Chapter 219 — The Legend of Daoist Xiaoyao

My Dao to Eternity

Chapter 219 — The Legend of Daoist Xiaoyao

The clearing had gone completely dark by the time he moved. The fire had burned down to a bed of low orange coals, giving light only within a few feet. Li Fan crossed the open ground without disturbing a fallen branch.

He considered the name for most of the following day. He would not dismiss it merely because it had come from gossip rather than direct observation. A name had now been attached to him, spreading regardless of his wishes. That fact deserved consideration. Anonymity had been the foundation of his survival since the first weeks after Blue Star had drawn him into this world. He had maintained it through every identity since then: Lin Fan in Myriad Beast City, and no name at all through much of his wandering in the outer provinces. This was different. Strangers who had never seen his face had given him a name based solely upon the aftermath he had left behind.

He found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he did not dislike it.

A name spoken by strangers who had never seen his face carried no connection to his courtyard in Myriad Beast City, no connection to Lin Fan the formation master, and no connection to anything the Mu family or Qin Mo would recognize if the name ever reached them. Xiaoyao was not a mask slipping. It was another layer of the concealment he had maintained since arriving in this world. The name could carry the violence and the reputation while the man beneath it continued living as quietly as necessary wherever his true interests lay.

Behind his mask, the faintest trace of satisfaction appeared. He immediately set the thought aside, checked the formation current against the terrain ahead, and continued west into the deepening evening.

The notice hung nailed to a dead tree beside a trade path that Li Fan crossed eleven days later. It was one of a dozen postings left by the loose network of cultivators using this stretch of wilderness as an informal crossroads. He nearly passed it without looking. Since entering the Secret Realm, he had ignored every piece of posted parchment he encountered. Most concerned escort requests, warnings about demon beasts, or missing expeditions offering modest rewards for information.

The tree had been dead long before anyone nailed parchment to it. Its bark had fallen away in patches, leaving gray wood exposed to the weather. Other notices curled at their edges where moisture had entered the paper. Some had faded beyond recognition, while several were clearly weeks old. No one passed through the crossroads while Li Fan stood there. Only the tree, the notices, and the wind moving through the bare branches remained.

This notice made him stop.

Three seals had been pressed into the lower corner instead of one. A falling star rendered in silver thread. A coiling river in blue. The third mark belonged to the Green Mist Sect, a serpent enclosed within drifting mist. Beneath the seals, written in a formal hand, was a description Li Fan read twice before confirming that it referred to him.

A masked cultivator. Black featureless covering. Dark green robes. No sect affiliation. Early to Mid-Stage Core Shattering, though the notice added the words possibly greater. He was accused of killing no fewer than eleven cultivators from two Great Sects during a single engagement and was suspected of several earlier disappearances. Anyone with knowledge of his movements was instructed to report to the nearest sect outpost or waystation.

No reward was listed. No price had been placed upon his head. The notice contained only the description, the accusation, and an instruction to report rather than pursue. For the moment, it was a request for information rather than an order to kill.

At the bottom, written in the same careful hand, was a name: Daoist Xiaoyao.

Li Fan remained before the notice for some time. He read it a third time and considered the strange transformation of a name given to him by strangers into an official designation carrying the authority of three Great Sects. Rumor beside a campfire was one matter. A notice sealed and posted by three sects acting together was another.

The wax seals had cracked slightly around their edges after exposure to the weather. Li Fan did not touch them. His hands remained within his sleeves as he studied the parchment.

He considered what the notice omitted. It gave no reliable account of his cultivation beyond a cautious estimate. It provided no useful description of his techniques beyond the phrase "unusual sword intent." It contained nothing about his identity beneath the mask. The three sects knew only what he had done while wearing it.

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That was useful.

A crow settled on a branch above the tree. It watched him briefly before flying toward the distant forest. Li Fan gave it one glance and returned his attention to the notice.

He remembered Jian Suyao's words before the battle: "My master requires his soul for questioning." Whatever this notice represented, it was more than retaliation for the dead. Someone within the Falling Star Sword Sect had decided that the masked cultivator possessed knowledge worth extracting even after death. That interest was presumably connected to what the Falling Star cultivators had called the western formation trace. Li Fan did not know how much they understood about the formation current he had followed for months, or whether their interest came from genuine understanding or simple opportunity.

