Yu Qing said, “The grand martial uncle and master lost years of their lifespan due to long term depletion of their true essence.”
Zhou Xinyuan opened the folding fan in his hand and fanned his face several times in succession. The tear stains on his face dispersed like smoke in an instant. He then turned around abruptly and walked back into the hall. Standing before the mat platform, he demanded, “What do you mean?”
Yu Qing said dejectedly, “I did not know before either. Only when master entrusted me with some causes and effects from the temple on his deathbed did I learn that the crippled old man sitting in a wheelchair in the village, who is Ah Shiheng’s father Ah Jiezhang, actually had a significant background.”
He then recounted in detail Ah Jiezhang’s identity as a ministry official in the Ministry of Works and the related matters. The connection between Linglong Temple and Ah Jiezhang began with the tower inside Linglong Temple.
Inside Linglong Temple there stood a three zhang tall black iron tower called the Linglong Tower. The tower had layers of flying eaves, and on each eave hung a kind of bell. The sound of bells ringing in the wind was only the surface appearance. For inner sect disciples of Linglong Temple, entering to listen to the sound was the key entry point for cultivating the sound character formula.
Many years ago on a certain day an unimaginable scene occurred. The iron tower was struck down with a crash by a meteor from beyond the heavens and was destroyed. As it concerned the inheritance of Linglong Temple, the temple spared no effort to repair it. However, the refining materials were special and hard to find. Later they located the Ministry of Works official Ah Jiezhang and sought to use the Ministry’s ability to search and attack mountains to find them. Naturally Ah Jiezhang helped greatly with this favour, and his way of handling it left Linglong Temple deeply grateful.
Linglong Temple promised to repay him.
Several years later, Ah Jiezhang was dismissed from office. Before leaving the capital he sent a message to Linglong Temple. There was an agreement that Linglong Temple would send experts to escort and receive him.
Who could have expected the unpredictable ways of heaven? The grand martial uncle responsible for going to receive him encountered old grudges along the way and became entangled, resulting in a tragic incident that nearly wiped out the Ah family.
In short, the grand martial uncle arrived late. Fortunately on the road he came across the killers’ ambush point targeting the Ah family. A servant of Ah Jiezhang who lay on the ground after being killed but had not yet breathed his last begged him for help. Only then did the grand martial uncle learn that he had just encountered Ah Jiezhang in danger.
In great alarm the grand martial uncle immediately displayed the sound character formula, found the direction Ah Jiezhang had fled, and rushed over urgently. Only then did he save the father and son pair.
Unfortunately, by the time the grand martial uncle went to rescue the others it was already too late.
In fact, when he decided to save the father and son first, the grand martial uncle had already made a difficult choice. There was no other way. The Ah Jiezhang family had scattered and fled in all directions. The killers clearly wanted to ensure no news of the family’s deaths leaked out and had no intention of sparing anyone, so they pursued them separately. In his urgency the grand martial uncle could only attend to one side and could not look after everyone at the same time.
Afterwards the grand martial uncle felt deep regret. He explained the details to Ah Jiezhang and apologised. Truly he had no technique to divide his body.
What the incomparably angry grand martial uncle could do was to display the sound character formula and pursue the killers everywhere. He did not let a single murderer escape, but he failed to extract information about the mastermind behind it all. The killers had been hired to commit the crime and the employer had hidden their identity, so the killers themselves did not know who the employer was.
That time the grand martial uncle left no survivors among the killers. He slaughtered them all.
Later the grand martial uncle went to investigate the leader of the killer gang, intending to follow the vine to find the melon and expose the mastermind. But he arrived too late. The man had already been silenced by someone else first.
That time, Ah Shiheng’s mother, elder brother and elder sister all died. The family servants and guards nearly all lost their lives as well. Of the whole family only the father and son remained, and Ah Jiezhang was also seriously injured, left with a lifelong disability.
The matter of the escort also became an indelible guilt in Linglong Temple’s heart. They remained troubled by it and could not let it go.
The family had shown great kindness to Linglong Temple. Linglong Temple had promised to repay the kindness. Yet the family trusted Linglong Temple and placed their hopes in it. Who could have known that due to its own mistake Linglong Temple failed to arrive in time, leaving the family unable to make other preparations and resulting in the destruction of the household.
Later, in order to save the heavily injured Ah Jiezhang, the grand martial uncle also sacrificed years of his lifespan.
Ah Jiezhang’s crippled body originally could not have lived until his youngest son grew up. It was the grand martial uncle who over those years continuously used his own cultivation to regulate and guide Ah Jiezhang’s body. To put it plainly, the grand martial uncle had been using his cultivation to extend Ah Jiezhang’s life.
The grand martial uncle, who could have lived several more years, suffered major reduction in lifespan due to long term depletion of his true essence and instead passed away before Ah Jiezhang.
After the grand martial uncle passed, the temple master took over his task and similarly used his own cultivation to extend Ah Jiezhang’s life.
In the end, with the ageing of his body and the repeated torment of old injuries, Ah Jiezhang still reached the end of his oil and lamp. No amount of help with regulation could save him. He passed away a year ago.
The temple master followed in the grand martial uncle’s footsteps and did not live much longer than Ah Jiezhang. He passed several months before Yu Qing left the mountain.
On his deathbed he entrusted the task that Linglong Temple owed the family. No matter what, they must successfully escort Ah Shiheng to the capital to fulfil Ah Jiezhang’s final wish.
Before passing, the temple master had wanted his junior brother Zhou Xinyuan to escort Ah Shiheng, because Zhou Xinyuan’s strength was greater and the escort would be more secure. However Zhou Xinyuan came and went like a ghost. Unless he returned to the mountain himself, even his senior brother the temple master could not find a way to contact him.
