…letting me live all these years like a worthless piece of trash…
Zhou Fuxue pondered a moment and said nothing more.
After a while longer, the group finally arrived at the legendary Wind-Listening Tower.
True to its reputation, the tower soared into the clouds, its floors bustling with people coming and going. Looking up, one saw countless glass lanterns hanging from the upturned eaves, jade chimes dangling from their tails, ringing out crisply in the breeze and blending into a delightful chorus.
And along the roof ridges of each floor, ridge-beasts in the form of Chiwen actually galloped along them, mouths gaping as if swallowing clouds and breathing fog, their tails pinned down by sharp swords—looking for all the world like Demon Beasts nailed dead to the eaves.
Mingzhu watched the endlessly galloping Chiwen, which seemed to be straining to claw its way free, and clicked his tongue. “Are those ridge-beasts?”
Shen Hongchuan lightly straightened a crooked flower in Mingzhu’s hair and said offhandedly, “Hardly. Ordinary establishments use stone or jade carvings for their ridge-beasts—when would they use the real thing? These are just Spirit Beasts forcibly pinned here to guard the building and keep the peace. Pay them no mind. Let’s head straight to the thirtieth floor.”
With that, he led Mingzhu into the crowded Wind-Listening Tower.
The tower was packed with people coming to buy information—old and young, peddlers and laborers alongside the richly dressed, all manner of folk. They carried heavy pouches of Spirit Crystals as they lined up to enter that gold-strewn tower, trading their fortunes for a single thin sheet of paper and leaving satisfied.
Mingzhu had been gawking around ever since they entered, looking endlessly curious.
Shen Hongchuan said lightly to the two behind him, “All right, I’m taking Senior Brother to collect his message. Entertain yourselves in the tower as you like. Just don’t cause trouble—and if you do, don’t tell anyone you know me.”
“…” Lu Qingkong had no comeback and could only roll his eyes.
Zhou Fuxue frowned. “The Eldest Senior Brother isn’t coming with us?”
Shen Hongchuan’s face promptly darkened.
Mingzhu smiled and patted Zhou Fuxue’s soft hair. “Senior Brother has important business. Don’t you two have your own errands at the Wind-Listening Tower? Let’s each handle our own affairs first and meet up at the entrance when we’re done. Then your Seventh Senior Brother will take us all out for something delicious. Sound good?”
Zhou Fuxue had always obeyed Mingzhu’s every word. At this, he nodded at once, gave Mingzhu’s wide sleeve a light tug, then, after a moment’s thought, swung it back and forth twice, coaxing like any ordinary child. “Then Senior Brother must be careful with everything.”
Mingzhu’s heart nearly melted at the gesture, and he hastened to answer, “Yes, yes, yes, I’ll be careful!”
Zhou Fuxue’s cold face finally cracked into a sparing, faint smile.
Shen Hongchuan had been watching coldly from the sidelines, and seeing that their farewells threatened to drag on forever, pressed a hand to Mingzhu’s shoulder and said with forced tenderness, “Senior Brother, let’s go. The Tower Master doesn’t wait for people easily.”
Mingzhu said, “Okay, okay, let’s go.”
And with that, the two of them walked off toward a corridor to one side.
Watching their departing figures, Lu Qingkong suddenly frowned as something occurred to him. “Something’s not right.”
Zhou Fuxue said, “What’s not right?”
Lu Qingkong said, “Before we left, I looked into the Wind-Listening Tower. Unless it concerns a Demonic Cultivator Mighty Figure, the Tower Master only receives honored guests on the thirtieth floor. And they just said they were going to the thirtieth floor…”
Zhou Fuxue, too, recalled Shen Hongchuan’s words, his brow furrowing in turn. “They’re looking into matters involving Demonic Cultivators?”
Lu Qingkong’s face was grave as well, but the thirtieth floor was not somewhere minor figures like them could casually enter. However curious, they could only hold it in and wait to question Mingzhu when he returned.
Mingzhu, the object of their worry, was the picture of carefree innocence, trailing after Shen Hongchuan and gawking around, chattering nonstop: “A building this tall—how on earth was it built? You know that rickety Exquisite Pagoda back on Rizhao Mountain only has ten levels at most, and even a decent gust of wind leaves it swaying on the verge of collapse. Every time I walk under it I worry it’ll come down and crush me. Oh, right—how do we get up there? Sword Flight?”
