Transmigrating as the Heart Demon of the Ruthless Sword Venerable – Chapter 40
by Little PandaDemon Shadows Flickering (Part 2)
Putting On a Play
For the mortals of Xunyang City, the lockdown was not so very inconvenient.
Mortals live short lives. To them, the world beyond the walls of whatever city shelters them brims with danger — even somewhere as comparatively safe as Qingzhou, they dare travel only in groups along the main roads. Any deeper into this continent, and one simply had to be a cultivator.
So they lived clustered together, shielded by their sects, moving only among the villages that ringed their cities, never straying far.
Cultivators were another matter entirely. To them the whole world was dazzling and colorful, riddled with countless opportunities and hidden treasures — even the lowliest rogue cultivator feared nothing.
In a mere three days, the mood inside the city shifted. The mortals went about their lives as always, but the cultivators were visibly more numerous now, clustered in teahouses and inns, brows furrowed, trading what they knew in hushed voices, worry written all over them.
“Demon cultivators have been stirring lately. I heard… demon cultivators showed up in Danchang City, set up some kind of formation, and boxed every soul in the city inside it. In the end there was nothing else for it — I hear they brought in a great cultivator, and the whole city was just…”
The speaker shot everyone a look that needed no explaining, and a wave of low gasps swept the listeners.
Even as they spoke, a commotion erupted in the distance, followed at once by the sounds of combat. Cultivators they might be, but they were still only human, and the love of gossip burned in every one of them — necks stretched in unison.
The clash of fighting drew closer and closer, until a green-robed figure came hurtling through the doorway in sorry disarray and landed on the floor.
Everyone, in flawless unison, produced the scrape of benches being dragged across the floor. Not one of them spoke — clearly they knew this kind of scene all too well.
“Eldest Senior Sister!!”
With the panicked cry of a girl, a young woman likewise dressed in green came rushing in through the door and caught the fallen cultivator. A sharp-eyed cultivator arched a brow and dropped his voice: “Sword Sect disciples!”
“Sword Sect disciples, eh…”
Smiles spread through the crowd.
Sword Sect disciples were easy to bully — honest to the point of woodenness. Everyone knew it, from the disciples of the great sects down to the rogue cultivators. Sword cultivators, so the saying went, were no great villains; never once did they draw a blade against the Human Race — a rule laid down in the days of the War of Gods and Demons. But what era was this? You couldn’t find a single trace of the Demon Race anywhere now; the whole world belonged to the Human Race. Forget demons from outside — even the Yao Race, born and bred in this very world, dared not so much as brush against their edge.
Clinging to rules that ancient was nothing but hidebound traditionalism!
And so the Sword Sect, for all it numbered among the Six Major Sects, reaped nothing but mockery — and plenty agreed those six seats were overdue for a shuffle.
“You.”
The farce inside the inn continued. The Eldest Senior Sister pressed a hand to her chest and lifted her eyes slightly — beneath the green, gold-trimmed forehead band, a pair of razor-sharp eyes. She stared straight ahead. “Your Treasure Gathering Pavilion goes too far.”
Her voice was perfectly level as she spoke, but the frigid aura rolling off her was enough that no one noticed how little feeling there was in the words. It was all script.
“Emotion. Come on, put a little emotion into it,” Tang Wenchun muttered under her breath. Her brows were pinched into a portrait of worry as she glanced down at Yu Zhaoming.
Yu Zhaoming pressed a hand to her chest, a thread of blood-red seeping from the corner of her mouth. That single touch of red against her deathly pale face made her look paler still — frail, yet unbroken.
Ah, this damn battle-damage aesthetic!!
Who cared if the lines had no feeling!
But the next line was a long time coming. Tang Wenchun looked up and hastily shot Zhan Lun a look where he stood by the door.
Yu Zhaoming’s delivery might be flat, but those eyes were genuinely, authentically murderous. Zhan Lun, who had been keeping up his drumbeat at the door, froze mid-tap, then stole a glance at the steward urgently seconded from Treasure Gathering Pavilion, and felt somewhat reassured.
Catching Tang Wenchun’s impatient glare, Zhan Lun gave a light cough, lifted his chin, and sauntered over in his square steps1, arriving before the two of them at a leisurely pace, a contemptuous smile curling across his face. “Eldest Senior Sister, you mustn’t say such things. I hold the Sword Sect in the deepest respect. It’s simply that circumstances have changed — and so the terms we agreed upon will have to be… revised.”
