Chapter 1979: 3: Wealth God and Penniless Ghost (Extra)
Chapter 1979: Chapter 3: Wealth God and Penniless Ghost (Extra)
Tu Shengyuan finished the fruit in just a few bites, casually tossed the pit aside, wiped his fingers on the nearby tree trunk, and was so excited he could barely contain himself. Heaven could testify how much effort the old man had spent lately just to sneak his way over here!
Damn it, even he felt it was downright uncanny!
First, back in the Central Plains, there was that business with the Xue Family’s Empress; fine, he fled to the shores of the East Sea and ran into a Whale Hunter, then went to the Western Regions and bumped into Li Zhaowen—alright, alright, alright, I can’t afford to offend them, but I sure as hell can still run, can’t I!
This time, this old man crossed thousands of mountains and rivers, over layered, overlapping ridges.
I—I’ll just run into the mountains and hole up!
I’d like to see what kind of trouble could still possibly fall on my head this time.
Tu Shengyuan flicked his sleeves, full of smug pride: “If something like that really happens, this old man will tear this gavel apart and eat it!”
“But how could that be possible?”
“The emperor is far away up in the heavens, while this old man is in these wild mountains and the Martial World—how could they possibly find me, hahaha. Compared to this peaceful world under heaven, it’s still this Martial World that suits this old man better!”
Tu Shengyuan was flushed with success, in excellent spirits.
Feeling quite interested, he climbed to the highest point of this mountain. Looking off into the distance, the mountain chains rolled on without end, lush and verdant. He saw, on those peaks and slopes, the faint outlines of Martial World sects, and glimpsed young Martial youths traveling along the mountain paths.
Youth knows nothing of the taste of sorrow.
They also do not know the fading of the Martial World.
They do not know the worries of their elders, and only joke and laugh.
The wind flew past the hems of those youths’ robes; Tu Shengyuan’s temples fluttered. He smiled and said, “Let this old man record this final Martial World of sects.”
“Perhaps there will still be a Martial World afterward.”
“But it will no longer be a Martial World of sects.”
“To witness this grand spectacle, to send off this three-hundred-year Martial World—what a vast, desolate sight.”
Tu Shengyuan laughed freely, then leapt down from the mountain, greeting those young Martial disciples. During this period, he had been mixing in with these Martial drifters, talking about Martial Arts Secret Manuals, discussing the Four Directions Ultimate Skills, and recounting the grandeur of this three-hundred-year chaotic Martial World.
Speaking of beauties like jade, speaking of Sword Qi like a rainbow.
How carefree and magnificent.
But such good days had barely passed for a few days when a piece of news suddenly spread through these wild mountains, throughout the Martial World. When the news reached Tu Shengyuan’s ears, the old man was drunk on a rock.
The Monkey Wine in the mountains, while not as strong in pure potency as the fiery liquor in the markets, was brewed from fruit, sweet and tasty, smooth down the throat, and had its own merits.
It was just that the mix of the wine’s strength was odd, and it easily went to one’s head.
Half-dazed, he vaguely heard something about a martial-arts contest for marriage, about heroes gathering, about some great Martial World event unseen in years; up to this point, Tu Shengyuan remained lazy and uninterested.
Until that young swordsman in a green robe said, “I heard the reason it’s such a big commotion this time is because word has it that the Master of that newly built Taoist Temple of ours here is that so-called number one peerless beauty under heaven!!”
“And she even has a Divine Weapon in her hand.”
“Moreover, she holds the secret transmission of that top-tier sect of the old days, the Yin Yang Reincarnation Sect.”
“That’s what stirred the entire Martial World into motion.”
Half-drunk, Tu Shengyuan felt something was off.
But after all, this was Monkey Wine from the mountain, wonderfully drinkable and very aged. He felt that even if it were that Thousand-Day Drunk brought by the fisherman, he wouldn’t trade. So he let out a boozy burp, turned over, smacked his lips, and went back to sleep.
He naturally didn’t care; after all, he’d seen too much.
