Chapter 509: The Past of Qingyun
Behind Shizi Slope.
The Qingyun Sect’s grand residence was situated atop a small hill in front of the mountain.
It was built by Wu Daodao ten years ago. As for the source of the funds... one could guess by considering what he was doing when he first t Chen Nuo.
However, this was not the true ancestral ho of the Qingyun Sect.
Truth be told, it was quite exasperating.
The new residence had originally been a dilapidated temple. It had no official registration or records; it was just a rural temple of indeterminate age.
Its origins were untraceable.
Later, it beca a place of worship for the nearby villagers. Naturally, the incense offerings were ager.
Villagers are pragmatic. Within the communities of Huaxia, honoring ancestors cos first, especially in the countryside where each clan has its own ancestral hall for worship.
Such rural temples relied on occasional villagers—perhaps those with a headache or fever—burning so joss paper and making a vow.
These rural temples lacked regular incense offerings and barely survived on the charity of the villagers; money was certainly scarce.
Even the temple gate was in shambles, with no golden Buddha to be found, and the clay Buddha statues had collapsed by nearly half.
The two tile-roofed rooms had been built decades earlier, thanks to a wealthy local who, having made his fortune elsewhere, donated money as a good deed. Decades later, they too had beco dilapidated houses.
Moreover, during that particular radical period many years ago, the temple was nearly demolished as a relic of feudalism.
Previously, the temple had been ho to two monks, one old and one young. The older monk was well-known in the village, while the younger had been brought back by the elder monk after a trip afar. He claid the boy was a relative whose family had fallen on hard tis and had no survivors, so he brought him back to raise. Villagers gossiped that the child was likely the old monk’s illegitimate offspring.
Of course, there was no way to verify such rumors.
Ten years ago, Wu Daodao returned with money he had earned from outside and decided to rebuild the Qingyun Sect. Sohow, after two months of entanglent with the temple’s monks, he persuaded them to give it up.
The land was acquired through procedures handled by the village committee, which leased out the hillside.
The old monk moved away with the young one. When they left, they took nothing but two personal bundles, and their destination remained unknown.
However, it was later said that so villagers had seen the young monk in the county town—no longer a monk, but running a fruit stall in the market.
The two decrepit tile-roofed rooms of the forr temple were promptly razed by Wu Daodao with a tractor that sa day.
Afterward, a construction boom ensued, and a large courtyard was built over more than half a year.
It had walls of red brick and a roof of green tiles. The sand and cent were hauled in from the town.
At the ti, villagers were curious. They thought Wu Daodao must have struck it rich while adventuring and had returned to build himself a grand mansion.
To their surprise, once the courtyard was completed, Wu Daodao hung a sign reading "Qingyun Sect" above the main gate and turned it into so sort of research society—a concept the villagers didn’t understand. Everyone said that this Wu Daodao was establishing his own school or sect there.
Only the village elders, upon seeing the three large characters "Qingyun Sect," would gaze from a distance with complex expressions before walking away, muttering to themselves.
Later, word spread through the village.
The Qingyun Sect had been an ancient local institution.
It had been burned down during the wars before the founding of the new country.
The sect’s original ancestral ho was a compound on the mountainside.
After being destroyed in the fires of war, it was left in ruins.
But later, when villagers needed bricks for building houses or constructing pigpens, they would scavenge in the ruins on the back mountain.
Any usable stones were also eagerly carted away.
So, with people taking a piece here and a piece there, gradually, not even ruined walls remained.
It was said that the greenstone slabs used for the old village school’s foundation had also been scavenged from those ruins.
Nobody knew that the Qingyun Sect, whose influence had vanished from the village for decades, was being rebuilt by this Wu Daodao.
Initially, the younger generation in the village found it novel. So had read martial arts novels and thought it was so kind of ga. After the signboard was hung on the main gate, so young villagers, completely engrossed and deluded by these novels, even ca to the Qingyun Sect wishing to beco disciples and learn martial arts.
So even imitated scenes from the books, kneeling before the sect gate, only to be dragged ho by their elders, beaten with shoe soles until their noses were bloody and faces swollen.
