Chapter 94: The Empty Room

Jiang Min stepped on the sand and gravel by the Wei River, walking step by step toward Wei River Village. The urgency that had sustained her all the way suddenly slowed, becoming heavy and hard to read.

She raised her eyes to look ahead.

Those distant scenes rose up from the depths of memory and overlapped once more with what lay before her.

That big, ugly rock—when she was little, a group of children often climbed it to play, competing to see who could climb higher and faster. If someone accidentally fell, they would inevitably be scolded or beaten by the adults.

That bend in the water was perfect for catching fish. When the water was shallow, she and her elder sister would run there to catch fish and scoop up shrimp. Her mother had once served as a maid in a wealthy household and had excellent skill in the kitchen, so with the simplest ingredients she could turn fish and shrimp into something so delicious and tempting that the whole family could rarely enjoy such a good meal...

After walking a little farther, Jiang Min saw her family’s fields and remembered that when she was still only a few years old, she had carried a basket taller than herself and followed her father and mother to harvest vegetables from the fields, then taken them to a distant market town to sell. Because there were beasts and bandits on the road, they also had to travel with other villagers selling vegetables in town. Every time, they would rise in the middle of the night and then walk mountain paths for several hours. By the time they reached the town, the sky was only just beginning to lighten.

To temper their children, her parents would take turns bringing her, her elder brother, and her elder sister along. Though the journey was hard, she always looked forward to the days when it was her turn to go to town, because there she could see many strange and wondrous things, and meet all manner of people. Everything she saw filled her with longing.

“Hm?”

Jiang Min suddenly fixed her gaze. She saw a figure that looked somewhat familiar, though it was not her parents, carrying a hoe and walking toward her family’s field, where he began to weed.

With her powerful divine sense, she observed the man from afar for a moment before finally identifying him with difficulty, relying on a cultivator’s astonishing memory.

“It seems to be... Ninth Uncle? Why is he weeding my family’s field?”

A faint sense of unease suddenly welled up in Jiang Min’s heart. She immediately activated her invisibility veil, concealing herself, and walked toward home. It would be better to first understand what was happening before showing herself; if she strode openly into the village, she would surely be interrogated about her origins.

Her figure flickered lightly.

Within a few breaths, she had arrived before her own house.

The door was shut tight. The house had collapsed. Weeds choked the courtyard, and there was not the slightest trace of human life. At a glance, it was obvious that no one had lived here for many years.

Jiang Min stiffened, frozen in place.

What was going on?!

In an instant, she imagined every worst possibility.

But the next moment, she forced herself to calm down. She bit the tip of her finger and formed a drop of blood, suspending it before her, then with one hand made a highly intricate seal.

A bloodline kin-searching seal.

The blood dissolved into the wind, and in some unseen place, Jiang Min’s heart filled with a great many faint premonitions of fate.

Most of the threads were so faint they were almost impossible to notice, scattered throughout Wei River Village; these belonged to distant relatives whose blood ties to her were very remote.

There was also one thread of fate that was extraordinarily dense, pointing toward the distant east. It was the whereabouts of the person most closely bound to her bloodline—more than one person.

“Several threads of fate are all pointing east, and very far away. Could it be that Father and Mother left Wei River Village and went somewhere else?”

Jiang Min could not help thinking this over.

She lifted her eyes and saw a woman come out of the neighboring house, holding a baby of about half a year old and preparing to do some work. So Jiang Min went around to the back of the ruined house, dismissed her invisibility, then deliberately made her footsteps audible. She walked out from in front of the ruin and toward the woman.

The woman had been about to gather firewood when she heard the footsteps. Looking up, she saw a woman in green robes walking slowly toward her from the path beside the ruined house. The newcomer was clean and refined in appearance, with a poised and agile manner, so spotless and untainted that the woman could not hope to describe it.

Seeing that the girl was dressed in excellent green silk and carried the air of a celestial being, though her face was unfamiliar and she was not a villager, appearing here without reason, the woman did not dare be negligent. She hurriedly held the child closer, bent slightly at the waist, and asked with constrained fear and caution, “Miss, who are you?”

An unfamiliar face in the village had to be asked about, no matter what.

Jiang Min stopped.

She studied the woman’s features and vaguely recognized her as the third daughter of Jiang Dazhu’s family from the foot of West Mountain. When they were children, she had climbed trees and caught birds with this very person. Ten years later, when they met again, the old acquaintance had already become a married woman—and no longer recognized her at all.

