Transmigrating as the Heart Demon of the Ruthless Sword Venerable – Chapter 35

Xunyang Ghost Market (Part 2)

Yunzhongjun

Folding fan swaying, Zhan Lun turned and bowed to the two maidservants behind him. “Jiejie, my thanks to you both. You may go now.”

            

The two maidservants, reluctance brimming in their eyes, each dug out a bulging storage bag and tried to press it into Zhan Lun’s arms. He waved his hands in a fluster. “No, no—the Pavilion Master and the Elders already gave me plenty on the way out.”

The three of them made a long and teary farewell.

Standing to one side, Tang Wenchun nudged Yu Zhaoming gently with her elbow. “Eldest Senior Sister, look at that. Other people got plenty of backup too, didn’t they? You can’t be too much of a stickler about these things.”

            

“I trust only the sword in my hand.” Yu Zhaoming’s hand came to rest on the hilt as she answered. Cangfeng let out a complacent hum and quivered faintly, as though in reply.

“But humans are social animals! Nobody gets anything done alone.” Tang Wenchun turned to look at her, gaze brimming with sincerity.

Yu Zhaoming met those eyes. Her lashes dipped. “If someone can’t get anything done alone,” she said, “it’s because that someone is too weak.” With that, she turned her head away and looked at Tang Wenchun no more. “Besides, you’re… don’t put on that face like you understand humans so well.”

            

Unbelievable! She might be a heart demon now, but she’d been human for years and years, okay?!

“That’s racial discrimination!” Tang Wenchun stamped her foot.

Yu Zhaoming spared the hard-stamping foot a single bland glance. “Mind you don’t stave the floor in.”

            

Tang Wenchun’s eyes narrowed on the spot. “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you calling me fat??”

Yu Zhaoming paid her no further attention, turning her face away—though the faintest trace of a smile ghosted her lips. In the next breath she caught it herself and whisked it neatly out of sight.

“Young Master.” One maidservant spoke softly, tipping her chin toward Yu Zhaoming and Tang Wenchun.

            

Zhan Lun turned, one brow arching, and tapped the folded fan lightly against his palm. “These two really are every bit as close as the rumors say.”

“Young Master, Yu Zhaoming is of the Emotionless Dao. If…”

If her Dao Heart shattered, the pair of them would be no asset to the young master. And if her Dao Heart held, and something happened all the same… then that too…

            

The words died half-spoken; the look she gave Zhan Lun carried open disapproval. Clearly she had no faith in her young master’s eye for choosing companions.

“Jiejie, my Commerce Grand Dao—on the small scale, it is buying south and selling north for the margin. On the grand scale, every drop and trickle, every scrap of intelligence, may be turned to my use. To hold what others do not know, to see what others cannot see, to stand forever one step ahead—that alone is the Grand Dao of Commerce.” Zhan Lun spoke with a smiling curve to his lips, his gaze resting on the maidservant. “You tell me—is that not so?”

Cold sweat slid down the maidservant’s forehead, and she lowered her eyes, not daring to say another word.

            

Still smiling, Zhan Lun turned, beckoned to Yu Zhaoming and Tang Wenchun, and came sidling up with a grin. “Sorry to have kept the two of you waiting. Shall we head into the city now?”

“Wait. The contract first.” A flick of Yu Zhaoming’s wrist, and a sheet of paper appeared in her hand. The paper, at least, Zhan Lun knew well—one variety of Heavenly Dao Contract, and the variety Treasure Gathering Pavilion used most. The contents, though: one glance announced a Sword Sect standardized template, names of both parties and terms all laid out with crystalline clarity. Only those large characters at the end—100,000 spirit stones—kept making Zhan Lun feel like a sucker¹.

“This is…” Zhan Lun narrowed his eyes and pored over the document. “I’ve never seen this particular Heavenly Dao Contract template before.”

            

Tang Wenchun, meanwhile, laughed from the sidelines. “It’s the Sword Sect’s newest release. Executed in duplicate—one contract, two copies, rights and responsibilities for all, perfectly clear. And as you know, we Sword Sect types are honest, guileless folk. We get swindled and bullied on the regular.”

Strictly speaking, this little contraption existed because Tang Wenchun had pitched it to the Sect Master herself. Back during her business dealings, she’d already noticed that even rogue cultivators delighted in fleecing sword cultivators. Never mind how often disciples went down the mountain to render aid, only for the promised payment to be trimmed—out of some momentary surge of compassion²—or waived altogether. And when it came to robbery, the sect’s ancestral precept—that the sword must never be leveled against one’s own kind, save against the irredeemably wicked—left them fighting half-shackled.

