Life as a Rogue Cultivator

Chapter 282: Returning Home

The storm had passed, and the sky was finally clear. Liu Xiaolou wriggled out of the rock crevice, scrambled up the nearby boulder. And looked out over everything around him.The forest was lush, and a rainbow arched across the sky.

Wuling Mountain was breathtaking, but to the eyes of a formation master, its feng shui always fell just a little off.

It had been over two months since Liu Xiaolou returned from Bazhong to western Xiang. He’d been through countless mountains and rivers along the way -- Dehang Mountain, the Taoyuan ranges, Mo Mountain, the Miluo River, the Wuchao River, and now Wuling Mountain. Every unclaimed stretch of land he came across, he explored. After looking around, he finally realized there was no place like home. Qianzhu Ridge still beat them all.

The journey had not been for nothing. He had gathered all the spiritual materials he needed and refine the formation disk key at the fire pit of Xingde Mountain. The three Sect Leader tokens had also merged into one. It was time to head home.

He had been gone for three years. What was Wulong Mountain like now?

By the time the sky began to darken, Liu Xiaolou finally started up the mountain road. He reached the foot of Wulong Mountain before dawn. This time, he didn’t alert Uncle Tian at the base of the mountain. Quietly, he slipped in and made his way into the depths.

By dawn, he had reached Ghost Dream Cliff. The ground in front of the cliff was littered with dead branches and leaves. And the cave entrance was thick with cobwebs. He also checked the secret cave beneath the cliff’s pool. Just like before, there was no sign that Wei Hongqing had ever been back.

Walking through the quiet mountain ridges, listening to the cheerful chirping of birds, he made his way to Half-Acre Gorge. The mouth of the gorge had clearly been hit by a flash flood, with debris blocking most of the entrance.

Dragon Horse Falls was still roaring, but the stone pavilion beside it was covered in a heavy layer of mud. And the two thatched huts had long since collapsed.

And it wasn’t just these places. Long Mountain, Mount Guzhang, Jade Maiden Cave, Hulu Pass, Shudao Ridge... one after another, the old cultivation dwellings of Wulong Mountain’s fellows were now ruined and deserted.

It seemed that ever since the Lu clan of Tianmu Mountain had led that siege which wiped out most of Wulong Mountain’s heroes, their show of force had done its work. No rogue cultivator dared come up the mountain anymore or call themselves part of Wulong Mountain.

It felt as if the entire Wulong Mountain had been emptied, forgotten by heaven and earth.

Without realizing it, Liu Xiaolou found himself at Sky Pit Drum. The place was now overgrown with trees. He climbed down to the bottom and walked to where the memorial stele had once stood. He lingered there for a long time, reading the names one by one and preparing to raise a new stone. He then noticed a corner where a number of fresh memorials had been set up. He had no idea who had placed them, but each one carried a name:

Gu Da, Gu Wu, Old Cripple, Qi Lao Qi, Li Fuchen… some he knew, some he didn’t. They were all comrades who had been trapped and slaughtered in Yellow Wind Ravine during the Tianmu Mountain siege. And only now did he truly know who had died in that battle.

He kept searching through the stones. After checking several times, he confirmed that the names of Dragon Mountain Wanderer, Li Busan, Mu the physician, and the Old Daoist Hu Du were not there. That allowed him to breathe a little easier. Aside from Tan Bajhang, Zuo Gaofeng, Captain Hu, and the sixth and seventh of the Gu brothers, maybe a few more of Wulong Mountain’s own had survived somehow.

By the time dusk settled, Liu Xiaolou finally returned to Ganzhu Ridge. And stood before his little courtyard.

Just like the other dwellings on Wulong Mountain, Ganzhu Ridge was in ruins. Weeds choked the ground, the thatched hut had collapsed, and webs layered the place. It wasn’t only the little courtyard. The path up the ridge was buried in brush and wild grass, with fallen leaves piled several layers deep so that every step felt like walking on a thick carpet.

Deep in the bamboo grove, his master’s grave was still intact, although wild grass had grown several feet high around it.

No one had come up the ridge in a long time...

Maybe Big White and Little Black had left too.

