Sect Master Wen's Junior Martial Brother Who Shared His Hardships Has Returned - Chapter 1

At the extreme south of the world was a sea, and upon that sea stood an immortal mountain. Atop the immortal mountain stood the foremost sect of the Twenty-Seven Regions, the Yingtian Sect.

An immortal climbed the stone steps, and the clouds and mist around him receded at his arrival.

The stone steps appeared ordinary at first glance, but what if they hung suspended tens of thousands of li above the ground?

Seen from afar, the stone steps looked like a thin line, as though they had grown out of thin air and stretched upward toward the sky, until they connected to an immortal palace as tall as the heavens themselves.

Against the vast sky, the stone stairway seemed exceedingly small, and the immortal upon the steps looked more like a slowly moving ink dot.

The immortal’s name was Fu Xuandao. He walked upward step by step, his eyelids never lifting, his gaze fixed from start to finish on the patterns etched into the stone steps.

The clouds and mist around him gradually thinned. The sides of the stone steps were no longer a sheer drop of ten thousand feet into open sky, but had gained some soil, and upon that soil grew a few small flowers and blades of grass.

Fu Xuandao restrained his aura even further. With his cultivation at the Dongzhen realm, he now seemed no different from a mortal.

He continued upward, and the soil on either side of the steps grew more abundant, the spiritual energy ever more dense.

The sound of flowing water grew louder. A breeze swept past, and he heard the rustle of leaves. A few flower petals fell at his feet; he did not step on them but walked around them instead.

For nearly ten thousand years now, let alone the fallen blossoms within the immortal palace — even a single speck of dust was not his to disturb.

Just as he continued upward, a disturbance nearby made him stop.

He turned his head to glance in that direction, and that single glance made the space between his brows twitch.

There, ten zhang away from him, was what had once been a patch of purple flowers. But what mortal flowers could there be in an immortal palace? These purple flowers were no exception — their true name was Fuhan Flower, blooming once every thousand years. Refined into an elixir and consumed, one who took it would never again fear any flame in the world.

Such a treasure, in full and glorious bloom, had now been crushed flat over a wide area.

A figure in red lay among them, a pair of legs as white and fair as snow stretched out lazily atop the flowers, purple flower sap staining the skin.

Fu Xuandao stood rooted to the spot, his mind buzzing, sinking into silence.

Xu Chaoqi had been lying there for a while, and seemingly uncomfortable, he finally braced his waist and sat up. As expected, the moment he lifted his head, he saw the immortal standing not far away.

Xu Chaoqi’s eyes visibly brightened. He hurriedly stood up, his feet once again trampling the flowers rare in this world.

Fu Xuandao’s heart clenched, a dull ache spreading through him.

Xu Chaoqi’s gaze carried a fresh curiosity. As he walked toward Fu Xuandao, he also sensed the other’s cultivation.

Xu Chaoqi’s own cultivation was low. Though he could not guess what realm the immortal was at, going purely by feeling, he could tell the other must be a great power in this world.

So the moment he reached Fu Xuandao, he bowed slightly.

Fu Xuandao steadied Xu Chaoqi, looking down at the other’s loose, unbound hair, and said, “You… could you be the young Daoist child who recently arrived here?”

“Huh?” Xu Chaoqi blinked, looking somewhat dazed.

Fu Xuandao sighed softly, released his hand, and turned back to walk up the stone steps.

Before leaving, he glanced back once more at Xu Chaoqi. “The Sect Master does not favor unkempt hair or disregard for the rules.”

As he spoke, he looked down and saw Xu Chaoqi’s red clothing. “Disciples of the Yingtian Sect wear black as their primary color.”

He had already reminded him this much; what happened from here on depended entirely on this young Daoist child’s own understanding.

He stepped onto the stone stairway, his ink-colored robe trailing and swaying, layer upon layer of cloud and mist parting before him, until, nearing the immortal palace, he glanced back down once more.

The young Daoist child had finally stopped stepping on the flowers. He pondered on the spot for a moment, then rolled up his trouser legs and went down into the small pool to catch fish.

Fu Xuandao: … Well. There was no saving him now.

—

Outside the doors of the main hall, Fu Xuandao gazed at the cold jade stone slabs beneath his feet, straightened his robes and cap, and then performed a great bow.

“Sixteenth-generation disciple Fu Xuandao pays respects to the Grand Ancestor.”

