Chapter 37 A Great Difference

Li Fuyao and Qing Huai didn’t pass the Jingkou Mountain but made a detour when they were a distance of two days’ walking from the high mountain where the Yanling Confucian Temple was located.

So they didn’t know that Huang Jin had climbed the mountain.

If Li Fuyao knew why Huang Jin climbed the Jingkou Mountain and entered the Yanling Confucian Temple, perhaps he would respect this scholar from the bottom of his heart, but he didn’t know, so he didn’t say anything.

Walking northward was Li Fuyao and Qing Huai’s plan. After they walked out of Dazhou, they didn’t have any reason to stay. And the Daoist assembly in late spring was drawing near, so they didn’t stop for long in Yanling. As a result, they just walked on the way and had a rest occasionally every day, without any unnecessary ramifications.

However, on the route as Li Fuyao planned, Luoyang City was the last place in Yanling they would stop, but he had killed a cultivator by the Luosang River and Yanling might have sent cultivators to take his life, so soon he gave up the plan to stop in Luoyang. He even thought, if possible, they would cross the Yao Mountain which was around Luoyang, but he knew that it would take more time, so he had to cancel it. Qing Huai who walked with him didn’t worry as much but still went ahead unhurriedly every day, and Li Fuyao even watched her make more progress in practicing these days. However, he had stayed at the first stage of swordsmen for so long, so he felt depressed. Although he just showed a little of his emotion, Qing Huai noticed everything.

The genius girl from the demonic land wouldn’t want to sneer at a new cultivator all the time who started practicing swordsmanship, so these days she didn’t say or do anything.

One evening when they were near Luoyang City, on an open hillside, Qing Huai asked, “You want to go to Luoyang City, but you don’t want to go there in such a position, right?”

Li Fuyao with a broken machete on his back looked gloomy and confused. Obviously, he didn’t know that Qing Huai would ask such a question. He looked at the magnificent city in the distance that he couldn’t see and smiled with self-mockery, “I really don’t want to enter this magnificent city in such a disgraced position.”

Everybody liked to return home loaded with honors.

“It’s not difficult to make those aristocrats in Luoyang pay the price who deprived you of your qualification to enter the Yanling Confucian Temple. And it’s not difficult even to make some unimportant people lose their lives. As long as you enter a certain stage after cultivating, you can make it happen, but if you want to destroy Yanling, it is extremely difficult.”

Qing Huai looked calm and turned her head after glancing at Li Fuyao.

She chuckled, “No empire in the world can compete with any of the three religious sects. We can say that without the support of the Confucianism, the Yanling Empire can’t even defeat Hengyang Academy. It’s a pity that the Confucianism needs an empire to stand for it in the world, so it chose Yanling, one of the top three empires. While if you want the aristocrats to lower their heads, you should at least try to make the cultivators in the temple think that it’s not a good thing to provoke you. Otherwise, how can you make it? The cultivators are not ungrateful. An identity or being able to go farther on the way of cultivating, most people would choose the latter between the two. What’s more, nobody in the world has become an immortal in the past six thousand years. Don’t you think that it’s interesting to try to be the first one?”

Qing Huai was not from the human world, but in fact, she knew better about the world than Li Fuyao.

Li Fuyao shook his head and knew that it wouldn’t be different from what Qing Huai said, so he changed the subject, “Yanling is under the control of Confucianism, and Liangxi is controlled by Daoism, while Buddhism is in the west. Why doesn’t Dayu belong to one of the three religious sects?”

“You have forgotten about the Sword Mountain.” Qing Huai looked at Li Fuyao several times, as if he were an idiot, and then satirized him, “I have told you earlier that the Sword Mountain is at the border between Dayu and Yanling, but in fact, it is mainly in Dayu. Although the swordsmen are declining, that Sword Immortal has shown up much more frequently than the sages of the three religious sects. Such a Sword Immortal who can almost kill all the sages is still in the world, and he cares about nothing but the Sword Mountain. How dare they not give the swordsmen a place to survive? Moreover, the Confucianism and Taoism are not compatible, so they need a place as a buffer, and Dayu is suitable.”