The moment she learned this world possessed things like Heavenly Dao Contracts, Tang Wenchun had cobbled this system together. Henceforth every plea for help would pass through the sect first, which would then assign disciples to carry it out. Even if the disciples ended up doing extra work, at least they would no longer walk away with nothing to show for it. High-tier disciples like Yu Zhaoming simply traveled with the Heavenly Dao Contract document in hand—a final guarantee, as it were.

            

Because most of the time, Sword Sect disciples were merely kind. Not stupid.

From the first round of discussions through implementation, the idea had already borne modest fruit; it simply hadn’t yet been rolled out sect-wide.

Zhan Lun read the contract through, then raised his eyes to Yu Zhaoming and Tang Wenchun. 100,000 spirit stones. The price he had blurted out back then now sat upon the Heavenly Dao Contract in white characters on black, and it stung every time he looked.

            

Tang Wenchun’s eyes narrowed at once. “What’s this? Having second thoughts?”

At that, the tiger’s mouth³ of Yu Zhaoming’s hand snapped upright, and Cangfeng sprang half an inch from its sheath, brimming with menace.

Zhan Lun: …No, hold on—if he did try to back out, were they planning to just rob him at swordpoint, looking like that? He looked at Tang Wenchun, then at Yu Zhaoming. Infuriating! He couldn’t beat them!

            

As the old saying goes, he who reads the times is a hero⁴. Zhan Lun beamed at once. “Nothing of the sort. I’ll sign!”

He dashed his name across the page with a flourish. Yu Zhaoming bent over the contract, verifying the terms several times over, before stowing it away with care and giving Tang Wenchun a nod. Tang Wenchun stepped forward with a smile. “Well then—honored customer, the way is yours to lead.”

“If I’m the customer, why am I the one leading?”

            

Tang Wenchun blinked. “We’re executing our bodyguard duties at present. Ever seen a bodyguard walk point?”

Zhan Lun considered this, found it reasonable, and took the lead. The delay had cost them time; dusk was near by the time they queued through the city gates. As she stepped inside, Tang Wenchun felt something watching her, and a shudder ran through her unbidden.

Mercifully, the sensation skimmed past in an instant, leaving no trace to be found.

            

Zhan Lun caught it and smiled. “Has Fellow Daoist Tang never set foot in a city under sect protection? A city with a governing power, like Xunyang, always has a Great Cultivator holding it steady, lest anyone stir up chaos…”

“You’ll get used to it.” Yu Zhaoming’s hand settled on Tang Wenchun’s shoulder, but her gaze, edged with frost, landed square on Zhan Lun.

Zhan Lun smiled back. “No need to look at me so, Fellow Daoist Yu. I intend no harm.” Inwardly, though, he mused that the Emotionless Dao, it seemed, didn’t actually chisel a person into a wooden head—that probe of his had been altogether too obvious.

            

Tang Wenchun didn’t mind a bit. She turned to Zhan Lun. “So where are we off to now?”

Zhan Lun checked the sky. “Dusk already. Shall we find an inn and rest up first?”

Tang Wenchun looked to Yu Zhaoming, who nodded. “The Heavenly Dao Contract states it plainly: for the duration of the term, all expenses for food and lodging fall to the employer.”

            

And so the delight in Tang Wenchun’s eyes, fixed on Zhan Lun, was open and undisguised. “Then we’re in your hands!!”

He felt even more like a sucker…

Zhan Lun drew a long breath and squeezed out a smile. “Then let us repair to Ascending Immortals Tower, the largest inn in the city.”

            

Neither woman objected, and they fell in behind him. As they walked, Zhan Lun said, “We’re not the only ones in Xunyang City this trip. Two other sects are here as well—and one Great Cultivator, concealed in the shadows, provides protection.”

“Which two sects?” Tang Wenchun asked. Zhan Lun glanced at Yu Zhaoming—lashes low, interest absent, walking in silence at Tang Wenchun’s side.

His eyes roved. “You don’t know, Fellow Daoist Tang?”

            

Tang Wenchun blinked, puzzled. “Should I?”

“And here I thought Fellow Daoist Tang already carried a Myriad Realms Mirror.” So saying, Zhan Lun fished a small mirror from his storage bag. “Pour your Spiritual Consciousness into it, and you can browse the information cultivators gather and share in one place. If two people each hold a Myriad Realms Mirror, they can even correspond through them. Very convenient.”

The Myriad Realms Mirror. Tang Wenchun had read of it in the book—an artifact that, years down the story’s timeline, would sweep through the Cultivation World until nearly every cultivator carried one. She’d assumed it hadn’t been invented yet. As it turned out, it already existed.

