Chapter Eleven: Those Who Follow Different Paths Cannot Work Together Section Nine: The Divine Soul Sect’s Treasure

Chapter Nine: The Soul Spirit Sect’s Treasure

“Heh heh, there truly is a treasure here in the Soul Spirit Sect. It was discovered years ago by your sect father and your master together. At the time, your master swore, in repayment for your sect father’s saving his life, that he would never tell anyone about it. He would pretend not to know of it and never covet it. When the Soul Spirit Mountain suddenly fell victim to war and disaster, your sect father certainly had no chance to tell you. The reason Zheng attacked the Soul Spirit Mountain was also this treasure. Zheng learned of it only because the Soul Spirit Mountain produced a traitor.”

Bu Jingxian recalled the former Soul Spirit Sect disciple who had led General Han Feng’s forces when they exterminated the Soul Spirit Mountain. That man had once been his sect father’s trusted confidant, but for some unknown reason had later left the mountain.

“Does the Soul Spirit Sect’s treasure truly exist?”

“If I had no absolute confidence, would I have remained here all these years?” Madam Li laughed dismissively, then continued, “Your sect father moved it to an extremely secret place to prevent your master from taking it. With your help, perhaps we can uncover the location.”

“What does the treasure contain?” Bu Jingxian asked instead of answering.

“The ancient Buddhist sect’s martial art, the Marrow-Washing Scripture. The ancient divine weapon, the Seven-Star Dragon Abyss. There are also some historical documents. I want only the documents. Everything else is yours.”

Bu Jingxian remained puzzled. “If that is so, why did my sect father never sell the Seven-Star Dragon Abyss and the ancient martial arts manual? He neither cultivated the art nor sold it. Is that not strange?”

“He naturally had no desire to practice human martial arts, but he was even less willing to let others possess them. The truly strange thing is why he did not destroy the manual and the divine sword.”

Bu Jingxian secretly felt that his sect father’s ideas might have changed later. Though he could not overcome his own scruples and bring himself to practice human martial arts, perhaps his prejudice against them had already begun to waver. That was likely why he had preserved the manual and the sword.

“Very well. I agree to help Madam Li search for the treasure. But what of the power of the Soul Spirit bloodline?”

“To be honest, I cannot help you. My husband’s Soul Spirit bloodline power was innate, and even he does not know how to awaken it. As for me, the circumstances were absurd. In those days, I fled to escape an arranged marriage, pursued all the way to the edge of a cliff. When my family came to seize me, I swore that I would never submit and leaped from the cliff to prove my resolve. I never expected my bloodline power to awaken in midair. Surely I cannot take you up into the sky and throw you down?”

As Madam Li spoke, she could not help laughing. Bu Jingxian, however, secretly thought that the method might not be entirely impossible. Still, such an experiment should clearly wait until after they had found the treasure, so he said nothing.

Zhao Ji had finished preparing the meal by then. After the three of them had eaten and drunk their fill, Madam Li carefully told Bu Jingxian everything she knew about the treasure’s clues.

The traitor who had once fled the Soul Spirit Mountain had originally revealed the location of the treasure. But after that man left, Bu Jingxian’s father must have taken precautions and moved it a second time. Madam Li believed that there were many documents among the treasures. Since Bu Jingxian’s father would not have dared let anyone else know of them, he must have moved everything alone. The new hiding place therefore should not be far from the original one.

Yet Bu Jingxian searched every place on Five-Finger Mountain where a treasure might plausibly be hidden, relying on his memories, and found nothing.

Before he knew it, a month had passed since he arrived at the Soul Spirit Mountain, and he still had nothing to show for his efforts. Madam Li remained remarkably patient and did not seem anxious in the least. Bu Jingxian, however, was troubled by the endless waste of time.

One morning, upon waking, Bu Jingxian remembered that this day marked the anniversary of the Soul Spirit Mountain’s destruction. Thinking of the countless white bones in the abyss, he felt a deep sorrow. He therefore begged Madam Li to take him down so that he could bury the remains of those who had died so terribly.

“It is rare to see someone with such a heart. But there are hundreds of thousands of bones. The two of you will hardly be able to bury them all.”

“That does not matter. I am idle in any case. I have done nothing for the Soul Spirit Mountain all these years. Let this at least serve as a small expression of my feelings.”

Zhao Ji had intended to accompany him, but Bu Jingxian refused.

