Chapter 61: Disappearance

Chapter 61: Disappearance

Yan Zizhan spoke the most unreasonable words in the calmest tone.

Even the system, which had been playing dead all along, nearly shot bolt upright.

If not for the blood-deep enmity between Yan Zizhan and the ghost clan, from another perspective, he would be the most bizarre figure in this story. First, he sent the Chu family a spokesperson out of some godforsaken corner, and then he was front and center at every major turning point of Chu Jingxi's life.

"Master, Brother Jingxi!"

Just as the room went dead silent, another oddball showed up. Lingzhu, having learned of their return, rushed over the second it heard.

These past few days, terrified of bad news, it had been going around with its ears covered, only daring to listen in for a second here and there.

And just like that, it just so happened to catch wind of their return!

Lingzhu didn't see anything odd about being fostered by the Chu family, and the Chu family had long since gotten used to it.

After sprinting over, it even made a point of thanking the Chu Clan Patriarch for the Spirit Liquid he had gifted, showing off its newly sprouted leaves to Chu Jingxi and the others.

System: "Don't you think this whole situation is a bit... much?"

"It's fine, really." Chu Jingxi replied to the system while casually giving Lingzhu's leaves a little squeeze, whose leaves had finally filled out a bit.

The Chu Clan Patriarch, a man who'd seen his fair share of storms, didn't immediately react to Yan Zizhan's words.

He zeroed in on the connection almost instantly—Yan Zizhan had started stirring the pot right after leaving the secret realm, and the Blood Curse Art was the only possible link.

Could he have stumbled onto something while their consciousnesses were linked?

Just as everyone was about to do the obvious thing and just ask, the flood dragon had already slipped away from the pillar. When it came back, all traces of its usual playfulness were gone, and it passed along six words from the Patriarch:

"Heaven's secrets can't be told."

"Can't" and "won't"—one word apart, but worlds different in meaning, meaning he might want to say it but physically can't. This almost certainly involves some kind of contract or oath. In addition, the flood dragon also carried two more messages from the Legendary Patriarch:

"Your parents are both gone, but there's no doubt they loved you."

"They say the dead become stars—believe that they've been watching over you from up there all along."

So people were already saying that star stuff back then?

After hearing those words meant to soothe a child, Chu Jingxi's lips thinned slightly, knowing he wouldn't get anything out of them. He let out a silent sigh and thanked the flood dragon for passing along the message.

Picking up on that faint helplessness, the Chu Clan Patriarch waved his hand and said, "I'll look into this. For now, go back and focus on your cultivation."

Great Cultivators don't make empty promises—if they say they'll do something, they mean it. Chu Jingxi couldn't help but feel a swell of gratitude.

Privately, he hadn't fully given up on finding answers on his own. He could just switch targets later:

Try to wheedle some info out of the system.

Lingzhu had just arrived and didn't know what had happened, only picking up from the last two sentences that the talk was about Chu Jingxi's background.

This time, it actually showed some tact, surprisingly. Seeing that he seemed weighed down by something, it didn't tag along with him and Yan Zizhan as they left. Instead, it turned and headed for Sea City, planning to haul back a big jug of wine to help them drown their sorrows.

Since leaving the council hall, Chu Jingxi had been unusually silent.

The immortal domain was thick with spiritual energy, and the air was crisp. He rarely slowed down, quietly soaking in the scenery.

Yan Zizhan walked beside him in silence the whole way.

When he walked, Yan Zizhan walked; when he stopped, Yan Zizhan stopped.

Stopping again, Chu Jingxi turned to Yan Zizhan, the corners of his mouth curving back into their usual smile: "Don't worry too much about me."

Yan Zizhan wanted to say something but swallowed it back down.

He never expected that Chu Jingxi would choose to comfort him first.

"The Patriarch said my parents loved me very much—at least that means I wasn't casually abandoned." Chu Jingxi counted off one by one, showing off the things he did have: "This trip was quite fruitful too; the enlightenment boost to my laws is a big benefit. And then there's you—first you risked danger to save me, and when you discovered something off about my origins, you didn't hide it. I'm really glad..."

His tone rose at the end, with barely a hitch in the middle: "A Heaven's favored one like me, of course I attract..."

The words trailed off abruptly, Chu Jingxi's hands hovering mid-air.