Later, the villagers began to look upon Wu Daodao and his family with disapproval. The older residents claid he was neglecting his proper business and warned that any money he had would soon be squandered.
The young people in the village had initially thought Wu Daodao possessed so incredible martial arts abilities and were very curious about him.
However, one ti when Wu Daodao went to town on a donkey cart for errands, the donkey acted up. Wu Daodao was kicked by the donkey and injured; he limped for more than a month.
Thus, the young n were disappointed.
What kind of martial arts master gets his leg broken by a donkey’s kick?
Later on, they discovered Wu Daodao had no real martial talent and was no good in fights, though he could read fortunes and practice geomancy for people.
Thus, everyone ca to regard the Qingyun Sect as a family of geomancers.
It was Wu Daodao’s wife who was renowned within a ten-mile radius as a fierce female butcher. She slaughtered pigs without batting an eyelid and was known for her ferocity and strength; none dared to provoke her.
Moreover, this woman didn’t charge for slaughtering pigs! At most, after butchering a pig, she would take a set of offal ho as paynt.
Gradually, she lived in harmony with the villagers, and their relationships improved. Additionally, Wu Daodao was quite skilled in fortune-telling and geomancy, becoming a locally famous "half-immortal." Occasionally, when villagers had weddings, funerals, relocations, or house constructions, they would willingly seek out the Qingyun Sect for consultation.
Yun Yin reached Cross Slope but didn’t head to the Qingyun Sect’s main gate. Instead, she bypassed the slope, heading straight toward the back mountain.
The southern region is characterized by nurous hills, and such untad slopes are a common sight. Here, mountains stretched one after another; though not particularly high, their continuous expanse created an imposing atmosphere. If it were sumr, the lush green mountain ridges would stretch for more than ten miles, creating an impressive sight.
Entering the mountain, Yun Yin walked swiftly, pausing only occasionally to confirm her direction before continuing along the mountain trail.
She rounded the woods, crossed a stream, and arrived in a valley.
This valley had clearly once held a path, but it had long been deserted, its yellow soil now covered by wild grass.
A thicket of flourishing shrubs and thorns lay ahead.
Standing outside the valley, Yun Yin let out a soft sigh. She looked up at the sky and squinted. Under the starry sky, she suddenly raised her hands and made several strange gestures, muttering sothing...
Suddenly, a green aura seed to flow between her brows, and in her vision, the thicket slowly parted, revealing a crumbling stone path.
The stone slabs, however, were mostly broken.
Yun Yin stepped onto it, loose stones shifting under her feet. Her eyes, tinged with a faint sadness, stared ahead.
After passing through the thicket and around a few large trees, the view suddenly opened up, revealing an ancient, grand courtyard house!
But its mottled walls were overgrown with vines, the once red-lacquered main gate had long faded beyond recognition, and its door panels and lintel had mostly collapsed from years of rain.
Standing before the gate of the residence, Yun Yin gently touched a roadside hitching post. Her gaze, though her head was bowed, was fixed on a half-buried bronze plaque lying near the collapsed gate!
It was almost rusted through, but the original characters for "Qingyun" were still faintly discernible.
"This place... is it your ho?" she suddenly said softly.
Then, Yun Yin’s expression changed. She snorted coldly, "Shut up! It’s none of your business."
After a mont of silence, she sighed softly and said in a low voice, "If you promise not to harm anyone, I won’t interfere with you."
"Hmph," Yun Yin scoffed. "Once I find a way, you’ll have no ans to threaten ."
With that, she leaped over the collapsed gateway into the residence.
Inside was a large compound with three successive courtyards.
Although dilapidated, with many sections collapsed, it was clear that its original construction must have been magnificent.
In the first courtyard, rows of wing rooms flanked both sides, and the ground of the central open space was paved with bluestone slabs arranged in a Bagua diagram pattern.
Nearby stood weapon racks for training and a bronze cauldron.
It was clearly a training ground.
The main hall at the front was empty, its support columns entwined with vines.
Yun Yin walked over, lifted the vines on the left column, and felt for a carved mark.
