Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 155: Enmity

Yin Ci’s clothes were completely destroyed. Su Si called his black horse and hastily searched for a set of clothes. Just as he handed out the clothes, the ground trembled. Shi Jingzhi almost lost his balance and nearly fell onto Yin Ci.

The ashes of the True Immortal were blown away by the wind as the ground continued to tremble. The previously flat wasteland visibly sank. The huge Hanging Tree was destroyed by the poisonous fire, causing the mountains to shake, the valley to slowly shift, and the ground to collapse to varying degrees. This tremor was subtle but noticeable, like a low rumble coming from the center of the earth.

The Hanging Shadow Sword was destroyed, yet Yin Ci still carefully picked up the hilt, holding the half-broken sword.

“Get another sword. Better to be safe.” Su Si helped up the dazed Shi Jingzhi, hesitating to speak. “I know a bit about magic too. Sect Master Shi isn’t like the Hanging Tree. If you get seriously injured now…”

“Not only will I die, but I might also endanger him. I know.” Yin Ci smiled. “…I could never hurt him.”

The monks pretended to hear nothing, while Su Si rolled his eyes in response.

The poison of the Ling Sect was potent; Qu Duanyun only managed to stay conscious and couldn’t move at all. Jiang Youyue’s mouth was stained with blood. His earlier refined demeanor was gone; his face was dark and intimidating. He sat on the ground, his wide sleeves covered in mud, showing no intention of resisting.

Seeing Yin Ci approach, Jiang Youyue looked up, his eyes filled with anger. The martial artists around had witnessed a dramatic resurrection, and fearing the resurrected man, they unconsciously stepped back.

“So that’s how… It’s the principle of grafting. Did you turn that Child of Desire into a new Hanging Tree?”

Jiang Youyue bared his blood-stained teeth, smiling maliciously.

“You connected his meridians to yours, sharing his vital qi to extend your life. But the source isn’t unlimited. He’s still struggling.”

“Under the curse of the Twin Roots, the blood master and the blood guide live and die together.”

Yin Ci stopped in front of Jiang Youyue, and his smile from earlier vanished like smoke.

“Was the gold really what the Chigou Sect was after when they destroyed the temples and stole it?”

Jiang Youyue’s smile froze.

It was the flesh idols.

After the Chigou Sect stole the gold, the outer shells of the statues were damaged to varying degrees. They saw that the statues remained and didn’t investigate further. They trusted the sturdiness of the flesh idols, just as they trusted the True Immortal of the Hanging Tree.

However, their enemies clearly used the same method on both!

The Twin Root’s effect was simple: as long as the “flesh” was consistent and the root could touch it, the curse could take effect. The flesh of Yin Ci wasn’t just “this one” in front of them—the flesh idols, like the Hanging Tree, absorb vital qi and self-repair, relying on the “immortal body” at their core.

The flesh idols were difficult to destroy, but it was easy to bury a piece of the Twin Root in them. Any ordinary person could do it. The Twin Roots weren’t such a rare item, so both the Chigou and Ling Sects have them. The Kushan Sect only needed to choose a large enough root group and have someone carefully split it.

Facing the two of them, the Immortal Assembly was thoroughly defeated.

Earlier, when Yin Ci was burned down to just a head, the immortal body inside the flesh idol couldn’t escape either. They were left headless, probably with just a few broken bones remaining. Without the immortal body, the flesh idols were merely statues made of flesh with no special attributes.

Shi Jingzhi wouldn’t be force-fed vital qi anymore, and a new Child of Desire wouldn’t appear. His own master was relying on the flesh idol to prolong his life, and now, his master’s fate looked grim…

Jiang Youyue’s face showed instant resentment. He clenched his teeth and fixed his dim eyes on Yin Ci.

“Quite insightful, worthy of being the Imperial Preceptor. Your flesh idols—I guess you’ll have to remake them.” Yin Ci grabbed Jiang Youyue’s collar, whispering in his ear. “Now I’m not immortal. This time, where will you find the core? …Why not go and ask the Child of Desire of Luojiu, and find out the method from them?”

