Chapter 10: A Handful of Yellow Earth, Fair Skin and White Bones

Exit through the West Gate of Fenglin City and head straight along the main road for about seven or eight li. Then turn left onto a small path. In less than half a joss stick's time, you will see the Green Willow River, with its weeping willows lining the banks.

At this moment, the evening breeze caresses the face, and the bright moon is reflected in the rippling water, shimmering with light.

When Jiang Wang emerged from the path, he saw Ling He's thin figure standing by the river like a silent tree.

"Hey, let me see," Zhao Rucheng jumped in front of him, craning his neck and saying, "You must have been hiding and crying, right?"

Ling He looked a bit helpless, "Why did you come here?"

"Your voice is a bit hoarse. You must have cried!"

At this moment, a gruff voice came out from the grass by the river, "Zhao, you can be really annoying sometimes, you know that?"

"Brother Hu, you're here too?" Zhao Rucheng shrank his neck. Du Yehu, the rough man, would really start a fight at the slightest disagreement and wouldn't care about his handsome face.

"I was already here drinking," Du Yehu said grumpily, his alcohol-laden breath wandering in the evening breeze, "I didn't expect him to carry that guy over here too. Bad luck."

"Exactly! Why even bury him?" Zhao Rucheng continued, "Such a heartless person should just be thrown into the river to float downstream and feed the fish and shrimp."

Jiang Wang glanced in the direction where Du Yehu had come from, "Is he buried there?"

"Third brother," considering Jiang Wang's feelings, Ling He explained, "I haven't forgotten Pengju's wrongdoings, but I also remember his kindness. My family was poor, and we often couldn't afford enough food. Pengju would always make excuses to teach me martial arts, holding me back until mealtime. His death was deserved, but I couldn't let him lie unburied in the wilderness... Of course, you were also very kind to me. That year, when we cleared out the Blue Ox Fort, you saved me..."

"Why are you bringing this up?" Jiang Wang interrupted him, "My father used to tell me when he was alive, adults are different from children. The first thing adults need to learn is to seek common ground while reserving differences. The kind of 'I won't play with him, so you can't either' is for children. You and Fang Pengju and I, we each have our own stance. I won't influence your deep bond with him, and you won't influence my complete severance with him."

"That's the way it is," Ling He said.

He looked around the Green Willow Riverbank under the night sky, "There's always an illusion that it was just yesterday. The place hasn't changed much, but we all have."

"Nothing remains the same. The only constant in this world is that everything is always changing," Zhao Rucheng said meaningfully, then shamelessly leaned towards Ling He again, "Burying someone doesn't have to be this late. Did you two cry together, holding each other's heads?"

As soon as he finished speaking, he leaped up and nimbly dodged Du Yehu's flying leg.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, getting angry because you're embarrassed..." He was in the middle of his taunting when he quickly bowed and said, "Sorry, sorry, Brother Hu."

Du Yehu was already clenching his fists and chasing after him, "You're not wrong, I'm just about to have a good cry with you."

Watching the two of them play-fighting, Ling He said leisurely, "But I believe there are some things that will never change."

"I agree with you halfway," Jiang Wang said.

The "sparring" between Du Yehu and Zhao Rucheng somehow turned into a four-person melee. Punches and kicks flew, and everyone tripped each other. In the end, everyone was panting, then burst into laughter, and then cried together, holding each other's heads.

If anyone had passed by the Green Willow River that night, they might have spread more ghost stories about water spirits.

The four brothers finally left the Green Willow River side by side, leaving the place that recorded their youth and friendship.

No one spoke anymore.

Only Zhao Rucheng muttered as he looked back:

"Over there, don't harm friends anymore. You ghost."

...

Moonlight flowed in the shimmering Green Willow River and also poured down from the dilapidated roof of Huanzhen Temple.

For some reason, perhaps because of the moonlight, the faces of the two people talking in the broken temple looked extremely pale.

One of them was a charming woman, dressed in a bright red robe, with an extremely well-proportioned figure, curvaceous and shapely. Especially the dazzling whiteness at the slightly open collar, it was hard to tear one's eyes away.

Her face was too pale, which should have made her look a bit weak and sickly, but she gave off an astonishingly gorgeous aura. Perhaps it was because of her overly bright red lips?

She sat on the dusty altar without any concern, so beautiful yet so composed.

She lightly wiped her red lips with her little finger and said, "All the beggars in this temple are dead. What a headache. What are we going to use to invite the divine will?"

Her voice seemed to circle around the spider web at the eaves before reaching its destination, sounding somewhat hollow.

"A cultivator's soul is enough."

The speaker stood at the entrance. Unlike the woman in red, he seemed unwilling to step even half a foot into the dirty broken temple and covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief embroidered with plum blossoms.

"Oh, you say it so easily," the woman in red said, "We have to sneak around to kill a few mortals. Killing a cultivator? Are you afraid the Zhuangguo Dao Academy won't come knocking?"

"One cultivator in this city is as good as another; they're all going to die sooner or later," the man said, frowning, "Do we really have to talk in a place like this?"

The woman in red chuckled, "The legendary Zu Guanglie perished right here. The people of Zhuangguo have searched this place inside out more than ten times. There's nowhere cleaner around here."

Mentioning Zu Guanglie, she closed her eyes slightly and took on a dazed expression, even her pale face quickly flushed, "I can almost still smell his heroic aura~"

"Back to the matter at hand," the man interrupted her reverie without changing expression, "Wei Quji is not someone to be trifled with, and now there's Dong A. We must find the Daoist as soon as possible. Those Qin and Chu barbarians are causing chaos here, disrupting the sacrifices at Huanzhen Temple. In my opinion, instead of stealthily capturing a few mortals, it would be simpler and more straightforward to directly sacrifice a cultivator."

"There's more than one way to find death. Why be so fixated on this? How about drawing a sword and slitting a throat? Or inviting a thunderbolt to devour oneself?"

Perhaps displeased at having her reverie interrupted, the woman in red opened her beautiful eyes and retracted her smile, "Before the Daoist appears, you'd better know what it means to be low-key!"

The man also seemed a bit annoyed, covering his nose, "Miaoyu! It doesn't seem like the idea to attack the Fenglin Dao Academy was yours! Now it's causing a storm in the city. If we're not careful, our grand plan will fail!"

"What do you know? The world is too vast, and there are too many accidents! Who could have thought that Zu Guanglie would just die like that? And it just so happened to disrupt our sacrifice plan. The bottom of the Forgetful River, the white bones have been silent for too long! There can't be any more accidents! Dong A in Fenglin City is crucial now. We must clarify his strength and limits! Some sacrifices are inevitable. Besides..."

The woman in red, named Miaoyu, licked her lips, "Do you know that not all the beggars in this broken temple are dead? In the Fenglin Dao Academy, I smelled a familiar scent..."

This dirty environment made the man even more impatient: "The life or death of a mere beggar is worth my concern?"

Miaoyu this time just casually stretched, her perfect figure fully displayed, "Fool."

The man narrowed his eyes, also covering the fleeting desire in his eyes, "Don't think that just because you are nominally the Daoist's woman, you can be so bold. There have been many holy women in the cult over thousands of years. Whether the Daoist will want you or recognize you when he appears is still to be seen."

"Fair skin and white bones, emptiness and illusion. Can't you see through it?"

"Hehehehe." The man turned and walked out of the temple, "Whether I can see through it or not, what does it matter? It's just like this."

After a long while, in this quiet and dilapidated old temple, the tempting murmur gently sounded, rippling like the moonlight.

"How could he not love me? How could he not want me? I've been guarding for so many years, waiting for so many years..."