Zhan Lun’s performance was masterful, the swaggering arrogance of a spoiled young master rendered to perfection. The crowd started in alarm — then a few muffled snorts escaped. Clearly, some of those present had once fleeced a Sword Sect disciple the very same way.
Yu Zhaoming’s eyes narrowed, her gaze sharpening further. Zhan Lun could not withstand it; he hastily turned his head away, feigning nonchalance.
Tang Wenchun squeezed Yu Zhaoming’s hand and, under cover of helping her up, whispered, “I’ve marked them. We won’t let a single one of those people slip away.”
Yu Zhaoming rose, leaning against Tang Wenchun, and turned to look at her. Her heart demon, compared to that lot, truly was adorable and considerate. No wonder so many people liked her.
Yu Zhaoming looked at Zhan Lun. Zhan Lun strained his chin higher still and arranged his face into a cold sneer. “Why does Eldest Senior Sister stare at me so? Don’t tell me you mean to play some trick on me?”
Yu Zhaoming’s wrist flipped, and Cangfeng flashed into her hand. Her wrist rose a fraction, the long blade leveling at Zhan Lun. The steward stepped in front of her, face rigid, brow knotted, casually unfurling his cultivation without the slightest hesitation. “Little friend, I would advise you to think twice.”
“It’s — it’s a Nascent Soul powerhouse!!”
Someone cried out on the spot.
This world counted three great realms above Nascent Soul, true — but Nascent Soul was the dividing line of martial strength. The world bustles2, and cultivators beyond counting — yet fewer than three in ten ever reached Nascent Soul, and past that threshold, each further realm grew rarer still.
A Nascent Soul steward was, for the overwhelming majority of cultivators, a summit to be gazed at from below — a height they would never attain in this lifetime.
Yu Zhaoming kept her eyes lowered, seemingly untouched by the man’s crushing presence — not so much as a fingertip trembled. Seeing this, a flicker of appreciation for talent rose in the steward’s eyes. Everyone here was playacting, yes, but a Nascent Soul’s oppressive pressure was real.
And however much of a half-step Nascent Soul Yu Zhaoming might be, she was still, in the end, a Golden Core.
Still numbered among the ants.
For the Young Pavilion Master to befriend figures like these… truly not a bad thing. And the little lady beside her wasn’t bad either — quick-witted, full of ideas. If only she could be poached into the Treasure Gathering Pavilion.
“Ahem.” Zhan Lun coughed with great force, and the steward came back to himself. This was no time to be courting young talents — though once this play was done, they could indeed, as the Young Pavilion Master had said, extend the Sword Sect some very tangible benefits.
So thinking, the steward let his gaze circle Tang Wenchun once more. One of them quick-brained and brimming with ideas; the other unshakable upon her path of the Dao, unmoved by joy or grief. Both stood at Golden Core Peak — should they break through to Nascent Soul, their roads would run smooth. On the strength of these two alone, the Sword Sect could be carried a thousand years into the future.
“…Um — Eldest Senior Sister, you had best know your place!!” Zhan Lun’s voice rang out. “You may be the Sword Sect’s Eldest Senior Sister, but who doesn’t know you’ve sat stuck at Golden Core Peak a full four years without half a breakthrough? I’d say you’re finished.”
A hush fell first — then the buzzing began.
“What? Four years without a breakthrough and she’s finished? Then what does that make my thirty years?”
“How can you compare yourself to a sect’s core disciple? This one is…” The voice sank to a murmur. “This one is the Sword Sect’s Eldest Senior Sister! A genius who reached Golden Core at 17!!”
At that, the looks the crowd turned on Yu Zhaoming changed — disbelief, admiration, and schadenfreude barely concealed beneath. Someone finally couldn’t hold back: “Golden Core at 17, so what? Below Nascent Soul, all are ants.”
The voice was neither loud nor soft — pitched precisely so Yu Zhaoming would hear every word. The malice in it made Tang Wenchun’s brow snap tight; she turned at once to teach the speaker a lesson. Yu Zhaoming held her back.
Yu Zhaoming kept her face lowered, hair spilling over her brow, veiling eyes that were usually bright. Tang Wenchun pressed her lips together and called softly, “Yu Zhaoming.”
It wasn’t only Tang Wenchun watching her. Zhan Lun was watching too. Yu Zhaoming’s plight was something he — a genius himself, a cultivator whose road had run smooth from the start — could feel in full. This was a scheme, yes, but the wound being peeled open was real.
Yu Zhaoming lifted her head a fraction and looked at Zhan Lun, lips pressed tightly together — so tightly it seemed that one instant of slack and they would begin to tremble.
