"Ah…!"
Song Qiuyue let out a cry of agony. The cultivators around her went pale, every face turning toward Chen Huangpi with fury.
"How dare you—"
"Everyone shut up!"
Song Qiuyue swallowed the pain and forced a smile. She left her severed hands where they had fallen and dropped to her knees in front of Chen Huangpi, keeping pace with him and saying: "Chen Huangpi, you shelter those remnants — you are kind. Why can you not spare a little of that kindness for ?"
"Just give a little more ti, can't you?"
"I will definitely pay you back."
Chen Huangpi stared at her coldly, raised one finger, thought for a mont, then lowered it.
"Half a day. I'm giving you half a day."
"I know you can send ssages through your deities to reach your uncle. Send the ssage right now. Have him dispatch soone to bring the copper coins."
"Otherwise — I'll have your heads."
Song Qiuyue let out a bitter laugh. "Mount Yuqiong is completely surrounded by white mist. With that mist blocking the way, how am I supposed to reach my uncle?"
Chen Huangpi was taken aback. Could white mist actually block communication between deities and the outside world? He had no idea.
He turned to look at the brass oil lamp.
"Don't ask. Ask and you'll get nothing."
The brass oil lamp felt helpless. This was Second Master's doing, after all — and Second Master was far more terrifying than First Master and twice as unhinged. Say the wrong thing and upset him, and it would be the one getting chewed on.
Chen Huangpi looked at the lamp's reaction and said: "Huang Er knows everything. If even Huang Er doesn't know that white mist can block deities, then you're lying."
"Every word I said is true."
Song Qiuyue said: "That white mist is deeply strange. Even the deities cannot disperse it. One touch and it swallows you whole."
Saying this, Song Qiuyue gritted her teeth and cast a look at one of the cultivators.
The cultivator understood imdiately, quickly produced a magical artifact, and launched it toward the white mist surrounding Mount Yuqiong.
Chen Huangpi watched.
The artifact shot into the mist — and the mist parted right there, pulling open a gap to reveal the dense mountain forest beyond.
"What—"
Song Qiuyue's eyes went wide. She hurriedly explained: "The mist wasn't like that before — this isn't right, this isn't right at all, this—"
"What's wrong with this mist?"
An old, raspy voice sounded from behind Chen Huangpi.
The cultivators gaped, every one of them trembling uncontrollably, and dropped to their knees.
It was him.
That strange old Daoist priest.
And he was wearing white — the most frenzied one.
Chen Huangpi looked at the cultivators' reactions and said, puzzled: "Second Master, I'm in the middle of handling sothing. You've scared all of them."
"This master doesn't eat people. How could I frighten anyone?"
The white-robed Daoist priest smiled warmly and turned to the cultivators, baring a set of unnervingly sharp and densely-packed teeth.
"Isn't that right?"
Every cultivator — and even every deity — imdiately began speaking in unison, as if by reflex: "Yes — Second Master is the best. First Master is the worst, and Third Master is even worse! Second Master is the true good master of Chen Huangpi!"
This was not the white-robed Daoist priest warping their will.
Their bodies had simply morized the words so thoroughly during the night that the mont they saw him, the words ca out involuntarily.
Watching this, Song Qiuyue felt a chill spread through her that she couldn't describe.
The old Daoist priest kept saying he didn't eat people.
But she could plainly see in his eyes a hunger and a madness he could not suppress.
A heartbeat later, as if sensing sothing, the white-robed Daoist priest looked at Song Qiuyue with an expression between a smile and sothing else, and said: "Little girl, just now you said sothing was wrong with this mist, didn't you?"
"I didn't—"
"Don't be afraid. You may have tender skin that would take well to a slow roast over a small fla, but this Daoist priest doesn't eat people."
"Go on — tell , what was wrong? Where was it wrong?"
"I'm sorry, it was a mistake — I was talking nonsense!"
"The mist is just mist. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the mist."
Song Qiuyue crumpled to the floor and shook her head helplessly.
The white-robed Daoist priest's smile remained unchanged. "In that case — send your ssage."
"Yes, yes, of course."
Song Qiuyue said in a voice on the edge of breaking: "I'll send word to Xu Province right now. I'll do it this instant."
And she imdiately reached out through the forty deities.
The deities naturally didn't dare refuse. They were deities — but they had once been cultivators who transcended into godhood.
Cultivators were people.
And people were afraid to die.
The deities channeled what little incense power they had left, drawing on their divine strength in an attempt to push their ssages through the white mist and reach Xu Province city.
They knew it was impossible.
But when this bizarre old Daoist priest gave the order — did they dare not try?
The mont their divine senses entered the mist, every deity froze.
Because there really was a voice responding to them.
It just happened to be the white-robed Daoist priest's voice.
"You're actually sending it for real?"
……
Elsewhere. In Xu Province city.
Inside the Song family estate, the usual air of calm and composure had been replaced by a suffocating silence.
Thousands of servants and attendants, along with Song Tiangang's children and concubines, all held their breath and didn't dare make a sound.
Sothing major had happened the night before.
Sothing that had driven even Song Tiangang — Governor of Xu Province — into a cold fury.
Since sunrise, several figures of consequence, the kind of n who outside these walls were addressed as officials and lords, had been ushered into Song Tiangang's study.
Not one of them had co back out.
Inside the study.
Crash.
A vase hit the floor, hurled down by Song Tiangang's hand with trendous force.
"Close to ten thousand migrants — vanished into thin air and reappeared outside Xu Province city."
"And not one of you can tell who did this."
"What exactly is the use of any of you?"
