Chapter 180 — The Gathering Gloom

Tian Buhui muttered under his breath, striding quickly back and forth through the hall, his expression growing more agitated and uneasy by the moment, with a faint thread of dread beneath it. Su Wan's worry deepened. "What exactly do you mean? Tell me at once."

Tian Buhui came to a stop before her, silent for a moment, then said in a low, heavy voice, "These past days, Senior Brother Dao Yan has summoned Shui Yue and me many times, repeatedly insisting that our disciples must keep the secret at all costs. That in itself is blameless. But in these recent meetings, I have seen that Senior Brother Dao Yan is more and more... not himself."

Su Wan was taken aback. "Not himself? What do you mean?"

Tian Buhui frowned. "In all the years you have known him, do you ever recall Senior Brother Dao Yan scolding anyone lightly?"

Su Wan fell silent. After a long while she shook her head. "Our senior brother is profound in cultivation and upright in character; he keeps his feelings hidden and never shows them on his face. How could he lose his temper and scold people lightly?"

Tian Buhui nodded. "Just so. Even you know that much. But since this great battle, Senior Brother Dao Yan's temper seems to have changed utterly. He grows more and more short-fused. These last few times he summoned Shui Yue and me, a few reminders would have sufficed—yet each time, without fail, he begins amiable enough and ends in a rage over some trifling, baffling little thing, either cursing us or venting his wrath on whoever is at hand. In short..."

He shook his head, slowly raised his eyes to Su Wan, hesitated a moment, then stepped close and lowered his voice. "I suspect that in the great battle with the Beast Lord, Senior Brother Dao Yan was already struck by the backlash of the Immortal-Slayer's sword spirit—its malevolent aura—and that is why..."

Su Wan's face changed. "Silence!" she said sharply. She hurried to the door of the Hall of Guarded Stillness, glanced left and right to make sure no one was near, then came back and said in a low voice, "This is a secret matter of our Canglan Sect. You—you must not go saying such things carelessly!"

Tian Buhui sighed. "How grave this matter is—how could I dare speak wildly of it? But in the last great battle, to ensure victory, Senior Brother Dao Yan ignored my repeated warnings and forcibly opened the Heavenly Mechanism Seal, with which the ancestral masters of past generations sealed away the spiritual essence of the seven veins of Qingyun, greatly increasing the Immortal-Slayer's power. Yet I cannot set aside what the former masters left in their final commands: that this ancient sword's malevolent aura is too fierce, its killing intent defies heaven, and it seems to be an ill-omened thing. When I parted from Shui Yue on Jietian Peak today, though the two of us have never gotten along, in that moment of parting our eyes met, and I felt as though something passed between us unspoken. I reckon Shui Yue must be thinking the same as I am—only the matter is too great, and neither of us dares to say it aloud."

Su Wan was silent a long while. Then, her voice a little rough, she said, "Even so, in the end it all comes back to the Immortal-Slayer. Now that the sword is destroyed, even if our senior brother has unfortunately been afflicted, first, the source is gone; and second, his cultivation borders on the divine. Given time, most likely he will gradually come to his senses and dissolve it himself!"

The heaviness on Tian Buhui's face did not lift in the slightest. "Let us hope so," he said flatly. "Otherwise—for one who stands as the sovereign of Qingyun, if some mishap befell him, this whole Canglan Sect... I truly do not know how it would end."

Su Wan thought it over, then gave a helpless sigh and said dejectedly, "Enough. This is beyond what we can manage now, and you need not torment yourself over it. There is one more thing I have long meant to ask: after the Immortal-Slayer was destroyed, what was done with it?"

Tian Buhui considered a moment. "I did once inquire of a senior uncle who knew of the matter. I heard that after Senior Brother Dao Yan sternly forbade everyone to breathe a word of it, he at once picked up the two broken halves of the Immortal-Slayer and walked into the Illusory Moon Grotto-Heaven, forbidding anyone ever to enter that forbidden ground again. So to this day no one knows what has become of that ancient sword. Perhaps there is still hope of repairing it?"

Tian Buhui tossed off that last sentence to himself, then at once shook his head with a bitter smile—plainly even he did not believe it. After two dry laughs, he said offhandedly, "That sword is beyond our reach now. But today, when I went to Jietian Peak, apart from getting an inexplicable tongue-lashing, I also heard a strange piece of news."

Su Wan blinked. "What strange news?"

Tian Buhui shrugged. "You would not believe it if I told you. In the last great battle, how many disciples and elders fell? Now the memorial rites are being held in the Yuheng Hall on Jietian Peak. Yet our Senior Brother Dao Yan shows his face there barely once a day and then vanishes. Instead, he goes every day to the ancestral shrine on the back mountain to keep vigil for the dead. Tell me, is that not strange?"

Su Wan was dumbfounded. "Keep vigil? What has happened at the ancestral shrine? Has some elder of the senior generation passed away?"

Tian Buhui shook his head and gave a cold laugh. "An elder? Not at all. I heard a few of the junior disciples of the main line whispering among themselves: it was an old man who for decades had swept and tended the ancestral shrine, and somehow it happened that he died that very day. How he died, no one knows. All they know is that when Senior Brother Dao Yan learned of it, one moment he stood dumb as a wooden chicken, the next he was stamping and roaring in fury. They say he wandered about in a daze for several days, and in the end he insisted on placing this old man's spirit tablet inside the ancestral shrine. But the strangest part of all—that spirit tablet he placed within the shrine was completely blank!"

The more Su Wan heard, the more bewildered she grew, and the more shocked. She shook her head. "This—this—what on earth is going on? Can our senior brother truly, truly be losing his wits?"

Tian Buhui sneered. "Whether he has lost his wits, no one can say. But people have advised him, and he will not hear a word of it. And instead of going to look properly at the tablets of those fallen disciples in the Yuheng Hall, he runs off to the ancestral shrine to stare blankly at that empty tablet. At this rate, I say this Canglan Sect will come to grief sooner or later—sooner or later it will be ruined at his hands..."

Su Wan said nothing. After a long while she gave a faint, mournful sigh and looked out beyond the Hall of Guarded Stillness. This lonely afternoon, the world outside was empty and bare, with only the distant blue of the sky.

The mountain wind blew past, and faintly carried the sound of bamboo waves from the back mountain—yet somehow it only added to the loneliness.

********

Canglan Mountain, Jietian Peak, the ancestral shrine on the back mountain.

Here it was as silent and solemn as ever. The tall shrine still stood, the woods around it as green as before, as though the earth-shaking battle fought on Canglan Mountain some days past had left no mark on this place at all.

Save that one old sweeper was gone—and on the dim altar table, in an inconspicuous spot among the countless spirit tablets, there was now one more unfamiliar, blank tablet.

Lin Jinghong knelt silently before that blank tablet, dressed in mourning hemp and white, a brazier set before him, two white candles and three slender sticks of incense on the table. Threads of pale smoke curled gently upward and soon merged with the incense smoke of the other offerings, never to be parted again.