But the show had to go on. Zhan Lun steeled himself. “In any case, that is how things stand. So what if you’re the Eldest Senior Sister? You’re nothing but a Golden Core. What ability do you have to fight me?”
Silence fell once more. The weak are meat for the strong3 — the one iron law of the cultivation world — and the rest of the crowd went quiet in turn, none daring to cross a Treasure Gathering Pavilion with a Nascent Soul powerhouse standing behind it.
Zhan Lun wrapped up in a rush — then, ever committed to playing the part to the end, flung a bag of spirit stones at Yu Zhaoming’s feet with the utmost contempt. “There’s your payment. Take it or leave it!!”
With that, he barked a single “We’re leaving!” and swept out at the head of his entourage.
“Eldest Senior Sister…” Tang Wenchun watched Yu Zhaoming, worry plain on her face.
Yu Zhaoming was silent for a long, long while. The sword tip sank; sharp-eyed onlookers caught the faint tremor running along the blade. Then, inch by inch, she bent down, picked up the bag of spirit stones, let go of Tang Wenchun’s hand, and walked off into the distance.
“Eldest Senior Sister!” Tang Wenchun called out loudly from behind her.
But this time, the Sword Sect’s Eldest Senior Sister paid no heed to her little junior sister. She walked on, slow and silent. The setting sun fell across her back, dragging out a long black shadow behind her that stretched into the inn.
For a moment the whole crowd was hushed, as though they could feel, in their own chests, the desolation of a falling star.
“Sob sob… s-so moving.”
In a private room on the second floor, the young girl pressed a hand over her nose, sniffling, righteous indignation blazing. “That Treasure Gathering Pavilion is utterly despicable! So what if she hasn’t reached Nascent Soul! Does that mean she’ll never form her Nascent Soul in this whole lifetime?”
“You’re that moved?” Yunzhongjun asked, chin propped in her hand.
The female disciple sniffled, eyes brimming. “Martial Uncle’s cultivation advances a thousand li in a single day — how could you ever know the grief of a genius fading, a rising star struck down before its prime? I want to go help them.”
Yunzhongjun spared the little disciple a glance, then let her gaze drift back — first circling a few times over the figures quietly rising and slipping out of the inn, then settling on Tang Wenchun. A smile surfaced. “What a scheme to dream up.”
She lazily gave the little disciple a forehead flick4. “You — just sit there and watch the show like a good girl.” With that, her gaze roved the distance before returning, a trace of disdain creeping across her face. “Stay out of trouble, and I’ll count myself as having done right by your master. Xunyang City’s situation is not something you can afford to wade into.”
The author has something to say:
Tang Wenchun, tapping the table with the script: The key points this scene needs to land are, Eldest Senior Sister, you—
Yu Zhaoming looks up.
Tang Wenchun: You need to show a genius’s desolation, the ache of having the wound torn open — lay the emotional groundwork for how desperately you want to raise your cultivation. Got it?
Yu Zhaoming nods.
Tang Wenchun nods, satisfied, and turns to Zhan Lun: As for you—
Zhan Lun: …
Tang Wenchun: You have to give Eldest Senior Sister money, and you have to mock her first — that way everyone believes she’s tragic, that she’s hit rock bottom, while also knowing she’s carrying plenty of spirit stones. That’s what lures the paupers onto the hook.
Zhan Lun: …You really do understand this crowd.
Tang Wenchun lifts her chin: Naturally.
The utterly bewildered onlookers (a certain little miss of the Sound Sect): Sob sob sob, so moving, so pitiful, so tenderly heartbreaking.
Comments, please! I got put on a poison ranking5, sob sob sob — I need comments to soothe me.
Footnotes
- 四方步 | sifang bu | The stately, measured stage-walk of Peking opera, reserved for emperors and high officials; walking it broadcasts pompous self-importance.
- 天下熙熙 | tianxia xixi | From Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian: 'The world bustles to and fro, all for profit.' A byword for the teeming, striving masses.
- 弱肉强食 | ruo rou qiang shi | Classical chengyu, literally 'the weak are meat, the strong devour': the law of the jungle, applied to nature and human society alike.
- 脑崩儿 | naobengr | A sharp flick to the forehead with a bent knuckle; a common Chinese gesture of teasing punishment between familiars.
- 毒榜 | du bang | Chinese webnovel slang for a ranking of 'toxic' novels — stories so angst-ridden or addictive that readers joke about being poisoned while reading.
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