Chapter 156: On the Cultivation and Ethics of Cultivators

“Pfft!” Shui Xinxin was instantly rendered speechless with anger. She glanced around, very much wanting to find someone’s thigh to cling to. Whenever she was troubled or at her wit’s end, embracing someone’s thigh was what she most wanted to do—rather like the feeling of an unweaned child.

“Lin Zhan, I, your lordship, am…” Shui Xinxin began transmitting, but stopped halfway. Who was she, anyway? How was she supposed to explain to Lin Zhan the mission her master had assigned her?

Before she could recover, Wushan had already assumed a fighting stance and was preparing to attack. Lin Zhan was naturally ready to do the same, and had no intention of wasting any more words on Shui Xinxin.

“‘Your lordship’? You think I’m illiterate? That’s obviously a lie… Help me? Clearly, you’re trying to fool me.”

That habitual “your lordship” of hers instantly blew away the familiar aura Lin Zhan had sensed around her. He therefore concluded that this little girl was no good at all!

Better to fight on his own. Once he took down this Wushan fellow, the people from Burial Sword Peak would collapse like a house of cards.

Lin Zhan summoned the white bone tower and set it beside him as an important support. Then he prepared to advance on Wushan and engage in the most decisive battle of life and death.

“Move aside! Let me handle this!”

Seeing that Lin Zhan had completely failed to understand her intentions, Shui Xinxin was overcome with grief and indignation. Was there not even the most basic trust between people anymore? Did every problem have to be solved with violence? If something could be settled with a fight, did that mean there was no need to use any other method?

Since they wanted to fight, then Master Mu would see it through to the end.

First she would beat Lin Zhan into submission. After that, she could slowly explain who she was—and who he was.

Besides, she felt that she needed some sufficiently convincing reason before she could make her move.

“Junior Sister Shui, stay back! It’s dangerous here!”

Wushan did not appreciate her concern. He had no need for Shui Xinxin’s help, and even less desire for her to cause trouble. At that very moment, before Lin Zhan noticed anything, something astonishing had begun happening to Wude’s corpse.

Had Lin Zhan thought to inspect Wude’s body with his spiritual sense, he would have discovered something amiss. Within Wude’s body, a round sphere was slowly unfolding with a crackling sound. The outer layer that encased it was peeling away, revealing an entirely new surface beneath.

It was blood-red from end to end, resembling the core of some monstrous beast.

The sphere radiated wave after wave of energy, rapidly restoring Wude’s damaged body. The entire process was much like the rebirth and nirvanic transformation of the Divine Phoenix and Golden Phoenix clans.

At that moment, Shui Xinxin actually employed the secret duplication art of the Red Refining Palace, condensing another illusory body. Her true body flew toward Lin Zhan to teach him a lesson, while the phantom rushed toward Wushan in an attempt to stop him from attacking.

The two movements took place in a single instant—or perhaps they counted as one movement split in two—and left everyone completely overwhelmed.

“Lin Zhan, why did you abandon me?”

Shui Xinxin’s true body wore an expression of outrage, like a resentful woman who had been betrayed by a man. The resentment pouring from her was practically soaring into the heavens.

“What nonsense are you talking about?” Lin Zhan was utterly bewildered. What kind of divine joke was this? He did not even know her. How could there be any question of abandoning her?

“Nonsense? So you really are a heartless, faithless scoundrel! Back then, in that secret cavern on Flame Peak, you swore solemnly that you would never marry anyone but me. You showered me with sweet words, yet you slipped away without a trace! Today, I’m going to kill you and avenge my wasted youth. I’ll offer your life as a sacrifice to the feelings I gave you… Lin Zhan, your lordship is going to kill you! Bah!”

Shui Xinxin was not merely furious. Once she became emotionally worked up, tears and mucus streamed down her face, and she looked utterly heartbroken.

This time, not only did the disciples of Burial Sword Peak watching the battle develop identical looks of speechless disbelief, even Wushan stopped moving. One after another, they gazed at Shui Xinxin with sympathy, staring at her frail figure as it seemed to grow even more delicate in the bleak, icy wind.

“Oh, heavens! So there was a reason she had such a fiery temper!”

One disciple whom Shui Xinxin had ordered around all along the way suddenly understood everything. A wave of guilt swept through his heart.

“I even secretly cursed her back then. Thinking about it now, that was truly wrong of me!”

Another disciple of Burial Sword Peak glared murderously at Lin Zhan and cursed inwardly:

“What a beast! How could you deceive such a young girl? You have no moral cultivation whatsoever! You deserve to be cut into a thousand pieces. No—you should be castrated!”

Strangely enough, he had not been nearly so grief-stricken when his fellow disciples had died moments earlier.

Facing Shui Xinxin’s duplicate, Wushan simply retreated another step, adopting an attitude that seemed to say she was welcome to attack. He even cast a glance toward Lin Zhan before saying, “Junior Sister Shui, teach him a lesson first. If that isn’t enough, I’ll step in!”

Apart from the fact that her duplication technique made him somewhat wary, he mainly felt that such an act of betrayal should be avenged by the woman involved herself. That would be far more satisfying.

Shui Xinxin recalled her duplicate and did not hurry to attack. Instead, she planted herself there and continued her tearful accusations. Her performance was so vivid that, for one brief moment, Lin Zhan wondered whether the events she described had actually been carried out by the original disciple from Azure Bamboo Hall whose appearance he had once assumed.

Lin Zhan: “…”

“You’re insane!”

After holding it in for a long while, Lin Zhan finally exploded. He poured so much spiritual power into those words that even the air seemed to freeze. The force of his shout nearly rivaled the famed Lion’s Roar technique of the young heir of the Golden Lion Sect from the Jiangnan Dao.

Damn it, was this a case of snow falling in June?

How could Lin Zhan have guessed that Shui Xinxin’s accusations were based entirely on certain scenes from his time with Yun Yin? She had merely exaggerated most of them beyond recognition, then casually added a great deal that had never happened at all.

She was truly wicked beyond belief!

He could not endure it any longer. He absolutely had to vent the resentment choking him.

“You wild girl from goodness knows where, do you even know what insanity is? It means your brain is full of water, full of holes, completely scrambled, short-circuited, or kicked by a donkey! Who is your master? How could she have raised a disciple like you, with nothing but wild nonsense and false accusations spilling from her mouth? With that flat little figure of yours, if I really had sworn never to marry anyone but you, then I…”

Shui Xinxin immediately pointed at Lin Zhan and turned to the disciples.

“You hear that? He abandoned me because he thinks I haven’t developed yet, because my chest isn’t large enough! He fell for a woman with enormous breasts instead! Boo-hoo-hoo…”

“To hell with your enormous-breasted woman! Damn it, why am I arguing with a lunatic?”

A spoiled, unruly child simply had to be beaten properly before she would learn how brilliantly red the flowers could be. Lin Zhan had once refused to hit women and had never been willing to fight female cultivators—but look at the situation now. Surely only a thorough beating would work.

His dark face grew darker still. The veins on his forehead bulged, and he looked nearly on the verge of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Never underestimate any woman. That was how they could talk a living person to death, bring the dead back to life, and send someone through death and resurrection all at once.

Well, Wude seemed to be going through precisely that process at the moment…

To be continued.