"Useless — every last one of you!"
The officials, each dressed in their deep crimson robes of office, kept their heads down and let Song Tiangang spray abuse at them without a word of protest.
"What about the forty deities?"
"And the cultivators?"
"Can soone tell where they've gone?"
This matter could be made big or kept small.
Xu Province city danced entirely to Song Tiangang's tune. He needed only to issue the order, and the whole affair could be buried completely. Even now, no one in the city knew what had happened.
The problem was — Song Tiangang didn't know what had happened either.
He only knew that the migrants had entered the Hundred Thousand Mountains, and in the space of a blink they had reappeared outside Xu Province city — with no mory of anything that had occurred.
"Your Excellency."
One official could not hold his tongue: "The migrants' mories have been completely wiped. The deities cannot restore them — otherwise we could know exactly what happened."
"If it would help, we could take one of the remnants to the City God. A trace-back might recover what happened last night."
"Trace-back my foot!"
Song Tiangang's fury obliterated decades of carefully cultivated composure. "If that were possible, do you think I'd have summoned you worthless lot in here?"
The City God of Xu Province was his Seventh Grand-uncle — sent here from the Song family in the capital.
For official business — like when he had sent Elder Lin and the others into the Hundred Thousand Mountains to find the source of the corruption, to stir unrest among the city's people, to harvest the tax revenue — Seventh Grand-uncle would readily help.
But this was private business. And it concerned the secret of immortality hidden within that mutated divine statue.
Give him ten thousand tis the courage — he still would not dare go to Seventh Grand-uncle with this.
If nothing was traced back, fine. But if the trace-back revealed sothing that should never have been seen — then the entire Song family would co for him.
Ascending to godhood was only a last resort.
Immortality was Song Tiangang's true ambition.
Even if he ever did let the Song family in on it — that could only happen after he had unlocked the secret of immortality and beco an immortal himself.
Moreover, these past days, Song Tiangang had been carrying his golden seal on him at all tis.
Because only with the golden seal on his person was he — as the Governor of an entire province — comparable in authority to the City God. Every word he spoke, everyone he saw, would be obscured by the boundless human qi stored within the seal.
It was precisely for this reason that Seventh Grand-uncle could not discover what he was up to.
At that mont the study door was pushed open, and the steward entered.
Song Tiangang's eyes swept coldly to the officials. "This matter — I'm suppressing it for now. Go and sort out those migrants. If you can't handle it, take off those crimson robes."
"How should we handle them, exactly?"
The officials grimaced — to kill them or to release them, give us sothing concrete to work with.
The word "handle" covered a very wide range of possibilities.
Song Tiangang took a slow breath. "Wipe their mories. Those who should be jailed — jail them. Those who should go ho — send them ho."
"Get out."
The officials filed out in a hurry.
The steward waited until they were gone, then said, shaking his head: "Your Excellency — Miss Qiuyue still hasn't returned."
"I know."
Song Tiangang's face remained dark. He picked up a cup of tea and took a sip. "By the usual schedule, she should be sending a ssage back to us right about now, shouldn't she?"
"Yes — the mont you finish that cup of tea, the ssage should co."
"Heh."
Song Tiangang gave a cold laugh, drained the cup in one go, and vanished in a flicker.
When he reappeared, he was standing inside a certain room within the Song estate.
From the outside, the room looked entirely ordinary.
Inside, it was vast enough to make the jaw drop.
Row upon row of deities sat cross-legged within it, human qi so thick it was practically seeping into the air.
Song Tiangang had long since reached the absolute peak of the Nascent Soul realm. He paid the human qi no mind and walked straight up to the deities.
"We pay our respects, Your Excellency."
The deities dared not be arrogant, and all bowed in greeting.
"Which of you has been keeping in contact with Qiuyue?"
"That would be , Your Excellency."
A deity of about forty years' apparent age, wearing a Confucian scholar's cap, stepped down from its pedestal.
Song Tiangang looked at it without expression. The golden seal at his waist shot out a beam of golden light, and in an instant it plunged into the deity's eyes.
The deity imdiately stiffened, its gaze going blank and hollow.
A mont later, the deity opened its mouth — and Song Qiuyue's voice ca out: "Uncle, it's , Qiuyue! How could you send only forty deities? That's far too few — send more, send more!"
"Four hundred, would that be enough?"
Song Tiangang said: "Xu Province city holds thousands of deities. Aside from Seventh Grand-uncle, there are four county-level City Gods. I was thinking — I might as well send all of them."
"The only question is whether you can stomach them all!"
With that, Song Tiangang shattered the deity's head in one strike.
Streams of human qi poured into his golden seal in an instant.
With the seal upon him, Song Tiangang within Xu Province city was a force comparable to the City God itself.
The remaining deities watched — and every one of them looked away, as if they had seen nothing.
Song Tiangang walked out of the room without any change of expression.
With a casual sweep of his hand, the human qi that the deities had been feeding on seed to take on a will of its own — and sealed every last one of them inside.
Outside, the steward stood waiting at his side.
Song Tiangang glanced at him coldly and said: "Can we still reach the fifty deities we sent out later?"
"We can."
"Have them co back."
The steward paused. "Understood. And Miss Qiuyue… her life tablet is still intact."
That is to say — she was still alive.
Were they really going to leave her to her fate?
Song Tiangang gave a sudden small laugh. "She's a mber of the Song family. If she lives, we see her in person;
if she dies, we recover her remains. But the ti to bring her ho is not now. We wait."
"This servant understands."
The steward grasped it at once. They would wait for when the life tablet shattered.
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