Chapter 614: Big Cousin

The Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast) was very happy today.

There were far fewer of those irritating Great Pure Palace disciples around, and the faint, filthy aura lingering near the mountain gate had weakened considerably.

Most importantly, Zhang Huainan was not in the Zhenwu Mountain Scenic Area. He was not even in Shizhou City.

A day like this was the equivalent of one’s parents going away for the weekend without putting a password on the computer, the neighbor’s obnoxious naughty kid being sent to an activity center, and the drainage pipe downstairs finally being unclogged after more than a month. Three blessings had arrived at once, and it could party however it pleased!

It had risen early that morning, fished several delicious whitebait from the depths of the Cold Pool, and enjoyed a simple breakfast. Then it had sprawled on a boulder before the mountain gate and sunbathed all morning. Afterward, it had dragged several descendants of that old turtle out of the Cold Pool and kicked them around like balls. What bliss!

However, just as it was growing excited and freely unleashing the wildness in its bloodline, all its happiness suddenly vanished.

It felt as upsetting as eating hot pot and singing songs, only to be abruptly robbed by bandits.

As a divine beast carrying the Qilin bloodline, it possessed a natural sense for danger. For one fleeting instant, it felt threatened.

The sensation prickled across its back!

It searched around in bewilderment and soon realized that two distant gazes were locked firmly upon it.

The Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast): “???”

Those gazes contained three parts lechery, seven parts amusement, and ninety parts ill intent. They were like human traffickers outside an elementary school selecting the easiest little girl to abduct, and they made its blood run cold.

It unconsciously shrank back into the Cold Pool until only its enormous head remained above water. Its bell-sized eyes darted around.

Then it found the source of the stares and saw Lu Yibei. In an instant, the suspicion in its eyes gave way to the vacant delight of a foolish roe deer!

————

After hearing Lu Yibei’s proposal, Huá Sāng considered it for a moment. She studied the Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast) from afar, then turned to Lu Yibei. “Under the current circumstances, a divine beast would indeed make a good means of transportation. But I doubt it will leave with us so easily.”

After a pause, she added, “Besides, if the divine beast really does accompany us, it may cause quite a commotion. After all…”

“After all, what?” Lu Yibei tilted his head.

Huá Sāng glanced at him and replied flatly, “Since ancient times, only successive Headmasters have been permitted to ride the divine beast…”

The current Headmaster was still at the height of his power, and no candidate for the next Headmaster had even emerged. If some obscure nobody suddenly appeared and inexplicably rode away one of the symbols of the Headmaster’s authority, how could the Great Pure Palace not descend into chaos?

More importantly, neither Lu Yibei nor Huá Sāng had the slightest interest in becoming Headmaster of the Great Pure Palace.

Headmaster? Not even a dog would take that job!

“So there’s no chance we can use it as transportation?” Lu Yibei frowned.

Huá Sāng rested her chin on one hand and pondered for several seconds. “It may not be impossible…”

Seeing her expression, Lu Yibei vaguely guessed what she meant. “Are you saying that as long as someone else shoulders the enormous burden of becoming the ‘Headmaster candidate,’ there won’t be a problem?”

“Yes.” Huá Sāng nodded.

“Well…” Lu Yibei considered it for several seconds, and a crafty glint appeared in his eyes. “Someone just occurred to me.”

Huá Sāng looked at him from the corner of her eye and frowned slightly. “What a coincidence. Someone occurred to me too.”

“Is the person you’re thinking of a once-in-a-century genius of the Great Pure Palace?”

Lu Yibei nodded. “Not only is she a once-in-a-century genius, but she’s diligent, hardworking, and kind to others. She’s extremely popular in the Great Pure Palace. No one would find it too strange if she became a candidate for the next Headmaster!”

Besides, the previous incident in which Fu Xinyi had made the divine beast submit to her had already laid the groundwork. That made the whole thing even more reasonable!

“Exactly,” Huá Sāng agreed.

To her surprise, she and her fiancé were rather compatible in certain respects.

The two immediately reached an agreement and soon settled on their next course of action: persuade the Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast) to accept a rider, have Fu Xinyi ride it down the mountain, and then kick Fu Xinyi out of the team!

Before that, however, they still had something rather despicable to do…

“In that case, shall we split up?” Lu Yibei asked Huá Sāng. “I’ll find a way to persuade the Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast), while you examine the items confiscated from Hu Chuan’s and Elder Wang’s quarters.”