Looking at the dilapidated courtyard, her mind replayed scenes from the past: a young girl giggling and running about, secretly standing by the pillar to asure her height, then carving a mark with a small knife. She rembered her father, always stern-faced, hands clasped behind his back, standing before her, rigorously teaching her to recite the cultivation formulas... And then... everything changed. After my father died, I was confined to the back courtyard under supervision, forbidden from ever playing in the front courtyard’s training ground again. Those senior martial brothers and sisters, once so warm to , later avoided on sight.
She passed through a corridor beside the main hall and stepped through a doorway into the second courtyard.
Yun Yin then stood on the left side of the second courtyard. Staring at the scene before her, she remained utterly motionless...
Before her lay a field of ruins!
Charred, broken pillars, clearly remnants of a fire.
The shattered bricks and timber on the ground had lost all color, and the area was choked with weeds.
Yun Yin stood there, staring at the ruins for a full ten minutes before she slowly took a deep breath.
Suddenly, she asked softly, "What about the building that used to be here?"
Her voice was soft, yet it seed to tremble with suppressed anger.
From the courtyard behind Yun Yin, a voice slowly answered, "Are you asking about the library? It burned down a long ti ago."
About ten paces behind Yun Yin stood Wu Daodao’s wife, the middle-aged woman in a short jacket.
Her hands hung down, but in her right hand, she held a whip!
Yun Yin slowly turned. She glanced at the middle-aged woman, her gaze lingering on the whip in the woman’s hand for a mont before she shook her head. "That Immortal-binding Rope of yours is a counterfeit, a fake."
The middle-aged woman remained silent, her gaze complicated as she looked at Yun Yin.
After a long mont, she finally asked, her voice hoarse, "You... how do you know?"
Yun Yin gently smiled. "The real Immortal-binding Rope was torn apart by my own hands back in the day."
The middle-aged woman nodded. "Hmm... The Sect passed down the legend that hundreds of years ago, the Immortal-binding Rope was held by the Sect Leader at that ti. Later, during a catastrophe, the Sect Leader perished, and the Immortal-binding Rope was also destroyed by a formidable enemy.
"This Immortal-binding Rope of mine, I made it myself based on the Sect’s archives. However, my skills are insufficient, and many precious materials are hard to co by these days. Therefore, this one is naturally not as good as the original from the Sect."
Yun Yin nodded. "You used cow tendons to replace Jiaolong tendons, which is more than a grade lower in material. Additionally, the attached Spells are also lacking."
The middle-aged woman rolled her eyes. "Let’s not talk about the Spells for now. You ntion Jiaolong tendons... hmm, where am I supposed to find crocodile tendons? Don’t you know it’s illegal to kill crocodiles nowadays?
"Moreover, even if there are places where crocodiles are fard, those fard crocodiles have soft flesh and weak sinews. Killing them and extracting the tendons wouldn’t be any good, not even as good as cow tendons."
Yun Yin nodded. "You’re not wrong. To make the Immortal-binding Rope, one needs sinews from a Jiaolong that has lived for a hundred years as the main material. Back then, my father... uh, the Immortal-binding Rope that belonged to our Sect was made from a Jiaolong hunted down that was at least one hundred and fifty years old."
"Stop talking about Jiaolong this, Jiaolong that; a crocodile is a crocodile," the middle-aged woman shook her head, speaking coldly. "Who are you, really? Can you tell now?"
Yun Yin smiled. "How many people are left in the Qingyun Sect?"
"Not many, just our family," the middle-aged woman sighed. "To be precise, among those who entered the Dao through martial arts, I am the only one left. As for the others... my husband cultivates mystic arts, and I didn’t have the heart to make the children learn martial arts."
"Ridiculous!" Yun Yin shook her head, scolding coldly. "Our Qingyun Sect has, for millennia, held that entering the Dao through martial arts is the true path! All other techniques, like Spells, are rely supplental, unorthodox practices. To abandon the true path and have Sect mbers cultivate unorthodox ways... Is this how you, the current Sect Leader of the Qingyun Sect, manage affairs?"
