Chapter 175

“I really have to admire you. Even in the situation you’re in, you can still be this confident.”

“That’s because it’s you. If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t be nearly this certain.”

“Certain of what?”

“Certain that you don’t dare gamble.”

“Heh heh heh…” Zhao Yi licked his teeth. “Do you know how dangerous it is for you to be saying this right now? Aren’t you afraid you’ll keep provoking me until I lose my head?”

“You’ve always been clear-headed.”

“Thanks.”

“That wasn’t praise.”

“You’re very weak. Talk less.”

Holding the towel, Zhao Yi walked back to the washbasin. He rinsed it in hot water, wrung it out, then came back and wiped the boy’s face.

“Actually, I really do hope you die.”

“I feel the same about you.”

“Thanks.”

“You a parrot or something?”

“Ah.” Zhao Yi tossed the cloth back onto the rack, then sat down beside the boy. “How great would it have been if it hadn’t been me who came this time?”

“I already knew that if anyone came, it would most likely be you.”

The oath carved on Zhao Wuyang’s stele said that when the Old Shape-Shifting Crone once again carried out large-scale slaughter, a descendant of the Zhao family would come to suppress her.

Zhao Yi said, “You saw the writing on the stele, right?”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “I also took what was inside the stele.”

“Do you have any sense that you stole something that belonged to me?”

“Do you think your ancestor’s oath on that stele was prepared especially for you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“If it really had been prepared for you, then I’d have to think a little less of that Dragon King in your family history.”

“No, you should keep thinking highly of him. I know my ancestor didn’t do this to leave blessings for his descendants.”

Li Zhuiyuan believed in the breadth of the Dragon King’s vision.

Ordinary people might suspect that Zhao Wuyang left behind the stele and the artifact to pave the way for his descendants, maybe even with a bit of the idea of raising trouble to increase his own importance.

But the problem was that the Old Shape-Shifting Crone was no ordinary nuisance.

Who would leave wolves and tigers behind just to pave the road for their own descendants?

An oath was both a sacrifice and a responsibility.

Zhao Wuyang had sincerely intended for his own family and surname to bear the mission of suppressing the Old Shape-Shifting Crone.

“Can I take a look at my ancestor’s thing?”

Li Zhuiyuan opened his right hand, and the copper coin sword slid out.

Zhao Yi reached out and lifted it carefully in both hands, bringing it before his eyes. His fingertips brushed lightly over the verdigris as he sighed,

“A fine thing.”

“Yeah. Your ancestor gave it to me.”

Zhao Yi continued cradling the copper coin sword carefully in his left hand while his right fist slammed hard into the floor.

Bang! Bang. Bang!

Old Tian opened the door and poked his head in, thinking something had happened.

“Out.”

“Right away, young master.”

Old Tian immediately shut the door and left.

After venting, Zhao Yi continued admiring the copper coin sword, practically entranced by it.

“My ancestor’s notes recorded this sword. Every single coin on it was personally refined by him. It’s utterly yang, utterly hard, made specifically to counter yin and evil things.”

For a copper coin sword, the material itself could only vary so much.

What truly determined its value was its previous owner.

When Li Zhuiyuan faced that boy at the bottom of the lake, the moment the boy’s head touched one of these coins, a layer of skin had been burned right off. That alone was enough to show the sword’s worth.

“Let’s discuss something. This was, after all, originally my family’s property. Why don’t you show a little grace and return it to its rightful source?”

“In your dreams.”

“This copper coin sword needs the matching arts to bring out its greatest effect. Otherwise, it’s just a pearl cast into darkness.”

“You can teach me your family’s set of arts, and that tragedy can be avoided.”

“This…” Zhao Yi hesitated.

“I learn quickly.”

Zhao Yi said, “What I mean is, you should at least leave me some benefit, so I can persuade myself to believe the act your man downstairs is putting on.”

From beginning to end, Zhao Yi had only glanced once at Xue Liangliang, when he carried Li Zhuiyuan upstairs.

He had not bothered to go out and observe more closely, because there was no need.

Like the two sides of a tossed coin, there were only ever two results. As for the path the coin took spinning through the air, there was no point in observing it at all.

