Heaven Official's Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu (Novel) Vol. 2

by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù

The sword was long and slender, embedded deep in the ground on a slant. The body of the sword itself was still quivering from impact. Its blade was deep and foreboding, forged from what looked like black jade, smoother than a mirror—and if anyone were to approach, they could see their own reflection within it. The blackness was disrupted by a thin, silver-white line running vertically down the heart of the blade; it cut the blackness in half, like a ray of sweet love. The name of this sword was Fangxin.

Lang Qianqiu managed to roll the right numbers. It really couldn’t be said whether it was because of his luck or Xie Lian’s misfortune. The only thing that could be said with certainty was, of the two crown princes, Lang Qianqiu had always been the more fortunate.

After hundreds of years, Fangxin had finally returned to his hands, and it moaned softly in Xie Lian’s grip. Standing close by, Hua Cheng’s eye also flashed sharply at the sound of that sword’s incessant cry.

Xie Lian took a sudden step and lunged forth. Lang Qianqiu’s eyes focused, ready to strike, when his body froze. It was as if he had been suddenly trussed up, and he fell heavily to the ground. He looked down to find that he really was bound! A snow-white silk band had come out of nowhere and wrapped around his body several times like a venomous snake!

Xie Lian wiped sweat from his forehead and replied, “We already fought to the death. The thing that’s binding you is one of my spiritual devices. You already lost.”

bands: he was insulting Xie Lian for not being a man. But Xie Lian didn’t care whether he acted like a man or not. He’d cross-dressed before, and he’d hung the words “I can’t get erect” on his lips. Nothing could get to him.

Ambush is a battle tactic; cunning well used is called intelligent strategy. If your opponent had been anyone else, you would already be dead.”

“State Preceptor, you’ve changed so much. You weren’t like this in the past.” “I’ve always been this way, actually,” Xie Lian replied. “You just didn’t know. I remember telling you a long time ago not to venerate me as an incorruptible saintly figure, since I’m not who you think I am in your head. In the end, you’ve only disappointed yourself.”

That was how so many people of Xianle escaped death and avoided genocide. Because I forbade it.” Of course, that was a good deed. But thinking back on it now, the good deeds he’d done made him feel all the more aggrieved. It wasn’t that his actions were unjust; the deed itself was correct. He simply felt deeply wronged. He’d acted with such benevolence, but he didn’t receive equivalent kindness in return.

Xie Lian didn’t respond, and Lang Qianqiu continued to shout accusations. “Was it because your seventeenth was a trial that you had to turn my seventeenth into a trial too?”

“If you want me to fill my heart with hatred like yours, I surely won’t! If you’re going to force me to abandon myself like you did, I refuse! I will never! No matter what you do to me, I will never become like you!!” It was a declaration so heroic Xie Lian was stunned just listening to it. A brief moment later, he pfft-ed and burst out laughing, sound returning to him at last.

When the smoke cleared, Lang Qianqiu had disappeared from where he lay. What was left was a budaoweng6 doll, swaying left and right. The budaoweng doll had a very round face and body, like a giant calabash gourd. Its brows were long and its eyes black; the expression on its face was strong and good-natured like that of a tiger, though also brimming with naivete. At present, it was glaring, plump with anger, and it carried a fat sword on its back, mightily gallant in its form. It was exactly like Lang Qianqiu, except as a big, lovable toy.

If he only judged him by that self-given title of his, there was some peculiar form of elegance to the sound of “Night-Touring Green Lantern.” But to literally have these “green lanterns” wandering around at night, there was indeed a gap between his initial impressions and reality.

Among the collection of humans, some were ragged and unkempt and some wore extravagant clothes, but they all seemed to be young men and women under the age of thirty. There was even a child, clutching the sleeve of one of the young men; they were probably father and son.

Out of the Four Great Calamities, there had never been any rumors that the three supremes devoured human flesh. Only the Green Ghost Qi Rong was gluttonous in this manner;

When the Kingdom of Xianle first fell, to relieve themselves of anger, the people burned down his eight thousand crown prince temples and desecrated all of his statues, stole the gems on their swords and cleaned their attire of gold. Yet after all that, the rage continued to burn, and so they came up with a new idea: building kneeling statues like this one. The crown prince, once so highly venerated and worshipped, was sculpted into the form of one kneeling down and begging for forgiveness.

Ever since Nan Feng had first mentioned the name, Xie Lian had kept it in the back of his mind, wondering if this Qi Rong was the same Qi Rong he knew. However, there was an unspoken rule that, demon or ghost, one was to hide their real name and bury their past life.

After all, those ten brides were kidnapped by Xuan Ji herself, and she was the one who killed them in cold blood.

