Slay the Immortals, Attain the Dao - Chapter 2

What else was there not to understand?

The immortal elixirs were eggs.

Once they hatched, the worms fastened themselves to a person’s dantian. Long, threadlike feelers spread through every extraordinary meridian in the body.

Cultivators were vessels for raising these slime-worms. They supplied the creatures with nourishment, and in return the creatures granted them power beyond that of ordinary people.

But why did none of the cultivators seem aware of it?

Did they know there were monsters inside them?

If they knew and had accepted this coexistence, it was revolting.

If they did not know, then the slime-worms were controlling them—which was just as unbearable.

I had to escape.

First I had to stay alive. Then I would run.

At first, running was all I intended to do, even if it meant burying my name and hiding for the rest of my life.

Then one day, I learned that everyone in my village was dead.

My parents had died when I was young. I had grown up eating at every family’s table, and to me, the people of White Crane Village were no different from my own parents.

So when I heard the words, “Did you finish off White Crane Village?” I froze.

I remembered the moment perfectly. It was my third month on Mount Penglai. Clutching my newly issued disciple token, I had hurried off to find Qi Mo. I planned to ask which nearby town sold the best wine and use the conversation to wheedle the surrounding terrain out of him.

Instead, hidden behind a thicket, I saw the handsome, carefree Qi Mo wiping blood from his sword.

“Clean sweep,” he said lightly. “Not one left. That includes Guan Xiao’s wife and the child still in her belly.”

He clicked his tongue. “More than a hundred people. Nearly worked me to death. In the end, I just used ice spikes.”

Wei Min, always so honest and mild, replied in a cold voice I had never heard from him before. “You’re certain they’re all dead?”

Qi Mo shot him a sidelong look. “Of course. I never leave loose ends.”

He wiped the last drop of blood from his blade and sheathed it with satisfaction.

“Don’t let little Tong find out. I don’t want my precious junior brother hating me. If he does, who’ll break the rules and sneak wine with me?”

“It is no concern,” Wei Min said. “Keep it from him for now. Tell him after he reaches Foundation Establishment.”

“Right. By then he’ll understand. Cultivators have no need for the seven emotions and six desires, much less attachments to the mortal world. Pity Junior Brother is taking so long. Otherwise he could have severed his own kin and proven his Dao himself.”

My teeth chattered.

I clamped a hand over my mouth and did not dare make a sound, but tears of panic and despair kept spilling from my eyes.

Their footsteps receded.

I lowered my hand and gripped the white jade token in the other until my knuckles blanched. The characters for Penglai carved upon it had never looked so mocking.

Was this an immortal mountain?

Was this what it meant to answer the people’s pleas?

Why had they murdered the innocent?

Guan Xiao was our village head and my uncle. Before I left, he had held my hand and laughed that our village was finally going to produce a great man. He had said that once his child was born, he would beg this “Immortal Master” to choose its name.

At the time, he had gazed happily at his wife’s six-month belly.

He could never have imagined that three months later they would both be dead, their child never born.

What right did you have to kill them?

What right did you have to say you did it for me?

Did you ask me? Did I agree?

It was absurd.

And once I reached Foundation Establishment, I would understand them?

What did that mean?

A chill crept up my spine.

Perhaps Foundation Establishment meant becoming a monster even I could neither understand nor accept.

I let go of my mouth and fought down the urge to vomit.

Then, word by word, I swore through clenched teeth, “I will never agree. Not ever.”