Chapter 495 - Grudges (VIII)

Chapter 495

Grudges (VIII)

"Even Lang Guiying died?"

"Not just him, but Tan Hai, too!"

"Wow!"

"Just what the hell happened there?"

"One of my Senior Brothers actually came out alive and said that they got trapped by a horde of undying shadows!"

"Pfft, of course. Stop making stuff up."

"I--I'm not! It really happened like that!"

Yun Qi sipped his jasmine tea in silence and listened to the nearby conversations. They all went somewhat similarly, with the story of the day (a week now, really) being what happened at the Eternal Mountain. Supposedly thousands of prodigies and Elders of the various Holy Lands went in; only a few hundred emerged.

Though he tried investigating it, too, he didn't get anywhere; it seemed that most of what had transpired inside remained either completely unknown or was safeguarded at the topmost level.

Finishing the tea, he stood up and dropped a few copper coins on the table before leaving. The streets of Jade Blossom City were rather wide but still overcrowded, and he had to navigate the sea of hurrying people. He didn't exactly have a destination in mind, as his latest target that he had been hunting for over two months was actually one of the Elders that had gone into the realm opening and didn't come out alive.

As such, he wandered, looking at the random vendor goods and soon finding himself in a downcast, winding alley. At the corner, nestled against two seemingly abandoned bookstores, was a strikingly green door made out of jade, on one side a glassed window displaying what looked to be martial art manuals.

Somewhat curious, he headed over and entered. The atmosphere inside was a mix of cozy and oddly foreboding; there was very little space to navigate between the wooden shelves stacked with manuals, but that was the case only for the left side of the store. On the right, dozens of paintings and scrolls were on a full display, some exuding extremely dangerous and downright murderous Qi.

Though he saw a woman sitting at the far back, and though she saw him enter, she neither greeted him nor approached him to ask if he was looking for anything specific. As such, he elected to browse by the eye.

Most of the manuals were of somewhat lesser quality, with only two reaching Heaven-tier and both being clearly marked as 'severely incomplete'. Though he had no interest in any of them, he still browsed with attention, as he did have a need for some martial arts, especially a movement-based one.

His last hunt, Jadesword, had nearly managed to get away because his movement arts were so vastly superior to his. Were it not for Jin Hua, he truly might have gotten away.

Alas, there was nothing of note here.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

After about fifteen minutes, he moved over to the other side to look at the scrolls and paintings. Though their place was somewhat indeterminate in the realm of cultivation, both certainly had it; there were ways of imbuing concepts into paintings that could inspire onlookers and even cause them to enter Enlightenment.

None here, however, seemed to be of that quality, though a few did catch his eye: a roaring tiger that seemed to hold a minute trace of madness, or a rather crudely drawn sword that tickled his innermost sword fanatic ever so slightly, and one painting that was turned away from him.

Glancing over at the woman, he asked, "Do you mind if I turn that painting around?"

The woman merely glanced at him, shrugged, and closed her eyes. Taking it as a yes, he leaned over and slowly turned the canvas around, whereupon the heart in his chest stopped beating, and he found himself short of breath.

It was a portrait--a somewhat crudely and hastily drawn one--of a man whose facial features were distinctly unfamiliar. Rather, most everything about the man was completely unfamiliar, save for two things: the man's eyes and the odd expression on his face.

He was never able to forget the young one's eyes as they held in them more sincerity than he had seen from the others in his entire life. Though he had been searching desperately wherever he went for information, it truly seemed as though they had died.

... but those eyes, it was unmistakable.

It was Lu Qi.

But... how? And what about the rest of his face? Why did someone make a portrait painting of him? And why did the painting have such... strange noise to it? As though it were disrupting a natural order of things.

"Caught your eye?" He glanced to the side and saw that the woman who was just behind was now standing by his side, a strange gleam in her eye.

"... I find it peculiar," he said.

"It's the man's expression for me," she said. "The painter was just some nobody that sold it to a wandering merchant who is a friend of mine. Since she knew I liked peculiar things and such, she gifted it to me. You hear it too, don't you?"

"What?"

"The discordant hum," she said, smiling faintly as her wrinkled skin flattened for a moment. "I found the oddness by accident; I'd put up an isolation array over the entire store, but when I went outside... I could still see that painting in the window. It ignored the array. It ignores near everything."

"The painter, then, can't have been some nobody."

"No, he was," she said. "Just like you, I was certain my friend had met some legendary grandmaster, but she repeatedly reassured me that she had bought several of the man's paintings, and all others were practically garbage compared to this. So, it is not the painter."

"..."

"There is also a story," she suddenly said.

"A story?" snapping her fingers, a somewhat tattered, thin book appeared between her fingers. Though it was leatherbound, the leather appeared to be of rather bad quality, as, despite it clearly not being that aged, it had cracked. "A friend of mine bought this, too. But... she couldn't read it."

"Hm? Is it written in an unknown language?"

"No, it's written in the most common script. Watch," she said as she opened the book. Inside, Yin Qi recognized all the letters and even the words. But, when it came to putting them together and thinking about the full strings... he couldn't do it. "Infuriating, isn't it?"

"... I'm tempted to burn it."

"Ho ho, as was I," she chuckled.

"How do you know it's a story if we can't even read it?"

"The man who sold it said that it was his life's work," she said. "That he poured the Dao of his heart into the words and had barely managed to capture a small trace of what he saw. The reason I say it's a story is this," she flipped the pages one by one until the first one, where only a single sentence was written. "Read it."

Yin Qi leaned over and read it, and, unlike the rest, he was able to properly string the words and the meanings in his mind. And his heart thus stopped once again.

I'd seen the eyes of Dao, their beauty sublime and eternal.

"... you don't mean?"

"I do," she nodded. "Nobody else can read these words either, not unless they've seen the painting."

"Are the writer and the painter connected?"

"Not as far as I know," she said. "The only connection between them seems to be their subject. That man."

Lu Qi, Yin Qi mused inwardly as he felt the stirrings of his heart beginning to churn. What the hell happened to you?