Qi Rong. He swore like there wasn’t a single person in the Three Realms he didn’t want cursed to death. He called Pei Ming a rotten manwhore, Little Pei a kiss-ass, Jun Wu a faker, Ling Wen a damned bitch, Lang Qianqiu a moron, Quan Yizhen dog shit, the Water Master blackhearted, the Wind Master a tramp—he probably didn’t know Shi Qingxuan was actually a man. If Xie Lian wasn’t seeing it now with his own two eyes, he wouldn’t be able to believe anyone could be so resentful.

A little green ghost spoke up. “We’ve followed our king’s instructions and spread the rumor that Pei Ming wants to make Pei Xiu the Martial God of the West. It’s becoming more and more of a riot by the day, so we used that as an excuse and desecrated hundreds of Ming Guang temples disguised as devotees from the Palace of Qi Ying. And no one was the wiser!

His form suddenly flickered and disappeared, then reappeared in a blink behind Qi Rong. He grabbed the back of Qi Rong’s head with one hand and smacked it down hard like a child playing with a ball. “And who the fuck are you to be so insolent before me?!”

If anyone were to see that half, they’d discover a shocking fact… The Green Ghost Qi Rong and the Crown Prince of Xianle—one ghost, one god, the difference of hell and heaven—looked astonishingly alike!

Their noses, lips, and the contour of their lower jaws were similar in shape, but their brows and eyes were quite different. Xie Lian’s eyes were serene and gentle. Qi Rong’s brows were high and sharp; his eyes were also much thinner and more slanted.

“What’s wrong? Don’t be angry, please don’t be angry, everything’s all right. Calm down, everything’s all right…” He gently rubbed Hua Cheng’s shoulders a few times, his voice growing soothingly soft. When Xie Lian was younger, whenever he got angry or upset, his parents would always stroke his back like this and comfort him with their gentle voices; thus, he used the same method on Hua Cheng.

Lang Qianqiu’s face was steely with anger. “No wonder everyone says the Green Ghost Qi Rong is vulgar and crass. Now that I’ve met you, you are indeed disgusting.” That comment stabbed Qi Rong exactly where it hurt, and his face dropped immediately. After achieving fame, he’d been mocked for his vulgarity by all manner of gods and ghosts for centuries, both behind his back and directly to his face. He truly hated it.

Qi Rong saw that he had been angered to stuttering and felt a rush of satisfaction, and he resolved to aggravate him even more. He laughed. “Even if you guys killed An Le, that child had a profitable death. Xianle lost one man, but Yong’an paid an entire Gilded Banquet. Too bad we didn’t kill you too, so you could all taste what it’s like when your entire bloodline is ended!”

“Hell knows where that evil cultivator came from,” Qi Rong replied. “It had nothing to do with him! Listen up, Lang Qianqiu—the slaughter at the Yong’an Gilded Banquet was the work of the people of Xianle! An Le had already planned to kill off every single damn rebel at the banquet, but then that weirdo State Preceptor suddenly busted in. An Le thought the plan had gone ass-up and ran to me for help, asking me what to do if his involvement was discovered. But that very night it was announced that the one who committed the Gilded Banquet Massacre was your State Preceptor, and he was the one who became the most wanted man in the entire kingdom.”

You just can’t believe what I’m saying, right? I heard you nailed your own shifu into a coffin over this! Ha ha ha ha HA HA HA, you dumbass! You killed the wrong person!” Listening to that vile, hearty laughter, Xie Lian closed his eyes and cursed inwardly again.

Just then, Qi Rong, who was lying on the ground, suddenly spoke up. “Cousin Crown Prince, is that you?” Xie Lian’s gaze moved back to Qi Rong. After staring coldly at him for a moment, Xie Lian stated, “Qi Rong, it seems you’ve been living colorfully over the years.”

He turned to Xie Lian. “You went to Yong’an, became their State Preceptor, and ended up stabbed to death by your own disciple, isn’t that exciting? Isn’t it hilarious? You deserved it, you pathetic fool!” The moment he uttered the word “pathetic,” Hua Cheng wrathfully struck once more.

Xie Lian had no idea that Qi Rong had sent any underlings to find him. On the night of the Zhongyuan Festival, it was a coincidence that he bumped into Hua Cheng, and taking him back to Puqi Shrine also wasn’t something he’d planned. It seemed that Hua Cheng had taken care of all of Qi Rong’s underlings.

Many in the Heavenly Court thought the way Mu Qing spoke was sarcastic, but if they were to listen here and compare, they would witness sarcasm in its primal form. Truly, they had wronged Mu Qing. Qi Rong didn’t just talk shit, he acted the part as well.

Xie Lian knew perfectly well what kind of person Qi Rong was: he was a little sick in the head, and the more extreme the reaction, the more excited he’d get and the more outrageous he’d become. Reverse psychology was the most effective strategy, so Xie Lian only smiled faintly.

