Chapter 2713 - What Should I Do if Someone Tries to Kill Me?

Qin Suqing nodded. “Let’s go, then.”

Luan Yunzhong promptly led the three of them into the distance, toward that floating continent.

Along the way, Su Yi read through the jade slip that Qin Suqing had given him. It clarified a few things for him.

This inauspicious zone was under the control of an inauspicious spirit known as Ol’ Devil Golden Spirit. He was intelligent, but more than that, extraordinarily strong.

They said he was comparable to Immeasurable Realm Dao Lords, experts of the fourth realm of Eternity.

Ol’ Devil Golden Spirit was quite strange. Once per solar term, he’d send a procession out of his territory to bring him a new bride. Then, he’d host a sumptuous wedding feast.

The brides were all inauspicious spirits, who he thought had “excellent spirit roots.”

Today was the start of the sixth solar term, Grain Rain. The procession Su Yi saw earlier was the one welcoming Ol’ Devil Golden Spirit’s newest wife.

It seemed unbelievable, but then, intelligent inauspicious spirits really weren’t that different from living people. It was actually understandable.

Su Yi did a bit of quick mental math.

If he marries twenty-four women a year, that’s two hundred and forty a decade, or two thousand, four hundred a century...

Just how many wives has he taken in total?

He might have a powerful cultivation base, but... does he really have the stamina for that?

The jade slip didn’t go into it, but Su Yi dared say with certainty that Ol’ Devil Golden Spirit wasn’t marrying all those women simply for the pleasures of the marital bed.

There had to be more to this!

Every time Ol’ Devil Golden Spirit hosted a wedding, he’d invite cultivators to attend.

But not everyone was qualified to receive an invitation. Only those with Blessed Jade Records could attend.

This detail piqued Su Yi’s interest.

The Blessed Jade Records were tokens Ol’ Devil Golden Spirit forged himself. Anyone who carried one, no matter who they were, could become his distinguished guest, attend his weddings, and receive his generous gifts.

This was the nature of their “blessing.”

Qing Suqing and Luan Yunzhong, as representatives of the Blue Peak Continent, carried one such Blessed Jade Record. They’d come to this wedding feast to receive Ol’ Devil Golden Spirit’s gifts.

Before long, the group arrived at the floating continent.

“My young friend, when we enter the Golden Spirit Hidden Realm, just follow us. No matter what you see, don’t pay it any heed,” Luan Yunzhong solemnly commanded.

Su Yi nodded.

The floating landmass up ahead was known as the Golden Spirit Hidden Realm. This was Ol’ Devil Golden Spirit’s territory, as well as the heart of this inauspicious zone!

...

Golden Spirit Manor, the home of Ol’ Devil Golden Spirit, in a two-story pavilion.

A handsome man sat before a calligraphic masterpiece. It was written in grass script cursive, flowing and uninhibited.

It looked like eight distinct characters, but in truth, they were all written in a single brush stroke, as smooth as a sword leaving the sheath.

A dwarven old man stood respectfully to the side and reported, “Your Excellency, representatives of four cultivation factions of Blue Peak Continent will be attending the wedding banquet: the Great Qin Kingdom’s Sky Profound Court, Divine Willow Mountain’s Yu Family, the Bluebird Palace of the Windswept Lake, and Fire Dragon Temple.

“Them aside, several rogue cultivators of various origins have come with Blessed Jade Records, seven in total.

“In this old servant’s estimation, of the four factions of the Blue Peak Continent, the Yu Family is the most noteworthy. They actually sent two Silence Realm patriarchs to attend.”

The dwarven elder spoke steadily, neither rushed nor slow, as he introduced the guests one by one.

Throughout this introduction, the handsome man in white just stood there in silence, examining the calligraphy, his expression calm.

It was only after the elderly dwarf finished that the handsome man said, “And is the wedding banquet in order?”

The elderly dwarf nodded, then hesitated. “Your Excellency, are we really going to give away this calligraphy?”

Only then did the handsome man look away. He walked over to the window, rested his hands on the sill, and gazed into the distance. “Harboring such a treasure will only invite disaster. Fortunately... I’ve always liked giving things away. I know I cannot keep this treasure for myself. In my hands, it will only lead to ruin.”

The elderly dwarf fell silent. He knew that over the course of the years, his master had given away vast sums of treasure at every one of his many weddings.

Tallied up, it was a staggering sum. The old dwarf had long since lost track.

But he still vividly recalled the way his master had once sighed while drinking.

“The blessings I’ve given over the years are comparable to ten thousand years of a top Eternal faction’s wealth! I’m different from the other rulers among inauspicious spirits. I’m a true do-gooder!”

But after saying this, his master’s gaze suddenly dimmed, and his interest waned. He stared at the calligraphy in a daze.

This scene had left a deep impression on the elderly dwarf, who remembered it vividly to this day.

His master had grown increasingly silent since.

“Go on. Welcome our guests to their seats. We can’t keep them waiting,” said the handsome man. He gazed at the eight characters written like the flourish of a sword and said, “I’ll head over shortly.”

