Chapter 396: A Big Fire

The image of the monk, with skin so pale that it was nearly transparent, would forever be imprinted on Shangguan Ru’s memory.

When she had been placed under house arrest, Master Lianhua was the only outsider allowed to visit her. His original intention was to find out if someone else other than the Dragon King and Maid Lotus had learned the Death Scripture, but he had ended up discovering a very unique young woman.

Shangguan Ru was the favored daughter of the Supreme King, and she had been born and grown up in the Stone Castle. Naturally, she would be immersed in the culture of killing, but she turned out to have a weak killing desire and was not willing to harm anyone.

It was the miracle that Master Lianhua had been hoping for. He instruted her in the entire Breaking Obsession, which was tens of thousands of words long, with the hope that the miracle would continue on.

It was a secret that the monk and the young woman kept between themselves; Lady Meng knew nothing about her daughter’s study of Breaking Obsession and treated her increasing ‘weakness’ as a mental obstacle.

Breaking Obession was a Buddhist incantation written by Lianhua and Lianxin and it specifically targeted the killing intent of violent individuals. Gu Shenwei and Maid Lotus had once unknowingly practiced part of the incantation and had had to spend a lot of effort to rid themselves of the effects.

Shangguan Ru, however, studied it proactively and recited the incantation at least once a day. At first, she did it secretly where there was no one around. Gradually, she was able to perform her recitations silently, and she did not have to worry about her mother discovering that she was practicing Breaking Obsession.

The incantation’s effect on her was extremely obvious. Not only did it remove her killing desire, she now wished for everyone to stop killing as the two monks did. However, it remained her secret wish; she did not express this desire to anybody.

Old Man Mu was the first person to learn Breaking Obsession from her.

The late Master Lianhua had been preaching Breaking Obsession to the machetemen of Jade City to limited effect, so much so that even Gu Shenwei and Maid Lotus, who had unknowingly learned part of the incantation, were influenced more by its effects. Most of the machetemen treated it as some sort of sutra promising atonement for their sins, and they would chant a few lines of it after killing or after committing violence. They spent hardly any effort trying to understand the incantation and inculcate it into their lives.

As such, even though Old Man Mu had heard of Master Lianhua and Breaking Obsession, he did not consider it as something important and casually dismissed the monk as a low-level con man. He never expected to be tricked into learning the incantation one day.

The objective of Breaking Obsession was to remove the killing desire of an individual. As such, the practitioner had to be a willing party. Because the machetemen knew about its effects beforehand, they had some natural resistance to it, and this led to the incantation having little to no effect on them.

Old Man Mu was now in a similar situation as Gu Shenwei and Maid Lotus had been a few years ago – they had all believed the incantation to be some powerful Internal Strength manual and took it upon themselves to memorize it. Since they studied it diligently and spent much of their efforts on learning it, the effects on them were pronounced.

It was not possible to make him give up killing immediately, as he had been memorising it for less than two hours and had only learned a few hundred words. However, it planted the seed of doubt in him.

There were many different levels of speed, but the difference between being fast and extremely fast was only a few split seconds, but it was what separated good kung fu masters from the very best ones. That iperceptible seed of doubt in Old Man Mu resulted in his speed diminishing slightly, but it took away his ability to make sudden and unpredictable attacks. Even Shangguan Ru, whose abilities were much weaker than his, could manage to escape his strikes.

Old Man Mu still had not come to complete realization. He only noticed that his moves were not as swift as before, and it gave him a shock. He stood rooted to his spot in a daze as questions began ringing in his head. He felt as though much of his soul had left him.

Shangguan Ru retraced her steps to get out of the All Annihilating Formation safely. She lowered the Blessed Child and caught Dragon King’s eye as she raised her head.

Gu Shenwei had followed her into the forest not long after she left and overheard most of her conversation with Old Man Mu. Just as he heard Shangguan Ru beginning to teach Breaking Obsession to the old man, he hurriedly retreated to a distant perch and only returned after a long while.

