Chapter 122: Just in Time

Xiang He looked around. “This is roughly where those two stopped chasing me.”

The mountain forest at night was quiet and deathly still. The trees here were particularly straight, towering into the clouds. Walking among them, an ordinary person would inevitably feel a sense of their own insignificance.

“Something is wrong. It shouldn’t look like this.” Xiang He took a tentative step forward. When she had fled in panic earlier, she might have run blindly, but to ensure she could bring people back to rescue her junior brother, she had marked the path with spiritual energy. To be safe, she had even memorized the scenery along the way. In such a short span of time, there was no way she could have misremembered. “But I don’t feel the presence of any barrier.”

To Wen Xu’s “sight,” however, the wind here behaved as if it had hit a solid wall. It was forced to flow upward, growing cramped as it crowded together and rushed toward the sky.

The wind couldn’t pass through, but people could. Interesting.

Wen Xu stepped forward. Sure enough, not a single breeze from the outside flowed in. Looking closely, this place was somewhat similar to the Back Mountain Secret Realm of Yonglu Mountain. Although the wind here wasn’t chaotic, there was… no wind.

Not a single trace of it, as if this place were completely isolated from the world, untouched by spring breezes, rain, or snow.

It was a very subtle sensation. Wen Xu sensed a state… somewhere between life and death. He looked up, feeling as though he were surrounded by countless pairs of eyes.

“What’s wrong, Wen Xu?” Chen Zui walked in curiously. But he was naturally dull-witted and couldn’t sense any difference at all. “Did you find Junior Brother Bian? This thing isn’t reacting at all.”

As he spoke, he patted the Base Station in his arms, but it remained as dead as ever, without the slightest response.

On their way here, Senior Sister Xiang He had already told them about the situation in Xiaoshu Village. It was clear that Bian Chunzhou was in extreme danger, and they had to stop it before tonight was over!

“I haven’t found him, but I’ve noticed something strange.” Wen Xu turned to the two of them. “Do you remember how the people in town described the location of Xiaoshu Village when we asked? They all said Xiaoshu Village lay to the west of the Tenfold Mountains.”

“Right, is there a problem with that?”

They had indeed been walking west all this way. Chen Zui didn’t like to use his brain, but he wasn’t so dense that he lacked a basic sense of direction.

“No, quite the opposite. We’ve been walking north this entire time. To be precise, northeast.”

Human perception, especially sight, was the easiest to deceive. Wen Xu had remained silent along the way, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t noticed anything. Whether Senior Sister Xiang He had actually taken the wrong path or had been deceived, following her was still the right choice.

“Northeast? That’s impossible!” Xiang He pointed to the moon, which was about to be hidden by the clouds. “The late-night moon is hanging in this part of the sky, and we’re walking west… Wait, something’s wrong. Why is the moon moving so fast?”

Now, even Chen Zui noticed. “Could the townsfolk have lied to us?”

“No, perhaps they didn’t know either. Xiaoshu Village is too bizarre for them. Ordinary people are too busy trying to survive; why would they go looking for death?”

The wind in the forest was extremely faint. Unless one deliberately tried to sense it, even cultivators wouldn’t notice its changes right away. But Wen Xu was uniquely gifted. Ever since he had started pretending to be blind, he had trained the wind to be his second set of eyes, and sometimes it was even more useful than his actual sight.

“So, my guess is…” Wen Xu turned to his senior sister. “The reason you and Chunzhou were able to enter Xiaoshu Village so smoothly was probably because they were waiting for their prey to walk right in. But now that the rabbit is caught, they’ve sealed off the passage to the outside world. It’s even possible that Xiaoshu Village has grown legs and walked away.”

“How is that possible? Could a giant tree have become a spirit?”

Xiang He shook her head with a solemn expression. “No, I think… your guess might be right. That would explain why all the spiritual energy marks I left have vanished.” In truth, they hadn’t vanished; she had simply taken the wrong path!

What should they do? Now they couldn’t even determine the location of Xiaoshu Village. The guilt in Senior Sister Xiang He’s heart grew heavier.

“There’s no time to explain. If they really are holding the ritual tonight, they can’t have ‘walked’ very far yet. Let’s catch up!”

“How do we track them?”

In the Back Mountain Secret Realm, Wen Xu had used a clumsy method to search for the jade tokens because both he and the tokens lacked spiritual energy. But things were different now. He had plenty of spiritual energy!

“We go up, following the direction of the wind.”

The most absurd direction was often the correct one. Wen Xu wasn’t entirely sure, but his only option now was to trust his intuition. He opened his eyes and glanced at the Base Station in Chen Zui’s hands. If only Chunzhou could send a Transmission Talisman, that would be perfect.

But it was also possible that they were too far away. Shi Yijian had mentioned that the Base Station’s signal was still unstable; sometimes it could receive signals from dozens of kilometers away, and other times there would be no reception even within two kilometers.

He hoped that this time, Chunzhou’s Transmission Talisman would work.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Bian Chunzhou, who had been hoisted onto the sacrificial altar, was indeed trying to find a way to use a Transmission Talisman. But… the talisman was inside his storage bag, and opening it required spiritual energy. As luck would have it, his spiritual energy felt as if it were stuck in a swamp, completely impossible to draw from his dantian.

