Chapter 65: The Former Imperial Clan

Northwest of Central Province, Ningcheng County.

The evening sky gradually grew dim. The peddler doing business along the long street was poking at the stove beneath his shed, trying to make the fire burn more vigorously.

Soon, he saw a young woman walking along the street, stopping before his stall.

This woman was a peerless beauty, wearing a snow-white dress. Her eyes were as soft and deep as autumn water, and her skin was as white as snow, yet her expression was cold, possessing a haughty air that kept strangers at a distance.

Every evening, she would come here to buy a sweet potato. She seemed to love them, yet she would always mutter that they weren't as delicious as the ones he roasted.

At first, the peddler dared to be angry but dared not speak, but as he heard it more often, he couldn't help but complain a few times.

"Miss, you always say mine aren't as good as others', so why do you still come to buy them?"

"Because he isn't here."

The woman peeled the sweet potato and said with narrowed eyes, "Do you know? Actually, I only met him once."

The peddler pursed his lips after hearing this, thinking to himself that there was no way for him to know that. However, he did know that if the "he" in the young lady's mouth was a man, she was likely lovesick.

After buying the sweet potato, the woman left along the long street, walking toward a dilapidated courtyard.

Disciples of Spirit Sword Mountain had once been attacked in Qing Province. After extensive tracking and investigation, the clues had led to the ruins of Qiling.

But there was one thing that many people had overlooked.

That was Chen Qinghe's original identity.

The Chen Immortal Clan had a rule for taking in disciples that was different from other Immortal Sects: disciples who entered the sect had to change their surnames and acknowledge the clan.

The reason for this rule was that they did not want overly prosperous aristocratic families in their vicinity.

According to the information she had gathered, Chen Qinghe's surname was not Chen before he changed it; it was Zheng.

During the era of the warring states, Zheng was actually a very ancient former imperial surname.

After the Great Xia obtained the assistance of the Immortal Sects and conquered the Central Plains, the Zheng State surrendered, transforming from an imperial clan into a massive aristocratic family. However, they did not decline because the cultivation talent of their clan members was excellent.

In particular, the last generation's Zheng family ancestor had been a senior fellow apprentice of the current Chen Immortal Clan Abbot, Chen Ruhai. A hundred years ago, people called them the "Two Pride of the Zheng Clan."

But because there was no Daoist orthodoxy to support him, the Zheng family ancestor had no hope of reaching the Approaching Immortal Realm. After his lifespan was exhausted, he passed away.

Since his passing, the luck that the Zheng family had continued from the era of chaos seemed to have been exhausted. Today, the descendants in the family were withering; they had even sold their ancestral home and moved the entire family elsewhere.

If it were just that Chen Qinghe was originally surnamed Zheng, it wouldn't be worth the Little Inspector of Spirit Sword Mountain coming here in person.

But there was another matter that seemed even stranger: the Hongshan Mine.

The Hongshan Mine was located in Central Province and was originally controlled by the Zheng family. It was said that later, miners accidentally opened up a mine tunnel that led to the depths of Qiling.

At that time, when the Zheng family learned of this, they almost emptied their entire nest. Their family's prestige seemed to have lost its luck from that moment on, and their descendants continued to wither.

First, the Zheng family's Hongshan Mine was dug through, leading to Qiling.

Then, the family member Zheng Qinghe turned into a creature that was neither human nor ghost, and he kept traveling back and forth to the Qiling mountain range, escorting convoys.

If one said there was no connection, Kuangcheng Yan Shuyi would not believe it at all.

The long street soon came to an end, and the sweet potato in the Little Inspector's hand was already half-eaten.

At this moment, she was standing in front of the gate of a ruined courtyard. Looking up, even the plaque was gone.

Only the characters carved on the stone pier in front of the gate indicated that this had once been the ancestral home of the Zheng family.

This courtyard was extremely large and had once been incomparably prosperous, but now the gate was tightly shut, and the copper lock was rusted.

Bang!

A wisp of sword Qi overflowed, and the gate of the Zheng ancestral home collapsed with a boom.