His field of vision gradually lowered, drawing nearer and nearer to the ground. Yet the hall’s doors seemed to rise higher and higher, the entire hall like a mountain range whose peak could not be seen.

Cold air drifted about him. Fu Xuandao found it somewhat hard to breathe, as though his spiritual energy were being drawn away from him.

He glanced once toward the hall doors, and his vision gradually darkened. He seemed to catch sight of some towering, immense being.

Time seemed not to exist in that place — perhaps it was an instant, perhaps a hundred years — until at last he heard a voice.

“Come in.”

Fu Xuandao closed his eyes, his heartbeat gradually settling, and pushed open the door to enter.

The interior of the hall was dim and vast. He walked step by step, with the utmost observance of propriety.

When he reached the cushion before the beaded curtain, he first performed a bow, then knelt and sat back on his heels, hands clasped.

“This disciple has not come to pay respects in ten years. I trust the Grand Ancestor has been well?”

“Well enough.” The voice carried no rise or fall, and no discernible age. Yet the moment it spoke, Fu Xuandao felt as though he sensed the vast changes of the world across boundless eons, the ten thousand forms of the Great Dao — as if a thread of light had shot from those eyes directly into his heart.

“This disciple has received your teaching.” Fu Xuandao bowed low once more.

From behind the beaded curtain came the sound of tea being brewed, mist curling upward, the fragrance of tea filling the air. The instant Fu Xuandao caught its scent, he knew this was tea of unmatched excellence — even for one of his cultivation level, a single sip could raise him an entire realm.

The person behind the curtain brewed one cup, then another, brewing five cups in total before stopping, the fragrance of the tea spreading throughout the whole hall.

Fu Xuandao’s expression grew somewhat guarded. For ten thousand years, it had always been the young Daoist child at the Grand Ancestor’s side who brewed the tea — the Grand Ancestor rarely did it personally. But now…

Ordinarily there were only one or two people beside the Grand Ancestor. And now there was no Daoist child at the Grand Ancestor’s side — it seemed the entire immortal palace was left with only that one red-clothed young Daoist child he had encountered on the way up.

This was precisely the time tea ought to have been brewed, yet the sole Daoist child had gone out to play instead.

Fu Xuandao felt a touch of helplessness.

Recalling the actual matter that had brought him here, Fu Xuandao lowered his head and said respectfully, “Grand Ancestor, in one more year it will be time for the Grand Disciple Competition across the Twenty-Seven Regions. Chengzhou is our sect’s Young Sect Master; his talent runs deep, and he should bring honor to our sect.”

“Good.”

Fu Xuandao inclined his head, his fingertips rubbing against the cushion beneath his legs. After a moment’s thought, he lifted his head slightly and said, “Five days ago, the Lord of the Eastern Central Lower Region sensed the Grand Ancestor’s descent and was greatly alarmed. He specially came to the Yingtian Sect to beg this disciple to inquire on his behalf. If it was not the Grand Ancestor, he begs forgiveness for the offense. If it was indeed the Grand Ancestor, the Lord of the Eastern Central Lower Region is willing to give everything he has to ease the Grand Ancestor’s troubles.”

The hand of the person behind the curtain, brewing tea, paused briefly before resuming as normal. His tone remained calm.

“I have recovered a supreme treasure I lost long ago.”

Fu Xuandao froze, his fingertips trembling slightly.

Even the treasures that filled the entire immortal palace, the Grand Ancestor regarded as mere weeds. If he called something a supreme treasure, what manner of world-shaking, earth-shattering treasure could it possibly be?

He was just about to try, carefully, to probe further, when he suddenly heard a burst of hurried footsteps.

The footsteps grew closer and closer, and without so much as requesting an audience, someone burst into the hall.

The one who had come wore no shoes; his damp soles left footprints on the clean, dark stone slabs. His trouser legs were soaking wet, dripping water across the floor.

He caught sight of Fu Xuandao and exclaimed in surprise, “The immortal is here too?”

Fu Xuandao lifted his head. Sap from various flowers still stained Xu Chaoqi’s face, and he struggled to hold a lively, thrashing fish in his arms.

The fish struggled with all its might, and its familiar scales let Fu Xuandao recognize at a glance that this fish carried dragon bloodline.