He placed the question beside the others that remained unanswered: the recurring mark found in the ancient library, the same mark upon the direwolf, the waystones, and the stone guardian's fixed territory. Then he turned away from the notice without tearing it down or disturbing it. Removing it would only tell whoever inspected this crossing later that someone matching the description had stopped here and taken an unusual interest. It was better left untouched.

He checked the current's pull against the terrain ahead. It remained steady toward a stretch of forest he had not crossed. Li Fan adjusted his route farther from paths that caravans and patrols might use. The notice changed nothing about his purpose in the Secret Realm. It meant only that news of him was spreading faster than expected and that the sects searching for him were beginning to coordinate.

He walked until the dead tree and its notice disappeared behind him. The information remained in his thoughts alongside the other facts gathered during his journey. His presence had begun to attract attention from people he had never met, and that attention would have to be accounted for.

The formation current curved farther west beyond the dead tree, climbing gradually into high, jagged terrain Li Fan had not yet crossed. The air changed as he ascended. The warmth and moisture of the wood-filled groves faded, replaced by colder, thinner air carrying the bitter scent of stagnant water.

The stone beneath his feet changed as well. Pale gray rock gave way to darker stone marked by long streaks, retaining the cold far longer than the terrain around the high pass. Low clouds pressed against the ridgeline. Visibility fell to roughly a hundred paces, and the wind carried a mineral taste that lingered in his throat.

Li Fan moved through the gray light of the ridge with his usual caution. His mask and robe concealed his features as he advanced beneath the low clouds. His divine sense remained within a half-mile radius rather than extending to its full range. His qi had long recovered from the marsh, and his meridians had returned to a steady rhythm. Returning Marrow vitality continued to support his body through the dense strength of his bones.

Two hundred paces ahead, his divine sense encountered something abnormal.

The mist there did not merely thin. The ambient formation current vanished, replaced by a cold, heavy force carrying no trace of living vitality.

Three figures emerged from the gray mist. They wore heavy slate-black robes that absorbed the surrounding moisture. Their faces were hidden beneath deep cowls, from which thin violet smoke escaped. Their clothing bore no resemblance to the cerulean robes of the Nine Rivers Sect or the silver-bordered white robes of the Falling Star Sword Sect.

The Netherworld Demon Sect.

The two figures on the sides moved with strange flexibility. Their Early-Stage Core Shattering auras were restrained, but biting yin qi remained within them. Between them stood a gaunt man whose exposed hands were pale and colorless, his skin stretched tightly over bone. His aura carried the heavier pressure of Mid-Stage Core Shattering.

They gave no introduction and demanded no storage pouches, lineage, or explanation. The leader merely raised two fingers.

Freezing pressure erupted from his palm and spread across fifty yards in complete silence. Wind and moisture ceased moving within the area. Even the faint vibration of the formation current beneath the stone disappeared. When Li Fan extended his divine sense, it struck a dense obstruction that prevented further perception.

"A rogue variable," the leader said, his voice dry in the sudden silence. "No sect crest. High-grade concealment. Eliminate him and harvest his soul for interrogation."

The two subordinates moved without hesitation. They lowered their bodies and crossed the ground beneath the domain's silence, one attacking with a blackened skeletal claw wrapped in violet yin qi, while the other leaped from a limestone outcrop and drew a yin-forged sword toward the back of Li Fan's neck.

Li Fan did not attempt to force his divine sense through the obstruction. He relied upon the physical awareness developed through Returning Marrow cultivation. He sensed the displacement of cold air and the changes in pressure as the two bodies approached from opposite directions.

His stance remained unchanged. The draw and counterattack occurred in one motion. Silver sword light tore through the silence and met the yin-forged sword in midair. The sword edge severed the darker weapon and continued into the attacking cultivator's shoulder and chest without slowing.

The cultivator collapsed onto the gray earth, his killing intent dispersing as his body struck the ground.

Blood spread slowly across the packed earth, darkening the soil beneath the cold mist.