Jiang Min did not reveal her identity. Instead, she clasped her hands and asked gently, “Good day, madam. May I ask where the family who lived here went?”

“That family?”

At her words, the woman was slightly startled. Then, in a respectful tone, she replied, “Four years ago, their eldest son came back and took the whole family away. They never returned. No one knows where they went.”

The eldest son of the Jiang family?

Her elder brother was alive, and he had come back?!

Then what about her elder sister? Had her brother found her sister?

Excitement and joy surged at once in Jiang Min’s heart, though not the slightest sign showed on her face. She merely nodded politely. “Thank you for telling me, madam. I understand now.”

After Jiang Min left, the woman finally reacted. How had this person come to Wei River Village? Why had she appeared out of nowhere beside the ruined house? And why had she seemed somewhat familiar...

Just now, she had been overawed by the woman’s presence, filled with fear and unease, and had not thought of any of these things.

After Jiang Min departed, she found a secluded place with no one around, waved her hand, and released the White Skiff.

Without delay, she urged the flying vessel onward, following the heavenly signs indicated by the bloodline kin-searching art, and flew east.

...

West of the Green River.

Dragon Gate Stronghold.

This stronghold had once been the Dragon Gate Gang of the martial world. At the height of its power, it had even hosted cultivators as garrisoned protectors. However, in the struggle among Green River’s factions ten years ago, the Dragon Gate Gang was defeated and declined. The remaining members left the town and built Dragon Gate Stronghold in the mountains, becoming bandits.

At first, Dragon Gate Stronghold still observed some rules. It was even properly managed, with connections to the authorities and certain local factions.

But in the past two years, the stronghold had burned, killed, plundered, and committed every evil imaginable. Some days ago, it had grown brazen enough to slaughter an entire village at the foot of the mountain.

Therefore, Feng Qi, the commander-in-chief stationed in Green River, sent his subordinate Jiang Yuanyi to wipe out Dragon Gate Stronghold.

At that moment, in front of the stronghold gate, cries of slaughter rang out both inside and outside, along with the clash of blades.

Among them was a tall young man in scale armor, wielding a long saber. Wherever his blade pointed, a tangible and razor-sharp blade aura swept across the field, and countless bandits of Dragon Gate Stronghold died beneath it, with no power to resist.

Blood splashed onto Jiang Yuanyi, but his expression did not change. Still gripping the low-grade spirit weapon Azure Origin Saber, he continued charging into the stronghold.

“So long as I wipe out Dragon Gate Stronghold, with such merit I’ll be able to rise another step.”

Jiang Yuanyi thought this to himself.

He had not originally been called Jiang Yuanyi, but Jiang Tian.

From the same Wei River village.

When he was in his teens, he had gone out and encountered bandits robbing and killing. At the brink of life and death, he invented a miserable backstory for himself. With a glib tongue and decisive courage, he convinced the bandits to spare his life and slipped into their nest.

Not long after joining them, he encountered a large-scale suppression campaign by government troops. Immediately, he defected on the spot, taking a group of brothers he had won over with him and volunteering to be temporarily incorporated by the troops. He then followed them in suppressing the bandits. Afterward, through outstanding performance, he was favored and promoted by a powerful patron. When his spiritual roots were tested, he was found to have five-element roots. He then began cultivating, rose again and again, and was granted a new name by that patron, becoming Jiang Yuanyi.

Once his position had stabilized somewhat, he hurried back home without delay, only to learn that his younger sister had been sold off and his second younger sister had been taken away by an immortal. At once, he used his connections to find his younger sister, who had been serving as a maid in a wealthy household, bought back her freedom, and brought the whole family to Green River. By virtue of his power and influence, he secured a home for them all there.

Thinking of his future prospects, Jiang Yuanyi quickened his pace and charged into the stronghold.

Suddenly, a streak of blood-red light, carrying an icy and murderous aura, shot out from a house and came straight for him. The thick stench of blood rushed over him.

That blood-red flash was so fast that it was not an attack a mere third-stage Qi Refinement cultivator like him could possibly withstand.

“There’s a powerful evil cultivator inside Dragon Gate Stronghold!”

Just as Jiang Yuanyi’s pupils contracted sharply and he had no time to evade—

Buzz.

A faint, glowing barrier suddenly appeared before him, blocking that fatal strike.

This chapter has undergone major revisions, so there may be some mismatch with the comments for it.

(The original plot was advancing too slowly. After struggling with it all night, I decided to cut it and move directly into the new storyline.)