After the Esoteric Society was exposed, Hu Chuan and Elder Wang had reacted quickly enough to escape for the time being. In such a short period, however, they could hardly have erased every secret left in their homes.

Qingxiazi had already ordered people to search both residences earlier and seal away every suspicious object they found, but those suspicious objects were not what Lu Yibei wanted.

Almost everyone in the world had little secrets they did not want others to discover—secrets that would make them die of embarrassment on the spot if exposed. Those were what Lu Yibei wanted from Hu Chuan and Elder Wang.

“No problem…” Huá Sāng nodded. Then she changed the subject. “But what if I can’t find the sort of little secret you’re talking about?”

“Why would that matter?” Lu Yibei spread his hands. “Even if neither of them has such a secret, as long as you find something we can distort or take out of context, we can simply fabricate one!”

“Our main objective is to ruin their reputations. They can’t exactly come forward to deny anything in their current situation, so whatever we say becomes the truth, doesn’t it?”

Once Hu Chuan’s and Elder Wang’s reputations had been destroyed, Lu Yibei could ask Lin Nian to spread the rumors throughout Shizhou City’s psychic circles!

During his previous visits to Moyue Pifeng and the garbage dump, Lu Yibei had gradually learned that although Shizhou City’s psychics appeared peaceful and law-abiding under the Great Pure Palace’s rule and suppression, the fighting in the shadows had never ceased.

At least a hundred psychics died in those hidden conflicts every year. The killers behind a large proportion of those deaths were never found, while the victims’ friends and relatives were connected to nearly every psychic faction in Shizhou City.

If they carefully selected a few dead people and blamed their deaths on Hu Chuan and Elder Wang, they would certainly cause an uproar throughout Shizhou City’s psychic community.

“…” Huá Sāng was silent for several seconds before asking, “What if they don’t believe it? Even if the news supposedly came from the Great Pure Palace, words alone aren’t proof.”

“We don’t need them to believe it completely.” Lu Yibei shrugged. “As long as my friend releases the rumors as inside information leaked from the Great Pure Palace, the vast majority of Shizhou City’s psychics will become wary of those two men.”

“After that, if anyone happens to discover their whereabouts, there will be a very high chance that the information circulates through Shizhou City’s psychic community. Even a casual mention could become valuable intelligence that helps us locate them!”

“This sort of thing is just like online harassment. When the attackers expose a victim’s personal information, they only care about the momentary pleasure of running their mouths. Almost none of them care what harm the victim might suffer.”

At present, Hu Chuan was like a large fish caught in a net that they could not haul in. But…

If they couldn’t pull him out, why not blast him out instead?

Lu Yibei intended to launch an online harassment campaign against Hu Chuan and Elder Wang, thereby bombing the fish out of hiding!

“…”

Huá Sāng watched Lu Yibei grow more excited as he spoke. She wanted to say something, but stopped herself, her gaze becoming complicated.

She suddenly grew curious about the power hidden beneath Lu Yibei’s Eifrit Spirit Pattern. Right now, he gave her the same impression as the legendary hauntings that specialized in sowing chaos…

————

A short while later.

After sending Huá Sāng off to collect Hu Chuan’s and Elder Wang’s “little secrets,” Lu Yibei looked around. Finding no one nearby, he walked to the pool before the Great Pure Palace’s mountain gate.

He crouched beside the water, spotted the Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast) with most of its enormous head protruding above the surface, raised an eyebrow, and beckoned to it. “Be good and come here. How about we discuss something?”

The Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast) looked at Lu Yibei as though considering his words. Its enormous eyes rolled once. Then, with a tremendous splash and water flying everywhere, it leaped from the pool.

It landed steadily on the open ground beside Lu Yibei and shook its muscular body, in which power and speed blended perfectly. Mist like a brilliant nebula scattered around it, threaded with azure arcs of electricity.

Then it folded all four legs beneath itself, lowered its massive head before Lu Yibei, and swept its thick, powerful tail back and forth across the ground with loud whooshes. Once again, it assumed the posture that seemed to say, Come on! I’ll take you for a ride!

Seeing the Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast) fawn over him, Lu Yibei frowned.

It really was coming toward me last time?

But why?

Is it because of the Ancestor?

“Um… I can’t ride you for the moment. It would look bad.”

The Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast) stiffened at those words. Its enormous eyes rolled, and it snorted loudly. Then, like a sulking child, it turned its back on him.