The middle-aged woman opened her mouth, then shook her head. "You’re mistaken. I’m not the current Sect Leader; my husband is. Besides... what’s so great about entering the Dao through martial arts, this ’true path’? In the history of our Qingyun Sect, how many of those Sect Leaders and masters who entered the Dao through martial arts, followed the true path, and achieved profound cultivation actually t a good end? We live in peaceful tis now; what’s the use of cultivating these things? It’s better to learn so Spells that can actually be useful. That’s enough to get by in the secular world."
"Enough?" Yun Yin scoffed, her face suddenly turning grim. "Enough my ass! If a powerful enemy—say, soone like —ca to slaughter your entire family, would you rely on those unorthodox Spells, those illusion techniques, or those fortune-telling thods to defend yourselves?!"
The middle-aged woman gave a strange laugh, sizing up Yun Yin and slowly shaking her head. "That’s a ridiculous thing to say. Don’t you understand we live in a society ruled by law? Assault is illegal, and murder is a capital cri. If soone cos to kill, you call the police. Peaceful tis have peaceful rules.
"You enter the Dao through martial arts, but even if you could soar to the heavens and burrow into the earth, what use would it be? This world has guns, cannons, airplanes, and tanks. No matter how strong you are, there are missiles and nuclear weapons...
"And honestly, can practicing those things get you urban residency? Help you pass the civil service exams? Secure a governnt job? Buy a house or a car?
"Our sons need to marry, our daughters need to be wed; people need to work, to live their daily lives. Those martial practices... for people like us, we dabble, and that’s the extent of it."
After hearing this, Yun Yin suddenly retracted the murderous aura on her face. She stared at the middle-aged woman and gave a slight nod.
"Hmm, you make a fair point."
"Hmm?"
"I said, you make a fair point." Yun Yin smiled. "I’m not so clueless ancient demon. I understand this world better than you do; I lived in the West for many years."
The middle-aged woman swallowed and sighed. "After all this talk, you still haven’t answered my question. Just who are you? Last ti, I couldn’t get an answer before Chen Nuo took you away. I didn’t expect you to sneak back here in the middle of the night. If the ancestral ho’s formation hadn’t been triggered, waking , I wouldn’t have known that besides myself, there was another person in this world who could recognize the Qingyun Sect’s ancestral formation. So... who are you, really?"
Yun Yin frowned. "This formation... only you know about it? What about your husband? Isn’t he the Sect Leader?"
"There are many things it’s better he doesn’t know. Living an ordinary, carefree life is easier than anything," the middle-aged woman shook her head.
A thought suddenly struck Yun Yin. She looked at the middle-aged woman. "You... your surna is Yun?"
"My maternal grandfather’s surna was Yun," the middle-aged woman rolled her eyes.
"That’s not right. As a descendant of the Yun clan, even if there were no male heirs, a female descendant from a lineage would typically be chosen to carry on the surna. Since you cultivate our Sect’s true path, you should bear the Yun surna!"
The middle-aged woman laughed. "Senior, what era do you think this is? Boys and girls are equal now. Why obsess over surnas and lineage? It’s not as if there’s a royal throne to inherit in the family."
At this, the middle-aged woman spread her hands. "So, are you going to answer my question or not? Who are you? Coming to our ancestral ho in the dead of night, you should at least reveal your identity. If you really won’t say, I’m going back to sleep. Autumn may not have mosquitoes, but the mountain wind is still quite cold."
Yun Yin stared at the middle-aged woman and finally nodded slowly. "The na Yun He... does that ring a bell?"
"Yun He..." The middle-aged woman frowned in thought, then her expression filled with astonished realization. "Could it be... the ancestor known as the ’Land Appraiser Venerable’?"
"What Land Appraiser Venerable? Such titles are nonsense." Yun Yin chuckled, then nodded. "But yes, that’s him. Yun He... was my father."
The middle-aged woman’s body trembled! But then, she shook her head. "I don’t have much schooling, so don’t try to fool . It’s been at least three hundred years since Venerable Yun He passed away! Besides... your father is clearly Sun Shengli, Principal Sun. I’ve even t him!"
Yun Yin: "..."
The middle-aged woman slapped her thigh. "So... this body belongs to Principal Sun’s daughter. But the soul in it now... is Venerable Yun He’s daughter? In that case, are you a spirit returned in a borrowed corpse, or is this Body Seizing by a living soul?"
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