“Understood!” The elderly dwarf went off to carry out his orders.

When the handsome man was the only one left in the room, he stared intently at the calligraphy and whispered to himself, “What should I do if someone tries to kill me today?"

Stinging, blood-red light appeared around him, like flowing sword intent, manifesting an astonishing phenomenon—a sword hurtling through space, blood dyeing the starry dome of heaven red as countless stars fell like rain!

The handsome man’s face contorted, becoming vicious and hideous. The depths of his typically unwavering gaze shone with frenzied, bloodthirsty light.

But in the end, he gradually regained his calm, and the strange phenomena around him faded away.

“A good person like me cannot be reckless. I cannot be reckless... If I kill them all, how am I to cultivate the heart of a bodhisattva?” murmured the handsome man.

He raised his hand as if to take the calligraphy off the wall, but in the end, he gave up. Instead, he turned and left the two-story pavilion, the forbidden section of Golden Spirit Manor.

𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

...

Heaven and earth were bright and open. Auspicious clouds hung in the sky.

A mountain range rose and fell, emanating chaos energy and flowing with divine radiance. It was a vision of an otherworldly pure land.

Su Yi hadn’t anticipated that the most dangerous place in this inauspicious zone would be so pleasant. It really was like a blessed ground.

But before long, Su Yi’s brow silently furrowed.

There were all manner of strange, inauspicious spirits along the way. Some gathered in groups, dividing and feasting on an ancient, rotting corpse. The blood had dried, and the stench was terrible, yet the inauspicious spirits feasted as if intoxicated, devouring the meat in a frenzy.

Others busied themselves atop a hill-sized pile of bones, piecing together fragments of human skin and hanging them on bone racks, like clothes hanging from a clothesline.

Most of the skins were rotten and in terrible shape. They came from men and women of all ages.

Other inauspicious spirits scooped human hair from pools of blood, spinning it into thread to sew all manner of objects—clothing, boots, and flexible armor, among others.

Another brewed medicine in a pot, fully one thousand feet across. The pot burbled with boiling blood, and thousands of severed, bloody heads churned within the crimson liquid.

This place looked like an otherworldly pure land, but these were like visions straight out of purgatory. They were more than just strange; they were bloody and terrifying.

Along the way, Qin Suqing couldn’t help but frown with disgust and revulsion. On numerous occasions, she covered her mouth and dry-heaved.

The stench of rotting meat was just too intense.

Most unsettling of all, wherever they passed, the busy inauspicious spirits paused to watch them, big grins all over their faces.

Like butchers welcoming their next shipment.

From beginning to end, Luan Yunzhong just calmly led the way, completely disregarding the inauspicious spirits’ reactions.

“This really is interesting,” Su Yi suddenly whispered.

He’d just noticed an inauspicious spirit who looked like a girl in the prime of her youth, sitting prettily on the ground.

When he looked at her, she even averted her gaze bashfully.

But whenever she thought no one was paying attention, she opened her mouth and swallowed a hideous, contorted mouse whole, her cheeks bulging as she chewed. Foul blood dripped down her face.

When she finished eating, she’d swallow the body and spit out the tail, laying them neatly in a pile on the ground.

Every time, she’d wipe her face clean, then keep eating.

There were already over one hundred tails piled on the ground.

When Su Yi looked over, the girl seemed to rally her courage. She stammered timidly, “Do you... want to eat too? They’re delicious.”

She proffered a hideous mouse.

But her hands were nothing more than bone, with no flesh or skin left, and her eye sockets were hollow.

Moreover, she was dressed like a bride.

It was an extraordinarily creepy sight, but Su Yi wasn’t bothered. He just smiled and shook his head.

Inwardly, he concluded that the young inauspicious spirit was likely one of Ol’ Devil Golden Spirit’s many “wives.”

The girl bashfully lowered her head and continued enjoying her meal.

Heaven and earth suddenly dimmed, as if enveloped in the darkness of an everlasting night.

Countless blood-red lanterns lit on a distant mountain, like crimson stars dancing beneath the night sky. All of them were decorated with “囍,” the character for “double happiness.”

The sound of gongs boomed throughout the night sky, and countless inauspicious spirits whooshed through the darkness, letting out a clamor of voices.

“That’s the Mountain of Blessings, Ol’ Devil Golden Spirit’s home turf and the site of the feast,” Luan Yunzhong said gravely. “When we get there, we’ll be able to see our host.”

As they conversed, they reached the foot of the Mountain of Blessings.

There, Su Yi saw that strange bridal procession once more, as well as that rotting coffin.

An old woman in celebratory red garments held a red lantern, illuminating her wrinkled face with its fiery red light.

It was also now that Su Yi and his companions saw the other living attendees for the first time.

They were all cultivators, mostly clustered in groups of three to five, but some were alone. All were waiting at the foot of the mountain.

When Su Yi and his companions arrived, all of the cultivators looked over.