Jiang Youyue: “Are you satisfied now? From now on, droughts, floods, epidemics, injuries—all will remain. Even if Luojiu’s Child of Desire becomes Emperor, wars will not cease! The beautiful land will be in turmoil; the people will suffer—is this the result you wanted?”

“In the past, I fought on the battlefield, joining Xu Li in battles everywhere, so the weak wouldn’t be oppressed by the strong and women, children, and the elderly wouldn’t suffer and die on the streets.”

Yin Ci responded nonchalantly.

“It has been 300 years of peace by the river and sea. Just to protect one tree, you destroyed villages and killed people. Now, the elderly and weak die even earlier than in times of war. Even if one is of the highest nobility, they are still tools to be manipulated… Is this the ‘golden era’ you wish for?”

Upon hearing this, Qu Duanyun struggled to move closer. “For 300 years, Great Yun has been strong and the people live peacefully. Isn’t that enough? Once the countries are unified, there will be no more wars. The price is just some insignificant lives. You killed the Hanging Tree. Didn’t you also decide for others?”

“You speak as if you are on the side of righteousness. Are you any different from us?” After saying this, he spat.

“Yes.”

Yin Ci tightly grabbed Jiang Youyue’s collar and raised his broken sword.

“The Immortal Assembly wronged me first and then hurt my beloved. Half for the greater good and half for personal grudges. Of course, I am different from you—I am but a mortal mired in the mud.”

Seeing that Yin Ci was about to deliver a death blow, Shi Zhongyu was startled and instinctively rushed forward. “Senior Yin, be careful! He is an official of the court. Beware of giving others a chance to criticize—”

But Yin Ci hesitated only for a moment.

Amidst the thunderous sound of collapsing mountains and rivers, the black broken blade shimmered coldly and was about to thrust down. Jiang Youyue roared, and a blinding magical light exploded. When the light faded, both the Imperial Preceptor and Qu Duanyun had disappeared without a trace.

Shi Zhongyu’s face turned pale with a hint of guilt. “They must have been preparing their magic while talking. With so many wilderness valleys around, I fear… I fear it will be hard to find them.”

Yin Ci slowly sheathed his sword, his face bearing a mysterious smile.

“Miss Shi, you’re still the same. Don’t take it to heart; we will find a way.”

He gave her a meaningful look, turned on his heel, and quickly returned to Shi Jingzhi’s side. The Sect Master seemed slightly more lucid, and without regard for the onlookers, he almost clung to Yin Ci.

Relieved that he was alright, Shi Jingzhi let out a deep sigh, as if releasing years of pain and loneliness. He buried his face in Yin Ci’s chest and fell into a deep sleep amidst the deafening noise.

Yin Ci sat quietly. When a monk approached to help, he just shook his head, holding the person tightly in his embrace.

“Let him sleep.”

A dozen miles away, a white light flashed.

Jiang Youyue and Qu Duanyun landed roughly on wild grass. It was a small hill surrounded by rocks and weeds. A few wild apricot trees grew among the rocks. Their flowers had already fallen but their leaves were lush, presenting a scene full of spring vitality.

Qu Duanyun quickly expelled the poison from his body. Knowing that they couldn’t go far with Jiang Youyue’s injuries, they were grateful for the secluded location.

“Master, what about our Hundred-Year Project?” Qu Duanyun’s face showed lingering anger.

“No worries.” Jiang Youyue’s eyes were cold. “Shi Jingzhi didn’t consume the Shirou, which means it must still exist. Such a treasure won’t be easily destroyed. Once we find it, I will personally consume it and plant a new Hanging Tree.”

“…Master…”

“That duo from Kushan, no matter how much they obstruct, are just mere mortals now seeking their own destruction. We will overcome them.”

“This Disciple understands. We need to deal with Xu Jingxing first.”

“Honk.”

“Right. The most urgent matter is the battle against Luojiu. You will accompany me…”

“Honk.”

