Chang Li did not seem to be offended by what Wen Leyang had said at all. She nodded her head in distress and said, "It was as if he was angry at something. He put on an act and tried to murder me. I too stuck out my neck for him to kill as I liked his ferocious appearance when he was holding the knife. Hehe, he couldn’t bear to kill me in the end." Her snow-white finger lightly brushed the red scar on her neck as she said that.
Wen Leyang was felt genuinely and sincerely worried on behalf of their Grand Master as they listened to Chang Li’s story. He understood that his Grand Master should be an erudite master who possessed supernatural powers granted by a great celestial being, yet he had deliberately mingled a witch with utterly no sense of right or wrong in her perception and acted with utter disregard for the human life.
The witch sighed lightly before she continued, "Ever since that encounter, he refused to speak to me ever again. No matter how I tried to please him in a hundred ways, he was even too lazy to take a glance at me. He thought that he could chase me away with that, but he did not expect that I still had my ways."
Chang Li changed a new set of expressions after almost every phrase of her speech; sometimes it was grievance and injustice, sometimes it was cheerful and enchanting, sometimes it was cunning and mischievous. In addition to her pleasant voice akin to the sound of ice knocking lightly on a glazed ceramic bowl, she had brought Wen Leyang and the two young girls deeply into her emotions. "I first went to the Kongtong Mountains and broke that four-thousand-year-old purple cinnamon plant. Then, I went to the towering cliff and smashed Laozi’s statue. After that, Qilian county’s Immortal Sect’s exquisite ice crystals…I offended all the enemies in the world and they hunted me all over the place. I knew that he still cared about me, I refused to believe that he would watch helplessly as I got killed by others."
Wen Leyang’s head started dripping with cold sweat.
Wen Xiaoyi asked the same question again, "What happened next?"
Chang Li lightly knocked her finger against her forehead, "He still wouldn’t pay attention to me! He ignored me since the beginning. I was foolish, he was not easily deceived as it was not possible that those idiots could kill me. Under those circumstances, I was not endangered so of course, he wouldn’t pay any attention to that matter either, so…" As she said that, the witch lowered her voice and whispered to Wen Xiaoyi secretively, "If you want to charge, you must charge with a huge disaster!"
Wen Xiaoyi fulfilled her duty of supporting her conversation and answered with a dumbstruck expression, "What kind of disaster?"
"Even if I were to explain you wouldn’t be able to understand it. Anyhow, in the end, I charged with the worst disaster as large as the heavens, hehe. If he had continued to ignore me, not only would I have died without a proper burial, I would be reborn ever again." Chang Li’s tone of speaking essentially was not of someone who would bring disaster, but akin to a stealthy egg-eating little fox. She held her cheerful yet cunning and prideful expression.
"By the time I escaped to his side, I arrived just in time to see him meeting with his three worthless disciples. I saw that he was so happy and I couldn’t bear to disturb him so initially, I had thought to wait for another two more days. But that group of old demons caught up so quickly and by nightfall they had broken through my camouflage spell. I then used the Thunder’s Heart Sand to blow his cave up and, as expected, he chased after me burning with a frenzy of rage, hehe. Afterwards…" Wen Leyang now understood that his first ancestor’s ‘thunderous escape’ back in the past was because of this witch’s misdoings.
Wen Xiaoyi, upon hearing that crucial fact, couldn’t hold back any longer as she reached out and grabbed Chang Li’s hand. She eagerly made a detailed inquiry pertaining to the thing that caught her interest, "Then… The Thunder’s Heart Sand that you gave me was actually so powerful? Even with Grand Master’s great abilities, the cave’s magic weapons were all blasted into pieces?"
Wen Leyang and Mumu’s bodies swayed simultaneously…
Chang Li, feeling highly flattered, looked at the little girl. There was utterly no sense of dignity within this elderly person of two thousand years old as she answered beaming with joy, "That happened naturally of course! This magic weapon of mine has a great past history, it is said that back in those years…"
Mumu and Wen Leyang were listening with keen interest before she suddenly changed the topic of discussion, causing them to stomp their feet in frustration. Chang Li chuckled as she looked at Wen Leyang and Mumu mischievously. She extended her hand and pinched Wen Xiaoyi’s cheek, "I will tell you all about Thunder’s Heart Sand in a while. As I was saying, he came running out fuming with rage at the same time that the old demons caught up with us. At last, he helped me still but…that battle…" Though she seemed to fear nothing and no one, the face of the witch who had slaughtered without batting an eyelid unexpectedly wore an expression of dread and she seemed to be afraid of recalling these past events.
"Both of us were severely wounded but he was no longer trying to hide his affection towards me anymore… Humans, they are just so peculiar, they have to experience a life and death battle only then they are willing to face each other sincerely. It’s nothing to them even if there was a Milky Way blocking the way. He finally told me the truth, that he liked me. I was beyond joyous."
Chang Li’s voice echoed within the cave faintly, because the heroine of the story was too beautiful, everyone was hoping for a happy ending, "At that time, I couldn’t move anymore so he hid me here and set down a series of prohibition spells. Then he left to look for those three foolish disciples of his. He said that he would return for me after a period of time, but he would not allow me to murder others for no reason. Sigh, where is the fun in randomly killing people? If it wasn’t for him, I would have been too lazy to kill anyone. The pathway that all of you took to reach here had been left behind by him. I refused to count the days, refused to look at the sun rising and setting outside. I waited for him because he said that he would return. When I missed him I said to myself, my portion of loneliness will soon be compensated by him eventually."