            

Tang Wenchun accepted the little mirror with keen interest and sank her Spiritual Consciousness in. The consciousness drew her into a vast void, where posts refreshed without end. For a cultivator’s faculties, keeping pace with that churn of posts was effortless; searching them took no more than a turn of the mind.

Ah. So it was the Cultivation World’s edition of the internet. Though set beside the world Tang Wenchun hailed from, it looked like the internet of ten or twenty years prior—text posts ruled the day, which felt awfully dated, and it lacked the futuristic slickness the original novel had promised.

Tang Wenchun skimmed a few screens and, sure enough, turned up word of their current mission. Apart from the Sword Sect and Treasure Gathering Pavilion, the parties in Xunyang City were Medicine Valley and the Sound Sect—though the poster showed some discretion and had revealed neither objectives nor names. Out of habit, Tang Wenchun scrolled down to the replies. Few were responding, but a handful of comments sat there.

            

“Sword Sect disciples know nothing but hack-and-slash. All brawn, no brains. Looks like they’ll fail to place in this contest.”

“Seconded.”

Tang Wenchun withdrew her consciousness and nodded to Zhan Lun. “So that’s how it is.”

            

It was more or less a phone—an aging one, by Tang Wenchun’s reckoning—so her display of interest stayed mild. Seeing it, Zhan Lun tapped a fingertip softly along the Myriad Realms Mirror’s rim. “Wouldn’t Fellow Daoist Tang and Fellow Daoist Yu care to own one?”

So this was his play: sell the two of them a mirror apiece and farm back some HP⁵.

Tang Wenchun produced a smile. “This thing is fun, I’ll grant you, but the functions are still far too limited. Build an image-captur—er, an Image-Recording Formation into its back, store everything inside the Myriad Realms Mirror itself, and cultivators could upload… that is, transmit images to the forum… no, no, to those gathering hubs of yours. Think how much credibility that would buy.”

            

Zhan Lun’s eyes lit up. “Say more, Fellow Daoist! I’ll have someone draft the schematics this instant and put a new model into production.”

Tang Wenchun regarded him, momentarily beyond words. “Oh. So this thing is a Treasure Gathering Pavilion product.”

Zhan Lun let slip a sly heh-heh and produced two more Myriad Realms Mirrors, pressing them into Tang Wenchun’s and Yu Zhaoming’s hands. “As the saying goes, a thousand in gold can hardly buy a good idea. Fellow Daoist Tang, this Myriad Realms Mirror is my gift to you. Let’s add each other as friends—your share of the profits to come is assured, naturally.”

            

“You have the authority for that?”

Zhan Lun laughed heartily. “I certainly do. And if you doubt me, we can always sign another Heavenly Dao Contract!”

Yu Zhaoming walked behind Tang Wenchun in silence. In the span of a few breaths, her heart demon had slung an arm around the young master of Treasure Gathering Pavilion, thick as thieves with him, the very picture of old friends. And of what they said, more than half Yu Zhaoming only half-followed. She knew only that Tang Wenchun, just as back in the Sword Sect, had fired up another money-making idea—and that, just as in the Sword Sect, her ideas always won other people’s recognition, and their push to see them through.

            

Yet Tang Wenchun had been at her side without interruption since the day she came into being. Even so, Yu Zhaoming could not say where so many of Tang Wenchun’s notions and turns of phrase kept springing from. Her heart demon seemed nothing like her at all—as if she were an entirely separate being, bearing the marks of a life of her own. An independent life.

Yu Zhaoming’s hand clenched tight around Cangfeng, and her lips pressed thin.

With Tang Wenchun along, Zhan Lun parted with his money noticeably more willingly. Every dish he ordered was extravagant, and Tang Wenchun dined to her heart’s content.

            

Full of food and wine, Tang Wenchun retired to the first-class suite Zhan Lun had taken for her. He proved a gentleman about it—he didn’t hover to pester her with questions, only walked her to the door and withdrew. Generous to a fault, too: he’d opened three adjoining first-class suites without so much as a word.

Tang Wenchun pushed open the door and flung herself onto the bed.

But a moment later she bolted upright, wrist flipping—Luoze was in her hand. “Who’s there?”

            

“It seems you really have come quite a way.”

A voice both familiar and not.

Tang Wenchun stared at the figure that had appeared from empty air in the middle of her room, and bit down on her lower lip. “Yunzhongjun…”

            

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The author has something to say:

Tang Wenchun: I’ve been making money for the Sword Sect every step of the way!! And with legal awareness too!

Other Sword Sect members: applause!!

            

Yu Zhaoming: Can’t make sense of it… but she doesn’t seem to be mine alone anymore… quietly sulking…

The usual plea for comments—thank you, honored audience lords⁶.

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