Jiang Youyue and Qu Duanyun: “……”

Both slowly turned their heads to see a plump, snow-white goose standing not far away in the wild grass. The goose, with two fleshy antennae on its head and eyes full of arrogance and disdain, let out a proud honk and flapped its wings vigorously.

“What are you two doing in such a remote place?” A playful female voice sounded. “Lost in the wilderness, are you perhaps monsters in disguise?”

The newcomer wore dark red clothes that were exquisitely made up. She had an intricate hair bun, revealing mismatched earrings—one of which was a jade pendant of the Minister of the Ministry of Heaven.

Shen Zhu.

She shooed away a sparrow on her shoulder, picked up the honking white goose, and her smile became even more radiant. With her free hand, she picked up a small cloth bag.

“If I heard right, you both want this, don’t you?”

The wind blew the cloth open, revealing a vibrant red fruit. A part of it was missing, oozing thick, clear nectar; its fragrance even more tempting than when whole.

The Shirou.

Realizing this, the master and disciple duo put aside all past grievances and schemes. Both lunged towards the fruit with determination.

Seeing the two of them rushing over, Shen Zhu’s eyes flickered for a moment, and she raised her head high to the sky and laughed sharply.

Shen Zhu laughed until her voice was hoarse; the sound sharp and grating. Rather than a manic laugh, it resembled a wail suppressed for many years. Standing still, she extended her hand, and just as Jiang Youyue’s fingertip touched the Shirou—

A faint sizzle.

Another soft sound followed, and the delightful fragrance turned into the charred stench of burnt meat. A dark flame scorched her left hand, making the two rings on it even more prominent. One was as pitch-black as the Hanging Shadow Sword, while the other faintly glimmered with gold, clearly a tool that channeled yang fire.

Shen Zhu’s left hand was charred beyond recognition, and the Shirou on it also turned pitch black. Yet she kept laughing, her tears flowing freely, as if she felt no pain at all.

The Shirou was small and quickly turned to ash in an instant. Worn out from laughing, Shen Zhu raised her burned left hand and gently licked it twice.

Jiang Youyue stood dumbfounded, staring at the woman in front of him, who laughed triumphantly. Their Hundred-Year Project evaporated with the ashes, leaving not a trace of hope behind. A mix of anger, despair, and helplessness turned into overwhelming murderous intent. Both master and disciple glared with rage and charged at Shen Zhu.

Qu Duanyun struggled to raise his sword, while Jiang Youyue forced himself to form a spell gesture.

“You wretch, how dare you—”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

With two soft clinks, their attacks were blocked by an invisible barrier. Shen Zhu’s eyes, alluring and teary, gazed at them.

“There’s so much I dare to do, isn’t that right, Your Majesty?”

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Kinky Thoughts:

Speaking of grafting, I was reminded of the Tree of 40 Fruit, which is a series of fruit trees created by Syracuse University Professor Sam Van Aken using grafting.

Okay, for those who are confused, here’s a summary of what transpired.

300 years ago, the country was in chaos with war and famine. The country of Yun, however, was relatively safe, largely due to the influence of He Chang’an, who at that time, unknown to all, was already part of the Hanging Tree. Using his abilities, he recruited Xu Li, Wang Sun, and Yin Ci and established Great Yun, bringing peace to the Central Plains.

Shortly after Great Yun was established, calamities befell. Convincing the emperor that Yin Ci needed to be sacrificed in order to appease the gods, he captured Yin Ci and beheaded him thousands of times to take his immortal body to use as material. Yin Ci had drunk immortal wine and, unbeknownst to him, became attached to the Hanging Tree. However, he has a special constitution that allows him free will from the Hanging Tree while still retaining its benefits. This is why Yin Ci couldn’t die, and it is also why he has no inner force. When he became connected to the Hanging Tree, his inner force was drained by the tree. 

