Chapter 3 : Chapter 3
Chapter 3: The Banks of the Sanhua River!
Luo Li bit her lip and fell silent for two seconds, but in the end, she still nodded.
Her grandfather’s body was already like an oil lamp at the end of its wick. His life was nearly spent, and there was simply no time left for him to search out a more truly capable escort for her.
And what she needed on this journey was not merely martial strength, but, more importantly, someone reliable.
She turned around, put away the emotions in her eyes, and gave Chen Guan a proper curtsy. Her tone was gentle, yet carried a trace of distance.
“Then I shall trouble you on the road, Brother Chen.”
Chen Guan was not blind. He had long since seen that this little girl was full of dissatisfaction toward him.
That was a rare thing. In ten years of escort work, this was the first time he had ever been so openly disliked by a client, and by a little girl whose feathers had not even fully grown in at that.
As long as the money was in place, he did not mind.
In any case, the mountains were high and the roads were long. There would be plenty of chances along the way for her to come to know him properly.
“Escort Master Chen, then we shall go back and make our preparations today,” the old man said, cupping his hands. “Tomorrow morning, at the banks of the Sanhua River. Let us meet there without fail.”
“Fine.”
Chen Guan nodded, then briskly pulled out a crumpled booklet and handed it to Luo Li with a reminder.
“No problem. Put your handprint on the last page.”
Luo Li took it and lowered her eyes to the two crooked characters on the cover—《Route Contract》.
Her brows drew together slightly.
What sort of contract came in a volume this thick?
But since her grandfather had already made up his mind, she could not say much. She flipped to the last page.
That final page was densely packed with handprints. She extended one thumb, dabbed it into the ink paste Chen Guan handed over, and, with a decisiveness utterly out of keeping with her age, pressed it lightly into the blank space below.
【Mission Accepted: Escort Luo Li to Shangjing City of Great Zhou】
【Usable Skill: Pay More】
【Effect】: During an escort, the host may raise the price on the spot depending on the situation when negotiating with the client. Each successful increase raises the mission’s Escort Points by 10%.
Watching the old man and the young girl support each other as they disappeared by the little river below the mountain, Chen Guan drew in a deep breath. When he withdrew his gaze, a rare trace of gravity appeared in his expression.
What this trip wagered was not merely those one hundred and twenty taels of silver.
It wagered his life.
It was also the very step he had longed for over the past ten years, yet had never once taken—to go and see the world beyond this mountain hollow.
“Uncle Zhang,” Chen Guan turned and looked at Old Zhang, who was still standing there in a daze. “Deal with this rabbit. Tonight, the two of us... will not part until we are thoroughly drunk.”
“Good!”
Old Zhang came back to himself and nodded heavily.
He knew this boy could no longer be kept here.
If the whole village had not raised him, one mouthful of thin porridge and one scrap of flatbread at a time, he likely would have left ten years ago.
The fact that he had remained in the village and helped support everyone for a full decade already counted as repaying every kindness to the fullest.
Once a young eagle had grown its wings, it was bound to return to the sky.
What was more, how could the strongest man within several hundred li be wasted in a place like this mountain ditch?
He did not raise his voice to announce it, nor did he say any sentimental words of farewell. He merely lifted the fat rabbit, a full five jin in weight, and silently turned back toward the village, his figure seeming a little lonely from behind.
Chen Guan also returned to the little courtyard where he had lived for ten years.
The yard was simple enough—one main room, two side rooms, and a small courtyard enclosed by a fence—yet it had been swept spotless.
This was his habit.
A golden nest and a silver nest could never compare to one’s own dog’s den.
Even if this was only a temporary foothold, so long as he stayed there for a day, it had to be comfortable. At the very least, it made the place easier on the eyes.
He drew a bucket of icy well water and poured it over his head, washing away the exhaustion of the past several days of travel.
After that, he returned to his room and sat cross-legged upon the bed.
With a thought, a pale golden panel appeared before him.
【Escort Master: Chen Guan】
【Escort Points】: 11
【Realm】: Profound Passage Realm 190/200
【Right-of-Way Trait (Attack)】: Path-Cleaving Slash (While on an escort route, the power of blade techniques increases by 100%)
【Right-of-Way Trait (Defense)】: Escorter’s Golden Body (Limited-Time) (Within one zhang of the host, the employer may obtain thirty seconds in the state of an “Indestructible Golden Body”)
Chen Guan’s gaze fell upon the line marked 【Realm】.
The Profound Passage Realm was the fourth realm of martial cultivation.
In this world, cultivation began with tempering the Houtian body and strengthening one’s sinews and bones. After that came the nurturing of a strand of Xiantian qi, then the stage of entering subtle perception and observing the body’s acupoints, and after that came Profound Passage.
Thus, the realms were divided into: Houtian, Xiantian, Subtle Insight, Profound Passage, Purple Palace, Celestial Phenomenon, and Heavenly Human.
That old man in the ruined temple yesterday, the one who had been eaten by the sinister creature, had been a genuine early third-realm Subtle Insight expert.
Placed within the lands for several hundred li around here, that would already qualify him as a great figure capable of suppressing one region and founding a sect.
