Chapter 31: Biyu

Hearing this, Spiritual Physician Ming immediately clung to the doorframe and wailed in grief, “Cousin! Cousin, you can’t be so heartless! It’s just a mere ten thousand spirit stones. Could they possibly be more precious than our bond?”

Bian Chunzhou could hardly believe his ears. What kind of background did this guy have to call ten thousand spirit stones “mere”? Did he think spirit stones were like cabbages in a field, ready to be harvested whenever he pleased?

“Cousin, talking about feelings hurts our pockets. You can go in peace. I’ll find a plausible excuse for Mother.” To think Chengxin Hall had produced such a scoundrel of a spiritual physician. Tomorrow, he would file a whole string of anonymous reports against him. Hmph.

Spiritual Physician Ming was speechless. I didn’t expect him to be such a stingy miser. I miscalculated!

“Then I’ll-” At worst, they would drag each other down.

Bian Chunzhou wasn’t afraid. If the investigation mission failed, so be it. You couldn’t just pick up ten thousand spirit stones off the street, even if you walked to the ends of the earth!

“Cousin, no job is too humble. There’s no shame in working hard to pay off your debts. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone else.”

Spiritual Physician Ming was speechless.

“Are you two finished with your little comedy routine? Are you paying or not?”

“No!”

“He is!”

Seizing the opportunity, Spiritual Physician Ming contorted his body in a way that defied human anatomy, dodging the grasp of all the thugs. He then flipped over the railing and leaped down the stairs, vanishing from sight in a few bounds.

“Hurry up and chase him!”

But how could they possibly catch him now? No matter how useless he was, that Ming guy was still a cultivator at the first layer of Qi Refining. Now that he had escaped Biyu Tower, how could a few ordinary mortals catch him?

“Since he ran away, you’ll have to pay the bill for him. I see you’re decked out in gold and silver, Young Master, and you can even afford an Immortal Lady. Surely you aren’t short of a mere ten thousand spirit stones.”

The thugs of Biyu Tower certainly talked big.

Bian Chunzhou immediately took a step back, revealing Chen Zui with the broadsword on his back. “You people from Biyu Tower certainly talk big. A ‘mere’ ten thousand spirit stones? How do you even say that with a straight face? What, are you trying to teach me how to manage my affairs?”

“Oh my, what’s going on here? Young Master, are you unsatisfied with Miss Zanxue?”

The madam, having heard the commotion, rushed over. Seeing the tense standoff, she immediately scolded, “You lot, how do you do your jobs? Is this how you treat an honored guest? If I catch you acting like this again, there will be hell to pay! Does the young master look like someone who lacks a bit of money? No wonder business has been slow lately—it’s because we hired a bunch of useless fools like you!”

“Apologize to the guest this instant! You’ve ruined his mood. Do you realize your mistake?”

Bian Chunzhou was speechless. One playing the good cop and the other playing the bad cop—they were just trying every trick in the book to squeeze money out of his pockets.

“We apologize. We offended the young master. It’s just that the guest who ran away ordered our most expensive liquor, the Heavenly Fragrance Brew. Mother Li, you know that wine is no ordinary drink. We can’t afford to pay for it ourselves.”

So the madam’s surname was Li. Hearing that it was the Heavenly Fragrance Brew, her brow furrowed. “You didn’t catch him?”

“No, Mother Li. You might not know, but the guest who ran off is this young master’s cousin. I thought there would be at least some familial affection between relatives.”

Bian Chunzhou had already cursed that idiot spiritual physician ten thousand times in his mind, but the anger in his chest still burned fiercely.

“Don’t look at me. Do I look like a sucker to you?”

Mother Li was a bit unsure of this young master’s background, but since the Heavenly Fragrance Brew commanded such an exorbitant price, it naturally had its value. The tower didn’t have much in stock—only three bottles in total. Having lost one today, she couldn’t just let it slide.

“Today, I came to your Biyu Tower to enjoy myself, not to be made a fool of. Biyu Tower is open for business, but do you always force people to pay like this? Even biological brothers keep clear accounts. He’s just a distant relative who came to my family looking for handouts. Is he worthy of me paying his bill? It doesn’t matter that he ran away. I know where he is. You can just go and collect the debt from him.”

She had thought this young master would be easy to trick, but it turned out he was quite shrewd.

The tower was bustling right now, and she didn’t want to cause an ugly scene. Besides, the young master didn’t seem ready to leave yet, so it wouldn’t be too late to settle scores later. With this in mind, Mother Li dismissed the thugs and even smilingly ordered someone to bring over some fresh pastries and sake.

However, what Bian Chunzhou and Chen Zui failed to see was that as they turned around, Mother Li respectfully nodded to Miss Zanxue before swaying her hips and gracefully walking away.

Returning to the private room and sitting down, Bian Chunzhou was already drenched in sweat.

“You really didn’t need to do that. If you wanted to leave, I could have taken you out,” Chen Zui said, puzzled.

Wouldn’t that mean going back empty-handed and losing two spirit stones for nothing? What a waste. Bian Chunzhou waved his hand. “What terrible luck. To think I’d run into him here. If I ever see him again, I’ll break all three of his legs^[1]!”

Chen Zui said, “…You’re so angry you’ve lost your mind. People don’t have three legs.”

Bian Chunzhou shot him a sidelong glance. Oh right, there was still an innocent eighteen-year-old college student here. “You don’t understand. Be good and go play.”