Even a two-hundred-year-old ascendee could walk all over you. Over eight hundred years old and this is the state you’re in? What a failure.” Xie Lian smiled. “I am quite the failure. Not like my cousin, already a wrath after eight hundred years.”

Qi Rong continued, “Look at you both. The moment I say anything bad about you, whoa! Look how mad he gets. Was he blinded by that holy light from your halo? Yooo, I forgot! Isn’t he already blind in one eye? HA HA ha ha ha…”

However, this punch wasn’t from Hua Cheng, it was from Xie Lian. Xie Lian’s fist was faster than the eye could possibly track, and he said coldly, “Just because I’ve never hit you before, it doesn’t mean I would never hit you.”

Qi Rong, on the other hand, slowly crawled to his feet and sat, leaning against the kneeling statue. “After An Le died, I cut open his corpse to inspect it, and all of his organs were pulverized by the vibrations of an exceedingly powerful sword. That’s why, despite not having any external injuries, he couldn’t stop hacking up blood. This was something no ordinary swordsman could do.

“But you know this saintly cousin of mine, when he saw with his own eyes the people of Xianle committing murder, he must’ve thought: ‘How can this be? That’s not right!’ So, he went to find Prince An Le to educate him a little, but when he sought him out—my GOD, what did he discover? An Le’s massive plot! The plans didn’t stop with assassinating some thugs! There was no way cousin could educate him, so he hardened his heart and killed the last scion of our royal house with his own hands!

Xie Lian always treated others with kindness and respect, but Qi Rong was not someone who could be faced normally. Xie Lian knew this truth profoundly. Every time he had to face Qi Rong, Xie Lian’s normal politeness disappeared, and he unconsciously started being rude himself.

Yet whether it was as the crown prince of a mortal kingdom or as Heaven’s Martial God of the East, Lang Qianqiu had never done something like this before. He had always been straightforward in fights, never cruel. These actions were far from the Lang Qianqiu that Xie Lian knew.

Xie Lian turned away and said coldly, “What’s the use of knowing everything so clearly? Would I be any more blameless if I killed fewer people? Would things be less hard?!”

I deserve whatever comes to me—is it so wrong to count everything as my doing? What’s there to be afraid of? No matter what comes at me, I can’t die! I did this. I bring misfortune. And now Prince An Le is counted, Qi Rong is counted, everyone in Xianle is counted. Isn’t it better to hate one instead of a group? Must he think that everything I taught him was false, nothing more than empty bullshit?!”

Hua Cheng continued, “The Yong’an king was killed to protect the remaining people of Xianle. Prince An Le was killed to prevent the two clans from fighting. In the end, in dying at the hands of Lang Qianqiu, the murderer faced justice. Three lives exchanged for centuries of peace, that’s worth it.

“Even if it was a lie, I wanted Qianqiu to remember that his benevolence toward Xianle was reciprocated. To believe that doing the right thing will open endless paths. Not like now, where he thinks everything I told him and everything he believed in was all false, lies, and deception. That everything was fucking nonsense!

But in the end, who was killed was killed, who was murdered was murdered. However just the reason, however compelling the reason, the truth was that he’d killed, with his own hands, an honorable king who had truly wanted to eradicate discrimination, as well as the last blood descendant of his clan in this world.

“Don’t believe the words of useless trash like him,” Hua Cheng said quietly. “Other than being good at not dying and running away, he’s got nothing going for him. He couldn’t even level up to a supreme after eight hundred years. Even beating him up would only dirty your hands.” Xie Lian’s lips jerked upwards with the thought: wasn’t he the same? Only good at not dying and running away; even after eight hundred years, he’d only gotten this far, which was nowhere.

“The Gilded Banquet Massacre was very much his style,” Hua Cheng said. “So I had always believed that he was the mastermind and the State Preceptor Fangxin was his lackey. But in the Upper Court, when Lang Qianqiu identified you as the State Preceptor Fangxin, it was clear there was no way Fangxin and Qi Rong could be on the same side.”

Xie Lian chewed on his words but finally said, “I just think it’s best for people not to place too much hope on someone else.” “Oh?” Hua Cheng hummed. “And what do you mean by that?” “You shouldn’t idolize people or think of them as overly perfect,” Xie Lian replied. “If you’re just watching a shadow from afar and never interacting, then sure. But once acquainted and grown close, one day you’ll find that this person isn’t what you imagined, maybe even the complete opposite. When that happens, you’ll be very disappointed.”

Someone like Hua Cheng would be unforgettable from the first meeting. Xie Lian had never bashed his head in and lost his memories, so if they had met, there was no reason he wouldn’t remember. Xie Lian gazed at him, fixated and somewhat bemused. “Who are you exactly? Have I met you before?”

Feng Xin’s bow was gifted to him by Jun Wu; named Fengshen,10 it was a rather troublesome spiritual device to face off against.