“I… I only said for the moment!” Lu Yibei explained gently. “Let the girl who was with me last time ride you down the mountain first. Once we’re at the bottom, you and I can have fun together. How does that sound?”

As he spoke, he cautiously extended a hand and stroked the divine beast’s smooth, bald head. The next instant, its tail began wagging. It rolled over like a puppy, exposed its belly, and wore an expression of pure enjoyment.

At the same time, a low murmur that seemed to come from a remote, primordial age sounded beside Lu Yibei’s ears. His eyes suddenly burned with intense pain.

“Yinglong begat Jianma, Jianma begat Qilin, and Qilin begat the Savage Beast…”

Is this… a description of the Shuishu Shou’s power? Lu Yibei froze. Then an even softer whisper arose and gradually drowned out the description.

“…A Yellow Dragon of five colors is called Yinglong. The god of the Yellow Dragon is called the Xuanyuan Star, and it commands swift thunder and violent winds…”

The instant Lu Yibei faintly made out those words, fierce pain tore through his eyes. His vision abruptly blurred, and an enormous phantom radiating majesty flashed past, its precise outline impossible to grasp.

Then a dragon’s chant that shook his very mind thundered through Lu Yibei’s consciousness, nearly making him faint on the spot.

When the dragon’s chant finally faded and his vision gradually cleared, he looked again at the Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast), which was rolling around and begging for affection like a puppy, and frowned.

Was that enormous phantom just now… Yinglong?

He suddenly realized that the Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast)’s affection for him might not arise solely from the trace of Qing Ji’s bloodline on his body. It might also be because he carried the power of the Blue-robed Celestial Maiden and a portion of the Human Emperor’s power.

Yinglong’s power—the source of the Shuishu Shou’s own power—governed an extremely broad domain. One of its duties was disciplining the Human Emperor’s descendants. Some ancient texts even recorded Yinglong as the Human Emperor’s principal consort.

Therefore, in terms of the affinity between their powers alone, the affection the Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast) felt upon seeing Lu Yibei resembled the warmth one might feel upon meeting a younger female cousin and childhood companion after many years apart.

Combined with all those wonderful memories it shared with Qing Ji, that affinity instantly sent its affection for Lu Yibei through the roof.

Then wasn’t everything settled?

There was nothing wrong with riding his own cous—

“Wait! There’s still one question. Are you male or female?” Lu Yibei asked.

Fu Xinyi had said the Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast) was probably male, but that had only been her guess. Asking the beast itself would be more reliable.

The Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast) tilted its enormous head and thought for a moment. Then it abruptly shifted and thrust its smooth, flat belly toward Lu Yibei.

Staring at the flat abdomen and its conspicuous lack of certain parts, Lu Yibei froze. Then understanding dawned. His cheeks reddened, and he hurriedly covered his eyes with one hand. “I understand, I understand! That’s enough!”

A divine beast was still a beast, after all. In certain respects, its behavior was no different from that of any other animal.

“Big Cousin! Next time someone asks you a question like that, don’t expose your belly without warning. It’s improper! Someone might even mistake you for an exhibitionist, you know?”

The Shuishu Shou (Water Savage Beast) tossed its head with carefree pride and snorted.

Its expression seemed to say, I don’t care!

“…” Lu Yibei stared expressionlessly at the divine beast and pursed his lips. “Whatever makes you happy, Big Cousin.”

————

Meanwhile.

Huá Sāng finished gathering Hu Chuan’s and Elder Wang’s “little secrets,” packed everything up, and left Zhen Ting Hall. Taking out her phone, she sent her junior sister a message.

Huá Sāng: “Junior Sister, I have an important operation and need some help. Are you free to join me?”

Several seconds later, a reply arrived.

Fu Xinyi: “Sure, sure! I have nothing to do right now! When and where should we meet?”

Earlier, Qingxiazi had refused Fu Xinyi’s request to join the pursuit of Hu Chuan and Elder Wang. She had watched helplessly as one fellow disciple after another departed through the mountain gate, overwhelmed by complicated feelings.

Those emotions had kept her from concentrating on her cultivation throughout the entire morning. Now that she had received Huá Sāng’s invitation, she agreed without a second thought.

Besides, she was overjoyed at the chance to act alongside her beloved Senior Sister Huá Sāng!

Huá Sāng: “Meet at the mountain gate in ten minutes?”

Fu Xinyi: “No problem!”