“Forget it.”

“You really lack this one artifact that badly?”

“I do.”

“No, wait. Between the ancestral homes of the Qin and Liu Clans, what good thing could you possibly be lacking?”

“Could you still go into Old Zhao’s storeroom in Jiujiang and pick out whatever you wanted right now?”

“Of course not. I’ve already started river walk. Unless I light the lamp a second time and admit defeat, I can’t have overly deep karmic contact with my family.”

“Same principle.”

“But before anyone starts river walk, doesn’t their family always prepare things for them first?”

“I didn’t get that.”

Zhao Yi: “...”

The river’s harshness toward Li Zhuiyuan was not limited to his age.

The sudden spontaneous ignition of the lamp and the beginning of river walk had directly severed the karmic connection between Li Zhuiyuan and the inherited legacy of the Qin and Liu Clans.

Under the normal course of things, after Granny Liu accepted him, she certainly would have brought out the best items from the ancestral house for him. As long as he could match them and use them smoothly, Liu Yumei would never have been stingy.

But she truly had not expected such a bizarre event to exist in the world, a situation she had never even heard of before.

Once river walk began, karma came with it. Those exceptional items that exceeded the limit could no longer be given to him.

A Li using the ancestral memorial tablets as materials for his tools had actually slipped through a loophole, because the ancestors of the Qin and Liu Clans no longer possessed spirit. With the spirit gone, their tablets naturally no longer counted as entangled in karmic consequence.

In ordinary dealings, it was fine to eat and drink at the Liu house, and it was perfectly reasonable for elders to make clothes for juniors.

But even knowing Granny Liu was wealthy, his family’s little pickup truck had still been bought with money scraped together from Yin Meng selling old books.

That was where the issue of degree came in. If the entanglement ran too deep, it would easily bring backlash onto the family.

Even money had to avoid large sums, let alone ancestral artifacts tied by much deeper karmic bonds.

Uncle Qin taught Runsheng martial arts, but at that time Uncle Qin had returned while suffering from severe injuries.

Aunt Liu taught Yin Meng poison arts, and she had nearly been poisoned to death by Yin Meng. Was that really only because Mengmeng was exceptionally gifted in poison techniques?

Runsheng and Yin Meng only worshipped the Dragon King, and even their karmic backlash was much lighter than his.

Back then, the old lady had felt so guilty she simply couldn’t bear watching it anymore, so she gathered a whole set of basic books and handed them to him.

Even for that, she had probably coughed up blood in secret more than once.

It meant the boy had effectively been born into a great household, yet had gone out to make his own way empty-handed.

That was why Li Zhuiyuan was unwilling to part with this copper coin sword.

He couldn’t use the good things at home, so anything he picked up outside had to be treasured all the more.

“Stingy.”

Zhao Yi placed the copper coin sword back into the boy’s hand.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Young Master Zhao, you’ve never lived through hard times.”

“Heh, being called young master by someone from a proper Dragon King family makes my bones go soft.

But you ate the whole pot of rice yourself. At least let a little slip through your fingers. You can’t really expect me to have made this trip for nothing. I missed this wave, and the next one is definitely going to come fast. I’m taking a huge loss here.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“I should have gotten at least half the pot.”

“If I had delayed one more day and waited for you and your people to arrive, even if we had reached a partnership, do you think you would have let me take the lead? Search your conscience. Would you have dared?”

Zhao Yi bit down hard on his lip.

Then he raised both fists again and pounded the floor savagely.

Old Tian opened the door again.

“Get lost!”

“Right away, young master.”

Zhao Yi looked at his reddened fists and said,

“When you saw that stele, you should have known I might come. At that time, you were ahead. I believe that with your intelligence, you could have set a trap for me in advance and waited for me to jump into it.”

“I did think about it.”

“But in the end, you still didn’t do it. So I repaid that in kind—”

“Don’t make yourself sound so noble. You just didn’t dare gamble.”

Smack!

Zhao Yi slapped himself viciously across the face.

Smack!

One wasn’t enough, so he hit himself again to make it symmetrical.