“They would not be pleased to have an outsider touch their remains. You cannot go.”

“My lord—”

Zhao Ji still wished to explain, but Bu Jingxian merely shook his head. “They were unlike me. They hated humans. You are not truly a seeker of the Soul Spirit ideal, and they could never recognize or accept you. Even I will face them today with a heart full of shame. I can only hope they will show some regard for my sect father and not hold it too strongly against me.”

Only then did Zhao Ji accept his order and remain behind.

Madam Li spread her radiant wings and carried Bu Jingxian down into the abyss beneath the Cliff of Blessings.

After descending a hundred yards, they could faintly make out the ghastly heaps of bones below, the flesh long since rotted away.

The sight pierced Bu Jingxian with unbearable grief.

When Madam Li brought him to the bottom, she could not find a place to land. The piled bones had risen to an unknown height, filling the abyss, whose floor had once measured only some fifty yards across, layer upon layer.

“I will bring food and water down tomorrow morning.”

With that, Madam Li spread her wings and flew away alone. She knew that Bu Jingxian was grieving, but since he was willing to reveal his sorrow before no one, she left him in solitude.

The corpses had accumulated at the bottom of the abyss for years. The stench of decay had settled there and could not disperse. Inhaled, it did not nourish the body as it should but instead poisoned it. Bu Jingxian, however, relied on the rapid recovery of his physical strength. The poison consumed his vitality far more slowly than his body restored it, and he therefore paid it no mind.

Facing the endless white bones, he knew that everyone he had known—or never known—on the Soul Spirit Mountain lay here, including his sect father. But so many years had passed that most of their clothes had rotted into dust. There was no way to tell one person from another.

Bu Jingxian knelt upon the bones and pressed his hand against a human skull. No longer able to suppress the grief in his heart, he broke down in tears, weeping helplessly. Only after a long while did he manage to calm himself, and then he began to recount in detail what had happened after the catastrophe on the Soul Spirit Mountain.

“For many years, I have not dared forget my sect father’s teachings. I have not dared forget everyone’s last wishes, nor have I dared forget my master’s hopes for me. To realize the Soul Spirit ideal, I kept telling myself that I had to set hatred aside and accomplish something great. Yet the situation before me has reduced all my painstaking efforts to ashes. During that year I waited for my master on Northern Spirit Mountain, I pieced together countless fragments of information from Shao Yuan and my two senior brothers before locating the Black Wolf Clan’s Northern Yin City. I used the circumstances to create the Zhou Kingdom that exists today.

“But at the crucial moment, everything was helplessly cut short, and all my efforts ended in failure. Yet complaining about the past will accomplish nothing. I have no other choice now but to find a way to prove to the world that the power of the Soul Spirit ideal truly exists, and thereby lead people to believe in it. If I succeed, perhaps the Zhou Kingdom can be reformed into a nation founded upon the Soul Spirit ideal. Beyond this, there is no other way to continue the great undertaking.

“Yet I clearly possess the Soul Spirit bloodline, and still I cannot awaken its power. Now, by good fortune, I have encountered Madam Li. If my sect father and all the others have spirits in heaven, I hope they will see the sincerity with which I seek to realize the power of the Soul Spirit ideal and lend me their aid and protection.

“I know that what I have done all these years is utterly contrary to the Soul Spirit ideal of guarding one’s own path. I would not dare claim that my actions are right. But the destruction of the Soul Spirit Mountain left me no choice but to seek change and renewal. I can only continue forward. I know that you cannot approve of me, but I hope you will give me a chance—let me walk this path to the very end…”

The bones had accumulated in such mountains that they were difficult to handle. Bu Jingxian could only rely on his tremendous strength to break apart the cliffs and dig through earth and stone, creating pits in which to bury them. He could have simply brought down the slopes on both sides and buried everything beneath the falling rocks, but he was unwilling to treat them so carelessly.

“Since I cannot avenge you or wash away your hatred, the only thing I can do to express my feelings is to bury you with all my heart.”

The next day, Madam Li brought food and water down to him. But she could not endure the poisonous miasma at the bottom of the abyss. After exchanging only a few words, she hurriedly flew away.

Zhao Ji waited above for the entire day, unable to settle her heart. She wanted to ask Madam Li for help, yet she also remembered Bu Jingxian’s order.

After spending so much time with Madam Li, she inevitably grew curious and talkative.

