pick up a fistful of soil. Only after pausing here momentarily did he continue onward, paying a trip to the swordsmith shop, which hadn’t been moved to Divine Elegance Mountain.

He had heard that the woman that had been evicted from the Wind Snow Temple had accepted Ruan Qiong as her master, and she was cultivating here while looking after the shop on the side. She had even severed the thumb of her sword-wielding hand to show Ruan Qiong that she had completely left her past behind. Chen Ping’an slowly strode along the Dragon Whisker River, which was now completely devoid of snake gall pebbles.

At the moment, Chen Ping’an still had five or six premium snake gall pebbles. As for ordinary snake gall pebbles, he had once possessed plenty, but that supply had dwindled significantly.

As opposed to returning to Downtrodden Mountain, Chen Ping’an made his way to the stone arch bridge, which had been restored to its original appearance. He planned to visit the small temple there, the walls of which were riddled with many names, including those of Liu Xianyang, Gu Can, and himself.

The three of them had gathered together to write their names onto a blank section at the very top of the wall, and Liu Xianyang was the one who had stolen the ladder, while the charcoal that they had used to inscribe their names had been taken by Gu Can from his home.

However, only upon his arrival did he discover that the temple was nowhere to be seen, and he immediately recalled that it had already been taken by Old Man Yang for some unknown reason.

Upon returning to the bank of the Dragon Whisker River, Chen Ping’an continued in the downstream direction, and the path on the other side had already been widened into one of the Dragon Spring Prefecture’s post roads. Chen Ping’an had taken that path during his first long journey away from home, and back then, Li Baoping had trailed along behind him.

He had looked after her over the course of that entire journey, but at the same time, he was only able to persevere with the journey to its completion thanks to the support that her presence provided to his mental state.

Chen Ping’an passed by a water god temple that had been taken in by the Great Li Empire’s imperial court. It barely received any worshippers, and it was also very strange in status, as if the water deity in question only had a godly body and a temple, making it inferior even to some of the illegal temples in other nations.

The temple didn’t even have a proper plaque, and as a result, no one knew if it belonged to a river god or a river guardian. In contrast, the river god temple of the Iron Talisman River was extremely majestic, and the residents of the small town would rather travel an extra few dozen kilometers to offer their incense there.

There was another reason for this, which was that according to the older people in the small town, the deity statue in the temple strongly resembled an old woman from Apricot Blossom Alley back in her youth. All of the old people in the town were constantly warning the younger generation not to offer incense at that temple as doing so could invite evil influences into their lives.

Chen Ping’an didn’t enter the temple. Instead, he continued onward, planning to go all the way to the river god temple at the Iron Talisman River.

At the moment, the Iron Talisman River was the foremost river of the Great Li Empire, and it was held in extremely high regard, much more so than even the Embroidered Flower River and the Fine Wine River.

If it weren’t for the fact that the Dragon Spring Prefecture was only a prefecture, a provincial governor would’ve had to personally come here to pay respects to the river god in the place of Prefectural Overseer Wu, praying for calm weather and no droughts for the citizens of the prefecture.

In contrast, paying respects to the deities of the Embroidered Flower River and the Fine Wine River was considered to be far less important an affair, and even subordinates of the respective regional overseers could be sent to carry out the task if said regional overseers were too busy to attend to the matter in person.

Following Chen Ping’an’s departure, the clay deity statue in the deserted temple behind him began to ripple incessantly, following which the face of a young woman appeared over its surface amid a cloud of water vapor. The woman’s brows were tightly furrowed as she heaved a forlorn sigh.

She couldn’t help but let loose some profanities at the pitiful situation that she was in, but it wasn’t long before she ran out of energy, and her complaints died down. Hunger truly was the best cure for a sharp tongue.

Meanwhile, Chen Ping’an was beginning to pick up the pace, and in the end, he began practicing his six-step walking meditation, which had become slightly unfamiliar to him after a three-year break.

According to Cui Chan’s grandfather, there were both positives and negatives to Chen Ping’an’s current physical condition. The positive was that his martial artist physique had simply laid dormant in Bamboo Scroll Lake for three years, but its foundation hadn’t been harmed at all during that time.

Those three fiery dragons that Spiritual Master Fire Dragon had planted in his body had benefited him immensely. Otherwise, he wouldn’t even have been able to leave Bamboo Scroll Lake alive.

Unfortunately, the path of cultivation was one that was rife with hardship, and the after-effects of shattering that golden scholarly core were extremely severe, particularly as the five-elemental bonded items were supposed to have served as the foundation of the reconstruction of Chen Ping’an’s bridge of immortality.

The higher the caliber of the bonded item, the more severe the detrimental effects of its destruction. This was similar in nature to something that Cui Chan’s grandfather had mentioned to him, namely the holes that had been pierced into his mental state from witnessing the power of the sword immortals of the Sword Qi Great Wall.

Both were extremely difficult to remedy, so refining his third bonded item as quickly as possible had become a matter of great urgency.

This was why Cui Dongshan had changed his mind in the secret letter that he had left behind in the bamboo building, advising Chen Ping’an to make the soil of the Great Li Empire’s new Five Mountains as his earth-attribute bonded item, when Chen Ping’an had already previously abandoned the idea.

In the letter, Cui Dongshan hadn’t specified the reasons for giving this piece of advice, merely imploring Chen Ping’an to trust him. Once the entirety of the Eastern Treasured Vial Continent was conquered by the Great Li Empire, it was very apparent which five mountains were going to be made the new Five Mountains of the empire.

For example, Cloud Drape Mountain had been predetermined to become the Northern Mountain, and only less than a handful of people in the entire Great Li Empire had been privy to this information, including the late emperor, Song Zhengchun.

The Central Mountain was none other than the old Central Mountain of the Luminous Vermilion Empire. The Central Mountain God had been forced to pledge its subordination to the Great Li Empire, but overall, this was a positive development for him. He would get to keep his godly body and be elevated in status into the Central Mountain God of an entire continent.

In return, he had to help the Great Li Empire consolidate the mountain and water fortune of its newly acquired territory. All cultivators residing within his territory would receive the protection of the Central Mountain, but would also have to abide by its rules. Otherwise, the Great Li Empire could easily turn on him and destroy his godly body to have him replaced.

Xu Ruo was personally responsible for this matter, and he was staying near the mountain god temple.

Once the time came, Ruan Qiong would also leave the Dragon Spring Prefecture to travel to the new Western Mountain, which wasn’t far away from the Wind Snow Temple. The new Western Mountain was called Ganzhou Mountain, and it hadn’t even been one of the Five Mountains of its nation, so it had certainly enjoyed a meteoric rise.

A group of top-tier guest elders of the Great Li Empire, all of whom were Golden Core Tier and Nascent Tier earth immortals, were going to travel to the new Eastern Mountain by the name of Moraine Mountain, where they would patrol the border to ward off any cultivators from fallen nations that could potentially venture into the Great Li Empire’s territory on suicide missions to damage the local mountain and water fortune.

As for the Southern Mountain, Fan Junmao was going to serve as its mountain goddess.

Cui Dongshan had intentionally chosen not to reveal what this new Southern Mountain was, merely telling Chen Ping’an in the letter that once it was announced, he would come to understand what it meant for accumulating earth to form mountains.