INDIFFERENENCE TO GOOD AND EVIL, disinterest in right and wrong: such were the roots of ignorance. Murong Chuyi was infamous for his pursuit of artificing to the exclusion of all else. It was said that he cared nothing for friends or family and dedicated all his time to his chosen vocation. In his effort to create supernaturally powerful weaponry, he was willing to try anything and sacrifice everything.
This man gave the impression of complete detachment from the earthly world—whether it was in his disposition, looks, or flowing attire. All of it exuded an unmistakable aloofness. Almost no one in the entire imperial capital liked the idea of speaking to him, though he wouldn't waste breath on them either, of course. The only person who unflaggingly clung to him was—
"Fourth Uncle!" Delighted, Yue Chenqing scrambled forward and attempted to hug him.
Impassively, the "Ignorant Immortal" Murong Chuyi stepped back to dodge the little nephew charging toward him. With one sweep of his horsetail whisk, swirling gusts of wind surrounded Li Qingqian, handily trapping the vicious sword spirit within a haze of white smoke.
"Fourth Uncle, Fourth Uncle! You're finally here! So you were in the capital! Hooray!"
Mo Xi and Murong Lian couldn't help but pity Yue Chenqing. He bounced around like a puppy bursting with excitement, joy, and attachment to this fourth uncle of his. Murong Chuyi, for his part, acted as if he hadn't heard or seen a thing, simply turning his gaze upon the sword spirit. Those bright brown eyes swept across Li Qingqian. "A good blade," he said, as if the man Li Qingqian didn't exist in his eyes at all, and before him was only Hong Shao the sword. "What a pity."
With a swish of his whisk, a talisman—the same one that had taken Yue Chenqing unimaginable effort to draw—materialized beneath Li Qinggian's feet. Murong Chuyi enunciated each syllable in a tone devoid of emotion: "This sword of water's gleam was once a yearning dream. The sword subsumes thy soul, my bidding lights thy way..."
Yue Chenqing was long accustomed to being ignored by his fourth uncle. He scurried over and said, undeterred, "That's what I just chanted, it didn't work—"
Murong Chuyi didn't so much as blink as he continued. "Rest not in this demon blade, return thyself to the earthly world..."
"It's not 'holy sword'?!" Yue Chenqing exclaimed in shock.
But anguish was already apparent on Li Qingqian's face. Black mist seeped out of the Hong Shao Sword in his arms; at once, it congealed, and the blade shattered into thousands of glittering shards.
Yue Chenqing had recited the incantation thirty times, but Murong Chuyi only needed to say it once... He finally realized what had happened. "Ah! That's right... This sword is from the Liao Kingdom; it's not a holy weapon but a demonic one. That's why—that's why the final line should be..."
Murong Chuyi glanced sidelong at the fragmented remains of Li Qingqian's sword spirit with his amber eyes. There was a pause, and he suddenly knit those sharp brows. How odd. Sword spirits ought to immediately dissipate after their weapons were destroyed, but Li Qingqian's sword spirit hadn't scattered at all. It was still there; it had merely become faded and incorporeal, and then...
A cloud of black mist shot upward before he could finish the thought, sweeping past the group and soaring out of the cave.
"Fourth Uncle! He escaped!" Yue Chenqing cried.
"Im not blind. I saw."
"Let's go after him!"
Murong Chuyi glanced in the direction the black qi had gone. "We can't catch up."
Yue Chenqing was stunned by his fourth uncle's frank honesty. Murong Chuyi lifted a hand and worked a spell, levitating what remained of Hong Shao's hilt. Extending two fingers, he lowered his gaze and began to examine it thoroughly.
"What happened?" Yue Chenqing launched into a flurry of questions. "Why is part of the hilt still here? Shouldn't the entire thing disappear? Why didn't the sword spirit dissipate?"
"Oh no!" Yue Chenging yelped. "Fourth Uncle! He said he wanted to go kill more people! So he'll never disappear unless he kills the person he wants to kill?"
