The Forest Path

Chapter 25: The Forest Path

Cling—

The longsword clashed against the Heavenly Scripture, producing an ear-piercing shriek of grinding metal. The others in the room instinctively covered their ears and stumbled back a few steps.

“Didn’t even leave a scratch. Changming’s sword is no good. Isn’t he supposed to be a sword cultivator? This blade shouldn’t be ordinary…” Li Huowang held the sword up, studying it for a few seconds, then gripped the hilt with both hands and swung it down again with all his might.

He gritted his teeth and chopped several more times. Finally, something changed—but it wasn’t the so-called Heavenly Scripture that changed. It was the longsword in Li Huowang’s hands.

Dang—

The blade split in two at the point of impact. A perfectly good longsword had become a broken sword.

Staring at the broken blade in his hands, Li Huowang felt a moment of stunned disbelief. The weapon he had just acquired was gone just like that.

He looked left and right, then hurried over and pried the sword from the dead Changren’s hand. “Good thing there’s a spare.”

Shwa—

He slid the sword into its scabbard and circled the Heavenly Scripture, thinking about his next move.

He had originally planned to destroy this so-called Heavenly Scripture. But now it seemed this thing actually had some substance to it. Hard to say it wasn’t some kind of treasure.

Since he had already decided to stop wallowing in self-destruction, something this valuable naturally couldn’t be thrown away casually. “Whatever the case, I’ll carry it for now. At the very least, I can pawn it for some cash later.”

As for the unrealistic notion of attaining immortality through this thing—Li Huowang had completely abandoned that. He had already seen the fate of everyone who tried before him. He didn’t want to be the next one.

He struggled to lift the stone slab, testing its weight. It was far heavier than he had imagined, but still within what he could manage.

After wrapping the stone slab in cloth and hoisting it onto his back, he turned to the others waiting nearby. “Let’s go. We’re leaving this place.”

Lamp oil was splashed across Danyangzi’s stinking cavern. Flames raced along the oil trails across the floor, igniting everything burnable inside the room—including Changming and Changren and the Xuan Yuan on the ground.

The fire spread fiercely. Watching the scene unfold before him, Li Huowang understood something in that moment: a human corpse was a natural fuel.

They made their way back along the same path, lighting every room as they went. The searing flames wavered, then began to merge, burning everything in Qingfeng Temple that could burn, blackening everything that couldn’t.

Cough—cough—

Thick smoke started making the others cough. Everyone quickened their pace.

Three sticks of incense later, they all stood under the sunlight, silently watching the mouth of Qingfeng Temple belch rolling black smoke.

The smoke billowed straight up, carrying all the darkness and evil of Qingfeng Temple with it, disappearing into the bright sky.

Li Huowang, still looking up, laughed quietly again. He adjusted the sword and stone slab on his back, then turned and walked toward the distant forest path. “Let’s go.”

The others, carrying their supplies of grain, fell in behind him. Without quite knowing when it had happened, Li Huowang had become their leader.

Watching the forest path draw closer ahead, Li Huowang’s mood was no longer so heavy.

“Ah… this place looks strange. I wonder what kind of people and things I’ll run into next. All of a sudden, I’m actually looking forward to it.”

The sunlight fell on his face, and as he breathed the clean air, his mood began to lift.

“Brother Li… slow down… my eyes hurt.”

Li Huowang turned to look. Under the sunlight, Bai Lingmiao was shielding her eyes with her hands.

He walked over, cupped her face, and studied her carefully. He was startled to discover that he could see the blood vessels behind her eyeballs through the center of her pupils. The pink color was the dark red of those vessels illuminated by the light.

“This… it’s some kind of defect, isn’t it?” Li Huowang guessed silently.

He wasn’t a doctor. He didn’t understand these things. But he could make a guess—because he remembered that most of those old albino fortune-tellers and massage practitioners were blind.

It seemed that Bai Lingmiao’s condition made her eyes fragile, far more vulnerable than an ordinary person’s.

That wouldn’t do. Li Huowang tore a strip of cloth from the hem of his green Daoist robe and gently tied it over Bai Lingmiao’s eyes. “From now on, whenever the sun is out, keep this on.”

“But… then I won’t be able to see…”

“It’s fine. I’ll hold your hand.” Li Huowang took her soft right hand and led the others, striding quickly into the woods.

Bai Lingmiao stumbled a couple of times, then started jogging along with Li Huowang.

Thump—thump—thump—

Lü Zhuangyuan, his face lined with wrinkles, rapped his dry pipe against the opera trunk. After knocking out the clogged black tobacco, he fished fresh tobacco from his pouch, packed it in, and lit it with a fire striker.

He took a deep, satisfying drag, then shouted toward the woods at the head of the cart: “Kid! You done yet?”

“Almost, almost!” a boy’s voice called back from the trees.

“A lazy donkey takes more time shitting than pulling the cart. Taking this long just to take a dump—anybody’d think I was starving you, making you eat clay.” Lü Zhuangyuan grumbled discontentedly about his youngest son as he puffed on his pipe.

His gaze shifted to the back of the cart, surveying his entire opera troupe on the forest path. Besides the single horse cart carrying the trunks of costumes and instruments, there was his eldest son’s family of three and two distant nephews he’d brought out of the village. Small as the troupe was, it was the livelihood he had painstakingly built up over the years.

With this little troupe, in times as bad as these, he could at least keep his whole family fed.

“Dad, have some water and bread.” Lü Juren approached, carrying food and a gourd canteen for his father.

“Eat? It’s not even mealtime yet! What are you eating for? You think grain grows for free? Do you have any idea what grain costs these days? Your daughter’s already two years old, and you’re still acting like a kid! Have you no sense!”

Lü Juren, having been thoroughly chewed out, didn’t get angry. He just smiled sheepishly, backed off, and handed the things to his wife to put away.

“What happened? Got yelled at again?” Luo Juan put the food back on the cart and started playing with the fingers of their precious daughter, who was sitting on one of the trunks.

“So what if I got yelled at? It’s not like I lost any meat. Let him yell. Ever since Mother died, that’s just how Dad is.”

“Hey, husband… what I told you last night… did you talk to Dad about it yet?”

“Let’s wait a while longer. We haven’t hit a performance town recently, and Dad’s tight on money.” The moment the topic came up, Lü Juren’s expression turned bitter.

“Tsk! Tight on money? So tight there’s not even enough to buy cloth for your own granddaughter’s clothes? Everything she’s wearing now is stage costumes.”

“Stage costumes… they’re kind of…”

“AAAAH! A GHOST!!!”

A terrified scream cut off the couple’s conversation. The atmosphere of the entire troupe tightened instantly.

Moments later, everyone saw a bare-bottomed boy burst out of the woods, wailing and shrieking, and throw himself into Lü Zhuangyuan’s arms.

“Ghost? What ghost! In broad daylight! Put your pants on this instant!”

Though Lü Zhuangyuan was scolding his youngest son, he still kept the boy behind him, gripping his pipe tight, his eyes fixed warily on the direction of the woods.

Figures moved in the shadows. It looked like someone was coming.