Radiant Blade of the Wilderness

Chapter 253: That’s All It Was?

Seeing that Twelfth Madam was so angry that her eyes had lit up, Ding Songyan hastily said, ”This involves the schemes and plots of the heretics. As a member of the orthodox side, I can’t just stand by, but I’m afraid of Demoness Ji, so I had to drag you along, Twelfth Madam.”

He was genuinely afraid of setting off the fire in Twelfth Madam’s bones and getting a hatchet to the head.

After hearing his explanation, Twelfth Madam Luo’s gaze softened.

”You can just be straight with me on such matters. No need to play mind games.

”Always scheming only makes people sick of you.”

”I was wrong.” Ding Songyan apologized sincerely.

Twelfth Madam Luo snorted and let the matter drop, turning to say, ”Tell me exactly what happened that day.”

Ding Songyan walked from memory to the spot where he had ”happened” to meet Ji Hanyi and said to Twelfth Madam,

”That day, I’d just gotten here when a bamboo pole suddenly fell from above. I dodged in time and looked up to where it came from. Demoness Ji was propping the window with one hand and lifting the veil of her hat with the other, looking down at me...”

He pointed to the window where Ji Hanyi had appeared.

As he spoke, Ding Songyan gradually trailed off.

Twelfth Madam Luo was now looking at him with a rather amused gleam.

A bamboo pole falls from above, nearly hits you, and when you look up, there’s someone from the Peerless Beauties of the Jianghu?

Isn’t that just the story of Cao E and Princess Iron Fan?

And he still says it’s not a debt of romance!

”Has Demoness Ji read your storybook too?” Twelfth Madam Luo asked with a smile.

Is this the old tale of an orthodox young hero and a demoness of a demonic sect?

I’ve read plenty of storybooks myself!

There have indeed been cases like this before, but they mostly ended in disgrace.

If I didn’t see that your heart belongs to another and that you’re resisting against your will, I might well have cleaned house for the Brightnight Sect.

Sure, there’s the claim that ”a butcher dropping his cleaver immediately becomes a Buddha,” but that’s Buddhist talk. I hold with ”repay kindness with kindness and grievance with justice.” Demoness Ji has done plenty of evil, and a single word of repentance can’t cancel that. Besides, she never has indicated any regret.

Ding Songyan felt a bit awkward.

”She insisted on reading it.

”I’m no match for her, and I’m not ready for a fight to the death yet.”

Twelfth Madam Luo was itching to ask many things, but in the end she held back and kept to her principle.

Don’t get dragged into other people’s romantic debts!

She only teased with a smile, ”Who else has read this storybook of yours?”

”You, Twelfth Madam, Demoness Ji, and Young Master Brightstream Jiang Lanting. Just three. When it’s finished, I’ll make a copy and send it to my senior sister in Du Province’s Changhua Prefecture. I’ll also trade one to Hero Ou Luwen in the hope of learning the Mirage Dragon True Transformation Art and continuing down the path of unifying all arts,” Ding Songyan confessed honestly. ”In fact, Hero Ou was the original inspiration for writing it. He’s a Feaster on the Sea of Letters and loves storybooks and tales most of all.”

Twelfth Madam Luo nodded thoughtfully.

”Your senior sister is Miss Zheng Zhuxi?”

She had run a wine shop near Prince Kang’s estate for over a year and knew the prince well enough to know that Changhua Prefecture, Du Province, meant the Zheng family, and that the Zhengs had only one Brightnight Sect disciple at present.

”Yes.” Ding Songyan suddenly felt wistful again.

He came to the spot below the room where Demoness Ji had appeared and saw a red paper posted there with a vacancy notice and the name of a broker.

This was a different kind of street building, unlike the shop-in-front, courtyard-behind kind. The ground floor held the kitchen and hall, and some were converted into shops, with living quarters on the second floor and, in some cases, a third. This one had no third floor.

”Shall we go in and look?” Ding Songyan asked Twelfth Madam for her opinion.

Twelfth Madam Luo nodded lightly, raising no objection.

Ding Songyan reached for the iron lock on the door. His true qi extended outward, following his grasp of the lock’s structure through the Chaos Realm, and with a click the padlock opened.

The people nearby saw this and paid no attention, assuming a broker was showing a client an empty unit and opening it with a key. There was nothing valuable inside anyway.

The ground floor was empty, but the original layout could still be made out from the stove and the marks on the floor.

In Ding Songyan’s Chaos Realm, there was nothing special about it.

He and Twelfth Madam Luo went up to the second floor, one after the other.

The space was fairly roomy and had probably been a bedroom, though not even a wooden bed remained.

Ding Songyan went to the window where Ji Hanyi had pranked him, opened it, propped it with his hand, and looked out.

He could see the people coming and going on Shushui Street and the row of buildings opposite.

Using Ji Hanyi’s vantage point, Ding Songyan swept his gaze over the shops one by one, looking for any clue.

Twelfth Madam Luo, having checked the whole second floor, came over.

”Nothing unusual.”

Ding Songyan gazed at Shushui Street and said in a low voice, ”I can’t see any clue worth noting from here either.”

”We may need to ask around about what happened on this street in the past, which notable people have lived here, and whether anything out of the ordinary has happened lately,” Twelfth Madam Luo said thoughtfully.

Ding Songyan nodded, lowered the window, and walked, thinking, to the middle of the bedroom.

He said to himself, ”Demoness Ji was standing somewhere around here, sensed me passing, walked to the window, pushed it open, and deliberately let the bamboo pole fall onto me...

”So what was she doing before that?”

As he spoke, Ding Songyan acted it out step by step.