"Are there any other options?" Mo Xi cut in.
"Yes." Murong Chuyi tossed the last piece of the Hong Shao Sword into his own white silk qiankun pouch. "Talk him out of this obsession." With that, he turned to leave the cave. But after taking a few steps, he halted again. "If you wish to stop him, please come back with me to Yue Manor to talk first."
Yue Chenqing scurried after him. "Fourth Uncle, you don't need to be so polite with me. Of course I'll go home with you."
Murong Chuyi's white robes fluttered and the silk ribbon in his hair crown danced. He was the picture of an elegant immortal who trod without touching the dust of the ground. But he didn't even glance at Yue Chenqing, as though he were selectively deaf.
Mo Xi took in the scene in front of him and sighed inwardly. Human relationships were indeed the most unpredictable. Jiang Yexue was so kind and attentive to his little half-brother: he was warm and lenient, thoughtfully considerate in every possible way. Despite this, Yue Chenqing didn't respect him, let alone like him.
But Murong Chuyi? He always treated Yue Chenqing poorly. Toward others, he could be described as aloof, but toward Yue Chenqing, he could be downright cruel. Yet Yue Chenqing stubbornly adored him—he loved to tag along and pursue him to make conversation. This never changed, no matter how many years went by.
Mo Xi couldn't help but think of all the ways Gu Mang had betrayed him—so numerous that he had given up speaking of them. And yet he himself couldn't say whether some bygone affection still hid somewhere within his heart.
Yue Manor was one of the most mysterious residences in Chonghua, and the most secretive areas within this mysterious abode were all Murong Chuyt's territory. Ranked by difficulty of entry, the list would look something like this:
Murong Chuyi's courtyard.
Murong Chuyi's study.
Murong Chuyi's bedroom.
Murong Chuyi's artificing workshop.
The last was more or less an invulnerable fortress, impenetrable to anyone but the Ignorant Immortal himself. No one else had taken more than a Step inside. This was the origin of a common saying that within Chonghua's borders there were two places that not even His Imperial Majesty could access. The first was Medicine Master Jiang's medicine refinery, and second was Murong Chuyi's artificing workshop. The medicine refinery was guarded by poison. And the artificing workshop boasted safeguarding mechanisms that couldn't be cracked even if you gave His Imperial Majesty hundreds of years.
Murong Chuyi's artificing abilities were unmatched, to the point where not even Yue Juntian himself had ever sounded the depths of his true skill. Which wasn't to say Yue Juntian hadn't tried—Murong Chuyi served him a heaping bowl of refusal every time. Eventually, Yue Juntian could no longer endure the repeated hits to his pride. Thus he always told outsiders with a stiff chuckle, "Chuyi is young after all; it's understandable that he's afraid of swapping pointers with zongshi a generation older than him."
Murong Chuyi let him say whatever he liked. In any case, he didn't care a whit what others saw or what they thought; his "Ignorant Immortal" moniker hadn't come out of nowhere. Murong Chuyi loved nothing except his armor blueprints, and he loved them to the point of madness. As for reputation, friends, or family, if they wanted to leave, he was happy to show them the door.
Yue Chenqing's paternal uncle happened to be leaving just as this group reached the manor. His eyesight was poor, so from afar, he only noticed Yue Chenqing. He was compelled to raise his voice in rebuke. "Little brat! So disobedient! Where'd you run off to? I was just gettin' ready to go hunt you down!"
"Uncle," Yue Chenqing tried to explain, "I accepted His Imperial Majesty's mission..."
"You baby rascal, what mission—" But before he could finish, he caught sight of Murong Chuyi approaching under the frosty moonlight and his eyes bugged out of his skull. "You?"