During their conversation, she suddenly asked, “What exactly is my lord’s relationship with the Soul Spirit Sect?”

Madam Li smiled faintly. “He has not told you. Perhaps that makes you feel he does not trust you.”

“Zhao Ji would never dare think so.”

“He is a man who trusts himself above all others. That has left him very lonely and made him suffer much hardship that he might otherwise have avoided. But it is also precisely why he has survived until today and achieved what he has. His origins are deeply significant, so his extraordinary caution is only natural. It would be best if you did not investigate further.”

“Thank you for reminding me, Madam Li.”

As Madam Li sipped her tea, she pondered the clues concerning the Soul Spirit treasure. When she thought of Bu Jingxian, she felt that he was more broad-minded than Li Kuang. In the past, Li Kuang had been unwilling to let others learn the Soul Art, whereas Bu Jingxian was now willing to teach it even to his subordinates. In her view, Li Kuang’s greatest failing in his youth had been his excessive selfishness, along with his tendency to cling too tightly to hatred.

“Perhaps all things are guided by fate.”

Half a month passed in this way. By then, Bu Jingxian had buried only a fraction of the bones in the abyss.

He had hollowed out much of the rock beneath the four cliff walls. At first, he had worried that this would cause the cliffs to collapse, but nothing happened.

One day, while continuing to bury the remains, he discovered an enormous woven-grass chest at the very bottom of the bone heap. He remembered that it had once stood in his sect father’s room and was overjoyed to retrieve it.

Despite the passage of many years, the chest had not decayed. When Bu Jingxian opened it, he found his father’s old clothing covering the surface and immediately sensed that something was strange. If the chest contained nothing but clothes, it should not have been so heavy.

As he searched through it, he found a wooden case and set it aside. Beneath that, he discovered a long brocade-covered wooden box.

By then, he had already begun to suspect what lay within.

When he opened the brocade box, he saw a broad, heavy sword resting inside. Its scabbard was dark silver, and it appeared once to have been inlaid with jewels, though every setting had been gouged empty. When he drew the blade, its cold radiance illuminated the space within three yards.

“The ancient divine weapon, the Seven-Star Dragon Abyss!”

Only then did Bu Jingxian finally understand why countless people had searched for the Soul Spirit Sect’s treasures without success. His sect father had simply placed the sword in this woven chest in his room—somewhere no one would ever think to look. When disaster descended upon the Soul Spirit Mountain, his sect father must have ordered someone to throw the chest from the cliff so that it would not fall into Zheng’s hands. He had never imagined that the chest was extraordinarily resistant to impact and would survive such a fall from a great height without damage.

Here at the bottom of the cliff, if he had not come today to clear away the remains of more than a hundred thousand people, who could ever have thought to search for it—or found it?

Bu Jingxian opened the other wooden case and found it filled with old documents. Only one letter appeared relatively new. The words “Last Testament” were written upon it. He assumed that his sect father had hastily left it during the catastrophe and immediately unfolded it to read.

“With annihilation upon us, I have thought the matter over again and again. The Zheng army will surely throw the corpses of everyone on this mountain beyond the Cliff of Blessings. If this chest is ever discovered, the one who finds it can only be my son, Jingxian.

“Your father’s natural gifts limited him, and I achieved nothing in my life. All my hopes rest upon you. I knew that this ancient secret manual might alter one’s aptitude, yet I hesitated for so long to make up my mind, fearing the contempt and condemnation of my fellow sect members.

“Only now do I understand that too many stubborn prejudices from the past have brought nothing but the destruction of the Soul Spirit Sect. Therefore, I urge you to seek instruction from the Northern Spirit Elder.

“Your father has left you nothing of material value. I can only pass on this immense responsibility. In my haste, I have no time to offer you many instructions or explanations, but I believe my son will surely pass the Northern Spirit Elder’s test and attain mastery.

“…There is little I can leave behind. I have placed the Soul Spirit Sect Master’s waist token in the box. Perhaps it may prove useful someday.

“There are also many historical documents in the wooden case. They must be given to Madam Li. I once owed Madam Li a debt of gratitude. If my son succeeds in becoming a disciple of the Northern Spirit Elder, he will surely encounter Madam Li again. Under no circumstances must you neglect or slight her.

“Madam Li, however, is as elusive as a dragon glimpsed only in passing. If you do not know where she is, you may present the documents to the Northern Spirit Elder. He will certainly be able to deliver them on your behalf…”