Stranger Danger

Ye Qing replied smilingly, “My name is Ye Pingshan. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Brother Wang.”

“Ye Pingshan?” Wang Yang tried to recall if he ever heard such a name before. “I don’t think I recognize you. If you don’t mind me asking, which sect do you belong to, Brother Ye?”

Ye Qing clasped his fist. “I am but a wanderer with no sect or faction to my name. I’m not even a citizen of Luo Shui, in fact. I have only arrived at Luo Shui a few days ago, so it’d make sense that you don’t recognize me.”

“I see,” Wang Yang exclaimed in realization before growing wary, “By the way, why have you journeyed to the depths of Thousand Buddhas Grotto?”

Ye Qing nodded. “To tell you the truth, I’m a body-tempering warrior. I heard that there is a Thousand Buddhas Vine in this place that bears a fruit named the Thousand Buddhas Fruit, an excellent body-tempering spirit material. That is why I have come to test my luck.”

“A body-tempering warrior? You have my respect, brother!” Wang Yang exclaimed in astonishment. Body-tempering warriors were pretty rare in Luo Shui, and the most famous of them all was Gu Suitang, the guy who could beat up even his dad like nothing.

Ye Qing hid a smile when he saw the flash of disgruntlement and hatred on Wang Yang’s face. He hadn’t called himself a body-tempering warrior to annoy Wang Yang, of course. It was just another effort to mask his identity.

It had been a few months since he came to Luo Shui [1], and he hadn’t tried to conceal his power or the characteristics of his martial arts. Therefore, Sunset Hill must know that the astral qi he cultivated was the Burning Wind, which was unique in all of Luo Shui. The scion would absolutely recognize him if he used his Burning Wind in front of him.

That was why he decided to reveal the fact that he was a body-tempering warrior instead. For one, it was a good cover since it was the truth. Two, it was to lay down the groundwork necessary to execute his plan—the plan to kill Wang Yang without a trace, which was only doable if he kept his identity a secret.

No reconciliation was possible between Wang Luori and himself. Since he was lucky enough to stumble onto Wang Yang today, he didn’t mind collecting some interests first. The scion was a bad egg anyway.

“Are you headed for the inner depths of the Thousand Buddhas Grotto too, Brother Wang? Let us walk together then. There is safety in numbers, and I believe that Thousand Buddhas Grotto warrants that level of caution,” Ye Qing suggested.

He was planning to screw Wang Yang over after all. It would be a lot harder to do that if he chose to stay away from his group. Also, he was certain that Wang Yang would agree because one, the Thousand Buddhas Grotto was a very dangerous place. Two, Wang Yang was an arrogant and self-conceited man. He wouldn’t fear a mere outsider even if they were scheming something.

And three, he was basically offering himself to be a minesweeper. There should be no reason why Wang Yang would turn down extra fodder.

As expected, Wang Yang agreed to Ye Qing’s suggestion after just a few seconds of thought, “If that is agreeable with you, then let us travel together, Brother Ye!”

“Of course.”

……

“Are you okay, Senior Brother Cheng?” Chéng Youlan asked worriedly.

“I’m fine,” A deathly pale Cheng Yi shook his head but grew hateful in an instant, “What happened today won’t go unanswered, especially that bastard who colluded with the likes of Wang Yang. I swear I’ll kill him one way or another.”

Mu Yuan frowned when he heard this and tried to explain, “Senior brother, that senior saved our lives, and he only did what he did just now to—”

Cheng Yi interrupted him rudely before he could finish, “Are you a member of White Horse Academy or what, Mu Yuan? Didn’t you hear how he insulted us earlier? My name isn’t Cheng Yi if I don’t repay what he did to us ten fold!”

“But—” Mu Yuan tried again, but Cheng Yi interrupted him angrily, “But what? I’ll expel you from White Horse Academy if you say one more word to defend that bastard!:

“Senior brother… I…”

Mu Yuan turned white when he heard this. Whatever he was trying to say quickly died in his throat.

“Let us make haste. As soon as we return to the academy, I’m going to report this to—” Cheng Yi muttered darkly when suddenly, he froze in his tracks. His pupils slowly dilated as he abruptly collapsed to the ground.

“Senior brother?”

“Senior brother!”

Both Chéng Youlan and Mu Yuan cried out and rushed to his side, but Cheng Yi didn’t react. Mu Yuan subconsciously tested his senior brother’s pulse and withdrew his palm just as quickly. His complexion was pale as he stammered, “He’s dead! Senior Brother Cheng is… dead!”

“What?” Chéng Youlan exclaimed in disbelief and tested Cheng YI’s pulse as well. When she sensed what he sensed—which was nothing at all—she too collapsed on her feet and blurted, “He… he really is dead.”

“But how can this be? He was fine just now. How did he just… die all of a sudden?”

A long time later, Mu Yuan finally recovered his wits and murmured, “Maybe it was Wang Yang who did it. He could’ve shattered senior brother’s heart when he struck him earlier, but controlled his strength so that senior brother wouldn’t perish immediately. It was only now that the damage had caught up to him.”

“Yes, yes! It has to be Wang Yang! He was about to kill us all just a while ago! It must be him!” Chéng Youlan echoed in agreement. “So… what do we do now?”

Mu Yuan thought for a moment before answering, “There is no way we can take revenge for senior brother by ourselves. We should return to the academy immediately and report this to the vice principal. He would know what to do.”

“That’s a good idea. We should hurry!” Chéng Youlan replied while looking around paranoidly. It was as if she was afraid that Wang Yang would catch up to them at any moment.