Straining with all his might, he finally managed to squeeze out a tiny sliver of energy to retrieve a specially made Transmission Talisman. The problem was, using the talisman also required spiritual energy.

Talk about a design flaw! It had to be improved. If he made it back alive, he would definitely modify it so that even ordinary people could use it just by tearing it open.

The sacrificial altar wasn’t large, but it was surrounded by very tall braziers. Array patterns resembling tree rings were carved into the ground. Bian Chunzhou was bound right in the center. To his left knelt the old woman, praying devoutly. She was still chanting, her voice growing higher and more piercing. Her face was covered in twisted veins, as if the blood in her veins had frozen solid.

To his right was Yuan Po’s daughter, Man’er.

Yuan Po knelt right beside Man’er. However, her gaze didn’t fall on her daughter. Instead, she looked at Bian Chunzhou, her eyes reflecting the firelight and seeming to hold a trace of pity.

Pity or not, Yuan Po had absolutely no intention of helping Bian Chunzhou escape.

The ritual had been going on for a long time. Bian Chunzhou had no way of knowing how much time had passed. He only knew that if no one came to rescue him soon, he would be completely done for.

No, he had to save himself! At the very least, he had to make sure the sect could find his bones!

Facing life and death, he could no longer care about whether the water and fire elements in his body were balanced. He squeezed a sliver of spiritual energy from his dantian, a painful process that felt like pulling out his own tendons and bones. This sliver of energy was quite clever, obediently slipping into the Transmission Talisman the next second. The talisman ignited without fire, and a wisp of light smoke drifted away in the direction of the rising smoke from the braziers. Surprisingly, no one noticed his subtle movement.

As expected, a Transmission Talisman needed to be stealthy! This talisman was a success!

Thinking of the distance between the Tenfold Mountains and Yonglu Mountain, Bian Chunzhou began to pray to all the gods in heaven, hoping that Senior Brother Shi had remembered to give the Base Station to the senior brothers and sisters who were coming to rescue him!

Right at that moment, however, the braziers on the altar suddenly went out.

Bian Chunzhou widened his eyes. He could only see specks of starlight-like light lingering around every villager. Among them, the light on Man’er was the brightest. She was the first to stand up, walking to stand opposite the old woman. Then, she slowly knelt and bowed to the ground. The toothless, balding old woman reached out a trembling hand. In just the span of a single stick of incense^[1], she had actually aged even further.

If she had been on the brink of the grave just moments ago, she was now practically in it.

Her hand rested on Man’er’s thick, dark hair, devoid of any jealousy. An indistinguishable incantation spilled rapidly from her lips. Before long, Man’er actually prostrated herself devoutly, palms and forehead to the ground, right where the old woman had just been sitting.

What kind of bizarre stunt was this?!

When he blinked again, the old woman was actually standing where Man’er had just been.

Yuan Po gave Bian Chunzhou a bizarre look. Pulling a dark green wedding sash from out of nowhere, she forced one end into his hand, while stuffing the other into the hand of the old woman who already had one foot in the grave.

Good heavens, this wasn’t just forcing a decent man into marriage; it was a ghost wedding^[2]!

How on earth did I get this unlucky? Bian Chunzhou thought. I only came down the mountain to help a friend pick out some New Year gifts, and now I’m going to lose my life? Bah! They said the girls of Xiaoshu Village were as beautiful as fairies, so why was he-

The old woman cackled, seemingly delighted by the disgust on Bian Chunzhou’s face. “Yuan Po, hurry and begin.”

Yuan Po silently shoved Bian Chunzhou. At some point, the brazier on the altar had been lit again. The other villagers had all stepped down, leaving only the three of them on the stage, along with the devoutly kneeling Man’er.

Help, help, help, help, help!

He was still a pure, innocent young man! He didn’t want a ghost marriage!

Unable to speak, Bian Chunzhou could only vent frantically in his mind to maintain a shred of sanity. Now that things had come to this, he would protect his purity even if it cost him his life!

I’ll fight you human traffickers to the death! At worst, in twenty years, I’ll be another-^[3]

A powerful surge of spiritual energy suddenly erupted from Bian Chunzhou. In an instant, the blast struck the two people standing near him: Yuan Po and the old woman he was supposed to marry.

Yuan Po fared well enough; though hit by the shockwave, she quickly dodged. The old woman, however, was not so lucky. Already on her deathbed, she took the spiritual energy blast head-on. With a sudden snap, she was gone. Just like that.

Dead?

Had he killed someone?

Bian Chunzhou’s sanity instantly snapped back. As a modern, civilized college student, he could be a slacker, but taking a life was a line he could never cross. He… had just killed someone.

Even if she had been on the verge of death, it was still by his hand.

Bian Chunzhou didn’t know what to feel as his mental defenses rapidly crumbled. But right then, the deceased old woman suddenly twitched. It was barely perceptible, but Yuan Po had already propped up the old woman’s nearly collapsing body, even tying the slipped wedding sash back onto her limp, lifeless hand.

“First bow to the Divine Tree!”

“Second bow to the Divine Tree!”

“Third-“

There was no third bow. Just as Bian Chunzhou realized to his astonishment that the old woman had actually returned to life, Yuan Po, who was in the middle of calling out the third bow, was skewered clean through by a blade flying out of nowhere.

He looked up. It was Wen Xuxu and Chen Zuizui! And Senior Sister Xiang He!