Chapter 212 - The Pond (1)

Seaport Falls teemed with people. With the Myriad Manifestations Sect standing nearby, the magnificent waterfall had taken on a character unlike any other scenic wonder.

There were young masters from noble families who had come to sightsee, refined scholars who came to admire the view and compose poetry, and even poor families dragging their children along in hopes of somehow joining the sect.

The first two groups mostly gathered in the taverns and pleasure houses along the riverbank. The last crowded atop the dam.

Yet all that noise and bustle was split cleanly in two by the waterfall’s natural divide. On one side stood a lively crowd amid all the trappings of prosperity. On the other sprawled a vast, silent complex of imposing palaces.

Because the sect had been built beside the falls, its lower-ranked disciples lacked the cultivation to resist the damp. To keep moisture from seeping into their bodies, the palaces had either been built from water-repelling materials or carved with water-repelling formation patterns. The walkways remained pleasantly dry.

Along the corridor leading into the sect’s restricted grounds, two sets of footsteps echoed just as they had over a month ago.

“Old Fifth, were those bastards still arguing at yesterday’s sect council?” The bearded middle-aged man sounded tired.

Old Fifth glanced at his longtime friend. “I was about to ask you the same thing. You didn’t go either?”

The two men abruptly fell silent.

After a long while, the bearded man let out a heavy sigh. “They argue every damned day. Blaming each other, passing responsibility around, and getting nowhere after hours of shouting. Going is no different from not going. How are things on your end?”

At the question, Old Fifth slowly turned his gaze toward the distance.

The view from here was excellent. The entire waterfall lay spread before them.

He stared at it for several breaths before speaking. “That idiot Second Elder keeps telling me to send people over and investigate. Investigate how? How would I dare? Ji Wencheng and the other two haven’t sent back a word in all this time. Something almost certainly happened to them. Sending more men now would only walk them straight into a trap. We might as well hang a sign around our necks saying we’re guilty.”

The bearded man flexed his fingers. His knuckles cracked sharply. “Three Grandmasters, vanishing without so much as a sound. Was it an Origin Awakener?”

Old Fifth shook his head. “That isn’t the problem right now. We need to figure out what to do, and quickly. Half a month ago, our hidden agents in the surrounding commanderies sent word that troops were moving toward Sageridge. And after all this discussion, we still haven’t made the slightest bit of progress.”

“That’s true.” The bearded man nodded. After a pause, he suddenly remembered something and lowered his voice. “If I recall correctly, Little He and that Li fellow were both in Sageridge when it happened. What became of them?”

Old Fifth shook his head. “Little He is unharmed, but the blow hit her hard. The Sect Master has probably placed her under house arrest by now. Still, she should come around eventually. As for that simpleton, Li, he’s likely dead already.”

“Dead?” The bearded man frowned.

A 20-year-old fourth rank cultivator. If Li Erzhu managed to comprehend the Dao within the next two years, the Sect Master would most likely have groomed him as a future son-in-law. Otherwise, he would never have let Little He spend so much time with him.

Old Fifth narrowed his eyes and said quietly, “On the way back to the sect, he told me he wanted to return to Sageridge and kill demonic beasts.”

The bearded man raised an eyebrow, his expression turning strange. “Kill demonic beasts? In the middle of a beast tide?”

Old Fifth paused. A complicated look crossed his eyes as he remembered Li Erzhu kneeling before him and pleading.

“Fifth Elder, I’ll never be able to repay what the sect’s done for me in this lifetime. But could you let me go back there and kill demonic beasts? Or... you could just cut me down with one stroke. My conscience won’t let me live with this.”

Old Fifth narrowed his eyes, his meaning impossible to read. “You watched him grow up too. You know what kind of man he was.”

The bearded man froze. Then, remembering the boy’s temperament, he snorted. “He asked you to kill him?”

“Mhm.”

“Utterly foolish.”

“So I let him go kill demonic beasts instead.” Old Fifth smiled.

The bearded man frowned. “Weren’t you afraid he might reveal what happened?”

Old Fifth smiled again, but there was no warmth in it. “The sect’s kindness toward him was as weighty as a mountain. With his temperament, he would never forget that. And if the Sect Master’s personal disciple died fighting for Sageridge, it would help clear away some of the suspicion hanging over us. Far more useful than simply killing him with one stroke.”