He had good reason to be shocked. Although Murong Chuyi lived in the Yue Manor, he almost never showed his face. If no one needed to ask him anything, the manor's residents could go months without catching so much as a glimpse of the man. Yet now, he was not only out in public, but also followed by Yue Chengqing and a good handful of others—this was truly too unthinkable. Uncle Yue was dazed for a long moment. "Wh-what were you doing outside?"
Murong Chuyi deigned to reply this time, though not with any courtesy. He coldly retorted, "Was I under house arrest?"
Uncle Yue, being a very direct man, immediately felt insulted. "What's with that tone? You're not even a member of the main family—I give you an inch of respect and you're really taking a mile, aren't you?"
"Uncle, don't be angry," Yue Chenqing hurried to mollify him. "If it hadn't been for Fourth Uncle's timely rescue today, that rapist might have killed me."
Only then did Uncle Yue snort like a bull, glance at Murong Chuyi's snow-white silhouette, and satisfy himself with a few grumbles. A second or two later, he squinted his cloudy eyes to peer at the figures bringing up the rear of the party. "And these gentlemen are..."
"Second Brother Yue," Murong Lian sneered, "you'd best spend less time peddling your little mechanisms. If you can't even make out the face of someone a few meters away, you're not far from going blind."
At the sound of this voice, Uncle Yue stared. "Wangshu-jun?!"
Murong Lian laughed maliciously. "Mn, and Xihe-jun too."
Uncle Yue was stunned into silence. Even with his status as a high- ranking noble, he still fell short of the stars in the sky that were Wangshu and Xihe. He hustled down the steps to greet them. "Aiyo, terribly sorry about that. Look at these eyes of mine—they really are almost blind. Please excuse the insufficient welcome!"
Only as he got closer did he realize that the stalwart bamboo warrior that stood at the back of the group had an unconscious Gu Mang tied to it. At the sight of public enemy number one right before him, and in such a bewildering position, Uncle Yue couldn't help his astonishment. His jaw dropped in shock and he tilted his head back to look up at the insensible Beast of the Altar.
Murong Lian hooked his pipe around Uncle Yue's neck, snapping the old man out of his daze. "Second Brother Yue, don't forget to go see Medicine Master Jiang," he said with a grin. "Treat your ailments before it's too late."
"Yes, yes, yes! I'll go see Physician Jiang for a liuli eyepiece!"
"Good boy." Murong Lian let him off, laughing. "Oh right, I have a craving. Could you pop by my manor and fetch me a fresh pipe and some ephemera?"
Second Brother Yue quickly nodded twice, only to hear Murong Chuyi say blandly, "Open flame is prohibited in my courtyard."
Murong Lian looked at him quizzically. "Why?"
"I'll blow up."
Murong Lian was struck silent for a moment. But his curiosity won out in the end. He could smoke ephemera to his heart's content at home, but the living quarters of this Ignorant Immortal were closed even to His Imperial Majesty himself. He repressed the burning itch in his chest and followed Murong Chuyi down long, winding corridors into the deepest recesses of the Yue Manor's northern corner.
The group stopped before a tightly shut full-moon door of red sandalwood. Murong Chuyi flicked his whisk four times at the Qixing Beidou star formation embedded within—first at Yuheng, then Tianshu, then Yaoguang, then finally Tianquan. The four spirit stones clicked and slowly sank into the wood, to be replaced by four little wooden men. The wooden figures opened their tiny mouths and asked in unison, "Who goes there?"
"It's me," Murong Chuyi said simply.
An engraved key appeared in the hand of each figurine. "Which will you choose?"
Murong Chuyi carelessly grabbed one, and the wooden men disappeared.
Yue Chenqing stared with eyes wide as copper bells, murmuring to himself as if trying to memorize something. Murong Lian absentmindedly spun his pipe in his hand and snorted, "There's no point in trying to memorize it; the procedure might not even be the same every time. Isn't that right, Ignorant Immortal?"
Murong Chuyi did not dignify his question with a response, choosing instead to insert the key into the lock. There was a muted click, and the sandalwood door rumbled open.
"Come in," he said lightly.