Cleaning the Deck

Without permission, Sun Yin grabbed Ren Junjie by the collar and jumped down with him on tow. She sent one talisman to make a stepping stone before jumping down again. She could do so without the stop, but she was not sure if Ren Junjie would survive the fall. She immediately let go before summoning her talismans to cut through the mess again.

Ren Junjie stood up as if nothing happened. He held his right hand out and waited for a sword to come flying to him. However, it seemed like a different one answered his call. He only looked at it and tossed it to his other hand before catching the right one. Though the Huayuan Lin sect was the one famous for their sword art skills, the Reqi Ren sect masters had a rather infamous set of twin swords.

The one that broke the barrier and was tossed to the left hand was Huaishuang or the so-called evil twin. This sword was believed to have a mind of its own. It passed on judgments whether the master should kill someone for punishment. Whenever the master agreed to its wish, they would say they were feeding the sword. The more evil souls were eaten by Huaishuang, the stronger it became.

There were also repercussions in using Huaishuang. It was said that if the master of the sect killed an innocent man with Huaishuang, the master of the sword would be cursed for life or would be killed by the sword itself. Due to its autonomous nature, only a few masters tried wielding Huaishuang.

The one Ren Junjie called out to was Haoshuang, the good twin. It was like a normal flying sword. A very obedient sword that did everything the master asked of it. Like Huaishuang, it must be fed to become stronger. However, the food must be anything harmful to humans like ghosts or corpses.

Since the deck was crawling with fierce corpses that were chopped by Huaban, it was not hard for Haoshuang to feed on them. The unmoving ones were thrown overboard due to reasons.

Sun Yin got to the railing and watched the entire sea around the ship be dyed dark red and loitered with the dead. It was bad for the fishes, but she had no options but to leave them there. 'Just so you wait till I get Yuanyan!' She sobbed inside of her, weeping for her children again.

Waddling came from the far off side of the horizon. The maiden watched as some diced corpses, who were not eaten by Haoshuang, tried to leave the premises to get to the shores. The shields were broken, and so escape was possible. At that rate, the false Bride would not find any use for them. Should she create a water vacuum to save them from the harsh reality?

Lu Bang went to her side and joined her in watching. "They're escaping."

"Should we get them?" Sun Yin even leaned on her elbow. She could hear the triumphant grunts of the Reqi Ren sect as they cleaned the deck. She was probably not needed anymore.

"That's too troublesome, but look, they're all swimming back in the same direction." Lu Bang frowned at the realization. "That's not even the direction to Heici." He twitched. "They did not... cross Huayuan, did they?"

"If they did, we would have known through Ren Junjie." Sun Yin hummed at the possibility but judging from the desperation of the false Bride, it looked the opposite. She should be more confident if she ended up destroying the Huayuan Lin sect.

It took a few more minutes into the long night for the Reqi Ren sect to dispatch the remaining corpses in the ship. Even though it's troublesome, Ren Junjie still asked his disciples to make the bodies sink to the bottom of the sea. Sun Yin and Lu Bang only watched them work over cups of teas handed by the ship's crew.

The supposed fun dinner was interrupted by the corpses, and so the passengers could only spend it inside their cabins. Since they went in the middle of the night, the volunteers from the Reqi Ren sect were received in the dining hall. There were also some people who stayed there to gaze at their heroes.

Ren Junjie was a famous man even outside his region. Most of those who got to see a lot of cultivators through traveling knew him by face and by name. He was the youngest among the masters and quite the boldest. Lin Kun was too decent to jump into trouble at the very second it started; neither were any of the older masters from the last generation.

Because of his fame, it was hard not to be stared at by the people. Lu Bang did not like the attention while Sun Yin treated the onlookers as air.

"Now that I proved to you that there is a false Bride, what are you going to say to the other sects?" Sun Yin held her cup and swirled the tea while waiting for his answer.

"Nothing. I could have seen her myself, but I had no proof that she isn't the Bride." He drank his own tea. "Only a few of this generation had seen the Bride. Also, she was wearing the same hanfu and mask back in those days when she terrorized the Society."

"Didn't they say anything about her body?" Sun Yin hummed. It was the first and most obvious fault after all.

"Are you expecting them to remember a woman's figure as they escape death?" Ren Junjie raised a brow.

The maiden only shrugged. She stared at her tea. "We're headed to the Haiyang Cheng sect so it would be nice if you could relay a message for me."

The master looked at Lu Bang for a second before bringing his eyes back to Sun Yin. "What does it have to do with Lin Guwei's case?"

"The late master Lin Guwei hid the Bride's sword, Buyue, and someone was trying to get rid of Lin Kun using the Cinder Army. If the false Bride managed to get the iron fan, she would be a lot harder to deal with."

"Are you taking the iron fan?" Ren Junjie's eyes averted the maiden's gaze, staring at the biscuits before him. They were sad for some reasons.

"Would it hurt Cheng Huan? You wanted to take it away from her as well, right?"

"...her family found a use for her since she was the only one who could guard and retrieve the iron fan without getting killed. If you take that away from her, she might be back to being the laid-back girl she used to be."

Sun Yin hummed before taking a sip from her tea. "Lu Bang told me Cheng Huan was a special breed of an incompetent cultivator. She only had her family name to save her from being evicted from her very sect. Is that true?"

Ren Junjie only smirked as if ridiculing the insult. "Cheng Jianguo was the one who forced her into cultivation. She refused to be one ever since she was six. It's not her fault if she ended up rolling around like a lazy cat.

"Then again, her heart was not made of stone. She would get hurt every time someone mocks her for being incompetent. Especially when she formed her golden core shortly after starting." He sighed. "The Society had too many high hopes, and they died out all at once. Her father and her uncle were the only ones who wouldn't dare insult her."

"She formed her golden core too fast? But she failed to deliver? And you still love her all the same?" the woman murmured, ignoring the gaze Lu Bang gave her for her embarrassing words.

"It would still take us roughly a week to get to Haiyang." Lu Bang joined the conversation, feeling guilty about badmouthing Cheng Huan behind her back. "That should be enough time for you to help her through the phase. We really need to take care of Yuanyan."

"Why? Are you going to use the items of the Bride against the false Bride and then turn the Heici Xu sect to dust?"

"That sounds like a plan, but let me tell you this. I'm not planning to enslave the cultivation world; I just want them to stop practicing the Hushe Path." Sun Yin waved her hand in front of him.

Instead of asking again, Ren Junjie only shook his head. He seemed to be uninterested at the moment. The more he knew, the more he could be worried... and it would be bad for Cheng Huan's birthday.

Soon, the disciples of the Reqi Ren sect left to come back home. Ren Junjie said goodbye to the ship's crew and the captain before giving his goodbye to the Huayuan Lin sect disciples. The night continued with the crew cleaning the deck floorboards while the passengers go to sleep.