Chapter 2: An Audacious Mortal
Rong Zhao was a very efficient person, he disliked taking the long way around when a shortcut would do.
The area within a hundred li* of Chuyun Mountain fell under the jurisdiction of the Chuyun Sect, and the sect dungeon naturally held many villains. With luck, one might encounter one or two mortals who looked pleasing to the eye.
An incense stick later,
He stood indifferently in the Chuyun Sect's dungeon, looking at the strangely shaped creatures filling the cell, once again confirming that luck had absolutely nothing to do with him.
A lone calamity star, abandoned by heaven and loathed by all.
Rong Zhao sighed softly and closed his eyes. His vast, ocean-like divine sense spread out, instantly enveloping the entire mountain.
The dungeon had three levels; there might be places he missed.
A moment later, he suddenly opened his eyes.
He knew the places in the Chuyun Sect where divine sense could be blocked; the extra square thing resembled a secret chamber.
Soon, Rong Zhao tore up half the mountainside and pulled out a ragged mortal.
This mortal was so thin he was practically skin and bones, looking so fragile he could be crushed with a pinch. Yet, his eyes shone like stars, and when he lifted his gaze, they seemed like shooting stars streaking across the night in the dimly lit chamber.
Rong Zhao's eyelids twitched.
Not a bad looking appearance; once cleaned up and properly nurtured, he shouldn't be too shabby.
He suddenly gained more patience. He lifted his robe, squatted down, and reached out to pinch the mortal's chin, examining him closely.
"...A flesh-bodied spirit mushroom?" Rong Zhao was somewhat surprised.
A flesh-bodied spirit mushroom referred to a mortal without spiritual roots, but born with abundant spiritual power. Such beings were rare and highly prized, whether for cultivation or alchemy, their flesh, blood, and bones all were excellent materials.
However, most flesh-bodied spirit mushroom died before reaching adulthood due to torture, and this one was so big… This was the first time he had ever seen one like it.
The “benevolence and righteousness” of the Chuyun Sect leader truly made life worse than death.
Rong Zhao didn’t have much pity for the flesh-bodied spirit mushroom; in terms of suffering, it was uncertain who had suffered more. He only cared about whether he could take it back and raise it.
“What’s your name?”
“…”
“How long have you been imprisoned?”
“…”
Rong Zhao frowned: “Are you mute? Can you understand human speech?”
He disliked imperfect things, but this one was so strikingly beautiful that he could make an exception.
His dwindling patience slowly slipped away in the silence. He released his grip, and a crystalline thread slid out from under his sleeve, deftly wrapping around the mortal’s neck. They tightened, instantly drawing a string of tiny beads of blood from the fair skin.
"I've wiped out everyone from the Chuyun Sect. Do you want to die here, or come with me?" Adhering to the principle that if you couldn't have a rare treasure, it must be destroyed and never let it fall into someone else's hands, Rong Zhao slowly tightened his grip on his fingers and coldly said, "I'll count to three, one, two..."
Upon hearing the words "wiped out," the mortal's expression shifted slightly.
"Dead?" His voice was hoarse. "You killed them?"
He wasn't mute.
Rong Zhao's brow relaxed, his expression softening slightly. With a flick of his sleeve, two sharp sounds rang out as thin threads, like nimble snakes, severed the shackles binding the mortal's wrists.
"It's not your place to ask me. I'll ask again, what's your name?"
"...Meng Zhifan."
"Rong Zhao."
Having saved the man's life and exchanged names, Rong Zhao felt they had laid a solid foundation for becoming a loving Dao couple.
Satisfied, he bent down, picked him up, and carried him home.
_____
The journey home wasn't smooth.
Meng Zhifan was a living person, and couldn't be stuffed into a storage bag. Once his identity as a flesh-bodied spirit mushroom was exposed, shameless old geezers soon came clamoring to snatch him away. While the Immortal Alliance, under the banner of righteousness, also came to cause trouble.
The word "spit it out" didn't exist in Rong Zhao's dictionary.
He simply carried Meng Zhifan, fighting his way through without any restraint. During fights, he would simply toss Meng Zhifan aside and casually cast a defensive shield.
Venerable Rong had completely failed to realize how fragile mortals were, how unbearable it was to witness the gruesome sight of primordial spirits exploding and flesh flying everywhere, or even the slightest aftershock of a battle between immortals.