Sadly, the old man had played too recklessly.
The corpse puppet inside that red coffin had been an object of extreme yin, a kind of sinister fiend. Among all evil things apart from demon fiends, creatures like that were both the most numerous and among the most vicious.
Demon fiends were not so bad. At the very least, they knew to avoid pursuit by human cultivators and rarely came out to cause trouble.
But ghostly fiends were different. They had no minds to speak of and fed upon human beings. Once such a thing came into the world, it often devoured several villages in one go.
Over the years, Chen Guan had encountered only a few while on escort duty.
However, because they had blocked his road, he had cut every one of them down.
As for the yin wraith from last night, in terms of realm, it had already shown the signs of stepping into Subtle Insight, reaching the middle stage of the third realm.
That old man had been nothing more than an early Subtle Insight cultivator, yet he had dared try to control a sinister fiend of that level. One could only say it was like a mouse serving as bridesmaid to a cat—if he died, he had it coming.
“One hundred and ninety points... just ten short.”
Chen Guan gave a mental push and directly staked it all.
The moment the thought fell, a current of heat burst forth from his dantian qi sea and coursed through his meridians, instantly flooding his four limbs and hundred bones.
His body, which had been somewhat stiff from the well water, was swept by that rush of heat, and a cloud of white mist rose from him at once.
His six senses suddenly grew clear.
The cries of insects and birds outside, which had once been an indistinct clamor, now separated into clear, distinct rhythms within his ears.
He could even hear the faint sounds made by earthworms wriggling through the soil a hundred meters away.
Purple qi arose in the dantian; today, the gates of the mansion opened.
If Subtle Insight meant opening the body’s hidden divine treasury and reaching the point of plucking flowers to wound a man, then Purple Palace meant truly knocking upon the gate between mortal and immortal, gaining transcendent means such as shaping true qi and taking a man’s head from afar.
【Realm Breakthrough: Purple Palace Realm (1/500)】
Chen Guan slowly opened his eyes and clenched his fist.
Amid the crackling of his knuckles, a faint layer of purple qi flowed unceasingly across his palm.
“The Purple Palace Realm. This journey now carries at least some measure of assurance.”
At dawn the following morning, before the sky had even fully brightened, while the wilderness was still wrapped in hazy blue-gray light, Chen Guan shouldered that horse-cleaving saber wrapped in strips of cloth and quietly left the little courtyard where he had lived for ten years.
That drinking bout last night with Old Zhang had lasted until deep into the night.
It only ended after Chen Guan drank that farmer—who was usually famed for never falling no matter how much he drank—straight under the table.
Though only the two of them had actually shared cups across the table, Chen Guan had nevertheless smelled the reluctance of all one hundred and twenty-eight souls in Xiaohe Village in the night wind.
Because the air had been too salty.
That was what happened when tears mixed into it.
He left, taking with him the patched-together concern of all the villagers, yet he also left behind on that broken wooden table every bit of savings he had accumulated over ten years of escort work.
“Ah. I did business for ten years without ever taking a loss, and in the end, I lost it all on this one drinking bout.”
Chen Guan muttered the words under his breath. He did not turn back. With a tap of his toe, his body shot out like a black bird through the woods. In a few rises and falls, he vanished from the edge of Xiaohe Village and disappeared into the morning mist.
...
The banks of the Sanhua River.
To put it plainly, it was just a wild river carrying the smell of withered grass.
Both banks were overgrown with weeds, and the water was far from clear enough to see the bottom. Instead, it carried a murky, earthen smell.
And yet this river had quite a history.
According to legend, thousands of years ago, an old turtle demon of the river had lived here.
It had been an age of chaos. Demons and monsters ate humans, and humans ate humans as well.
Unable to bear the suffering of the common people, the old turtle transformed himself into a ferryman, and transformed his three sons into great boats, escorting refugees day and night to the other side of the river to seek shelter.
The eldest son escorted the displaced southward and died in battle upon the road.
The second escorted orphans northward and had his core cut out by greedy cultivators.
The third sent off the final batch of wounded soldiers and never returned.
And so the old turtle remained at that ferry crossing, waiting and waiting. He waited until the river dried up and flowed again, waited until the turtle shell upon his body became the blue stones along the riverbank, yet he still never saw his children return.
Because of this, the place came to be called the Sanhua River, and it became the place where people from all the surrounding villages came to bid farewell to those departing.
Perhaps it was because people wished to honor a fragment of that old turtle’s longing. From this place, whoever went out into the world, even if they died elsewhere, their souls would still remember to drift back here.
When Chen Guan reached the riverbank and lifted his eyes, he saw a slender figure standing alone atop the bluestone at the head of the river, like a lone wild goose separated from its flock, quietly gazing at the shattered reflection of the waning moon in the water.
At the sound of footsteps behind her, Luo Li suddenly turned around.
The moment she saw that it was Chen Guan, she hastily lifted her sleeve and stubbornly wiped away the tears still clinging to the corners of her eyes. Her eye sockets were red, and her voice carried a choked, fierce edge.
“Why did you take so long?”