Kuangcheng Yan Shuyi stepped inside and felt a cold chill constantly attacking her. A strange smell drifted all around.

In the first courtyard of the house, the pavilion was full of knee-high weeds. Apart from that, there were only broken bricks and tiles and a main hall that had almost half-collapsed.

The Little Inspector looked around for a long time, then left the front courtyard and headed toward the depths of the Zheng residence.

If a person wanted to hide something, they certainly wouldn't hide it in plain sight; this was something even a three-year-old child knew.

Kuangcheng Yan Shuyi stepped over the weeds while spreading out her soft palm.

As the immortal light surged, a stone mirror floated in the air. The immortal light from the mirror shone down, revealing everything in minute detail, shooting into the inner hall of the last house.

Kuangcheng Yan Shuyi drew her sword and walked into the house. Watching the immortal light constantly flickering and thinking for a moment, she slashed the stone wall of the back wall with one sword.

With a boom, the wall was directly shaved in half, but what was exposed was not the sunset behind the house, but another wall.

This wall was hollow. It looked like one side, but in reality, it hid a narrow passage with a flight of stone stairs leading constantly downward.

"..."

Kuangcheng Yan Shuyi stood above it, silent for a long time, not moving a step.

She was afraid of the dark.

This had nothing to do with her strength or realm; it was purely a psychological factor.

But after pondering for a moment, she still walked down this long, dark passage, passed the long stone stairs, and finally arrived at the depths.

Before her was an incomparably vast underground palace, the area of which was not much smaller than the Zheng residence above.

But unlike the pavilions and towers above, there were only stone cells sealed by iron bars in the underground palace.

"Zheng Jinghui, Zheng Yu, Zheng Chen, Zheng Hongwen..."

Kuangcheng Yan Shuyi's gaze swept across the nameplates on the stone cells, and finally, she stopped, her brows deeply furrowed.

Judging from the nameplates, those locked here were all Zheng family descendants.

But what the Little Inspector saw inside the stone cells was... not human.

They were withered corpses as dry as charred wood, having lost their vitality long ago, locked in individual cells, already covered in dust.

Kuangcheng Yan Shuyi continued to walk toward the depths of the stone cells, and when she reached the very end, she suddenly stopped.

Through the iron bars, what she saw was an Evil Seed filled with baleful Qi, curled up in a corner. The walls were covered in deep scratch marks, which seemed to have been made by it.

Seeing a living person enter, this Evil Seed suddenly went into a frenzy, pouncing forward, its withered claws scratching fiercely, as if wanting to tear everything before it to shreds.

But contrary to its frenzied behavior, a weak voice came from its mouth.

"Save me..."

"The ancestors lied to me, save me."

Seeing this scene, Kuangcheng Yan Shuyi instantly felt a chill surge into her heart.

Why did the Zheng family have withering descendants? Could it really be as the outside world said, that because their luck had vanished, they couldn't give birth to children, to the point that such a large former imperial clan would fall to the point of abandoning their ancestral home?

Actually, when she looked at the previous cells, she already had an answer in her heart that was about to come out.

But even with psychological preparation, upon seeing the Evil Seed actually speak human words, that intense feeling of discomfort still shrouded her heart.

However, Kuangcheng Yan Shuyi then noticed another withered corpse, right in the shadow behind this Evil Seed.

That was a real withered corpse, not one formed by a dead Evil Seed losing its baleful Qi.

She could see that this withered corpse had long, beautiful hair; it was a woman, and she was still wearing the robes of Spirit Sword Mountain, clearly having been drained dry.

Kuangcheng Yan Shuyi turned and left the dungeon, her heart already cold.

And as she reached the ground, the immortal light on the distant Qiling Mountain surged again.

Compared to the time when the Immortal Sect disciples entered the mountain, this immortal light was even more turbulent, with colorful clouds filling the sky in all directions, as if golden scales were constantly spreading over the mountain range.

The Immortal Sect prodigies who had previously ridden flying swords and followed the disciples into the mountain outside the baleful Qi could no longer suppress the excitement in their hearts, and large swords constantly fell into it.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 66 =====