Blade Rising in the Five Elements, Chapter Eighty-Eight: Better to Take the Straight Path
The boy sat before the bellows, holding up a fire poker blackened at the tip. Pretending it was a treasured sword, he meant to imitate the figure from his dreams and whirl a dashing flourish. But he lost his grip and jabbed his mother as she was dropping dough into the pot beside him. The patched trousers at once bore a long black streak.
The woman flared with anger, seized the boy by the collar, and gave him a vicious beating on the backside. Hidden beneath his quilted trousers, it did not hurt much.
“Mother, I won’t dare again... Mother, stop hitting me.”
The boy wailed extravagantly. Once his mother’s temper subsided, he had escaped disaster.
Yet he no longer dared play with the fire poker.
Resting his chin in his left hand, he watched the fire in the hearth and let out a wide yawn. Just as his eyelids were growing heavy, a clear voice sounded in the courtyard.
“Sister, would it be convenient for me to have breakfast at your home?”
The woman turned toward the doorway and saw Su Ye, who had visited their house the night before. Her face immediately broke into a radiant smile.
A meal for a few taels of silver.
A bargain like that, even with the most expensive lantern in the general store, would be hard to find again in these parts.
“Brother, come inside quickly. The food will be ready in a moment.” She kicked the boy with her foot. “Go fetch two eggs from the henhouse.”
The boy ran out of the main room. Passing Su Ye, he grinned at him.
Su Ye stepped into the house and casually glanced at the divine statue placed within the wooden niche.
The man coiled within it had already been sent into reincarnation by his compassionate soul-guiding passage and would no longer bring harm to the region.
Spirit Jade was fine indeed, but it had to be taken by proper means.
Stealing was obviously not his style.
“Sister, to tell you the truth,” Su Ye said solemnly, “I am a disciple of the inner court of the Jade Profound Sect... Last night, I entered a dream and subdued a demon, helping this village rid itself of a hidden evil.”
The woman looked at his handsome face and could not help but smile.
“Now that you put it that way... when I woke up this morning, I really did not feel tired at all.”
“Can you guess where the fiend was hiding?” Su Ye teased, leading her along.
The woman leaned forward until she was almost touching him. “Where was it hiding?”
Su Ye subtly stepped back to widen the distance between them, then raised a hand and pointed at the wooden niche.
“It was that divine statue made of demon stone.”
“If that is so... then this thing really is an ominous object!” The woman believed him without the slightest doubt, and her face filled with concern.
Just as Su Ye was about to speak, a Daoist in a robe of blue hemp and Taiji pattern came into the courtyard.
He wore a Eight Trigrams cap, a Seven Stars sword slung across his back, and held a whisk in his hand.
“My friend, you have always been an upright man. Why are you lying to deceive a kind woman?”
At his words, Su Ye and the woman both turned to look at him.
“Daoist, you...” the woman began, but did not finish.
Su Ye was not angry; rather, he felt somewhat relieved that the Daoist had arrived so suddenly.
Otherwise, he would have had to carry the lie through and mislead a woman who trusted him completely.
Though he would not have paid any less silver, it would still have counted as a kind of deception.
He could not help sighing inwardly.
“At the beginning, when I was poisoned by demonic corruption, it was precisely because greed arose in my heart.
“Now I am already a cultivator seeking immortality, and yet I still have not shed my base nature.”
The Daoist stroked his beard and said, “I recall a saying from the scholars: to know one’s mistake and correct it is the greatest of virtues.”
Su Ye looked in surprise at the unremarkable Daoist.
The ability to probe another’s thoughts was a karmic skill only cultivators above the Mysterious Truth realm could comprehend.
This Daoist’s aura was not strong enough; restrained rather than released, and in Su Ye’s perception he did not even match Zheng Tiandao of the Jade Robe realm.
His mind turning, Su Ye vaguely guessed the other man’s identity.
But he did not dare make a rash conclusion.
The Daoist stroked his long beard and smiled at the woman.
“This divine statue was indeed once the dwelling place of a fiend... However, its material, for this friend here, is worth a fortune beyond measure...
“How much to sell it for, that is for you to decide.”
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Four people sat around the heated table.
Two Daoists and two commoners.
The seat of honor in the north was given to the Daoist.
Mother and son sat side by side on the east.
Su Ye sat opposite them.
“Brother, what do you want the divine statue for?” the woman asked sincerely.
She was a country woman and had never studied in her life.