Chang Li completed her story and gazed at Wen Leyang, "It has been two thousand years, right? Yet he never returned." An unshakeable sense of disappointment grew slowly from the corners of her eyes to the tips of her brows, the air within the stone cave turned heavy once again.
Wen Leyang first nodded his head, then shook it as he said, "Ever since that day, the Grand Master had never returned to his disciples either."
At first, Chang Li was stunned, her almond-shaped eyes stared at Wen Leyang as her gaze froze suddenly.
When that expression faded from her beautiful face, it was replaced with the unsurpassed agony of heartbreak. Wen Leyang and Mumu hastily completed one another’s sentences and told her the stories that had been passed down through word of mouth down the generations. The legend of Grand Master Tuoxie was told by these two in less than a hundred words.
Regardless, the legends which had been handed down by the two families were truly similar and goes like this, "The Grand Master had walked to this spot, he moved the mountains and filled the ponds, he scattered the soil and made the land fertile, he slayed the demons and punished the evil before finally moralizing the barbarians…" The adjectives used were not much different, it appeared that the three fellow apprentices had compared their testimonies in private back then.
Chang Li bowed her head and muttered to herself for a while, then suddenly leaped up with a delightful heart and laughed at the three youngsters, "So he really did not return after that? The three foolish disciples too did not see him ever again?"
Wen Leyang painfully scratched the back of his head and was filled with psychological stress as he responded, "The three foolish disciples…were our ancestors."
Chang Li covered her little mouth with her slender hand, her eyes shone with a joyful glow as she offered a witty apology, "It is true that he never returned after that? That he…vanished not because he was unwilling to come back for me? Even if he had refused to return and look for me, I bet he would not have left his three good disciples!" When she was happy, the ancestors from the Wen, Miao, and Luo families too benefited from the association.
"But…" An uncertain expression flashed through Chang Li’s gaze as she looked towards Wen Leyang once again, "How about you? If he never returned after that, while the three disciples were normal beings, how could your body practice his method of cultivation?"
Wen Leyang coughed once, "The three ancestors each inherited one of Grand Master’s unique skills; the Faulty Punch is practiced by those of us from the Wen family…"
Chang Li waved her hand around and interrupted him, "Not the Faulty Punch, I mean the unique power within your Faulty Punch. Albeit there are some differences, but your bones do not lie! I am talking about your unique power and also, how did all of you even discover this pathway?"
This time it was Wen Xiaoyi and Wen Leyang’s turn to tell the story together. They gave a broad summary of the misfortune encountered in the Red Leaves Forest and how he had cultivated himself using Wen Lazi’s method of cultivation. Mumu, who was listening on the side, could not believe what she was hearing and opened her eyes wide. The story of his body burdened with hundreds of poisons, followed by the breaking of his Meridian vessels and nerves. Then the usage of the Return-to-Before Herb’s fruits coupled with the string puppeteers, all those unimaginable incidents mingled together and this little monster in the form of Wen Leyang.
Chang Li was ecstatic as she listened to the story. Mumu reminded her from the side, "Did you think that Grand Master Tuoxie’s disappearance had anything to do with him getting into an accident?"
Chang Li laughed with a sharp voice, "If he is truly dead, I will accompany him for sure. As long as he had not intentionally refused to return and look for me!"
Though Wen Leyang had already became inured to the strange beings and occurrences, the witch’s words and manners were widely divergent from normal beings in every aspect.
Wen Xiaoyi opened her eyes wide as she caught on to the earlier topic and refused to let go, "What do you mean when you said that Wen Leyang had inherited Grand Master Tuoxie’s method of cultivation?"
Chang Li laughed as she shook her head, "I do not understand that fellow either, but this foolish little lad’s unique power, is very similar to his power…"
Wen Leyang shook his head and interrupted Chang Li’s conversation. He stooped towards her and made a civil bow, followed by rapidly telling her the story of how the ancient cave at Zhanyan Peak was exposed to the public, and that his four grandfathers had also vanished without a trace. At last, he begged, "The three families of the Luo, Miao, and Wen were the descendants of the legendary Tuoxie. Since the Grand Master has disappeared, you would be considered our elder…"
Chang Li chuckled lightly and said, "Foolish fellow, you need not use your sweet words to please me. I will never watch idly if his descendants were bullied by others, but…if they had really entered this ancient mountain cave, I am afraid that by now…" As she was saying that she shook her head, "Grand Master Tuoxie had personally cast the prohibition spell on this cave, only the pathway that you entered from was safe to traverse, if anyone were to enter the cave from anywhere else, they would immediately trigger the prohibition spell."
This cave stretched unbroken and endlessly through the mountain, it was originally a stretch of horizontal shafts through the inside of Zhanyan Peak which had been used by Tuoxie to hide the severely wounded witch. In addition, it was laid with prohibition spells. In the past two thousand years, the witch had been waiting around on this side of the cave, she had essentially never been to any other parts of it and she wouldn’t know if the other end of the cave had already been exposed.
The three youngsters cried out in alarm simultaneously. They looked towards the long stretch of the cave in front of them as they raised their legs in preparation to walk forward. If the four grandfathers were to trigger Grand Master’s prohibition spells, it was feared that they had already come to a bad end. The three of them: Wen Leyang, Wen Xiaoyi, and Mumu were concerned about the elders in their own family as they prepared to rush towards the other end with great haste.
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