The arms wrapping around him from behind tightened slightly. Yan Zizhan's mind went blank for a moment as he held him—he didn't know what he was doing, only that he had never felt such a strong urge to protect someone.

If he were truly that lucky, he wouldn't have drifted from place to place. Behind every gain lay brushes with death.

He didn't know how long passed until he caught the slightly strained breathing, and only then did Yan Zizhan realize how far over the line this gesture went.

The world pressed pause at this moment. A crane flying overhead witnessed the scene and nearly fell out of the sky, only to flap wildly and screech away just before hitting the ground.

Amid the birdsong and floral fragrance, the two finally pulled apart as if shocked.

"I..." Yan Zizhan was at a loss for words, unsure how to explain his body moving before his reason.

"I understand."

Chu Jingxi indicated that he understood—he understood it all. Whether the other party understood was another matter entirely.

The embrace brought an inexplicable strength that dispelled the lingering uncertainty. Chu Jingxi resumed walking.

From the distant training grounds came the sound of sword practice—Elder Feng was readjusting the sword formation, on an even larger scale than last time.

Spotting Yan Zizhan, Elder Feng began conscripting him on the spot to work on the formation, striving for perfection.

Chu Jingxi sucked in a cold breath, terrified of being dragged in to cooperate with that whole "ten thousand swords as one" business. Without a moment's hesitation, he abandoned the fellow bird he had just embraced and bolted.

Leaving Yan Zizhan chuckling in place, helplessly going alone to arrange the formation.

The formation was designed specifically for Chu Jingxi, so it truly couldn't be taken lightly.

Chu Jingxi hadn't been idle since his escape. He'd been away for several days, and besides his origins, he had many other matters to confirm.

**

He'd originally planned to contact everyone one by one with Message Talismans, but the Rustless Copper Bell proved to be worth three of them—it had been working everywhere and knew everything.

Drenched in the smell of overtime, the Rustless Copper Bell darkly reported: 'The Snow Frog Patriarch is hanging on by a thread.'

This was something Chu Jingxi had been concerned about. During his time as a jade sculpture, rumors had been flying that the Wangdao Tower was attacked and the Snow Frog Patriarch had fallen.

'The Nine-Tailed Fox Clan elder announced seclusion, and the alchemy factory has assigned a demon clan member to handle puppet maintenance.'

Anyone sent would have their identity verified—Chu Jingxi wasn't too worried about that. But the demon clan elder choosing this time to go into seclusion was rather suspicious: "Has the demon clan made any other moves?"

'All normal. Suspiciously normal.'

Some "all clear" this is.

Chu Jingxi chose to set this matter aside for now. If the Rustless Copper Bell knew, the clan definitely knew too, and since they weren't doing anything, it probably wasn't a big deal.

He just stuck to his own lane and moved on to ask about the alchemy workshop's progress: "How's the pill R&D coming along?"

"Major breakthrough! We managed to refine a Poison Pill that can actually weaken a Senior Ghost General, but then..."

The Rustless Copper Bell tried to drag it out, but when it saw Chu Jingxi wasn't biting, it huffed and spilled everything.

"The potency fades fast—basically dies the moment it hits light. Then the Pill Alliance looked into it and thinks one specific herb might fix it. Word is that herb's already extinct, but they came up with a new workaround."

That's what happens when you're uneducated—every other word is "but then" or "however." Chu Jingxi, being the seasoned one, let it slide: "What approach?"

"They originally wanted the Heavenly Mechanism Sect to do a divination, but turns out the beggar getting treated at the workshop had seen this thing before."

"So the Immortal Alliance sent some cultivators as escorts, bringing that Beggar Warrior—who still nods off from time to time—along to go find it."

Chu Jingxi couldn't help but feel a little moved. Saving those warriors back then had unexpectedly paid off.

Any spot on the continent with even a scrap of resources was already claimed by cultivators, so warriors were the ones who usually explored the remote, off-the-grid areas.

He shook his head: "Such is fate."

Finally, after checking on the progress of the Savage Corpse's liberation rites with the Rustless Copper Bell's sub-bells, Chu Jingxi closed his eyes and started cultivating.

His law comprehension had shot way up, so his body couldn't afford to fall behind. The ancient body-forging art from the Barbarian heritage was now his main cultivation focus.

Using his body as a furnace, he ignited his origin, pushing all his power out to his limbs as a new origin was reborn. The whole process was pure torture.

The more agony inside, the more radiant he looked on the outside.