He finally understood why Shangguan Ru could not regain her killing desire. The death of Shangguan Yushi and the betrayal of her close friends and family had served as the pretext for her to pore over Breaking Obsession, but they did not provide a complete explanation as to why she had stopped killing.

Gu Shenwei could not describe what he was feeling now; it was a mixture of pity, surprise, despise and respect.

He knew that now was not the time to speak to Shangguan Ru and composed himself. He took a few steps forward, shielding Shangguan Ru and the Blessed Child from the old man. “Old Man Mu, do you still have any deals to make?” he asked.

Old Man Mu looked as if he just woke up from a coma and looked at Dragon King and Shangguan Ru in bewilderment, his wrinkly face turning and unexpected peach red.

He was angry now, furious, in fact. Even when the Master of Xiaoyue Hall, Han Wuxian, had tricked him into learning the Seven Rotation Skill, he was not so angry. Furthermore, he had gained some skill from that incident, but now he had nothing except for the seventh chapter of the Wayless Book, which was useless by itself.

“What unique skill is this?” Old Man Mu asked, his voice urgent and stiff, the exact opposite of his usual frivolous tone.

He had already begun to realize that all of his problems were caused by the 500 words Shangguan Ru had taught him.

“Evil Cleansing Chant,” replied Gu Shenwei, lying to Old Man Mu about the name of the incantation. There were some Taoist books in the Gu family, and when he was young, he had flipped through a few of them out of curiosity. He did not know why, but the words ‘Evil Cleansing Chant’ had left a deep impression on him.

The Yuqing Sect was a model Taoist sect, but since Old Man Mu had no interest in learning the ways of Tao, he had never heard of the ‘Evil Cleansing Chant’. He repeated the words to himself a few times in a soft voice. Just the name itself gave him chills.

“It’s not possible; you’re trying to fool me. How can chanting a few hundred words cause my moves to be slower? How can there be such strange sorcery in this world?”

“Speaking of strange, you should know more about that type of thing than us.”

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Old Man Mu had learned many types of kung fu from different sects. To him, the best types of kung fu were those which were cruel and strange. Even the Five Hole Punch of Yuqing Sect, which was not devious, but when remodeled into a terrible technique by him was used to rip out the hearts and shatter the lungs of his opponents. As such, he was especially drawn to weird theories.

He opened his palms skyward and observed them, before suddenly starting to shadow box. His moves were as swift as lightning, making him feel relieved. He let out a deep breath and began to smile again, not caring anymore that he had completely lost to Shangguan Ru. “Whew, you scared me. I’m alright, I’m alright. My punches are still as swift as before. You’re too devious, Dragon King, to concoct a lie to scare me.”

Gu Shenwei was intimately aware of the powerful effects of Breaking Obsession and made a soft sound of retort. “Old Man Mu, don’t be happy just yet. Imagine that someone is standing in front of us and that you can kill him or her with one punch. Think hard about it and then try to strike again.”

Under normal circumstances, Old Man Mu would definitely not do as told, but he was extremely receptive to Gu Shenwei’s suggestion now.

He only managed to punch his ‘target’ twice before finding himself rooted to the spot like a wooden puppet. Gradually, his entire body started to tremble and he suddenly leaped onto a flowering tree and shouted at Shangguan Ru, who was behind the Dragon King, from above, “All women are bad people. Do you think you can kill me by tricking me into learning a few hundred words of the Evil Cleansing Chant? Foolish girl, you’ve offended me now. I’ll catch you and strip you naked before parading you in the streets of the city. There aren’t many young men in the city, but many between sixty to seventy years of age. It’ll be a treat for them…”

Filthy words sprang from his mouth and Shangguan Ru grew red with embarrassment just hearing them. She had originally wanted to plead for mercy on his behalf but gave up the idea. She grabbed the Blessed Child and left the forest quickly.

Old Man Mu immediately changed tack when he saw Shangguan Ru leaving. “My good lady, don’t go. I’m just being cheeky with you. When will the effects of the Evil Cleansing Chant wear off?” he asked.

“It won’t go away,” replied Gu Shenwei on her behalf, who was now facing Old Man Mu alone, dealing him another heavy blow. “Look at Shangguan Ru, do you still not understand?”

