NOVPUB
Chapter 1115: Gods as Slaves
Seven days later, they were passing Mount Ninesongs.
Yunmen Qianfan was singing softly in a voice that sounded like countless chanting spirits. “Green summits conceal traces of immortals, nine curves twist and turn through the clouds. Emerald waters whisper through the stones, evening clouds gently add color to the trees.”
Her words drifted over Mount Ninesongs, swirling to the summit, curving nine times before landing at the foot of the mountain, where emerald waters flowed in a mighty river. There was a boat on the river, almost like a fallen leaf.
“Senior, that’s Mount Ninesongs. The stream that comes down the mountain has nine bends in it, and when it flows, you can hear the sound of immortal songs. That’s where the name comes from.”[1]
Incense was burning in the boat, and a lantern provided light.
Yunmen Qianfan was playing the zither and simultaneously looking at Xu Qing, who was studying Mount Ninesongs. She was not any less shaken than she had been earlier. Seven days had passed, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the gruish death of that Diling Dynasty elder. He had been a seven-world Smoldering God, but he had died weeping. That... seemed like something that only nine-world Smoldering Gods, those in the great circle, could possibly accomplish.
She was getting the sense that whatever Sir Firedark had done in the Spiritdust Mountains, it was only the tip of the iceberg. And unless they ran into an Imperial Sovereign, she was going to be completely and utterly safe. As a result, the sense of danger within her had grown weaker. In its place came a marvelous sensation of freedom. Now she felt like she was just on nothing more than a pleasant journey.
As she relaxed, she smiled more. It affected her music as well. As the zither song drifted in the wind, it merged with the sound of the water to make something even more pleasant.
Combined with the incense and the lantern, it really made it seem like they were just drifting along without a care in the world.
As Xu Qing listened to the wonderful sounds around him, and gazed at the mountain, he took a sip from his flagon of alcohol.
In contrast to the way Yunmen Qianfan was relaxing, Xu Qing couldn’t stop thinking about real life. Though he was sipping alcohol, his thoughts were actually wrapped up in memories. He was thinking about another time he had traveled on a boat with someone. And he was thinking about the music from that time.[2]
Yunmen Qianfan eventually sensed his mood. Looking down, she sang a bit more quietly. “The bird soars in search of dreams; the cascading water brings peace to the heart. I’ll spend my life with you, my love; I’ll ne’er ask when we shall depart.”
The glistening river flowed past Mount Ninesongs.
All of a sudden, Xu Qing said, “There’s a song I know that I haven’t played in a long time. Would you mind playing it?”
Yunmen Qianfan looked up at Xu Qing, whose back was to her.
“Of course,” she said softly.
Xu Qing waved his hand, and a jade slip flew over to her, which contained the score to the song.
She picked up the jade slip and then closed her eyes in concentration. The zither music changed.
A familiar song filled heaven and earth. The little boat slowly floated down the river. A young woman’s delicate hands caressed the zither strings. A man stared off into the distance. He was searching for an old dream in the flowing waters.
The sound of the river drifted along with the wind. The zither music described the joys and sorrows of life. It ended in a flagon of unfiltered rice wine.[3]
Xu Qing drank.
Yunmen Qianfen hesitated briefly, then said, “Senior... this song is profound. It contains a lifetime of obsession, and though it’s full of grief, it also feels free and at ease. The person who wrote this song is obviously someone extraordinary. Does the song have a name?”
Xu Qing didn’t answer the question. He just looked at the water flowing off to the horizon. The wind blew, stirring his hair and rustling his robe. It seemed filled with something cold and detached.
Then the wind stopped. The water no longer glittered.
All of a sudden, the river in front of the boat exploded!
Water sank down as an enormous head rose up. It looked like the head of a pitch-black snake, covered with scales and slime. Crimson eyes burned with deep malice. It was hundreds of meters long, and compared to it... the boat looked like a child’s toy.
Along with it came a sound like chanting. It entered the ears to fill the heart of the listener with madness, to destabilize their soul and cause their fleshly body to tremble. The gruish head caused the surroundings to ripple and distort until everything was like a blur.
When its gaze locked onto Yunmen Qianfan, she felt her heart racing so rapidly it felt like it would burst out of her chest. At the same time, a feeling of madness gripped her as something extremely domineering tried to invade her from the outside. She trembled from head to toe, as if her flesh and blood had a will of their own that was trying to expel her from her own body.
The spirit energy in the area was in chaos as a different variety of energy invaded it, took it over, and rejected it. The spirit energy was being polluted! This was the aura of a god. It was mutagen! This was... an actual god!
Yunmen Qianfan was shaken to the core, and her cultivation base was suppressed. But even as she felt like her body and soul couldn’t stand up to the presence of this god, a gentle force swept out from Xu Qing and enveloped her. It screened her off from the outside.
Xu Qing extended his right hand and made a grasping gesture. The ripples and distortions shattered and dissipated. His grasping gesture caused mountain-toppling, sea-draining force to make a huge hand that reached down and latched onto the god’s head.
He yanked upward. Heaven and earth trembled. An ear-piercing howl erupted from the god’s mouth as the thing was pulled up writhing from the river. Water cascaded down as a bizarre body was revealed. The head made up ninety-nine percent of īts entire body. Beneath the gigantic head was a tiny body with gray skin, covered with sticky slime. The thing was surrounded by glowing spheres that slowly orbited in a circle, emanating a fantastic and gruish glow. The entire area filled with a wild sensation, like that of primal-chaos itself.