Back then, he was present at that world-shaking battle of the Sword Madman at the Academy; he was also there for the Sword Madman’s chase after longevity in the Western Regions; he had even witnessed from beginning to end the current number one Martial Arts legend, Emperor Qin. To be honest, he had lost interest in many bits of news in the Martial World.
However, this piece of news—this Yin Yang Reincarnation Sect, this number one peerless beauty under heaven…
Why did it all feel strangely familiar?
Tu Shengyuan lay on his side, drunk, and beside him, on a level invisible to the naked eye, his Bai Ze Dharma surfaced of its own accord, a humanlike look of blankness appearing on its face.
It looked at those youths, then at the drunken Tu Shengyuan.
Then it stuck out a hoof and kicked Tu Shengyuan on the butt.
Tu Shengyuan was still drunk and woozy, but these freshly entered Martial youths were brimming with excitement.
Someone asked, “Now you’re just talking nonsense. That Taoist Temple only teaches very ordinary martial arts, and they even send their disciples to the nearby town, to the official school in town to learn characters and numerology. Doesn’t sound like one of those top grand sects at all.”
“Sounds like fake news!”
Boys of that age find two things hardest to endure: the lectures of parents, and the doubt of their peers. The youth’s face flushed red, his voice clearly rising several notches as he said:
“What—what fake news, this news couldn’t be more real!”
“This is, this is!”
“What the Guest Elder storyteller of The World’s First Building said!”
?!!!!
The Bai Ze Dharma’s eyes bulged wide. With one hoof it grabbed Tu Shengyuan up, and with the other hoof it swung twice across Tu Shengyuan’s face, the two Dharma Forms brawling it out on that level.
They struck up gusts of air, beating out layered waves of Ripples and wild wind.
This successfully allowed Tu Shengyuan to hear that last sentence.
The next moment, the Grandmaster immediately connected all the previous words together.
??? What???
Then, all his thoughts inside his head seemed to freeze. Those Martial youths had been arguing heatedly over this rumor, faces flushed, neither side yielding, when they suddenly heard a loud shout.
From the rock at the side, from a pile of weeds, an old man suddenly sprang out.
Drunk out of his mind, with leaves stuck to his body and face, his eyes bulging, stunned like a wooden chicken. After several breaths passed, he suddenly let out a miserable scream:
“Fuck!!!!”
Tu Shengyuan was so angry he jumped to his feet:
“That damn brat who deserves a thousand cuts came here stirring up trouble under my name!”
“How come I haven’t said a word, and there’s already a chamber pot of shit getting dumped on my head?!”
Tu Shengyuan was being wronged.
At least this time, it wasn’t something he let slip.
But Tu Shengyuan had roamed the Martial World for years, sharp-tongued yet always able to turn misfortune into fortune, all because he knew his own limits. Even now, as he tried to console himself, saying Li Guanyi at least wouldn’t wish him ill, the rest of his thoughts told him—no chance.
The young man had thought it was their talk of Martial World rumors just now that made this old man misunderstand, that the drunk old fellow assumed he’d been spouting nonsense, so he comforted him: “Sir, what we just said has nothing to do with you.”
“That was said by a storyteller from The World’s First Building.”
Tu Shengyuan said, “Nonsense!”
He pulled a long face.
A storyteller from The World’s First Building, with no filter on his mouth—who else could it be?!
This was what you called a reputation.
Even he, Tu Shengyuan, instinctively wondered if he’d gotten drunk one day, lost the filter on his mouth, and blabbed about Nangong Wumeng living in seclusion amid these mountains.
If not that, then maybe when he left The World’s First Building, the notebook he left behind there had been taken by some descendant, who then went out swaggering around looking for trouble!
Damn it, why did I, for the sake of so-called taste, for the sake of so-called fame, leave behind that secret transmission scroll?
The me back then.
What in the world were you doing!!!
The Emperor Qin’s beloved being dragged into something like this—Tu Shengyuan didn’t dare imagine what might happen next. Would it end in iron hooves trampling the Martial World? The old man’s scalp tingled, and without stopping, he hurried toward the current training ground of the Yin Yang Reincarnation Sect.
The closer he got, the more genuine the Martial World news became.
