Life as a Rogue Cultivator

Chapter 283: Encountering the Emei Daggers Once More

Winter had settled in again. A heavy snow had just fallen on Wulong Mountain, the sky hung low and gray, and thick mist blurred the ridgelines until the peaks looked like ghosts.Liu Xiaolou stood up, packed away the formation disk, and the spirit spring hidden in the crack shut. With its source cut off, the aura that had been spreading across Ganzhu Ridge slowly thinned out. And before long the mountaintop was quiet and empty of spiritual energy.

He drifted down from the summit and stopped at the Golden Ring hive on the cliff face. And filled a gourd with honey. This would do nicely for the road.

Two years had passed, and the hive had grown even larger. The colony was hundreds strong now. At the edge of the bamboo grove below the cliff, a patch of wildflowers spanning several acres had taken root, all grown from seeds the bees had carried back from faraway places.

More than a dozen kinds of flowers bloomed there. Liu Xiaolou recognized only half of them. Three varieties were still blossoming bravely in the dead of winter, and he didn’t know a single one. Their fragrance was light and clean, and beneath that gentle scent he could sense a faint spiritual energy. They must have been nourished by the aura that drifted down from the summit.

One looked like wintersweet, only it was a deep violet.

Another was long and slender, drifting like falling willow leaves.

The last one grew a single bloom on each stem. Its flower opened wide like a shallow bowl and slowly turned to follow the sun’s rise and fall. When the sky clouded over, it folded back into a tight bud. It was a curious thing.

On this trip down the mountain, he planned to look into the origins of these three wildflowers and see whether they might be useful.

The small courtyard was even more run-down than before. Liu Xiaolou hadn’t dared fix anything. He gave the gate a quick look, then headed down the mountain.

Beside the path, a wild vine barely three feet tall clung to a dead tree. So ordinary that you wouldn't give it a second glance. Only Liu Xiaolou knew that the dead trunk had once been a camphor tree that had grown for more than ten years.

He crouched down to study the vine more closely. When he reached out to touch it, a few tendrils lifted and swayed toward his fingers, as if greeting him. They seemed to enjoy his touch.

All at once, the vine’s tendrils slipped from between Liu Xiaolou’s fingers and vanished... only to reappear several paces away. They snared a wild mouse that had popped up from who-knows-where and wrapping it up tight.

Only Liu Xiaolou could what happened next. The fine, soft hairs on the tendrils pierced straight into the mouse’s skin.

The mouse squeaked a few times, struggled for a moment, then went limp and slowly slipped into unconsciousness. Over the next month, the young Ghost Banyan would drain it dry, turning it into its nourishment.

Liu Xiaolou straightened up, continued down the mountain, picking the narrow, lonely trails. Before long, he was at the foot of the mountain. Smoke curled lazily from the village chimneys in the distance.

He paused for a moment, then decided not to visit the village for now, and not to see Uncle Tian just yet. Skirting around the bend of the mountain, he headed west.

As usual, he traveled through the Wuling Mountains. Dangerous as they were, they were still the best place to move unseen.

By dusk, the already gloomy sky had grown even darker. Liu Xiaolou found a small cave he had used before and settled in for the night. The mountain paths in Wuling were treacherous after dark. Even a group had to move with care, and going alone meant it was best not to wander at all.

Around midnight, the world seemed to brighten. A pale glow spread through the clouds as snow began drifting down again.

At first the flakes were tiny and shimmering. By the second half of the night, they had turned into big, soft clusters. And a thick layer had already blanketed the ground.

Liu Xiaolou had never seen snowfall like this. A sudden childlike excitement welled up in him. He stepped out of the cave, eager to feel the deep snow under his boots.

He crunched happily through it for a few moments when a faint noise sounded in the woods. Liu Xiaolou turned and saw a woman darting swiftly through the trees. The moment she spotted him, she skidded to a stop.

She was dressed all in black, lithe and poised, with a high nose and a look that screamed steel beneath beauty. There was something familiar in her face. Her sudden, fluid movements made it hard to gauge her cultivation. But Liu Xiaolou had the feeling she was at least on his level, if not higher.

Their eyes locked. A second glance, and Liu Xiaolou finally recognized her.. It was the same woman he’d run into years ago in the Dehang mountains, the one who’d taken shelter from the rain. And almost attacked him, mistaking him for Jingzhao.

He hadn’t expected to run into her again after so many years, and here she was, in the Wuling Mountains. Back then she had looked thirtyish, and now… she barely seemed to have aged at all.

She froze for a heartbeat, then relaxed. Then frowned again. “It's you!”

Liu Xiaolou cupped his hands. “Senior, what a coincidence.”

The woman fixed her eyes on Liu Xiaolou. She moved, and in the blink of an eye she was standing at the mouth of the cave. “Back off!” she hissed.

Liu Xiaolou took a couple of steps back.

Walking backward, the woman retreated into the cave.

The cave wasn’t deep at all. It was more like a hollow in the mountain. The entrance was wide, yet it stretched inward less than two zhang. So you could see everything inside at a glance.

She flicked her hand, sending out a flash of white light that settled into an Emei dagger angled straight at Liu Xiaolou. “Go!”

Liu Xiaolou’s heart jumped. The Mysterious True Cord coiled back up his arm, and he took several more steps back.

She really was a Foundation Establishment expert. He didn’t stand a chance. Even his strongest tool, the Mysterious True Cord, would be useless against her.

But things had already come to this point, so saying more was useless. Liu Xiaolou kept backing away until he slipped into the swirling curtain of snow. And disappeared.

Once he was gone, the woman twirled the Emei dagger, then stabbed it into a spot on the cave wall and twisted. A bundle popped loose. She pulled it out, shook it open, and a pile of items tumbled onto the ground. She squatted down, rummaging through them in a fluster until she found a pill bottle. She dumped all the spiritual pills inside into her mouth. Unable to hold herself up any longer, she dropped into a seated posture, trying her best to regulate her breathing.

After only a few breaths, she coughed up a mouthful of blood, staining the snow at the cave entrance a deep red. Her body slumped to the side.

She forced herself upright again, settling back into a cross-legged stance. Reaching down, she grabbed a handful of dirt and covered the bloodstained snow. Before long, the falling snow covered it all over again.

Out of nowhere, a man emerged through the heavy snowfall. It was Liu Xiaolou, returning. He saw she was still there, glaring at him. “I thought… you’d left… sorry,” he quickly explained himself while backing away again. He vanished into the snowfall.

The woman let out a small breath of relief, closed her eyes, and returned to steadying her breathing, guiding the pill’s medicinal energy toward her injuries.

She hadn’t been meditating long when Liu Xiaolou burst out of the snow again. He bowed. “Senior, the snow is coming down too hard. I really don’t dare travel alone. Would you let me rest here for a bit? I’ll leave once the snow stops. Don’t worry, I won’t go inside. I’ll stay right at the entrance.”

A flash of white shot out from the cave. In an instant it formed an Emei dagger that streaked straight toward him.

Liu Xiaolou bolted.

The Emei dagger tore through several trees, until finally it was stopped by an earthen slope and didn’t follow any further.

Liu Xiaolou shook the snow from his hair, spat on the ground, muttered a curse under his breath. Then quickened his pace to get out of there.