Unsheathed

Chapter 141(2): Fantastic Oddities (2)

Chen Ping'an didn't dare to go anywhere that he pleased in the inn, so he made his way to the pavilion, where he noticed Lin Shouyi sitting inside. He didn't dare to disrupt Lin Shouyi in his cultivation, so after observing the boy for a while, he decided to turn and depart, but right as he did so, Lin Shouyi stood up and beckoned to him.

Chen Ping'an strode into the pavilion, and compared with when he had first arrived at the Autumn Reed Inn, there seemed to have been a bit more flair and elegance about the current Lin Shouyi.

Lin Shouyi chose a less sensitive subject to break the ice as he said, "Cui Dongshan borrowed a talisman from me, then blatantly broke the rules of the inn, stepping out of this pavilion before jumping into that old well, and he's nowhere to be seen now."

"I don't care whether Cui Dongshan lives or dies, and I can't control his actions," Chen Ping'an replied in a quiet voice.

Lin Shouyi was silent for a long while, then turned to look at the well as he continued, "I know you had good intentions when you decided for all of us to stay here, but you should've notified me in advance."

"I will in the future," Chen Ping'an replied with a nod.

Lin Shouyi turned back around to carefully inspect Chen Ping'an's expression as he asked, "That's it?"

"Of course, what were you expecting?" Chen Ping'an asked.

A self-deprecating look appeared on Lin Shouyi's face as he said, "I thought you would try to talk some sense into me, or just roll up your sleeve and give me a beating. I was already prepared to not retaliate no matter how you beat me or scolded me."

Chen Ping'an shook his head in silence as he leaned against a pillar of the pavilion. He then cast his gaze toward the old well, but he wasn't able to see anything special about it.

"I'm sorry for yelling at you," Lin Shouyi said.

Chen Ping'an smiled as he waved a dismissive hand in response, then sat down with his legs crossed and stared intently at the well with an unblinking gaze.

Lin Shouyi was very relieved that he had escaped a beating, but a perplexed look then appeared on his face as he asked, "What are you doing?"

"I have to look really hard at the scenery here to make it worth the money I spent to stay here!" Chen Ping'an replied with a serious expression.

Lin Shouyi immediately clapped a hand firmly over his own mouth so that he didn't laugh out loud.

————

In the Great Water Palace on the bank of the Cold Food River.

The azure-robed man occupying the main seat turned to the guests in the hall, and people immediately began to stand up one after another to offer toasts to him, showering all types of praise and adulation onto their host.

A literary who was renowned across the imperial court stood up once again, raising his cup to the azure-robed man as he spoke about how the great river god was solely responsible for the safety and prosperity of the prefecture over the past however many years, completely dismissing the role played by the prefectural overseer with the Wei surname.

This was rather blatant and corny flattery, but the literary master wasn't the only one uttering such words of praise. As soon as he sat back down, a man wearing a third-rank official uniform of Yellow Court Nation immediately stood up to take his place, also raising his cup as he delivered words of praise to the azure-robed man.

As a third-rank official, he was the highest-ranked official present, but he was still referring to the azure-robed man as an esteemed lord, just like everyone else.

Once someone ascended to godhood, their name and the clan they had come from while they were alive were all made secret. As for those who were blessed with the opportunity to meet a god, they had to be particularly mindful of this and avoid referring to the deity by name.

The title of "lord" was a safe colloquial term, and as for why this was the case, there were all types of stories aiming to explain the title, out of which the commonly accepted one was that among the three direct disciples of the Dao Ancestor, one of them liked to refer to their master as lord, and the Dao Ancestor accepted this title, following which it gradually became popular throughout the land.

The azure-robed man slowly withdrew his gaze. On either side of the hall sat four of his most trusted subordinates who had followed him everywhere he had gone. The ones that had been with him the longest had been around for over 300 years, while even the ones that had been with him the shortest time had accompanied him for over a century.