There were more and more Martial Artists gathering; several fairly large sects had already joined the crowd. All sorts of young heroes and famed knights were mixed together, calling each other brother. When Martial Artists clustered together, ideas came easy; some half-baked “smart fellow” suggested holding a martial contest for marriage.
He said that since all these heroes were gathered and the Master was also a Martial Artist, they might as well follow the rules of the Martial World: whoever won could carry off the beauty and so on. When Tu Shengyuan heard this, his forehead broke out in cold sweat.
He seemed to see the Qilin Army’s banners flashing behind these idiots’ heads.
The Taoist Temple’s main gate was tightly shut.
Nangong Wumeng couldn’t be bothered with this lot. When she was young, she’d roamed the Martial World and had seen these so-called rules. In the sects and the Martial World, there were indeed many heroes, but compared to the heroes, there were far more petty schemers.
So she shut the gate tight, no matter what they did.
A few men, relying on their decent Qinggong, planned to leap over. Over there, the woman lounging lazily in a reclining chair, enjoying every right of a Master while a few little girls kneaded her shoulders and back, casually pinched her fingers.
The stone on the ground flew up and landed between her fingers.
She flicked it with a bent finger.
The shot was like a bolt loosed from a Powerful Crossbow, knocking those few people straight out of the air. And mind you, among them was even a Qinggong expert who’d reached the Sixth Layer Heaven, yet he’d been swatted down this easily.
The man’s face changed: “Grandmaster?!!”
Xie Ziran knew that her teacher, from the very day she found her, had fallen off a cliff and, somehow, inexplicably achieved a breakthrough to Grandmaster. When she asked the reason, her teacher only said that as long as you remembered who you were, you wouldn’t lose your way.
If your path wasn’t lost, breaking through a境界 was very simple.
“It’s like your teacher pointing at the moon in the sky. If you only see my finger, you won’t see the moon. But I’ve always known what I wanted, so why would I ever be confused?”
When she said this, Xie Ziran felt her teacher’s brows and eyes were calm, like a beauty carved from white jade, making people unconsciously sink into a trance, so she was actually a little unhappy inside.
Her teacher was a genius—beautiful, serious yet adorable, her smile soft and gentle.
Just what kind of person was that Emperor Qin, to be someone her teacher held in her heart like this?
Outside, it was uproarious. Since those Martial Artists couldn’t get in, they started sparring among themselves. It seemed another Martial Grandmaster had arrived, planning to force the gate open; Nangong Wumeng lazily thought that fighting was fine either way.
Xie Ziran, however, was getting irritated.
She picked up a broom, ran to the gate, puffed up with anger, opened it, and said:
“My master is resting and will not see…”
Her eyes widened.
There were many Martial guests here, originally stretching from the Taoist Temple atop the mountain all the way down to the foot. Every day they clanged swords and waved sabers, shouting and clattering, driving people mad with the noise. Before opening the gate, she’d been talking about going out there to teach them a lesson.
But when she opened the gate, she saw that all the Martial guests on the mountain and at its foot, including those three Grandmasters, were lying prone on the ground.
From the mountaintop all the way down, it was the same.
A wooden sword lay quietly at the Taoist Temple’s doorstep.
From beneath the gate of the temple, a tall, slender youth walked over at an unhurried pace. His sleeves billowed as he advanced, and with his fingers pressed together in an easy gesture, the Weapons in the surrounding Martial Artists’ hands clattered to the ground, the crisp sound like Zither Sound, like falling snow.
“A hall of blossoms drunk with three thousand guests.”
“One Sword whose light chills nineteen provinces.”
“Successor of Sword Madman Murong Longtu.”
“From the Murong Family of Jiangnan, Li Guanyi.”
“Here to present my visiting card.”
The clear-voiced man walked up step by step, stood before the Taoist Temple gate, before Xie Ziran, lifted his palm, let his five fingers hang down, and pressed them lightly on that wooden sword. A clear and resonant sword sound rang out, then Sword Qi surged full to the brim. An invisible, intangible Sword Qi spread, sweeping over the whole mountain range.
It startled a mountainful of birds into flight and sent blossoms cascading from a tree.
“Martial contest for marriage.”