When he finished, he realized that even his own Chaos Realm could manage this, and with her strength as a Supreme Master, Ji Hanyi could easily have stood much farther from the Shushui Street window.

”Farther...” Ding Songyan’s gaze snapped to the window on the opposite side.

It faced the back alley.

Twelfth Madam Luo nodded almost imperceptibly. She joined Ding Songyan at that window, and each propped it open with one hand.

Outside was a narrow alley, and on its far side lay other people’s back courtyards, one after another.

Ding Songyan was about to use Candle-Star Pupils when Twelfth Madam Luo’s phoenix eyes narrowed slightly and her voice dropped a little.

”The ’name’ of the third courtyard from the left is abnormal.

”It’s a deity’s house.”

Ding Songyan looked with Candle-Star Pupils and found no falsehood to break, no illusions, and no deep darkness there.

”A deity’s house?” he turned to ask Twelfth Madam.

Twelfth Madam Luo explained briefly, ”Someone invoked a deity in that house, or a ghost or incense-fed deity lived there for a time.”

So that’s what ”deity’s house” means... Ding Songyan did not hurry downstairs. He kept observing the other courtyards with Candle-Star Pupils.

Once both had confirmed nothing was amiss elsewhere, they went downstairs together, relocked the padlock, and circled to the back alley.

With their realms and strength, they easily slipped past the watchtower’s surveillance and entered the deity’s house.

This time Twelfth Madam Luo walked in front. She went to the row of rooms on the right of the back courtyard and pushed open a wooden door that stood ajar.

The air in the room was thick and stale, as if no wind had blown in for ages, with a trace of sandalwood lingering.

At a glance, Ding Songyan saw blackened bloodstains left in several places on the walls and floor. An incense table, censer, and other items lay scattered, and nothing else.

The people of this house left in a hurry... Was it pressure from the Sage-Severing Way, or did something go wrong with their own affairs? As his thoughts raced, Ding Songyan noticed something through the Chaos Realm and pointed to the packed earth behind the censer.

”There’s a corpse buried there, not deep.”

Twelfth Madam Luo nodded lightly and walked to the burial spot.

With every step she took, the ground trembled and the packed earth quickly loosened.

Ding Songyan found a wooden stick, and with one stick each, they quickly dug the corpse out.

It was a most peculiar corpse. The head was a bloody pulp, as if burst apart by an invisible force and kneaded back together. Below the neck, the arms, legs, and torso had fused into one thick, snakelike mass covered in blue-black scales and strange animal fur.

”A deity-invoking secret art,” Twelfth Madam Luo looked at the corpse and said coolly.

”What is this?” Ding Songyan asked.

Twelfth Madam Luo sighed.

”The Shamanism Order.”

The Shamanism Order that’s in cahoots with the Accumulated Evil Way? Is Demoness Ji going after the Accumulated Evil Way again? No wonder she showed herself to me... Many thoughts surfaced in Ding Songyan’s mind.

”Did it succeed or fail?” he asked gravely.

”Failed.” Twelfth Madam Luo withdrew her gaze and said to Ding Songyan, ”Find some pretext to report this to the Martial Prohibition Bureau, and leave me out of it.”

Great, I’m shouldering the blame again... Did Demoness Ji deliberately lure me to Shushui Street to investigate, all for this? She has a hundred ways to get the Martial Prohibition Bureau to find this place without exposing herself... Was it just that she bumped into me and found me something to do? Or is something else hidden here? Ding Songyan grew uneasy and said to Twelfth Madam Luo, ”No need for all that trouble.”

Reporting to the authorities didn’t require going in person.

Under Twelfth Madam Luo’s gaze, Ding Songyan erased the traces they had left and piled a heap of fallen leaves in the middle of the back courtyard.

As they were about to leave, he lit a fire starter and tossed it onto the pile.

Slipping back into the back alley, he saw smoke rising and at once shouted in a disguised voice, ”Fire! Fire!”

Twelfth Madam Luo had said nothing and only watched quietly, but now she finally couldn’t help twitching the corner of her mouth.

”You shout too,” Ding Songyan said with a smile.

Me? Twelfth Madam Luo clearly hesitated.

”Fire! Fire!” Ding Songyan shouted twice more, then turned his head. ”Lend a hand.”

Phew... Twelfth Madam Luo exhaled and shouted along, ”Fire! Fire!”

Their voices echoed and drew many neighbors to see what was happening.

Seeing this, Ding Songyan quickly said to Twelfth Madam Luo, ”Let’s go!”

He took the lead, slipping out of the back alley along the shadows, with Twelfth Madam Luo close behind.

They had barely returned to Shushui Street when a terrified scream rang out from the back alley.

”It worked!” Ding Songyan said to Twelfth Madam with a smile.

Twelfth Madam Luo tidied the stray hairs at her temples and glanced at Ding Songyan.

”That’s a bit like the Sage-Severing Way’s style.”

”The Sage-Severing Way? Didn’t you play this kind of prank as a kid?” Ding Songyan asked, amused.

Twelfth Madam Luo shook her head honestly.

”No.”

”Well, now you have.” Ding Songyan broke into a smile.

Twelfth Madam Luo fell silent for a moment.

Ding Songyan thought and changed the subject.

”Twelfth Madam, that night you scared off Demoness Ji. Did she recognize your true identity?”

”Yes,” Twelfth Madam Luo answered concisely.

Ding Songyan’s brow furrowed slightly.

”Yes... and the demoness hasn’t made use of it? Is she afraid of causing unexpected changes that would spoil her own plans?”

Twelfth Madam Luo’s brows moved slightly, and she said evenly, ”If she wants her plans to go on, she won’t expose my identity.”