The rules of the earth, beaten in by broom handles and dug from yellow soil.
This had always made her believe that Su Ye was not a bad person.
Even if he had once been tempted by greed, it was only the nature of an ordinary man.
Otherwise, he would not have been willing to stop by for a meal and pay several taels of silver.
Without anyone asking him, he had taken action to subdue the village’s fiend; that only proved his true heart.
Su Ye briefly told the people at the table about his experiences with his Dao companion.
After hearing it, the woman was speechless for a long while.
She and her husband, who worked at the blacksmith’s shop in town, had married by parental order and matchmaker’s arrangement.
Before the wedding ceremony, they had never even seen each other.
Married with children, tempered by the cruelty of life.
They farmed the fields and paid grain tax, and still had to find ways to feed the infant in its swaddling clothes.
She did not know what the word “love” meant.
Yet hearing how Su Ye and Luo Jinghong had, in only a few moments, gone from strangers to understanding one another and then to falling in love...
She could not help but feel that though they shared the same world under heaven, their lives were utterly different.
The woman used her sleeve to wipe away the tears at the corner of her eyes, filled with countless feelings, and said sincerely, “That divine statue never cost any silver to begin with, and on top of that it was hiding a monster that harmed the villagers... Even if you did not buy it, I would still have to find a way to get rid of it.
“It would be better to simply give it to you for nothing.”
The Daoist waved his whisk and stroked his beard with a smile.
“You may not know this... but Daoist Friend Su is not only a sword cultivator, he is also an alchemist, and even capable of creating his own techniques.
“For a cultivator like him, the thing he lacks least is money.
“If you do not take payment, he will feel uneasy in his conscience.”
After listening carefully, the country woman turned to Su Ye.
“Is that how it is?”
“I had no intention of hiding it, only...” Su Ye said.
“Only you were afraid I would raise the price on the spot,” the woman said with a laugh. “Then you would be underestimating your sister.”
Su Ye was left speechless.
The Daoist looked at the boy and asked, “What is your name?”
“Chen Chong,” the boy answered without hesitation.
The Daoist swept his right hand through the air, and when he extended it before Chen Chong, a letter had appeared in his hand.
Chen Chong could not read. His innocent eyes stared straight at the Daoist.
“You may take this letter to the nearby Heavenly Spring Sect on Python Head Mountain and enter the sect to cultivate immortality.”
The woman hurriedly said, “Chong’er, quickly thank him.”
Chen Chong sprang to his feet in alarm, knelt facing the Daoist, and kowtowed three times with loud, resounding thuds.
Su Ye cupped his hands and said, “Senior, as the saying goes, one should save a person to the very end and escort the Buddha all the way to the West.
“This junior does not know what price to offer for the divine statue... I hope you can act as mediator and name a fair price.”
The Daoist did not refuse. Looking at the woman, he said, “For you, this divine statue is both a burden and a sin.”
Then he turned to Su Ye. “For you, it is a priceless treasure.”
Neither of them spoke.
“I will propose a middle ground... How about Daoist Friend Su pays a thousand-tael banknote to purchase the divine statue?”
“Everything shall be decided by the Daoist priest.” The woman had no objection.
Su Ye summoned a thousand-tael banknote bearing the seal of the World Treasury Bank.
From the woman’s hands, he purchased the Spirit Jade.
A strand of Buddhist prayer beads was wrapped around the demon statue, suppressing its sinister power.
He stored it inside a jade gourd.
The Daoist looked at Chen Chong and instructed him, “Do you still remember the four words Daoist Friend Su left you yesterday?”
“I do,” Chen Chong answered respectfully.
“Say them for me.”
“Ten Directions Dream Domain.”
“You must keep these four words in mind. When you reach a place of extreme peril, shout them three times into the sky.
“By then, someone will come to save you.
“This method can be used only once. Unless it is truly the end of the road, never use it.”
Chen Chong nodded obediently.
The woman’s face was full of relief.
From the side, Su Ye watched the Daoist intently, finally confirming his identity.
There could be no second possibility besides Daoist Tiancang.
Daoist Tiancang flicked his whisk and swept his right hand through the air.
When he extended it before Su Ye, a delicate golden brocade pouch appeared in his hand.
Ten ancient seal-script characters were embroidered on it in red thread:
“Take only in a straight line; seek not by crooked means.”
Su Ye took the pouch, his heart pounding like a drum.
Inside this pouch was a treasure.
The Rainbow Feather Robe.