When he reached the summit, the place was thick with moss and overrun with dense plants. One glance was enough to tell that those two had not been up here in a long time.

With what he'd learned on Miao Feng Mountain, Liu Xiaolou looked at Qianzhu Ridge again. But this time with the eye of someone searching for the Spirit Spring. That’s when he finally realized that his stone peak was the eye of this terrain!

And the crack in the stone at its top was the vital point.

Maybe the reason he'd often found himself “sleepwalking” here during his cultivation was... because of this.

The last glow of the sun slipped behind the western peaks. Stars filled the sky. A gentle mountain breeze carried a sense of solitude. And within that solitude came a feeling he couldn’t quite name. It was familiar. It felt safe, peaceful, calm, and steady.

It felt like home.

He pulled out a formation disk from his robe. It was made by simply merging the three Sect Leader tokens. Sanxuan Sect, Purple Pole Sect, and Xingming Sect. Somehow they felt like they were always meant to fit together.

He slid the refined disk key into it, and the resonance reached straight into his mind.

Taking a deep breath, he set the disk into a crack between the rocks and activated the formation. The disk shrank, spun, and drilled down into the gap below.

He’d done this same thing at several blessed sites with excellent feng shui. Places like the Taoyuan Mountains, Dehang Mountain, and Wuling Mountain... yet nothing had ever come of it. He had no idea whether it would work here on Ganzhu Ridge.

He just hoped he hadn’t been duped by the He family uncle and nephew. Or, just as much, that they themselves hadn’t been fooled by this so-called inheritance.

His heart was full of expectation and tight with nerves as he watched the formation disk bore downward. The disk itself still sat braced in the crack; it wasn’t actually drilling through the rock. What was drilling down was some kind of gathered spiritual sense drawn from the three Sect Leader tokens, forcing its way through an unseen barrier somewhere below the stones.

He didn’t know how long it kept going. All at once, something in his mind felt as if a fingertip flicked it, sending a buzzing tremor through him.

His nose twitched before he could stop it

His nose twitched on its own. Was that a faint fragrance?

But he realized almost immediately that it wasn’t a smell at all. It was his meridians and acupoints responding to a thin trace of spiritual energy. It was the scent of qi.

The spiritual energy was very light. Digging through his memories, Liu Xiaolou compared it to what he’d felt back in the Danxia Grotto-Heaven; it was maybe half as strong. Still, it was just enough to cultivate with. It felt like holding a spirit stone and being able to absorb maybe a third of its energy.

It wasn’t dense, but it was manageable, completely under his control, and... never-ending.

He didn’t keep drawing it in. And instead let it flow out from the crack. The faint fragrance spread across the mountaintop.

The summit wasn’t large, only a few yards across. So the spiritual energy drifted downward, spreading over the little courtyard below. By the time it reached that far, the energy was extremely thin. It wasn’t enough for cultivation anymore; at best it was a pleasant scent. But that fragrance would be perfect for starting a small spiritual garden.

A few tiny, fist-sized venomous bees flew out from deep in the bamboo grove. They were the Golden Ring Bees he had raised years ago. They circled the courtyard, hovering uncertainly, then quickly sensed the source of the spiritual energy and flew upward toward it.

All at once his meridians churned. The two Ghost Banyan seeds that lived inside them had been jolted awake by the spiritual energy. They rushed about restlessly, searching for a way out, desperate to burst free.

Liu Xiaolou’s spiritual sense was almost linked with theirs. He understood immediately. After a brief moment of thought, he found them a new place to settle.

There were two mountain paths leading up to Ganzhu Ridge, one in front and one behind. Most people only knew about the front path. But northwest of the bamboo grove in back was a narrow trail almost no one knew of -- his personal escape route.

He planted one seed on the slope just below the courtyard, right on the front path. The other he set beneath the rear trail. One in front, one in back, guarding the two main ways up the ridge.

As soon as the seeds took root, two new pairs of eyes bloomed in his mind, watching both mountain paths forever.

He had no idea how many years Ghost Banyans took to grow. When these two seeds finally became towering trees, what would Ganzhu Ridge look like?

Liu Xiaolou could hardly wait to find out.