By the time he realized it, it was already too late.
Meng Zhifan was already on his last breath, and then developed a high fever, vomiting everything he ate, and quickly fell into a coma.
His grand plan to attain the Dao and ascend to Immortality was about to end before it had even begun.
Rong Zhao was somewhat at a loss.
He grabbed a handful of healing pills he had saved up, intending to feed them to Meng Zhifan, but he was afraid that the spiritual power of the pills would overwhelm him. After hesitating for a long time, he finally deigned to go out and brought over a mortal doctor.
When Meng Zhifan woke up, he heard a very soft "scratching" sound beside his pillow.
He weakly turned his head, squinted, and it took him a while to see what exactly Rong Zhao was doing.
Venerable Rong was holding a thin thread, or perhaps several threads, bound together to form a blade as sharp and thin as a cicada's wing, and using it to ... shave down a medicinal pill. In front of him was a bowl filled with water; the pill powder fell in, swirling a couple of times before dissolved completely.
"Awake?" Rong Zhao didn't even lift his eyelids as he continued shaving the pill. "Mortal medicine takes effect too slowly; I don't have time to wait for you to recover. Drink this bowl of spiritual elixir water later; it's a small amount, nothing bad will happen."
Meng Zhifan looked at the pill in his hand.
The outer layer of the pill had been shaved off, leaving only a thin layer; indeed, the amount was small.
Rong Zhao paused, hesitated for a moment, then carefully shaved a tiny bit of powder into the bowl, seemingly weighing the dosage.
He seemed genuinely afraid of killing him.
Meng Zhifan stared at him for a long time.
For no apparent reason, he recalled a winter when he found a frozen little bird. He had been just as clumsy and awkward in caring for it, pinching a few grains of millet, prying open the bird's beak to feed it, and then, worried it wasn't getting enough, feeding it a little more.
In the eyes of a cultivator, he was probably no different from that bird.
...
Rong Zhao finished slicing the pill, put away his Rou Zhi Rou blade, and looked up, frowning, "What are you smiling at?"
Was this mortal out of his mind? How could he still smile after having a brush with death?
He felt a little regretful.
Then again on second thought, it was a living spirit mushroom in human form; even if they couldn't become a Daoist partner, it could still be made into an elixir— so it wasn't a loss.
"I..." Meng Zhifan struggled to sit up, but his body went limp and he fell back down, only to be gently supported by a soft force, who then gently placed several pillows behind him.
"Don't move," Rong Zhao said coldly, picking up the bowl and handing it to him. "Drink."
Meng Zhifan glanced at him, seemingly sensing no malice from the cultivator, lowered his head. He brushed his pale, chapped lips on the rim of the bowl, and drank from Rong Zhao's hand.
Rong Zhao: "!?"
His eyes widened slightly.
Rong Zhao hadn't expected this mortal to be so audacious: "You... insolent!"
After drinking the elixir infused water, Meng Zhifan felt slightly refreshed, lazily lying back on the soft pillows, his voice clear and pleasant, though tinged with weakness: "I am a flesh-bodied spirit mushroom. Whether I'm insolent or not, what difference will my fate be?"
Rong Zhao was surprised once more.
To think this mortal actually knew about flesh-bodied spirit mushrooms.
If he hadn't been certain this person lacked spiritual roots and couldn't cultivate, he would have suspected he'd picked up a seriously injured and lost disciple from some immortal sect.
"Aren't you afraid of me?"
Having witnessed Rong Zhao's own battles and the carnage, the man remained remarkably calm. Rong Zhao felt this person was incredibly audacious and difficult to control.
He needed to be taught a lesson.
So he adopted what he considered his most frigid and menacing expression and threatened, "Do you know that my notorious is legendary? My name alone is enough to stop children from crying at night, I've killed more people than you've eaten grains of salt. Just a few days ago, I wiped out the entire Chuyun Sect. I'm on the Immortal Alliance's list... Do you even know what the Immortal Alliance is?
"I don't know." Meng Zhifan perfectly demonstrated the ignorance and fearlessness of a mortal—he reached out and tugged at Rong Zhao's sleeve, calmly asking, "Venerable One, is there anything to eat?"
Rong Zhao's expression was a complex mix.
"You..." He started to speak but stopped himself, finally attributing the behavior to the fearlessness of the ignorance, and went to get food for the mortal with a dark face.
*1 li = 500m
