Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way - Chapter 88

“The sect rules state that we cannot cause the death of another disciple; otherwise, the Disciplinary Court will lock you up in the Heavenly Fiends Tower,” said Li Rong anxiously as he caught up with Gu Suihan. Not even Li Rong dared to break the sect rules.

“I’d happily get locked up in there. That way, I won’t have to be part of this complicated competition where everyone is trying to scheme against everyone else,” said Gu Suihan with a laugh as he turned back to look at Li Rong. He sounded like he couldn’t wait to make a trip to the legendary Heavenly Fiends Tower.

Li Rong didn’t know what to say to that. But after he remembered that Gu Suihan had been willing to give up the chance to become an internal disciple and hide far from the sect for a few years in order to avoid this same competition, it made sense.

“You intend for me to cultivate with that technique?” Li Rong’s head was filled with several questions.

“I intend to give you Liu Min.” Gu Suihan looked up with a frosty glint in his eyes. “You need a personal jiangshi, don’t you? I’ll give you one.”

Li Rong’s eye twitched and looked a little conflicted now. He wasn’t worried about whether Liu Ming was suitable to be a jiangshi or not since anybody that Gu Suihan had an eye on had to be extraordinary in his own way.

The problem was that the rank of aptitude made a difference. Personal jiangshis needed the blood of their owners to become stronger, and the higher the rank of aptitude, the faster the jiangshi would become stronger.

Liu Ming was famous for having a poor rank of aptitude, which was not what Li Rong wanted in his personal jiangshi at all. So now, he was really curious to find out what made Gu Suihan so confident that Liu Ming would make a good personal jiangshi for him.

Gu Suihan and Li Rong sauntered into Liu Ming’s residence, which made Liu Ming wake up and leap out of bed instantly. He called out in a grave voice, “Who are you?”

“Someone who’s here to kill you.” Gu Suihan’s handsome features looked extremely sinister under the pale moonlight.

Before Liu Ming could respond, Gu Suihan covered nearly 50 meters in an instant to appear behind Liu Ming. He flicked his fingers to send out tiny wisps of spiritual energy that ran down all of Liu Ming’s chakras. This energy dissipated any magic energy Liu Ming had within his body and broke all the joints in his four limbs. Liu Ming instantly collapsed onto the floor.

“You can take a good look.” Gu Suihan put his hands behind his back again and told Li Rong to go ahead and inspect Liu Ming.

Li Rong took a step forward and placed his palm gently on Liu Ming’s shoulder even as Liu Ming stared in horror at Li Rong. Shortly after Li Rong sent his spiritual energy through Liu Ming’s body to inspect it, he started frowning.

“There’s something wrong.” Li Rong looked shocked. The information he was getting from his spiritual energy told him that there was a big problem with this person.

Li Rong proceeded to retrieve a dagger from his storage ring and cut Liu Ming’s chest open, ignoring the deathly stare Liu Ming was giving him. Liu Ming’s skin was slit open, and blood spurted out. This scene was painted even eerier beneath the silvery moonlight.

After turning the tip of the dagger a few times, Li Rong cut away a large section of Liu Ming’s flesh to reveal Liu Ming’s bones.

Unlike what a normal human skeleton ought to look like, what Li Rong saw right now was practically a wall of ribs. Liu Ming had so many bones, and they were intertwined so tightly that there was no gap between them at all. Li Rong curiously stretched his fingers out to tap on the bones gently, making a tapping sound echo in the room.

“He’s not human?” Li Rong turned to ask Gu Suihan with a shocked look on his face.

“He’s human alright, but the cultivation technique wasn’t meant for humans.” Gu Suihan smiled sinisterly as he stared indifferently at the panicky yet despairing Liu Ming lying on the floor.

Liu Ming was not that stupid either. The short conversation and the actions of Li Rong and Gu Suihan answered all the questions he had over the past three years. The broken knife, the cultivation technique that had worked so well, that weapon spirit – none of it had happened by chance. Someone had planned for this to happen all along.

For some reason, Liu Ming was reminded of how he had gone home a while back and threw the certificate of engagement in his fiancée’s face. He had been so smug and arrogant, while she was filled with despair and regret. He had said in a dramatic fashion that a man’s fortunes could change anytime, and she shouldn’t have despised him back then for being poor or lacking.

When he thought about these things now, it seemed like it had been nothing but a dream. And now, it was time to wake up from this dream.

“You can take this time to think about what you want to do with him. I’m going inside to search for something,” said Gu Suihan calmly to Li Rong, whose eyes had lit up greedily. He didn’t wait for a response and turned to walk further into the house.