Prior to attaining a human form, one of them had been a bright red koi fish, and he was extremely close with another koi spirit cultivator in the Great Li Empire's Rushing Tranquil River.

However, the koi spirit was on a mission at the moment, so his seat was empty.

Another one of his subordinates had once been a water snake. He wielded a pair of steel maces, which were artifacts left behind by an immortal that he had inadvertently stumbled upon. In battle, his favorite way to dispatch opponents was to smash their heads open with his maces. Furthermore, he liked to devour children, but he only did so occasionally, not daring to do so too frequently as he was being kept partially in check by the azure-robed man.

The third subordinate to the great river god was once a toad. He possessed the best aptitude out of all of the great river god's subordinates, but he was very lazy, so his cultivation base was languishing at the bottom of the pack. However, he had an incredible ability that allowed him to devour as much water as he pleased.

So long as his mouth remained open, he would be able to guzzle down water indefinitely, and his stomach would never burst. Hence, no one dared to pick on him, and he was an extremely prized subordinate to the great river god. There were once two river gods who had joined forces and gathered an army to try and overthrow the great river god.

Thus, the Cold Food Great River God had sent this subordinate of his to sneak over to the origin of one of the rivers, where he had then revealed his true form, a toad that was the size of a mountain. The toad spirit then proceeded to devour the origin point of the river, forcing that river god to surrender without putting up a fight.

As a result, the other river god was left on his own, and his temple and godly body were destroyed by the Cold Food Great River Gods. The fragments of that river god's temple and godly body had all sunk down to the riverbed of the Cold Food River, making it impossible for the river god to ever enter the cycle of reincarnation.

The final one of the great river god's subordinates was one that stood out a little like a sore thumb. His hair was well-groomed and he had a very refined disposition, and if it weren't for the fact that his face was a dark green color, he would've looked exactly like a middle-aged scholar.

The Cold Food River was around 400 meters in length, and it passed through three states and eight prefectures. Hence, the entire northern region of Yellow Court Nation relied on this river to nurture the land.

The scholarly man wasn't renowned in the Great Water Palace for his combat prowess, but he was the undisputed chief strategist, constantly advising the great river god from behind the scenes, and he was someone who liked to operate alone and never worked with others or joined any factions.

Half of the maidservants serving tea and wine in the hall were human beauties, while the other half were wearing a special type of makeup to disguise their deathly appearance, and these were water ghosts that had drowned to death in the river.

Not just anyone who drowned or committed suicide in the river could become a water ghost. Instead, it depended on the degree of resentment that they were harboring at their time of death, their innate constitution, and the time at which they had passed away.

Only those who satisfied all three criteria were fortunate enough to not have their souls dissipate into nothingness, and only then did they have a chance to be chosen to serve as maidservants in the Great Water Palace. Even then, there were still water ghosts among them who were constantly passing on due to the ravaging effects of the astral winds.

For example, there were the soul slapping winds and sense blowing winds that arose in autumn. Out of the five elements, the two types of wind leaned primarily toward metal, and one of them blew during the day, while the other blew at night. Both of them were natural enemies to all ghostly beings, and had been responsible for blowing many a soul into non-existence.

Generally speaking, the two types of wind only posed a threat to yin entities, but if a living being possessed an extremely frail body or very little fortune, then they were at risk of being harmed by these winds as well.

The existence of these two types of wind during autumn ensured that there would be no rampant frenzy of ghosts, which was why the authorities generally carried out all of their executions during autumn.

Aside from that, thunderclaps also posed a severe threat to yin entities, and in their ears, the rumbling of thunder was like the pounding of a drum that heralded their demise.

It wasn't easy being a human, but it seemed to be just as arduous being a ghost.

Aside from the four trusted subordinates of the great river god, everyone else in the hall were guests.

Among them, the one that the great river god was most fond of was naturally none other than that vastly renowned literary master. Once upon a time, he had been nothing more than an impoverished scholar who had inadvertently stumbled into the river.