His face turned sour as he spoke, and he clutched his stomach in agony. “Please tell me we’re not?”
Shen Hongchuan had been listening to his rambling with endless patience, showing not a hint of impatience. At this, he chuckled softly. “Of course not.”
The two had just reached the end of the corridor. Shen Hongchuan, familiar as an old hand, pushed the door open; a Jade Token on his wrist flickered, forming a circular barrier that enclosed them both.
Mingzhu’s vision blurred, and the scene around them transformed abruptly, as if teleported through the void.
They now stood in a room whose walls were lined floor to ceiling with archives. Mingzhu tilted his head back to look and discovered that even the ceiling was stacked with scroll after scroll, suspended in midair within an invisible barrier, swaying gently in the breeze.
Shen Hongchuan patted Mingzhu’s wrist. “Senior Brother, that is the Tower Master of the Wind-Listening Tower.”
Mingzhu retracted his wandering gaze and followed Shen Hongchuan’s line of sight to a woman in blue robes, seated amid a pile of person-high archives, writing at furious speed.
She read astonishingly fast, nearly ten lines at a glance; in mere breaths she’d flip through a thick volume and toss it, without so much as a look, onto the pile on her desk—as if pressed desperately for time.
The Tower Master of the Wind-Listening Tower was remarkably young, with a lovely face and graceful bearing, a dot of cinnabar between her brows, strikingly beautiful. But she seemed to have gone many days without rest—there was a bruised shadow beneath her eyes, and she kept her lids half-closed, languid and drowsy, as if she’d fall asleep the next moment.
Mingzhu always minded his image in front of beautiful women. He immediately put away his rakish, slouching manner, straightened his spine, shook out his sleeves, and strove for an air of dignified grandeur. With affected reserve, he announced, “Mingzhu, chief disciple of Daoist Master Guining of Rizhao, pays his respects to the Tower Master of the Wind-Listening Tower.”
Wenfeng lifted her head from the mountain of archives, gave Mingzhu a languid glance, and mumbled, “Mm. Decent-looking. Passably presentable.”
Her speech sounded as if she were holding the words in her mouth, her lips barely moving, squeezing each syllable out one at a time—lazy and listless, enough to put a listener to sleep.
Mingzhu couldn’t quite parse what the remark meant, but being complimented always inexplicably delighted him, and he grinned. “Thank you for the praise.”
Wenfeng gave him another lazy glance and said to Shen Hongchuan, “So it’s him who wants Mingzhao’s whereabouts, yes?”
At that name, the smile on Mingzhu’s face faded several degrees.
Shen Hongchuan’s expression didn’t change. “It is.”
Wenfeng said, “Fine. Ten.”
Shen Hongchuan said, “Deal.”
Wenfeng nodded, yawned behind her hand, and began dragging her languid steps along the surrounding walls, rummaging this way and that in search of the archives concerning Mingzhao.
Watching her dawdle along like a tortoise, Mingzhu wanted to help but feared making a mess of things, so he could only stand to one side and whisper to Shen Hongchuan, “What did she mean just now, ‘ten’?”
Shen Hongchuan smiled. “The Wind-Listening Tower has always traded information for money. That ‘ten’ naturally means Spirit Crystals.”
Mingzhu said, “Oh, ten Spirit Crystals. That’s cheap. I’ve heard the Wind-Listening Tower loves to jack up prices and gouge people—apparently they’re not as ruthless as the rumors say.”
Watching Mingzhu’s earnest expression as he studied Wenfeng, Shen Hongchuan’s lips curved in a soft smile, and he said nothing more.
That ten, of course, could not possibly mean ten Spirit Crystals. Only someone like Mingzhu—shut away on Rizhao Mountain for years, innocent of the world—could interpret a bare “ten” with no fine print so literally.
The two waited off to the side for the better part of the day before Wenfeng finally shuffled over to Mingzhu and tossed him the archive worth “ten Spirit Crystals,” saying, “Here it is. Take it and get lost—don’t stand there being an eyesore.”
