Chapter 114: Are You Going Up There to Get Yourself Killed?

Wen Jinge had changed into her ornate ceremonial robes, the heavy fabric requiring two people to support her as she walked. Naturally, Lu Wei and Liang Si were commandeered as her bearers.

“Good thing it’s night; during the day, you’d surely roast in this,” Lu Wei scoffed, mischievously flicking the crown atop her head. “Honestly, you wear that well. Don’t you feel like a sovereign ruler?”

“Oh, look at you with all these new phrases!” Wen Jinge teased him. “Enough with the nonsense. If you like, I’ll take it off and let you put it on.”

“Don’t even joke! You’re the Ancestress; I wouldn’t dare.”

“Such a brat!” Wen Jinge shot him a glare.

Wen Xueshan and a group of black-clad attendants halted in front of the sedan chair. It was richly decorated with gold leaf and silver embroidery, the roof studded with dazzling jewels, exuding opulence.

At each corner of the sedan chair stood a person, indicating it was a grand eight-pole sedan. Surrounding it were several young girls dressed in bright red robes, their heads adorned with silver ornaments. They scattered flower petals around the chair as they walked, the only vivid color in the dark night.

This strange custom gave Wen Jinge the eerie feeling that she was about to be wed; the absence of doors around the sedan chair only deepened the illusion.

The tinkling silver bells on the girls’ garments sounded like a new melody composed for the night.

The procession took some time, and by the time they arrived at their destination, it was exactly midnight.

Wen Xueshan and the others knelt on the ground, murmuring unknown words. Liang Si and Wang Xi looked bewildered, Lu Wei’s face darkened, and Yang Wennan’s eyes, previously closed, opened with a puzzled gaze. Ling Yi, seemingly having climbed onto the sedan chair at some point, clutched Wen Jinge’s hand tightly, trembling with fear.

“Ancestress, the Wraith Festival has begun. Please take your place.”

Just as Wen Jinge was about to move, Ling Yi tugged at her sleeve. Wen Xueshan stepped forward to support him, handing her a strange container holding a torch. “Please, Ancestress, ignite this sacred flame.”

Ling Yi wrapped his arms around her hand, pouting. “Master, can we just go back and sleep?”

Children are children, Wen Jinge sighed inwardly.

Of course, she sensed the oddity of this place.

But with such a careless answer, how could Wen Xueshan allow them to leave?

“Master,” Ling Yi whispered near her ear but said nothing aloud. Instead, he traced words on her palm with his finger. “Look at that tree. What kind of tree is it? Are its leaves red or yellow?”

“Yellow? Ginkgo?”

“The leaves were originally red, but over time, with wind and rain, they faded.” Ling Yi rubbed his eyes, feigning weariness, then continued writing on her palm. “The Buddha of joy and sorrow is also on the tree.”

In a daze, Wen Jinge recalled something Ling Yi had said not long ago—that he had seen her kill many people at the very place where he was saved.

Perhaps it was not only the past but the future as well.

The so-called villain was indeed a villain, but…

She looked toward Qiao Yu.

The villainy wasn’t limited to Qiao Yu alone; everything written about Qiao Yu in “Celestial Pulse Swordmaster” was fictional, but what was done to others might not be.

“All right, all right! Once this is over, I’ll take you back to sleep,” Wen Jinge said, patting Ling Yi’s shoulder. Secretly, she slipped the beads that suppressed his powers into his hand. “Hold onto these. Your master will be back soon.”

Lu Wei opened his mouth, seemingly wanting to say something, but in the end, he simply watched her descend from the sedan chair.

The young girls knelt, transforming into paper effigies that formed a carpet leading to the great tree. Wen Jinge then realized these girls were puppets.

Several disciples gathered near the sedan chair, watching their master walk further and further away along what seemed an endless path toward the tree.

“One thousand and four, one thousand and five, one thousand and six... one thousand nine hundred and twenty…”

“What are you counting?” Lu Wei smacked Ling Yi’s forehead. He knew the boy had a strange streak. “What did you see?”

“Master, they will all die.”

“What?” Yang Wennan’s eyes, once showing whites, now turned hollow and black. “It’s really… like that?”

“Could you stop being so cryptic?” Wang Xi glared fiercely at the group, feeling left out. She wasn’t as cultivated as them, so why were they treating her this way?

Lu Wei casually cast a barrier and transmitted a message to the others through his mind. “Did those people just mention something about the Soul Clan?”

“Yes, at first, I didn’t understand, but then it became clear.”

“Speak quickly! Brother Yang, will you go mad from waiting?” Wang Xi raised her fist, about to strike him, but then softened, feeling some pity for his current crippled state caused by uncontrollable Soul Clan powers.

“At first, I thought it meant offering our lives to the master,” Yang Wennan confessed nervously, “but now I understand… it means the lives of the master’s followers return to the forest. The dead come back.”

“Return to the forest? The dead?” Liang Si’s face twisted in pain, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, as if suddenly burdened by some heavy truth.

“Senior Brother!” Wang Xi exclaimed, her eyes sharply scanning the surroundings. “What… what just happened?”

“Nothing.” But Liang Si’s gaze toward Lu Wei—or rather, toward Qiao Yu—became complicated. “Great Master, when we return to the sect, may I offer my body to you?”

“Hm?” Lu Wei scratched his head. That would be good news, but why so suddenly?

“What happened to you just now?”

Liang Si wiped the blood from his mouth, smiling bitterly. “Great Master, don’t worry about it. Qiao Yu… he doesn’t deserve such protection.”

Having been kidnapped by an old Taoist, Lu Wei knew there was a significant misunderstanding among the three disciples. Liang Si must have remembered something again.

Perhaps, like Ling Yi, they were recalling premonitions of the future, unwilling to see those painful scenes come to pass.

“So, what became of Qiao Yu in the end?” Lu Wei suddenly grew curious, hoping to find a way to escape the fate of being disgusted by Wen Jinge from time to time.

“Besides killing your master, what other evil deeds did he commit?”

“My master wasn’t killed by him; I killed him,” Liang Si sneered, following the crowd in pursuit of Wen Jinge.

As an elderly man who had slept underground for many years, desperately longing for good skin, only to be forced to submit to evil forces and become a servant of the people—after hearing this, he was truly enraged.

Originally dead by demonic means, his temperament had to be restrained before the domineering Wen Jinge, but he never took these disciples seriously. “Come back here!”

He didn’t know what Wen Jinge was planning, but after half a year together, the bond between them—no, between master and servant—was strong.

At such a moment, she clearly didn’t want anyone stirring up trouble.

“Are you looking to die?” Lu Wei grabbed one of the silk ribbons hanging from the sedan chair and flew after her.