This time, Old Tian did not open the door to check what was happening.

With both cheeks bright red, Zhao Yi lowered his head and stared fixedly at the boy lying before him.

Li Zhuiyuan no longer met his gaze. Instead, he closed his eyes. The medicine had left his body warm all over, and he was getting sleepy.

Zhao Yi said, “I’ll ask you one last time. Do you regret not laying out a plan to kill me and ending up in your current state?”

“What current state?”

“Right now.”

“A tiger fallen to the plains being bullied by dogs?”

“That... counts, I guess.”

“I regret it.

But I don’t just regret that one thing. Not planning ahead to kill you was secondary. I shouldn’t have taken the initiative to go to that evil thing’s lair. That thing’s secret art had restrictions tied to the location.

I should have let that evil thing be born first, then struck when it left its nest.

Or I should have let it start killing first, then worked out the pattern from the killings and prepared the bait in advance before waiting for it to bite.

In any case, the Heavenly Dao only looks at results. As long as a few mistakes and loose ends don’t turn into a real disaster, merits and faults would offset each other, and I still should have come out with something to gain.”

“Then why didn’t you do that?”

Pain appeared on Li Zhuiyuan’s face.

Zhao Yi panicked and hurriedly said, “Hey, I didn’t poison the medicine I fed you!”

He could feel that the boy was not pretending. Deep in his soul, he seemed to be enduring some kind of intense agony.

Li Zhuiyuan opened his eyes, and they gradually filled with bloodshot veins.

“Because I was stupid!”

He could have reduced the risk. Of course, risk did not vanish out of thin air. It only shifted elsewhere.

If his own risk became smaller, then the ordinary people in the surrounding villages would have to bear it instead.

He knew very clearly that when he made that decision, he had deliberately looked away from certain things.

Facing Zhao Wuyang’s stele and gift, he had felt that under those circumstances, plotting against Zhao Yi was meaningless.

The reason he had led people early to the bottom of that lake was to prevent the Old Shape-Shifting Crone from giving birth and starting a blood sacrifice. Of course he knew full well that there was no way the lake bottom could possibly hold enough living people for the blood sacrifice she needed, and besides, she was picky about who she killed.

It could only be said that, beneath the General’s Tomb, the sight of the ancestors of the Four Old Heavenly Gate Families bowing to him as one, then lining up one by one to walk into the great formation and perish...

had chiseled a crack open in his heart.

Ever since returning from Zhangjiajie, every time he went to Granny Liu’s house to see A Li, he would deliberately stand for a while before the memorial tablets in the third-floor ritual room.

You could not, on the one hand, stand beneath the authority of the Dragon King household and have the dead die once more for your river walk, while on the other hand evading the responsibilities that came with standing under that same Dragon King household.

A person could not only enjoy rights while refusing to bear obligations.

Actually, someone like him ought to have walked Wei Zhengdao’s path. History books would not record him; even if traces of him remained in the jianghu, no one would know who he was.

If no one knew, then there would naturally be nothing to hold him back, and he could act with even fewer scruples.

But the problem was that he was already on this road.

Seen that way, the spontaneous ignition of the lamp during the initiation ceremony into the Qin and Liu Clans probably carried this meaning as well. It was as if the Heavenly Dao was afraid that after entering the Dragon King household, learning its arts, and taking its artifacts, he might regret it later, so it had fastened shackles on him in advance.

Even though he had lost the specific memories from the dream, Li Zhuiyuan still could not help suspecting:

Was the Heavenly Dao being this deliberate in targeting him because Wei Zhengdao had frightened it too badly before?

At last, Li Zhuiyuan’s expression calmed.

“You okay now?”

“Mm.”

Zhao Yi washed the towel again, then came over and wiped the boy’s face as he asked,

“Is there something wrong with you?”

“Yes.”

“Can it be cured?”

“I’m trying.”

“For someone like you, having a few problems is normal. If you were too healthy, that would be the strange part.”

“You talk too much. It’s annoying. Better place the bet.”

After wiping him down, Zhao Yi looped the towel around his own neck and yanked hard.

“Ugh…”