“It turns out that the Dayu Empire is merely the result of the compromise between Confucianism and Taoism.”

Li Fuyao was not surprised at this summary.

…

They talked for a long time and didn’t notice that it was getting dark. Fortunately, they didn’t stay over outside for the first time, so they didn’t feel unaccustomed. Li Fuyao made a fire. Under the firelight, he caught two hares from nowhere. After skinning them and removing the entrails, he roasted them on the fire. Qing Huai’s face looked ruddy under the light, and she had everything that a girl should have, but Li Fuyao didn’t notice. He just concentrated on the two hares in his hands.

He roasted the hares with golden color and the sweet smell was attractive, but it couldn’t attract Qing Huai. This girl from the demonic land didn’t have a lot of interests in food. She just wondered how to defeat that gifted Dao cultivator at the Daoist assembly. Even if she couldn’t, she would let the gifted Dao cultivator know that not all the most outstanding young people were from the human world.

Under the light of fire, Li Fuyao tore one hare and ate it with oil on his mouth. He raised the other hare in his hand and asked vaguely, “Won’t you eat one?”

Qing Huai ignored him.

But when Li Fuyao almost finished eating, she reminded him softly, “After you eat the hare, we have to go. I need to tell you something. Some cultivators are coming here and they are not at high stages but the Fundamental Stage. However, there are three people, and I can’t handle them alone.”

Li Fuyao asked hesitantly, “You can feel them, but they can’t feel you?”

Qing Huai answered simply, “No, they can’t.”

Li Fuyao didn’t ask why as it was pointless, but now Qing Huai was in a good mood obviously, and she continued soon, “Because I have the magic tools, but they don’t have.”

Hearing that, Li Fuyao remembered that this powerful girl once said that she had the little stuff, and after crushing one, she could walk one thousand miles. And she had ten thousand of them. Then he shook his head involuntarily.

He understood the pain when facing somebody else who had a better talent, more powerful family background and even cultivated for longer.

After Li Fuyao finished the hare, Qing Huai threw something like a ring to him and said casually, “Crush it.”

Qing Huai disappeared before finishing her words. This was the first time for her to use this little stuff in front of Li Fuyao, and it surprised him. He wanted to observe this ring, but soon he remembered that three cultivators at the Fundamental Stage were rushing here. Then he gave up the plan to check it carefully and crushed it before disappearing.

The ring went halves and fell next to the fire.

As a gust of wind came, three cultivators whose faces couldn’t be seen clearly walked to the fire. One of them squatted down and picked up the ring. After checking it carefully, he stated, “The two teenagers are not ordinary. They even have the magic tool, thousand-mile ring.”

Another cultivator laughed immediately, “The Ministry of Penalty has informed the academies and schools and the temple in Yanling, and they have said that the two are not their students, so no matter where they are from, they are useless.”

Right, in Yanling, the cultivators who were not from the Confucianism would be useless even if they were big shots from the Daoism. Especially the two teenagers didn’t look like the teenage geniuses in Liangxi.

The one who didn’t speak of the three, an official working in the Ministry of Penalty expressed in a deep voice, “If they have more than two thousand-mile rings, we can’t catch up with them.”

The cultivator who spoke first stood behind the two and laughed, “You two don’t need to worry. The magic tool thousand-mile ring is quite valuable, and how can they have it easily? Even the masters in the temple might not take along too many. After all, although this stuff is not a powerful magic tool, only the demonic land in the north has one of the materials which can be used to make it. The human world can merely purchase few of them every year, so the two children couldn’t have too many.”

Upon hearing that, the official working in the Ministry of Penalty frowned and then sighed with emotion in a low voice, “I hope so.”