For the sake of safety, he had no choice but to entrust the matter to his disciple Yu Qing.
First, the youngest disciple was after all a true inner sect disciple with higher cultivation than the other three apprentices, so his protective ability was stronger. Second, those three apprentices were not very willing to deal with officialdom. They had returned to secular life in their early years and only hid back in the mountain after causing trouble. In plain terms they were wanted criminals of the imperial court.
As a result, the grand martial uncle’s mistake crippled Ah Jiezhang, and his own mistake crippled Ah Jiezhang’s son. What kind of thing was this?
When he spoke of how a bowl of spiritual rice attracted evil spirits that mistakenly injured Ah Shiheng, forcing him to take the examination in his place, the sighing Yu Qing looked utterly dejected.
Zhou Xinyuan remained silent. He knew that Ah Jiezhang had been personally brought back to Nine Slope Village by his own master. He had suspected back then that there was some background. He had asked his master, but his master had not told him. He had not expected such reasons to be hidden behind it, nor had he expected that his master had been silently extending Ah Jiezhang’s life in secret.
Now he roughly understood why his master had not let him know. No one knows a disciple better than his master. If he had known he would definitely have stopped his master from extending Ah Jiezhang’s life. He might even have quietly killed Ah Jiezhang.
He also finally understood why this fellow Yu Qing had been in such a dilemma. If he ran away, he would destroy Ah Shiheng’s future and fail to fulfil his master’s dying wish.
The scene stayed quiet for a long time. Zhou Xinyuan suddenly said, “Did senior brother pass the position of temple master to you?”
Yu Qing replied, “No, he passed it to you.” He observed the little martial uncle’s reaction.
Zhou Xinyuan raised his eyebrows. “Under normal circumstances the position of temple master would not be given to a sound character formula disciple. Do you think I do not know why senior brother forced you to practise calligraphy? He was afraid that the handwriting of Linglong Temple’s temple master would embarrass them if taken outside.”
“Gah…” Yu Qing made a strange sound from his throat like a quacking duck whose neck had been pinched. He then sighed and said, “He did pass it to me, but do you know what my master did on his deathbed?”
Zhou Xinyuan showed some curiosity, looking as if he was ready to listen attentively.
“My master called us several martial brothers together. In front of those three silly birds he passed the position of temple master to me. Passing it was one thing, but he also said the position of temple master belongs to the virtuous. Whoever can defeat me can become temple master. Moreover, some of the family assets under the temple master’s control should by rights have been handed to me as the successor. Instead master divided them into four portions and let the four of us share them equally. This made me neither inside nor outside. Now those three silly birds keep opposing me becoming temple master.”
“You did not beat them up?”
“I cannot win against them. They are now waiting for you to return and seize the temple master position from me, hoping you will vent their anger for them. Martial uncle, you do not even need to seize it. We are family. As long as you are willing, I can transfer the position of temple master to you at any time.”
“Sweeping the ground and planting a few rows of vegetables every day makes one the temple master? A broken mountain temple so poor that even rats are unwilling to visit. Looking at stars at night and feeling dazed and silly during the day. I cannot hold on to it. You keep it and play with it yourself. When I grow tired of this mortal world I will consider returning.”
Zhou Xinyuan expressed his disdain, then pondered again and said, “Senior brother doing it that way… After all you are young with shallow qualifications and no virtue or prestige. Senior brother also could not tell them the truth about the inner sect disciples, so he had to find an excuse to pass the position to you. They are all his disciples. He did not want to chill the hearts of the others, so he made it look as if he was treating everyone equally. If he directly chased the others away, would you as a bare pole temple master still find it meaningful?”
“Ah!” Yu Qing sighed, waved his hand and said, “This is no longer important. The matter before us is what matters. You make a decision.”
Zhou Xinyuan stayed silent for a moment. He understood Yu Qing’s difficulty, but this matter clearly still had suspicious points. “I just do not understand. Leaking examination questions is no small matter. Why would that girl kindly send the questions to you?”
Yu Qing sighed, “Martial uncle, can you have some dignity? Can you stop having women on your mind all the time? I said he is a man, not a girl.”
Zhou Xinyuan said, “Fine. Why did that lad send the examination questions to you?”
Yu Qing replied, “He said it was to repay the kindness of saving his life. I saved his life several times.”
Zhou Xinyuan asked curiously, “What happened?”
Yu Qing vaguely felt that this little martial uncle seemed quite interested in Chong’er. He had no mind to think more about it now, so he roughly recounted the experiences they shared after meeting, the hardships they faced together. He concealed the matter of winning first place in the word riddle at Wenhua Academy and only said that later he discovered Chong’er had been captured, then ran to rescue him, accidentally entered the demon realm, caught the fire cricket and escaped, and so on.
It was basically the truth, except he hid everything related to money. Causing things to turn out this way was really too embarrassing to speak of.
However the little martial uncle understood him too well and knew his character deeply. For someone he had just met with little friendship, the first thing after getting out of the prisoner cart was not to escape for his life but to take risks to save Chong’er. Hearing this he already felt something was off and had raised one eyebrow, waiting for Yu Qing to continue making things up.
When Yu Qing finished, he said coldly, “Are you sure you have confessed everything honestly?”
Yu Qing blinked. “At this point, how could I joke with you?”
Zhou Xinyuan closed the fan in his hand and planted it on the table. “I thought about it carefully. At this critical moment for the sect, as a Linglong Temple disciple one has the responsibility to shoulder heavy duties. Since you also feel I am more suitable as temple master, very well. You step down immediately and I will take over now.”
The two who had earlier been sorrowful over the old temple master’s passing now treated it as completely unimportant.
“Uh…” Yu Qing was somewhat stunned. If the other party really wanted it, he felt reluctant in his heart. He said blankly, “Martial uncle, is this not too hasty?”