“He doesn’t understand? And you do? Two wet-behind-the-ears brats, yet you still don’t know-” The speaker was Miss Zanxue. Her appearance was cold and aloof, and her voice was like wind sweeping over ice and snow, extremely detached. She fit the stereotypical image of a celestial maiden perfectly.

“Don’t know what?”

“Don’t know that disaster is about to strike.”

Bian Chunzhou narrowed his eyes slightly. “What disaster? Make yourself clear. Is this how Biyu Tower threatens its customers?”

“Threaten? This isn’t a threat, just a statement of fact.” Zanxue suddenly changed her expression. Under the slightly intimate candlelight, she actually made Bian Chunzhou’s heart leap in fear again.

What was going on? That weak-kneed feeling of being under a spell was happening again!

“No one who has taken my Heavenly Fragrance Brew has ever walked out of Biyu Tower.”

Chen Zui was highly sensitive to danger. The booklet Wen Xu had given him also stated that if the situation was urgent, he should not hesitate for a second when he decided to strike.

Right now, he didn’t hesitate at all!

“As expected, you’re cultivators. A pity you’re just two greenhorns at the Qi Refining Stage.”

*

By the time Wen Xu emerged from the slums, the moon was already high in the sky.

It was the dead of winter, and the weather was biting cold. Although Langyuan City was located in the south, the nights were still freezing. Fortunately, cultivators were impervious to extreme temperatures. Even though Wen Xu wore only a single thin padded jacket today, he did not feel the cold at all.

At this hour of the night, the streets were practically deserted. He placed the wooden box into his storage ring and strolled leisurely toward their designated meeting spot.

The moon in the cultivation world doesn’t look any different from the moon in the Mortal Realm.

Perhaps triggered by the sights in the slums today, Wen Xu could not help but recall some of his own grim memories. He remembered being cold and hungry, clad in rags, never knowing where his next meal would come from. Every night before falling asleep, he had worried that he might not wake up the next morning. And every morning he did wake up, he had fretted over where he could beg for food just to keep from starving to death.

Chunzhou had mentioned that evil cultivators might capture beggars to host the Evil Seeds, but how could that be? Whether in the cultivation world or the Mortal Realm, beggars lived in such wretched squalor. Cultivators looked down on even ordinary people, let alone skin-and-bones beggars.

The Jade Bone Acacia Tree, which he had gone out of his way to look into over the past two days, was one of the most common dark items used by evil cultivators.

Although called a tree, it was actually a type of vine. However, once it matured, its vines grew as thick as tree trunks. According to the 《Chronicles of Cultivation》, thousands of years ago, a Jade Bone Acacia Tree had once appeared and devoured all living things and vegetation across tens of thousands of hectares. The entire forest had been completely overrun by the Jade Bone Acacia Tree. From the outside, it looked like a perfectly normal forest, but stepping inside was like entering the depths of purgatory.

It was said that to eradicate this single Jade Bone Acacia Tree, five Tribulation Transcendence patriarchs had to be deployed, and they only barely managed to destroy it using lightning and fire.

Since then, the Jade Bone Acacia Tree had become a taboo in the cultivation world. Righteous cultivators would never touch such a vile thing, but to evil cultivators, it was a prized treasure.

The growth period of a Jade Bone Acacia Tree was very long, but for evil cultivators, it had many other “uses.”

For instance, the Jade Bone Acacia Tree could be used as an ingredient to make aphrodisiac powder, specifically designed for harvesting yang to supplement yin^[2]. This powder ranked at the very top of the list of pills most hated by male cultivators in the cultivation world. Furthermore, when it transitioned from its juvenile stage to its growth stage, it would shed a layer of bark. This bark was a crucial material for crafting the evil artifact known as the human skull drum.

This time, they were dealing with the Evil Seed of a Jade Bone Acacia Tree. Moreover, it had been processed so that it could directly parasitize a human body and drain their essence. Although Wen Xu had never encountered an evil cultivator, he could tell from his reading that they were a ruthless, vicious bunch with absolutely no sense of morality.

The introductory jade slip to cultivation recorded evil cultivators as follows: most of them possessed twisted personalities, fed on blood and malice, harbored extreme hostility toward both cultivators and ordinary people, disregarded life, and took pleasure in playing with good and evil.

Therefore, once an evil cultivator was discovered, they were to be executed on the spot.

Wen Xu drew a quick comparison. If evil cultivators were in the Mortal Realm, they would be notorious bandits who committed all kinds of atrocities, robbing and murdering at will. However, because evil cultivators possessed far greater power, the harm they caused was exponentially worse.

Now, it was known that there were handsome young men in Wushan Village suffering from the “aging sickness.” A person could not age rapidly for no reason. Could they have been poisoned by the Jade Bone Acacia Aphrodisiac Powder? Or perhaps, in the late stages of the Evil Seed’s parasitism, the host would rapidly age?

“Hey, hey, hey! Aren’t you that… Yonglu Mountain disciple? You’re not wearing your blindfold, I almost didn’t recognize you. Are you really blind?”

Wen Xu frowned instinctively. “Who is that?”

“Me! The Mystic Physician! The pregnant man! Do you remember now?”

Wen Xu shook his head decisively. “I don’t. What do you want?”

Spiritual Physician Ming thought to himself, You Yonglu Mountain disciples are really getting more and more rebellious lately. Aloud, he said, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember. But those two companions of yours are probably in grave danger.”

“What do you mean?”

“Biyu Tower isn’t a place just anyone can enter. I risked my neck to barge in just now and even caused a bit of trouble for them. I don’t know if they got my drift, but I think-hey! Why are you running? Do you even know where Biyu Tower is?!”