Unfortunately, he was simply not cut out to be an official, so even with the support of the great river god, he was still only able to become a sixth-rank imperial censor before finding himself unable to climb up the ranks any further, and in the end, he declared his retirement. He constructed a luxurious manor in the mountain wilderness of the Praise State in the northern region of Yellow Court Nation, where he began to live a leisurely and carefree life.

In the 20 or so years following his retirement from his official post, he had earned himself a reputation as the leader of all of the scholars in the northern region of Yellow Court Nation, and he had constantly been praising the Cold Food Great River God.

Just the poems that he had written about the Cold Food River alone numbered in excess of 20, and once every two or three years, he would invite a large number of scholars to host poetry gatherings on the Cold Food River, sparing no expenses to provide exquisite wine, delicious food, and beautiful women to all of the scholars in attendance.

The literary master had a grandson who possessed rather average aptitude for cultivation, yet he had somehow been able to climb rapidly up the ranks in the temples of Yellow Court Nation, but no one was willing to question this matter. In other words, no one dared to raise any questions.

The literary master referred to himself as Old Daoist Huang, and at this moment, he was chatting joyously with the state attendant.

The state attendant was technically the third-in-command of a state, while the top official was naturally the state governor, after which came the general, who held control over the state's military forces.

In Yellow Court Nation, military officials were rather disadvantaged as scholarly officials were held in higher regard, so state attendants often had more authority than state generals. The main reason why the position of state attendant existed was so that the emperor had some leverage against the state governors.

Right at this moment, everyone reflexively stopped talking as they turned to the entrance of the palace, where they saw an armored man with a pair of feelers growing from his cheeks stepping into the hall. The man cupped his fist in a salute as he declared, "My lord, that insolent itinerant cultivator is dead. I snapped his head off myself, so there's no chance that he would've lived."

The great river god took a glance at the expression on the white-robed old man's face, and he noticed that the burly man with the short halberd strapped to his waist seemed to have something that he wanted to say, so he smiled as he prompted, "If you have something to say, then say it."

This was the same man who had emerged from the old well in the Autumn Reed Inn, and his true body was a red koi fish. A wide grin appeared on his face as he said, "Prior to his death, that young itinerant cultivator spilled a great number of scandalous secrets, both about yourself and some important figures in the prefectural city.

“Of course, most of those secrets concerned the prefectural overseer with the Wei surname, and he wasn't holding back at all. He cursed the prefectural overseer and his ancestors over and over again, and if I hadn't quickly put an end to his life, he would've most likely even told everyone about how the prefectural overseer peed his pants as a child!

“I wouldn't be surprised at all if jokes about Prefectural Governor Wei began to circulate throughout the entire city tomorrow."

The great river god was clearly rather taken aback to hear this.

The burly koi spirit was just about to continue when the great river god waved a hand, indicating for him to sit back down and not ramble any further. The koi spirit did as he was instructed, obediently sitting back down before taking a glance at the scholarly man. The latter nodded at him with a smile, and only then did the koi spirit return to feasting and downing large bowls of wine.

Upon hearing about the death of the itinerant cultivator, an elated smile immediately appeared on the face of a sickly young man in attendance, and he began downing cup after cup of wine in celebration.

Inside the prefectural city, the prefectural overseer wore a dejected expression, lamenting over the demise of the young itinerant cultivator, while in the Great Water Palace, everyone was drinking to their hearts' content, presenting a stark contrast.

All of a sudden, the great river god abruptly raised his head, casting his gaze toward the entrance of the palace with a dark expression.

A handsome white-robed boy had appeared outside the entrance of the palace without making any sound, and he was in the process of sweeping some water droplets off his sleeves with his hands. As he did so, he strode over the tall doorstep, then looked around with a cheeky grin as he mused, "You're not human, ghosts, or gods... How strange..."