A Guide to Self-Rescue in the Cultivation World - Chapter 18

Just as she finished mentally mocking the cartoonish exit, she immediately heard her Master’s distant voice beside her:

“Haha, I won’t be seeing you again!”

The figure in the black smoke seemed to pause. Zhou Suyao privately thought he was utterly enraged and was using that second of hesitation to calculate the odds of winning a head-to-head fight with her Master.

But after that brief pause, the black smoke immediately fled. Beside her, Master shook his head and sighed, “He’s still the same as he was a hundred years ago—always running away from trouble.”

Then, he pointed at the dazed Qi Shuo Bei and the severely wounded Qi Jie. “Don’t just stand there stunned! Get up, or you’ll be the evil spirits’ midnight snack here in the palace. And you, girl.”

His gaze lingered on Zhou Suyao’s pale face for a moment, his tone softening slightly, though his words were still not exactly endearing: “Detonating your core? Quite the ambition, huh. When we get back, just wait until I punish you by copying the Pure Heart Bodhi Spell a hundred times!”

With that, he bent down, picked up the other, relatively cleaner grass sandal, casually slipped it onto his bare foot, and turned to walk deeper into the shadows outside the palace wall, his steps uneven.

“Wangcai! Where the heck did you go! Come lead the way! This palace is built with so many twists and turns; how’s a person supposed to know which rat hole the dungeon is in?”

Zhou Suyao closed her eyes. The feeling of surviving yet another near-death experience made her legs go numb. She stumbled, nearly falling over.

If the heavily wounded Qi Jie hadn’t rushed over to support her, she probably would have taken a hard tumble.

But it was this instant of reeling that a woman’s voice suddenly echoed in her mind.

“I know what I’m doing, Zhou Xuqing. Let go.”

“Master promised me that if I helped him succeed, when he ascended to the Spiritual Dao, he would use the entire sect’s power to open a channel connecting the Demon Realm to the Spiritual Dao.”

Zhou Xuqing, so that was her Master’s name!

She snapped her eyes open. In her ears was Qi Shuo Bei’s anxious urging.

And in her mind, there was nothing but the boundless, profound grief of being hidden from by the person she trusted most in this world.

The deathly night wind of the Imperial City carried a thick, clinging smell of bl00d, drilling straight into her nose.

Even with Qi Jie half supporting, half-carrying her, her feet staggered again, and a mouthful of metallic sweetness choked her throat.

But the pain in her body was nothing compared to the heavy, crushing sense of betrayal in her heart.

Zhou Xuqing.

The name sank and resurfaced repeatedly in her chaotic consciousness. Every syllable seemed to carry an icy chill.

The young, wide-eyed, furious figure from her illusion was actually.

The irreverent Master who had taught her for years.

Two radically different images were violently torn apart and superimposed upon one another in her mind.

Beside her, Qi Jie tightly gripped her arm, his concern deepening in his eyes. “What is it?” he asked.

She shook her head in truth; she didn’t know how to describe her feelings right now. She forced a weak smile and whispered, “W-why are you still standing there? Hurry and follow the Master. he just said he knows where Ming Luo is.

In front of her, Qi Jie frowned, his gaze fixed on the fresh red bl00d at the corners of her mouth. In the end, he said nothing more, just nodded gently, and quickly followed Master’s steps while supporting Qi Shuo Bei.

Behind them, Zhou Suyao sighed imperceptibly. Though her heart was churning with countless unanswered questions, Master’s sudden appearance had, nevertheless, been an anchor, instantly dispersing the suffocating despair around them.

After a moment of dazed stillness, she chose to suppress the turmoil in her heart, gritted her teeth, and quickly moved to help Qi Jie laboriously support the heavily wounded Qi Shuo Bei.

And so, the three of them stumbled on, leaning on each other, struggling to keep up with the figure in the worn grass sandals being led by Wangcai, gradually moving deeper into the most concealed areas of the Imperial City.

The quiet of the Imperial City was terrifying.

Even Zhou Suyao, who was used to the solitude of a mountain peak, had never experienced such utter silence.

It felt as though if they accidentally stepped on a dead twig right now, the sound would travel straight from the foot of the palace to the ears of the old Emperor himself.

In this shocking stillness, Zhou Suyao’s gaze never left her Master’s bare feet. Mud clung to his ankles, and even the spaces between his toes were caked with dark, filthy dirt, making a faint, sticky sound with every step.

The sight was so real, so… grounded.

Yet, a hundred years ago, had these same feet trodden the immaculate, ethereal paths of Langyuan Yingzhou?

Zhou Suyao’s stomach churned instantly—not out of disgust for the mud on his feet, but from the immense, almost absurd contrast.

Was the young man who tried to save the day a century ago truly the same person as this cynical old man? What was in his heart when he watched Ning Qinggui pull her hand away and step into the point of no return at the Pure Brilliance Hall? How had a hundred years of upheaval worn him down into this… aimless, playing-the-fool demeanor?