Chu Jingxi's whole body gave off a soft, glowing light, his hair drifting with no wind, sacredness and vitality fused to perfection.

This went on for who knows how long—sunrise and sunset cycling endlessly. Chu Jingxi gradually lost all sense of time, feeling like a little boat drifting aimlessly, no anchor in sight.

After a long ordeal of bone reshaping, when he finally opened his eyes again, the surrounding spiritual energy had been mostly sucked dry—no longer dense.

"Spiritual energy?!"

Chu Jingxi immediately knew something was off—body-forging techniques didn't need spiritual energy.

The Rustless Copper Bell was still there, everything looked the same as before he started cultivating, but the spiritual energy in the air had thinned out a lot.

Chu Jingxi scrambled to his feet and shoved the door open, getting hit by a fierce gust of wind.

He found himself hanging in mid-air.

Below was a bottomless abyss, with green trees and vines shooting up violently like they were trying to drag the clouds down. Distant beast roars rattled the sky. About a hundred meters away, two people stood at the bow of a Warship, talking—it was Chu Suye and Chu Tiannan!

"You done with your seclusion?" came a familiar voice from behind.

Chu Jingxi turned his head, and the second his eyes met Yan Zizhan's, he sucked in a breath: "Illusions are this bold now?"

So sloppy—at least they could've given him a logical backstory.

Who do they think they're messing with?

Yan Zizhan slowed his pace, picking up on how sensitive Chu Jingxi was to illusions, and explained: "This isn't an illusion."

Chu Jingxi looked totally unconvinced, trying to figure out how to wake himself up.

Yan Zizhan hit the nail on the head: "Within the Chu clan's core territory, even the ghost race couldn't force you into an illusion."

His train of thought stopped, and Chu Jingxi said calmly: "I was actually just kidding."

Gazing at this unfamiliar landscape, he abruptly changed the subject: "So this is..."

Hearing the commotion at the bow, Chu Suye and Chu Tiannan flew over.

Chu Tiannan picked up the thread: "Some weird stuff's been going down in the borderlands between the Beast Taming Sect and the mortal Dynasty. The clan issued a training mission, and they specifically picked you. We've both been here before and know the terrain, so they sent us along too."

Since Chu Jingxi was deep in cultivation, and to avoid wasting time, the Chu Clan Patriarch had moved him—house and all—onto the Warship.

The body-forging process was brutally painful and threw his five senses out of whack. Chu Jingxi had figured that floating feeling was just his messed-up mind playing tricks, but turns out he really had been drifting.

He immediately opened his jade slip and sure enough, a new mission had appeared.

"Get to the bottom of the Beast Taming Sect's disappearance incident."

There was also a note attached: [Your parents' death might be connected to the first war against the ghost race. When the ghost race invaded half the cultivation world, the final battlefield was near this training ground. You might want to try looking for clues there.]

The Patriarch really lived up to his title!

Chu Jingxi couldn't help but marvel—the Patriarch had found leads for him that fast. He wondered if the old man had gone crying and throwing a fit to the ancestor.

After reading the note, he turned his attention back to the training mission itself.

"Let me see your jade slips."

The two handed them over, not sure why.

"Get to the bottom of the Beast Taming Sect's disappearance incident."

No note attached, but the mission content was identical. After reading them, Chu Jingxi's expression turned a little weird: "Interesting."

This mission had no contribution point reward—no way the clan just forgot about that.

Chu Suye and Chu Tiannan exchanged confused looks. What was so interesting about it?

They took their slips back but couldn't find anything unusual.

Chu Jingxi watched the two of them staring at their jade slips, completely clueless that they were working for free.

"Hopeless."

He shook his head and continued reading the mission details, discovering that the "strange things" referred to cultivators and demonic beasts who had recently gone to the old battlefield seeking fortune and had mysteriously vanished.

The more powerful the experts who'd fought in a place, the more dangers lurked there. Since ancient times, of every ten who went into ruins seeking fortune, half coming back alive was already considered a high survival rate.

If it were only that, the clan wouldn't have issued a mission.

Yan Zizhan had already learned the details before departure, and seeing Chu Jingxi's confusion, he revealed the most crucial part: "After disappearing for a while, they came back."

Chu Jingxi froze: "All of them?"

Yan Zizhan: "A good majority came back."