“Long time no see,” said Gu Suihan in a mocking voice when he saw the broken knife lying on a table.

“What do you want?” For some reason, the weapon spirit’s previously youthful and excitable voice had become old and jaded, a sign that life had been relatively peaceful in recent years.

“You should know that he wouldn’t have turned out this way if you went according to my plan. I’m not interested in who you were before you ended up in this knife, and you’ve gone against the rules I set for you, so your only fate is death,” Gu Suihan pronounced judgment on the weapon spirit in a nonchalant voice.

The weapon spirit’s voice became more agitated now as it yelled angrily, “Weren’t you very curious about the secrets of this world? Haven’t you been trying to find out who I was all this time? Why—”

Gu Suihan did not wait for it to finish speaking and snorted. “There’s no why. If you don’t want to tell me, I’ve got plenty of other ways to find out. Here, I’ll show you right now.”

A tiny whirlpool appeared in one of his palms. The center was pitch black, like a bottomless pit. Wisps of murderous Qi wafted out from the whirlpool and seemed to surround the broken knife as though they were actual threads, forcibly dragging the weapon spirit out of the knife even as it howled and wailed.

A light gray object came out from the knife, and the rust on the knife slowly began to eat away at the pathetic remains of the sharp blade.

“What are you trying to do?!” The weapon spirit struggled desperately as it tried to get out of the grasp of this whirlpool of Qi. It kept pushing against the Qi from the inside but failed to break through the tight net that Gu Suihan had woven.

“I don’t only have a way to search the memories of humans. I know how to search the memories of other things like weapon spirits,” said Gu Suihan without even flinching. He curled his fingers suddenly and caught the shrieking weapon spirit within his palm.

He cut his index finger and squeezed one drop of blood out as he quietly chanted, “Center of Heaven Soul Searching Technique.”

A bright light burst forth from the drop of blood on his finger and vibrated slightly as it fell onto the struggling weapon spirit.

A blood-curdling scream filled the air. Thankfully, Gu Suihan had already covered the entire residence with a soundproofing formation. Otherwise, the entire East Compound was going to wake up at the rate the weapon spirit was screaming.

Bam! A cloud of mist flew up from his palm to create a screen in the air that acted like a display monitor of sorts. Scenes from the past flashed by on the screen, replaying what happened like a silent movie.

“So, that’s what happened.” The smile on Gu Suihan’s face widened as he watched the mist screen.

Liu Ming’s body had undergone some physical changes after he had mastered the Extreme Ra-Asu Breach, which made the weapon spirit both shocked and excited at the same time, so the weapon spirit found a cultivation technique meant for cultivators in the Way of Martial Arts in its memories and got Liu Ming to practice that too.

Unfortunately, the Extreme Ra-Asu Breach technique was of a level that was much higher than the other technique, so the second technique was simply unable to get rid of the physical changes caused by the first. And after the two techniques were mixed together, Liu Ming ended up looking the way he was right now.

The weapon spirit was a cultivator in the physical body arts from ancient times. He had reached the Nascent Stage or so and was extremely formidable during his time. Unfortunately, he fell to an enemy’s schemes and had no choice but to start all over again. Despite doing so, things did not go well for him, and he soon fell into obscurity.

What this world used to look like in the weapon spirit’s day was also revealed to Gu Suihan. Demonic beasts that were as large as hills and mountains, cultivators who could spout philosophy all day, familiar commoner homes that were rundown and shabby – everything that the weapon spirit had been hiding all this time was no longer a secret to Gu Suihan.

The scenes kept going and stopped only when they reached the part where Gu Suihan found the broken knife. The mist disappeared, and there were no more shrieks coming from Gu Suihan’s palm. The only thing left was the energy from the spirit’s soul, which was about the size of a baby’s fist. It was a faint gray color, and it rippled slightly as it rested quietly on Gu Suihan’s palm.

“Not bad.” Gu Suihan was quite delighted with what he had and swallowed it in one mouthful. The pure soul energy was absorbed by his terribly damaged soul, slowly healing some of the numerous cracks on it. Suihan’s soul still looked like it was in bad shape, but it was much better now compared to where it had sat on the verge of collapse previously.

He quickly seized this chance to swallow a few soul-nourishing pills in the hope of healing his soul further, but the effect was almost negligible. He could only see a difference after he had swallowed three bottles worth of pills.

“I’ve just managed to repair it enough to reach Mid Origin Core. I still have a long, long way to go,” thought Gu Suihan with a sigh after he stood up and inspected his soul. His expression slowly calmingdown again.