His lips moved silently, and from the corner of his eye he glanced toward the beaded curtain. His heart clenched, and a chill shot rapidly up into his skull.

He felt somewhat faint, but Xu Chaoqi had already barged straight through the beaded curtain, fish and all.

“How about fish for dinner today?”

Fu Xuandao: … 

His lips paled as he looked toward the curtain, and there he saw the Grand Ancestor’s figure.

He saw the one who had never once shown a smile now rolling up his sleeves and taking the fish from Xu Chaoqi’s hands.

He examined the fish, studying it for a moment, then said, “This fish is old. An old fish like this has too many bones.”

Xu Chaoqi wilted.

Fu Xuandao: …

Xu Chaoqi listlessly took the fish back and said, “I wanted to show off my skills today. Didn’t expect…”

The person behind the curtain laughed. He reached out and plucked a fallen leaf from atop Xu Chaoqi’s head, then patted Xu Chaoqi’s head.

Seeing that someone else was present, Xu Chaoqi lowered his head and picked up the teacup on the table to hide his reddening face.

If anyone else had heard his senior martial brother laugh, they would surely have thought it was meant to comfort him. Only he knew that his senior brother was genuinely laughing at him. The reason was none other than his having just said he wanted to “show off his skills.”

It wasn’t as if he simply couldn’t cook — he’d never once succeeded, not in his whole life. Every meal had always been made by his senior brother instead. What was there to laugh about?!

Having played rather wildly today, Xu Chaoqi had long since grown thirsty. Seeing the tea already poured on the table, he picked it up and drank it in one go. Only the teacup was somewhat small, so it took him four and a half cups in one breath before he was satisfied.

Fu Xuandao was no fool. Those five cups of tea, brewed just so, and the Grand Ancestor’s evident indulgence toward Xu Chaoqi, were more than enough to show that Xu Chaoqi’s identity was not nearly as simple as he had assumed.

Only…

Fu Xuandao felt somewhat dizzy. For ten thousand years, let alone the Grand Ancestor treating someone this well — even speaking an extra sentence to anyone else was something the Grand Ancestor had never been willing to do.

How could everything unfolding before him feel so unreal?

Perhaps I have fallen into a demonic state, and have not yet emerged from this illusion?

Just as he stood there in a daze, unsteady on his feet, the Grand Ancestor finally spared a portion of his attention and told him the truth.

“He is my junior martial brother.”

Junior martial brother? Who could that be?

The Grand Ancestor was a member of the first generation of disciples; all of his fellow senior and junior martial siblings were people from ten thousand years ago. Of them, only one had been truly, widely renowned…

Fu Xuandao’s pupils shrank abruptly, his palms clenching. He rose to his feet and bowed, his voice hoarse, and asked respectfully, “Could this be Grand Ancestor Xu?”

The person’s surname was Xu — a fact known to only a handful of people in this world, and he was one of them.

Hearing this, Xu Chaoqi turned his head and looked at him through the beaded curtain, his eyes carrying surprise. “How do you know my surname is Xu? Huh, so I’ve become a Grand Ancestor now?”

The person before him was still, in every manner, Xu Chaoqi — as though these ten thousand years had never truly passed at all. But Fu Xuandao knew that the legendary Grand Ancestor Xu had already been dead for ten thousand years.

He understood that some hidden mystery lay behind all this, and after finishing his conversation with the two of them, he took his leave from the Grand Ancestor and departed.

Fu Xuandao walked out of the main hall. Outside, the sky had gradually darkened, and in his ears still echoed the two words the Grand Ancestor had spoken — “supreme treasure.”

What that supreme treasure was, needed no further explanation.

Truly, a supreme treasure… he murmured silently under his breath, head lowered.

Everything from years past flickered through his mind, light and shadow alternating, countless scenes flashing by.

An immortal wielding a long sword, cutting down ten thousand immortals, destroying mountains and rivers.

The lords of the Twenty-Seven Regions kneeling in confession. “I should not have… should not have touched his ashes…”

What answered them was having their bones crushed and their ashes scattered, their souls destroyed and their spirits dispersed.

From that point on, the Twenty-Seven Regions had changed masters. Even though the other party was merely the Sect Master of the Yingtian Sect, the Twenty-Seven Regions had pledged themselves as subjects to him.

For nearly ten thousand years, no one had dared utter the single word “Xu.” Otherwise… otherwise that person would know nothing more at all.