The bearded man rubbed his brow. “What a waste. Used properly, someone like him could have made a decent tool.”

Old Fifth glanced at him, then lowered his eyes and said meaningfully, “Perhaps. Or perhaps none of that matters anymore.”

Confusion flickered in the bearded man’s eyes.

Neither spoke again.

They reached the end of the corridor, where the doors to the council hall came into view.

They pushed them open and entered.

Unlike the oppressive silence of their previous meeting, the hall was now filled with noise.

More than a dozen voices tangled together in a chaotic din. Rather than an important council of a great sect’s senior leadership, it sounded more like a small vegetable market.

One old man was pointing at a young man in brocade robes and cursing him to his face.

“He Jigu! All you ever think about is that Mountain Sea Merchant Guild of yours! This was a plan involving the entire sect. Were all the interests we had in Sageridge even worth 50,000 taels combined? Yet you just had to pull everything out early! They had no target to investigate before, but thanks to you, now they do!”

The young man in brocade clenched a folding fan in his hand and slammed it against the table.

“Drunken Madman, stop barking! Wasn’t this failure mostly your fault? You were responsible for coordinating the formation and inspecting it before use. If something hadn’t gone wrong with the formation, how could we possibly have failed?”

“Bastard! There was absolutely nothing wrong with the formation!”

“Then explain how someone broke it! The illusory mist array was created by Xu Xinyao, a true master of formations. And while we’re on the subject, Old Drunkard, the sect’s formation research under your command has been a bitter disappointment. We pour an enormous sum into it every year, yet forget the illusory mist array, you even had to buy the ghost capturing formation from outsiders! Do you have any idea how much silver that cost?!”

“This old man personally developed the core of the ghost capturing formation! I merely purchased a few peripheral patterns, yet in the mouth of an ignorant brat like you, that somehow becomes the entire—”

...

As Old Fifth and the bearded man stepped into the hall and heard the disorderly shouting, they exchanged a glance. Both saw the same helplessness in the other’s eyes.

The moment the two entered, the Sect Master, who had been resting with his eyes closed in the seat of honor, suddenly opened them.

“Old Fifth and Youngest are here. That’s enough. All of you, stop.” His voice was deep and powerful, carrying directly into the minds of everyone in the hall and echoing there.

The arguing elders immediately fell silent, though they continued glaring daggers at one another.

They might ignore the Sect Master’s orders, but they still had to give him some face.

The Sect Master exhaled and asked evenly, “Have either of you made any progress?”

The two men oversaw intelligence and information gathering. At this stage, they were arguably the two most important people in the entire Myriad Manifestations Sect.

The movement of local commandery troops, the activity of armies from other provinces, even the contents of memorials submitted to the imperial court... all of it depended on the intelligence networks under their command.

Much of the infighting among the sect’s upper ranks came from one simple thing: fear born of ignorance.

They did not know what had become of the three men responsible for the formation. They did not know whether everyone in Sageridge had died. They did not know how much of their plan had been exposed. They did not even know the imperial court’s current position.

All they knew was that the court was sending more troops toward Sageridge.

Beyond that, they knew nothing.

They were ants on a hot pan.

Old Fifth cupped his hands in salute and delivered a useful piece of information, though it was hardly good news.

“Sect Master, I had one of our hidden agents follow the reinforcements into Sageridge. A report arrived today. The beast tide was held back. The reinforcements have wiped out more than ninety percent of the demonic beasts, but over 200,000 people inside the town died.”

The Myriad Manifestations Sect Master immediately asked the most important question. “Did they discover who helped Sageridge?”

The answer would determine how they responded next.

At the question, Old Fifth walked to his chair and sat down. “We only know that two people visited the city. A general named Wang Jiadian personally received them. One was a Grandmaster. We don’t know the other’s cultivation, but the Grandmaster appeared to be his attendant.”

The Myriad Manifestations Sect Master narrowed his eyes. “Can you investigate further?”

Old Fifth shook his head helplessly. “The highest-ranking agent we have there is only a thousand-man commander. Besides, the trail has gone cold.”