Just then, Master’s voice floated back lazily, seemingly intending to interrupt Zhou Suyao’s swirling thoughts: “Girl, can you still walk? If not, let that Qi boy carry you; I see he’s quite willing.”

He paused, then added, “Stop hanging your head. Yes, I’ll punish you with a hundred copies of the Pure Heart Bodhi Spell when we get back, but when have your good Senior Brothers not copied the majority of them for you? What do you have to be so wronged about?”

This familiar, slightly flippant tone of chastisement was like a needle, unexpectedly piercing Zhou Suyao’s chaotic thoughts. She suddenly lifted her head, a surge of overwhelming grievance rising in her throat, making her almost want to ignore everything and shout out the accusation:

How could you hide this from me for so many years! You clearly knew Eldest Senior Brother’s secret! Why did you pretend that nothing was wrong? Why did you keep up the act for so many years?

However, her throat felt as if something was tightly constricting it. All her questions were blocked, turning into a suppressed sob.

She bit down hard on her lower lip, tasting the metallic flavor of her own bl00d.

Her nails dug deep into her palm. The pain suddenly brought her back to reality.

She couldn’t ask.

Not now, at least.

Xuan Yangming’s remnant soul had escaped, Ming Luo’s fate was unknown, and the Qi brothers were severely injured. This place was riddled with peril. She shouldn’t dig up old grievances now.

“I… I’m perfectly fine,” she squeezed out, her voice husky. Then, she forced her gaze away from Master’s back and focused on the thick darkness ahead.

The grip on her arm from Qi Jie seemed to tighten slightly. He glanced at her sideways. In the gloom, a faint flash of concern seemed to cross his eyes, but it vanished instantly, too quickly to be grasped.

Suddenly, Wangcai, who was leading the way, barked urgently.

Zhou Xuqing’s steps instantly halted. He raised a hand, signaling the three behind him to silence.

The stillness returned, more terrifying than before. The air was permeated with a faint, metallic sweetness, like the smell of a vast amount of bl00d that had congealed and then evaporated.

The demonic spiritual power within Zhou Suyao instinctively grew agitated, stirring her consciousness like a stone thrown into thick bl00d, uncontrollably urging her body forward.

Just as she was about to move ahead, Master spoke.

“Don’t move.”

The words struck her chaotic consciousness like a spiritual spring. Zhou Suyao, who hadn’t realized what she was doing, snapped back to lucidity.

And she finally saw the scene before her.

This place did not look like the Imperial City, nor did it look like the human world.

The moonlight barely shed a few meager rays, outlining a massive, bottomless pit before her.

The soil around the rim of the pit was a disturbing dark red, as if it had been repeatedly soaked in bl00d, then dried and solidified.

More spine-chillingly, the bottom of the pit was littered with countless broken white bones. The bones were of varying sizes, grotesquely twisted, some still attached to dried-up skin and flesh, and the clothing of the current dynasty.

This was a hell within the Imperial City, a mass grave of ten thousand people.

Qi Shuo Bei only took one look before he couldn’t hold it in any longer, bending over and retching violently.

Qi Jie also gasped. He had witnessed plenty of bloodshed since childhood, but this silent testament to mass murder still severely impacted his mind.

Zhou Suyao’s stomach churned. The scenes from her illusion completely merged with the reality around her. The despairing wails and miserable pleas of the dying flooded her consciousness like a broken dam, assaulting her mental fortress.

She groaned, her body trembling uncontrollably. Her vision swam, and she seemed to see, again, the countless corpses floating in the bloody soup from the illusion. Ning Qinggui’s bl00d-and-tears-stained face was right before her, furiously accusing everything: “This is… the road to the Underworld… that Dao Mo Xing and Xuan Yangming forcibly dragged us onto…!”

Her feet moved involuntarily, slowly inching forward, as if her consciousness was whispering:

Go… Go… Go and die with them. Go… Lie down in it.

Just as she was about to completely succumb.

“Be still.” A warm, rough hand suddenly clamped onto her icy back.

It was Zhou Xuqing, her Master.

A warm, vast spiritual power, like an ocean, instantly surged into her body. Like a stabilizing divine needle, it forcibly smoothed the wild, churning resentment of the demon qi.

The power wasn’t overbearing. Instead, it carried the immense weight of accumulated years, slowly encompassing all the agitation within her.

As it passed, the turbulent spiritual power within her subsided, bowing reluctantly like a tamed tide.

She finally drew a ragged breath, cold sweat soaking her temples. At last, she slowly raised her head, meeting her Master’s eyes, which were right in front of her.

Gone was the usual cynicism and laziness. Those eyes were now filled with a profound gravity she had never seen before.

He spoke slowly, his voice carrying a strange penetrative quality, yet the words seemed not to be directed at her, but at the violent, demonic force within her consciousness.

Hate saves no one, nor does it destroy anything.