Within the body of the god was a burning flame, although above that flame was a lampshade formed from magical symbols. The lampshade sealed the flame and allowed it to be controlled. Above the lampshade was a unique jade slip. It seemed alive, and had long tentacles that covered the brain of the god, locking onto īt and parasitizing īt.
Thanks to Xu Qing screening Yunmen Qianfan away from the outside, she had already recovered. Now her heart was pounding. How could she ever have guessed that the people chasing her would deploy something like this to try to kill her?
When she thought about how terrifying these things were, she shivered and, without even thinking about it, said, “A godslave! Senior, this is a godslave that the Diling Dynasty bought at a very high price from the Dao Immortal Sect. Godslaves... have Imperial Sovereign battle prowess. Senior, you—”
However, before she could even get halfway through what she planned to say, her eyes went wide and she stopped talking. As she watched, an illusory hand grabbed the vicious and terrifying god, which was powerless to get free.
In front of īt was Xu Qing, whose expression was the same as ever as he sized up the god, almost as if he was studying īt.
Yunmen Qianfan was breathing heavily as she thought back to that vassal who died crying.
As Xu Qing looked at the lampshade and the flame beneath it, he said, “A god in the Godfire level.”
The lampshade was covered with a dense network of magical symbols, all of which were different from each other. There seemed to be millions upon millions of them, and though their structure was complex, there seemed to be order in how they were put together, although that order shifted constantly.
The living jade slip above the lampshade was even more bizarre. Xu Qing had never seen anything like it before, and wasn’t able to make heads or tails of it at the moment.
This was not his first time encountering a god in the Fifth Star Ring. And he had seen gods turned into slaves before; cultivators could make gods into magical treasures, or be treated as animals.
Thankfully, Yunmen Qianfan’s explanation told him what he needed to know about where this godslave came from.
So, the orthodox sect controls them. And they can sell them if they want?
Xu Qing was intrigued by the idea of turning gods into slaves. From what he was looking at, he could tell it was an ingenious technique. Unless you understood the inner workings, it would be very difficult to undo the effect. If you used too much force, the enslaved god’s godfire would be destroyed. The god’s mind would collapse, and the god’s soul and body would likely crumble into nothing.
But if it’s a slave, and can even be sold, then it’s obvious that it can be controlled.
Xu Qing looked off into the distance. Beneath the crimson light of the aurora, he could see ripples as four figures appeared.
Yunmen Qianfan saw them too, and she recognized them. Three of them were Diling Dynasty vassals. The other was a Diling conclave elder. The three vassals were all seven-world Smoldering Gods. As for the core elder... he was at the nine-world level. She immediately imparted this information to Xu Qing.
The four of them hovered in midair looking astonished and even terrified.
One of them had a little drum in his hand that was connected to the god. Yet no matter how he beat the drum, causing the god to struggle against Xu Qing, it did no good.[4]
Xu Qing’s mere gaze caused the four cultivators’ minds and hearts to tremble. Scalps tingling, they turned to flee. Clearly, they didn’t act fast enough.
The moment they took to flight, Xu Qing took a step forward. Wild colors flashed in heaven and earth.
From Yunmen Qianfan’s perspective, it was like a majestic scroll painting was being unfurled into the sky, covering everything and making it blurry.
After a few breaths of time passed, the scroll painting vanished. The four cultivators were gone. Xu Qing was returning. In one hand he held a flagon of alcohol. In the other hand he held a head. The head was that of the Diling conclave elder. He wasn’t dead, and his eyes shone with terror and despair. He was being soulsearched.
By the time Xu Qing was back on the boat, the soulsearch was over. Xu Qing now knew exactly what was going on.
The Yunmen Clan has a secret key leading into a land of good fortune. That’s why the two clans are at war. But there’s something special about the key that makes it hard to steal. Therefore, after pushing the Yunmen Clan into a corner, the Diling Dynasty made an offer that couldn’t be refused.
The Yunmens would send out fourteen conclave clan members for the Dilings to chase. If all fourteen of them die, then the Yunmen Clan will be declared the loser. But if even one of them survives, the Dilings will be the losers. The prize is the secret key and the survival of the Yunmen Clan.
Xu Qing had no interest in the secret key.
He crushed the head into ashes, then took out the little drum that could be used to control the god. He tapped it. The thump of the drum caused the god to turn into a stream of light that entered the drum and turned into a design on its surface.
Then Xu Qing looked over at Yunmen Qianfan, who was staring at him in astonishment and trying to control her breathing.
“I’m out of alcohol,” he said, tossing her the flagon.
“Uh....” She caught the flagon. Then, shivering, she produced a new flagon and handed it to him.
1. The Chinese character I’m rendering as “songs” has two main meanings. Obviously, in one sense, it can mean a song or tune. But the character can also refer to the bend in a river. So the name of the river has a double meaning that can’t be conveyed with one word in English. ☜
2. Xu Qing is thinking about the journey that began in chapter 297. ☜
3. The description of the song matches the song in chapter 299. ☜
4. If you look up the characters for this kind of drum in a dictionary, or use MTL, it will be called a “snare drum.” But in xianxia, everything is generally based on ancient Chinese stuff. So in reality, this drum most likely resembles something like this image. ☜
