Chapter 66
Chapter 66: An Empty Street
Palace Attendant Rong walked quickly, casually entered a farm yard and changed robes .
Usually, it would be easy for her to find the tracks of a person in Changling . However, it would be hard for people to find her as long as she was fast enough . So as she walked without stopping, almost everyone was a step slower than her, and only knew where she had gone .
She walked into a deserted large courtyard . Originally, there had been a tall stage outside this large courtyard . Now, the top of the stage was gone . The stairs up to the stage had rotted away . The stage was covered in broken tiles and weeds .
She had seen that person and his brothers here . She had admired them greatly and wanted to become one of them . Then, she finally had a chance to become a retainer of the Jiaodong Zheng Family, and the personal attendant of the perfect woman from Jiaodong .
She walked past this stage and through a group of horse stables .
The horse stables was deserted and the grasses had grown all over . There was a mass grave by the river port in the distance .
She remembered she had done the first thing she did not want to do here, purposely delaying a military order so that a certain person would die in battle . That person had once been one of the people from the Ba Mountain Sword Field she had admired greatly .
She did not stop . Her figure quickly appeared in an apricot forest .
At the end of the forest were two small bridges facing two completely different directions . She walked over one of the bridges .
These were the two bridges she had lingered over back then . After crossing this bridge, she had discovered she started to grow further apart from the person she wanted to be . In the end, she became someone she did not like .
She took a detour and arrived at a lively market . These shops here were all those selling goods from north and south . Shade clothes were supported by bamboo poles . So even in the summer, it was extremely busy, and gave off the scent of all kinds of salted meat and species .
The thick odor could not conceal the blood scent in her mind . She thought of that day three years before Emperor Yuanwu’s ascension .
This place had been a mill of blood and flesh . Countless flying swords were broken easily like arrows and fell into the thick bloody mud . The corpses of realm four and five cultivators were piled up in mountains like they were ordinary soldiers .
All the buildings here had turned to dust . The swing of each sword carried along mountainous bloody waves and hundreds of corpses like a giant ship in the waves .
Most of the people she had seen on the stage back then had died here . She had watched from a distance . She was unable to stand, whether out of joy or terror, and sat on the ground trembling until her body turned cold .
After that, she grew cold and cruel . She followed the miss who came from Jiaodong Commandery until she no longer felt terror .
She knew she had completely become the empress’ shadow .
Palace Attendant Rong looked towards her shadow .
The shadow was very lonely . There was only one .
She had walked along the shore and was not far from the tea garden now . Back then, wooden and vacant, she had walked here until she encountered that quiet tea master .
He did not know her status . He thought she was a student from a cultivation place who had gotten lost, or one of the misses or retainers who had managed to survive from the bloody Changling households . He had taken her in .
But why, in the end, was he also gone?
She ignored the mud and sat down on the shore facing the tea garden . She hugged her head and started to tremble just like how she had when facing the mountain of corpses .
She felt she had returned to that time . Inexplicably, her thoughts became as clear as back then . She thought of what Ding Ning had done to her . She thought of what had happened all these days . She found it familiar as well .
But then she thought of where she had just walked past and those two bridges .
She quickly stood up .
She walked towards Changling’s streets and started searching for Ding Ning among them .
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Jing Liuli followed quietly behind Ding Ning like an attendant . Ye Zhengnan followed suit .
Ding Ning passed through the streets faster than Palace Attendant Rong, and he would take many shortcuts . However, he would linger for a quick moment at certain places .
His first stop was an unnamed little alley . There was a broken stele next to an ordinary farmyard covered in moss .
Ding Ning stopped, and opened the metal box on his back .
Then a sword essence flowed out of the metal box . A part of the moss from the stele went missing to reveal a smooth cut . Then a very faint sword essence flowed into Ding Ning’s metal box .
Jing Liuli and Ye Zhengnan both suddenly stopped breathing .
They all sensed that faint sword essence they could not comprehend… If they could not comprehend it, it meant this sword essence was on a whole new level . But Ding Ning’s actions caused them to understand what he was doing .
Especially Jing Liuli . She could not believe that Ding Ning was able to master that sword manual in such a short time .
Ding Ning continued to walk past the streets and towards a mottled ancient wall .
The white powder on the ancient wall had chipped off slightly, revealing some traces that other people would not be able to detect even if they came to investigate .
He walked over a wide stone path that many carriages travelled across . A gust of dust suddenly shot out of the cracks in the stone .
He walked past a vegetable garden .
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In the rainstorm last summer, when Ye Celeng and Zhao Zhan of the Zhao Sword Furnace fought, a sword energy had destroyed this vegetable garden .
Other than Jing Liuli and Ye Zhengnan, even the cultivators who closely followed him could not sense these energies because they were not close enough . In their eyes, Ding Ning chose a very short path to head towards a hall .
That hall was called the Gourd Hall, and was a large medical clinic . Among all of Changling’s clinics, it could rank second .
As Ding Ning appeared here, many people started to realize this clinic had been surrounded by the Guanzhong Xie Family . The owner of the Gourd Hall, Sun Xingtang, was one of the most famous doctors in Changling . He was from Guanzhong .
When Ding Ning came to the gates of the Gourd Hall, this old man in his seventies, was already waiting there .
“You have already reached realm five . ”
Seeing Ding Ning bow calmly to him, this old man returned the bow and said slowly with unusual solemnity, “There has never been a cultivator as fast as you to reach realm five . So you have to take great care to not make mistakes . ”
“I understand your meaning . ” Ding Ning smiled and said, “You hope that I will not be impatient, but if one always thinks to be patient, they will be too late . Maybe after today, it will be someone else . ”
The old man stilled and then bowed seriously . “I do not understand cultivation matters like you . What you say makes me feel that this is a truth of life . ”
Ding Ning returned the bow again . “So I will trouble Elder . ”
The old man nodded . He retreated to the usually lively but now quiet clinic where most of the doctors had been dismissed .
Ding Ning stopped, put down the sword box on his back and stood it straight behind him . Then he calmly looked faced the main street as he stood at the gates .
Seeing him stop, everyone understood he was waiting here for Palace Attendant Rong .
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Jing Liuli and Ye Zhengnan exchanged looks . They were even more certain Ding Ning would not leave after stopping here . So the two of them walked behind Ding Ning into the shadows of Gourd Hall’s gates .
There was an inexplicable roar of thunder in the sky .
There were no black clouds, but someone seemed to be beating the drum for the drama about to start .
There were no black clouds in the sky, but from a side alley, a patch of black clouds floated out .
Everyone from that side looked fearfully over . Many people in Changling would use umbrellas on sunny days, but no one would have such black umbrellas .
Seeing the flow of black umbrellas, everyone who saw knew that Bureau Chief Ye Celeng of the Astrology Bureau had arrived .
There was a stone bridge not far from the clinic . A carriage was parked beside the bridge .
The carriage was ordinary but gave off a rotten odor . Many cultivators did not even dare to pass by . Only those ordinary people did not sense a thing and flowed in a tide towards the hall .
Looking down from the turrets, countless people were travelling in Changling’s streets towards that hall like ants .
Huang Zhenwei, who had just ascended the closest turret to the hall, had a gaze full of worry and admiration . It had been many years since the entire city coming out had occurred .
But at the same time, he was slightly stunned .
His teacher, Mo Shoucheng, had not come .
He did not know the reason .