Old Man Mu grew ashen-faced. Indeed, Shangguan Ru was entirely void of killing desire. She was skilled in many kinds of kung fu but when threatened, she could only flee – this would logically be due to the effects of the ‘Evil Cleansing Chant’.

“It’s impossible,” said Old Man Mu as he stared fiercely at Gu Shenwei. “She learned much more of the chant than me, I… only memorized 500 words, and only for a short period of time. I, I’ll forget them, I’ll forget them now.”

The more one tried to forget the incantation, the deeper it etched onto one’s memory. Gu Shenwei had first-hand experience, and he knew that if one wanted to remove the effects of Breaking Obsession, one would have to generate even more killing desire than before; it would be difficult in Old Man Mu’s case. Furthermore, Gu Shenwei had no intention of letting him know about this trick. “Then take your time to forget it, I hope you have enough time on your hands,” he said.

He took a final sweeping glance at the pieces of flesh and pools of blood on the ground around him before turning away and leaving the Flower Soul Forest as well.

Only Old Man Mu was left in the forest now. As the sun gradually rose, he hid under a bush of flowers offering the most shade. He had a premonition that something terribly bad was about to happen to him.

Thirty minutes later, a huge fire was lit at all corners of the forest, spreading quickly to the very center of it; thus, the last Flower Soul Forest of the Land of Fragrance was reduced to ashes.

As she stood at the outskirts the forest, Shangguan Ru felt uneasy. Even though she did not personally kill Old Man Mu, he had perished because of her doing. Regardless of whether it was due to her own nature or the effects of Breaking Obsession, his death made her feel guilty.

The slave soldiers garrisoned in the capital were observing the blazing fire under Maid Lotus’ direction, and they would toss in dry firewood upon noticing anywhere the fire showed signs of abating.

Gu Shenwei managed to guess what Shangguan Ru was thinking about and said to her, “It was I who killed Old Man Mu. No matter what you did just now, I would still have set fire on the forest.”

Shangguan Ru smiled stiffly, not saying a word.

The Blessed Child stood beside her, still shaking, and gazed at her, following wherever she went.

On her other side stood Shangguan Fei, who looked as if he could not decide to be embarrassed or afraid.

The Dragon King had not spoken to him, but Shangguan Fei felt that he should take the initiative to explain. “Dragon King, um, actually… this… I was…”

“You wished to trick Old Man Mu out of his formation, therefore you tried to fool him by promising to give him the Wayless Qigong manual,” Gu Shenwei finished the sentence for him.

“Yes,” Shangguan Fei was elated that the Dragon King understood his intentions. “This is the benefit of working for you, Dragon King. Without having to express my intentions to you beforehand, you’ve already understood what I was trying to do. I didn’t know that you planned to set fire on the forest. If I did, I would not have made things worse by trying to help.”

Shangguan Fei continued to offer his long-winded explanation but Gu Shenwei kept looking at the blazing fire, neither paying him any further attention nor replying him.

As Gu Shenwei felt that he would eventually be able to make use of Shangguan Fei’s status as the Ninth Young Master of the Golden Roc Fort and therefore did not wish to cut ties with him just yet.

The fire was raging, even a deity would not be able to escape it now.

Gu Shenwei turned to speak to Shangguan Ru again, “The documents from the Chief Priest are all kept in our military camp. Follow me, you have the right to see the eighth chapter as well.”

Shangguan Ru shook her head; she was no longer interested in any type of kung fu technique. “You are returning to the Western Region but I wish to continue traveling southward. It would be useless for me to have the eighth chapter.”

Suddenly, an idea sprang to Gu Shenwei’s mind. He did not pause to consider it before telling Shangguan Ru, “Stay here; the Land of Fragrance needs a benevolent ruler. Who would be more suitable than you?”

Shangguan Fei was so surprised at his suggestion that his mouth fell open. He could not believe his sister’s good luck, and interrupted, stammering, “What, what? Let me stay instead, Dragon King.”

Shangguan Ru was also extremely surprised and looked at the Dragon King, not sure what he meant by this suggestion.