Once they collected enough of his bodies, He Chang’an buried him under the Northwest Great Prohibition to serve as a power source for the seal to block off the natural disasters from the northwest. However, during the building process, a member of the Hua Clan stole some mercury used to seal his stone coffin, thus allowing Yin Ci to eventually escape (after breaking off his arms multiple times). The remnants of his body that he used for his escape powered the seal for a time, but eventually, in current time, it was running out (thus the weakening of the Great Prohibition).

The Imperial Preceptor lineage knows about the Hanging Tree and believes it to have a symbiotic relationship with them. The Hanging Tree has no sentience and only acts on instinct of survival. It views humans as basically livestock and harvests their vital qi so it can continue to grow. This is why in Great Yun, there is a phenomenon called ‘Heaven’s Displeasure’. The old and young who are weak suddenly die without any chance of recovery. This is basically the Hanging Tree culling those it deems unusable in providing it with vital qi (since they are too weak). In return, the Hanging Tree protects Great Yun from natural disasters and calamities in order to preserve its livestock.

In comes the Imperial Preceptor lineage and their Hundred-Year Project. Knowing about the Hanging Tree, they want to continue this symbiotic relationship with it. Through hundreds of years of work, they try to cultivate a “Child of Desire”. This Child of Desire would basically be the vessel for the Hanging Tree to interact with the world. However, they couldn’t use just anyone; it had to be someone with a special constitution and a fixed desire and wouldn’t break down into madness killing themselves.

The first step was to spread flesh idols throughout the country, using Yin Ci’s body as the core and covering it with flesh from “monster materials”. We’ve seen this in arc 2, where they stumbled upon Yuanxian Village. The Immortal Assembly set up villages like these to cultivate people who have “monster material” constitutions and use their flesh to cover Yin Ci’s core. They are then turned into flesh idols and set up in temples throughout Great Yun in order to absorb vital qi from the populace. This vital qi is then channeled to the Child of Desire, shaping them. 

The Immortal Assembly was able to master this technique after they dealt with one of the early Children of Desire, the Queen of Milan (arc 4). Through her technique of becoming the Arcane Arts (with herself as the core and flesh of monsters surrounding her), she basically preserved her core while the flesh absorbed vital qi to keep it alive (immortal).

However, this came at a cost, which is why all Children of Desire can’t live very long and have hemoptysis. Because the flesh idol absorbs vital qi through the country, that vital qi is channeled into the Child of Desire, essentially destroying their meridians (as no normal human could accept such power for so long), and it also explains why Shi Jingzhi has so much abundant inner force.

With their plan in motion, Yan Budu was also selected as a potential successor to the True Immortal. However, Yan Budu was hard to control and too mad. Knowing the Immortal Assembly’s plan, he hid the Shirou and then set up the Ghost Tomb in order to attract the martial world. While on the surface it seems like this is all just a game he wanted to play to the martial world after his death, in reality he was actually doing a “good deed” (this explains why he said and did what he did in front of Kongshi’s grave). His action was to reveal the true nature of the Immortal Assembly and the Shirou, and by connection, the true cause of everything, the Hanging Tree.

Finally, there was Shi Jingzhi, the best of all Children of Desire. Because he formulated his fixed desire at an early age (when he met Yin Ci in Juyi Valley), and it was fixed on survival, he became the perfect candidate for the Shirou. Unlike the other Children of Desire whose fixed desire was formed much later in their life and thus drove them to madness and death, Shi Jingzhi, in theory, would eat the Shirou in order to ensure he would live due to his desire, but not to the point where he would go insane from it. 

Not only that, Shi Jingzhi is also brilliant and incredibly talented. A genius that appears once every thousand years.

After hundreds of years, the Immortal Assembly managed to cultivate the perfect vessel for the new True Immortal to take over from Sun Wang, who was the current True Immortal. 

Like all plants, the Hanging Tree needs to propagate. Sun Wang, now bearing the seed of the Hanging Tree, needs to leave the land and go to a foreign place that has no Hanging Tree and “plant himself”, just like He Cheng’an did in Luojiu after he completed his mission. 