"That's not even the strangest part." Chu Tiannan couldn't help but interject: "Word is that place is haunted. The cultivators who returned had the same personalities and speech as always, but they felt like completely different people. Among them was even a Chu family scion."

Chu Tiannan looked worried; he was on decent terms with that Chu family kid.

Chu Jingxi, out of the loop, was just quietly listening when a sudden "ding" went off in his head.

"Side quest activated."

"Quest objective: ▁▂▃"

"Quest reward: ▃▂▁"

One second, two seconds, ten breaths went by... and still nothing.

"What's going on?" Chu Jingxi asked the system.

But no response came, like the system had just up and vanished.

"System?"

He called out three times in a row, got zero response, and his face turned serious.

Chu Jingxi immediately checked his panel, making sure it wasn't black-screened like during his last qi deviation, and that everything was running normally.

Yan Zizhan was always the first to pick up on Chu Jingxi's mood, and seeing his off expression, figured it was just mental burnout from closed-door cultivation.

"Still got about half a day left—go inside and rest up."

Chu Jingxi didn't turn down the offer. He looked back at his little standalone courtyard on the ship and his face went all kinds of complicated—he really did have that whole "home is where I am" thing going on.

**

It was late autumn, so night came earlier, and with everything pitch black outside, everyone slowly headed back to their rooms.

Once the coordinates were punched in, the Warship ran on autopilot.

This warship was on par with a top-tier magical artifact—you could even hide inside it from an immortal's attack. It also had a second form that could sense any danger nearby, packing stealth, firepower, and crazy-high defense all into one.

If Chu Jingxi had had this warship backing him when Gold Immortal Xuanlu tried to assassinate him, he might've even taken the guy out—that's how insanely strong it was.

Chu Suye and Chu Tiannan were peacefully cultivating on the ship, while in another separate cabin, it was just Yan Zizhan.

Lingzhu had downed a good chunk of the Spirit Liquid the Chu Clan Patriarch gave him and stayed in the immortal domain to digest it.

Yan Zizhan was alone, messaging the Taiqing Sect Master.

A few days back, Yan Zizhan had mentioned there might be a little friction with the Chu family, and the Taiqing Sect Master figured it was some beef with Chu Jingxi. But then he heard that if worst came to worst, Yan Zizhan would take Chu Jingxi out of the Chu family.

Even though he thought it was totally ridiculous, the Taiqing Sect Master still made some preparations. "Is the matter resolved?"

"Sort of. The Chu family doesn't mean Chu Jingxi any harm."

Taiqing Sect Master: "..."

Well, that was predictable.

After a beat of silence from the other end of the Message Talisman, the Taiqing Sect Master got even more curious—he'd never heard Yan Zizhan hem and haw like that.

Message talismans only lasted so long, and after burning through two in a row, Yan Zizhan finally spoke up: "Master, I think I feel something more than friendship for Chu Jingxi."

Even if he was slow on the uptake, the second he lost control and hugged Chu Jingxi, he knew his feelings had crossed some line without him even noticing.

The Taiqing Sect Master paused for a beat after hearing that.

An elder from the sect had just brought up the Soul Contract between the two, and how when Chu Jingxi got hit with the Blood Curse Art, his disciple—who'd already finished forging his Sword Bone—risked wrecking his Sea of Consciousness to save him.

Yeah, that definitely went way past ordinary friendship.

Yan Zizhan wasn't just venting for no reason—he needed straight-up advice.

He always called the shots himself, but when it came to Chu Jingxi, he got extra careful.

"If I told him how I feel, would it scare him off?"

Chu Jingxi had already been through a lot lately; Yan Zizhan didn't want to pile on more stress.

The Taiqing Sect Master never saw that question coming and shot back without missing a beat: "With everything that kid's been through, the shock from your little confession probably wouldn't even crack the top ten."

When it comes to life and death, everything else is small potatoes—and for Chu Jingxi, it's all life and death.

Yan Zizhan frowned a little; the guy on the other end of the talisman sounded way too sure of himself.

Would he really not be scared?

They dropped the topic, leaving Yan Zizhan to mull it over. The Taiqing Sect Master asked offhandedly, "So what's that Chu kid been up to lately?"

"Headed to some haunted place."

Taiqing Sect Master: "..."

Author's note:

Bonus scene:

Chu Jingxi's life could be summed up in three words: the death list.

Every day, either the King of Hell comes for him, or he goes for someone else.