After Mu Yuan carried Cheng Yi’s corpse on his back, the duo continued making their way toward the exit.

……

Cheng Yi should be dead by now, Ye Qing thought with a smile while walking together with Wang Yang and his group.

Earlier, he had pierced the guy’s heart and lungs using a wisp of Blood Shadow. The reason he didn’t die immediately was because he had used the Blood Shadow to block the wounds. If the Blood Shadow dissipated, or if Cheng Yi’s pulse elevated considerably because he was angry or something, then he would drop dead immediately.

He felt his Blood Shadow dissipating into nothing just now. It was how he knew that Cheng Yi was probably dead.

The reason he did this was to incite a conflict between White Horse Academy and Sunset Hill, of course.

Considering Mu Yuan and Chéng Youlan’s lack of intelligence, they would definitely think that Wang Yang was the murderer and reported the situation as such to their academy. He remembered Chéng Youlan saying that Cheng Yi was the vice principal’s nephew or something, so there was no way White Horse was going to gloss over this murder. They would definitely round up the men and come to Thousand Buddhas Grotto to question Wang Yang.

When the time comes, all he needed to do was to fan the flames, and the two major sects in Luo Shui would be butting heads like no tomorrow.

Okay, that might be a little too much to hope for, but at the very least it was going to keep Wang Luori busy for a bit and buy him more time to grow stronger under the radar.

There were few things more exciting than making life difficult and making enemies for one’s enemies. If he could watch his enemies putting out flames here and there and raging over the “injustices” that “the heavens” had sent their way, then even better. He couldn’t wait.

He hadn’t planned for this to happen when he saved the trio, of course. It was just that Cheng Yi’s glare before he left reminded him of The Farmer and the Viper, Mr Dong Guo and The Wolf of Zhongshan, and The Old Man and the Sea—wait, I think that the last example isn’t quite right but eh, whatever—The point was that he didn’t mind murdering and recycling a murderous ingrate for his own use, especially one who was a bad egg through and through.

“Careful. Something’s not right here.”

Suddenly, a warning jolted him out of his reverie. Ye Qing looked around and found himself standing in the middle of a field of Buddhist statues.

The Buddhist statues all wore kind and gentle expressions on their faces, but the bones, skulls and bodies on the ground both human and Stranger suggested a very different story. The stark contrast was both eerie and disturbing.

“Careful, everyone, and don’t touch anything. Now, let us go!” Wang Yang instructed in a hushed voice after scanning the area for a bit and finding no danger.

Wait a second. These statues are the Two-Faced Buddhas! That gives me an idea… Ye Qing concealed a devious smirk as he observed the kind-faced statues.

The group slowly walked through the field of Buddhist statues as per Wang Yang’s instructions. They did everything perfectly, and they should have been able to pass through the field without any incident. Too bad for them, Ye Qing had different plans.

As Ye Qing was passing by a Buddhist statue, he secretly let loose a hint of bloodlust. The moment it happened, the statue’s face slowly morphed into anger and swiveled its head toward the path.

Whoosh!

The next second, the Buddhist statue spat out a jet of flames that engulfed the two Sunset Hill disciples walking behind Ye Qing in an instant.

“Ahhh!”

Their screams were short-lived. The fire was so hot that it turned them to ash in practically the span of two seconds.

“Bastard!”

Wang Yang responded to the attack instantly. The second the two Sunset Hill disciples were turned into ash, he launched himself toward the statue and shattered its head with his astral qi.

This triggered a devastating chain ration, however. As if his “murder” of the statue had awakened their wrath, they all turned toward the group with an angry expression on their faces. They spat either flames, yin wind, physical weapons or more at the nearest Sunset Hill disciple.

For a time, it was utter chaos. Those who couldn’t protect themselves in time or were weak in cultivation were burned into ash, corroded into a pile of goo, or skewered like a pincushion immediately. It was positively tragic.

“Useless trash. Get out of my way!” Wang Yang’s eyes turned bloodshot as pure white flames rushed out of his body. It was perfectly clean, pure, and unblemished. The moment it appeared, all of the filth, cold, taint and even the space surrounding the group vanished into a white so pure that it almost resembled the color of nothingness.

Then, using his palm like a saber and his legs as the pivot, he spun horizontally and summoned what looked like a white moon.

Everything turned white under the white moon, literally. The Buddhist statues were covered in a layer of pure white energy that enveloped their bodies in the blink of an eye. Then, they crumbled soundlessly and dissolved into nothingness before the pieces could even hit the ground.

“The White Flame of Nothingness…”

Ye Qing narrowed his eyes a little as he watched the disintegrating Buddhist statues. He had read about Wang Yang’s astral qi from the files of the Pacification Bureau as a matter of course, but it was another thing to witness it with his own eyes.

One of the thirty-six superior grade astral qis, the White Flame of Nothingness was also known as the Flames of Nothingness. Colorless and devoid of temperature, it could dissolve all five natural elements—Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Metal—into nothing. Naturally, it was incredibly powerful.

While the White Flame of Nothingness was weaker than the Burning Wind in terms of sheer power, it outclassed the Burning Wind in terms of flexibility and applicability.

But of course, it all depended on the people who wielded it. If the White Flame of Nothingness was wielded by an idiot like Cheng Yi, then Ye Qing daresaid that he could beat the guy as a Vessel Augmentor. If someone was strong, then all arts were strong in their hands, and vice versa.

1. Okay wow, this timeskip could’ve been done better. The zombie outbreak incident either happened later than I thought, or at least one month had passed since that day. If you guys have a better suggestion to make this less abrupt, please don’t hesitate to share it with me. ☜