However, the current Hanging Tree needs a successor, so the Immortal Assembly enacted this project in order to breed a perfect Child of Desire to take over.

In present day, the Immortal Assembly plunged Great Yun into chaos in order to force Shi Jingzhi to become the new True Immortal with the promise of immortality and the seat of the Emperor to rule Great Yun. 

They have also overtime destroyed many things that would impede its growth or harm it, including the wushu ore. This is why Shen Zhu’s village and the other two were destroyed. Wushu ore can stop vital qi absorption, which is dangerous to the Hanging Tree.

Unfortunately, their plan didn’t pan out. 

Because Shi Jingzhi met Yin Ci at a young age, Yin Ci was able to quell his object addiction. This essentially allows Shi Jingzhi to not hastily accept the Shirou just so he can survive (knowing he will essentially no longer retain himself and just become a soulless puppet of the Hanging Tree).

So they devised a plan to destroy the Hanging Tree. In their fight against Sun Wang, Yin Ci inserted the Twin Roots into him, which then formed a connection between him and the Hanging Tree (after all Yin Ci is part of the Hanging Tree so by extension he is the tree).

The Twin Roots act like a curse; when one side gets hurt, so does the other. Thus when Shi Jingzhi burned Sun Wang with yang fire channeled through the hanging shadow sword made of wushu ore, it also burned Yin Ci and by extension Great Yun’s Hanging Tree.

Not only did the Hanging Tree burn but so did all the flesh idols throughout Great Yun. When the Chigou Sect raided the Imperial Celestial temples, they inserted the Twin Roots in the flesh idols, which triggered the curse when Yin Ci started to disintegrate, thus essentially killing two birds with one stone (the Hanging Tree and the flesh idols).

With the Hanging Tree dead, however, that means that Yin Ci, who was connected to it, would no longer have his immortality, so he would no longer regrow.

In order to save Yin Ci, what Shi Jingzhi did was basically “grafted” himself onto the Hanging Tree using the True Immortal finger he severed. By grafting himself to the Hanging Tree he became a Hanging Tree as well which allowed him to save Yin Ci.

As Yin Ci was dying since the Great Yun Hanging Tree was dead, Shi Jingzhi infused his vital qi into Yin Ci thus allowing Yin Ci’s “roots” to entwine with the new “Hanging Tree”.

Now Yin Ci and Shi Jingzhi literally share the same fate as they are bound together. Like the Twin Roots, if Yin Ci gets injured, so does Shi Jingzhi. And with the destruction of the flesh idols across the country, Shi Jingzhi no longer suffers from over absorption of vital qi.

And we have now reached the conclusion, with all the puzzle pieces coming together.

For those wondering why they didn’t just capture Shi Jingzhi and force feed him the Shirou, it’s because they needed to test him and make sure he’s fit for it. They didn’t want another Yan Budu situation (side note: the reason why the Yan Clan had a kill order on all their bloodline is because Yan Budu is part of the royal family. Since he sowed his seed everywhere, the Imperial Preceptor lineage needed to execute all his bloodline to prevent the royal bloodline from leaking and the potential leakage of the Children of Desire), and they needed someone smarter and better than the current True Immortal (remember Sun Wang was illiterate and was only good on the battlefield and even then was inferior to Yin Ci). This is why Yin Ci, who has both brawn and brain was chosen by He Chang’an to become the True Immortal but due to his special constitution only connected to the Hanging Tree becoming part of it but not controlled by it.

Jiang Youyue was also overconfident that once Shi Jingzhi passed their test he would willingly eat the Shirou due his obsession for survival. Little did he know that Yin Ci had a big impact on him during the formation of his obsession which threw everything off. Had Shi Jingzhi not encountered Yin Ci in Juyi Valley during his childhood and saved him for his possession, and had they not met again on Kushan in the prologue, Shi Jingzhi would have followed the Immortal Assembly’s plan and ate the Shirou.

In a way, they literally save each other and now they are connected physically, emotionally, and spiritually in every sense! It’s quite romantic if you really think about it.

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