Mingzhu hurriedly caught the Bamboo Scroll archive. He studied the faintly white-glowing bamboo closely, and for some reason, his eyes grew slightly red.
Seeing him standing there dazed, Shen Hongchuan tentatively pressed his shoulder. “Senior Brother?”
Mingzhu woke as if from a dream. “Ah. Thank you.”
Shen Hongchuan and Wenfeng seemed to be old acquaintances. With practiced familiarity, he tossed a ring to her. “The Spirit Crystals are all inside. Send someone over to count them. Oh, and I’ll borrow the room next door—need to help my Senior Brother unseal a bamboo scroll.”
Wenfeng didn’t even lift her head. “Get out, get out, get out.”
Shen Hongchuan chuckled and took her silence as assent, leading Mingzhu at a leisurely pace into the side chamber. “Senior Brother, long nights breed dreams. Better to unseal the scroll right here.”
Mingzhu stared down at the exquisite bamboo scroll in his hands, and only after a long while did he give a soft “mm.”
The side chamber wasn’t large, its furnishings styled throughout in the Wind-Listening Tower’s lavish taste—tables, chairs, a reclining couch, pearl curtains, incense burners, every item in place, every corner radiating refinement.
Shen Hongchuan said, “I’ll wait outside for you, all right?”
Mingzhu looked up at him, a little lost, but soon nodded. “Okay,” he said quietly.
Seeing his soul-drifted state, Shen Hongchuan gave a comforting smile and then, understandingly, closed the door and withdrew.
As the door clicked shut softly, Mingzhu stood before the pearl curtain of crushed jade, head bowed over the bamboo scroll, seemingly wrestling with whether to open it at all.
After a long time, he clenched his teeth slightly and, with trembling hands, unwound the Red Rope binding the scroll, coil by coil—as if peeling open, layer by layer, a hidden wound he had concealed for decades, exposing the raw flesh beneath.
The bamboo strips unrolled one by one. Nestled in the very center was a gleaming Jade Token of unknown purpose—but by now Mingzhu had no interest in examining it. He simply stared, entranced, at line after line of writing on the bamboo, and by the time he reached the end, his whole body had begun to tremble violently.
CRASH—
Shen Hongchuan, pacing outside, heard the loud noise and rushed in at once—to find Mingzhu sprawled on the floor, the bamboo strips still clutched in his hand. The crushed-jade pearl curtain behind him, apparently shaken by his presence, had snapped clean from its strings, beads clattering across the floor.
Shen Hongchuan watched Mingzhu sitting there in a daze, unable to gauge his state, and could only inch forward step by careful step, saying quietly, “Senior Brother?”
To his surprise, Mingzhu still recognized people. He slowly raised his head, reddened eyes fixed on Shen Hongchuan, and said softly, “Hongchuan—the dead cannot live again, a broken mirror is hard to mend, and spilled water cannot be gathered up. Even a three-year-old understands this. So why doesn’t he? Why doesn’t Mingzhao?”
Shen Hongchuan fell silent, not knowing how to answer.
“Back then he killed our mother and forcibly crippled my Spirit Vein, falling into the Demonic Path right in front of Fuhua.” Mingzhu seemed adrift in memory, his handsome face twisted between ferocity and grief. “And left me to live all these years like…”
He paused, then, in a gesture close to self-abandonment, chose the description that fit him most nearly: “…like a worthless piece of trash…”
Shen Hongchuan sank to one knee and extended his hand. “Senior Brother is not trash,” he said quietly. “I know it.”
Whether or not Mingzhu heard him, he lifted the strips of bamboo, and a tongue of flame reduced them directly to a pile of ash. From the corner of his eye, Shen Hongchuan glimpsed a barely legible line of text.
“…trading my life to enter a Secret Realm, deludedly seeking the Spirit-Suppressing Lamp… resurrection…”
The words after that were lost to the flames.
Mingzhu closed his slender fingers, gathering the burnt ashes into his well-defined hand. He stared into the void, his gorgeous face as cold as an ice carving.
“Resurrection? Delusional fantasy. Since you regret killing her so much, then I shall make sure the two of you are separated forever, so that for all eternity you will never again disturb her peace.”
