Ch27 - Righteous Heart

Translator: transcendentwings

Editor: teaff 

When they were about to enter the boundary of Hutiao Ravine, Xu Xingzhi had suggested that they shouldn’t bring Tao Xian and himself, these two burdens who weren’t proficient with utilizing spiritual energy, along with them. They should just settle them in a place where the two could avoid everything and wait for Meng Chongguang and the rest to return.

Meng Chongguang took the lead to express his stance: “Wherever Shixiong is, is where I’ll be.”

Qu Chi copied his words: “Wherever Tao Xian is, is where I’ll be.”

These two were important combatants; if they wanted to recapture the fragment from the Ghost King, then lacking either one would be unacceptable. 

Furthermore the difficulty of persuading either Meng Chongguang or Qu Chi was comparable to each other. One a fool, the other was a lunatic, but both were extremely stubborn.

Xu Xingzhi had no choice but to raise his hands in defeat: “Okay ba, just pretend I didn’t say a thing.”

Copious fog existed in Hutiao Ravine and there were many saltwater lakes. The air and atmosphere were heavily saturated by a salty and metallic smell. The closer one progressed to their destination, the more barren, and flares of gray and white were revealed among the rocks and soil. On the hundreds of kilometers of alkali soil, no grass or tree could grow, everything was withered and languished, and dry bones could be spotted all over. There were human bones as well as the bones of beasts, all which had desiccated, leaving only a husk that could be crushed into splinters from a single step.

While everyone was resting, Xu Xingzhi had nothing to do and wrote on the cracked limestone with a branch: “Xu Xingzhi was here.”

After writing this, he removed the branch for a moment and asked Zhou Beinan: “What’s the era title again?”

He didn’t know if he could walk out of this savage wasteland and didn’t know if “the Worlds’ Consciousness” would forcefully expel him from this body after discovering that he was just a good-for-nothing and toss him back into his original world, replacing him with someone more reliable to assassinate Meng Chongguang. Thus he wanted to leave behind some traces that he had been here.

Zhou Beinan used his phantom spear to prop up his body: “You entered so much later than the rest of us and you’re asking us what the era title is?”

Xu Xingzhi rushed him: “Why do you have so much nonsense to say ne, just hurry up and tell me.” Next he turned to Meng Chongguang, “Do you remember?” 

Meng Chongguang shook his head hesitantly: “I don’t.”

Zhou Beinan scratched his head: “If the same emperor is still in power since the year we entered the great desolation, then this year should be the Sixteenth Year of Tianding.” 

Xu Xingzhi’s fingers jolted briefly: “. . . En?”

The current year in his world also happened to be the Sixteenth Year of Tianding. 

He originally didn’t want to arouse anyone’s suspicions so he had specifically asked Zhou Beinan for their year here, but hadn’t expected to receive such an answer in return.

However, after mulling it over again, Xu Xingzhi became relieved.

He was the author of this novella, so for the date and calendar year to be the same as his own world wasn’t something that was incomprehensible.

While he was writing down “the Sixteenth Year of Tianding” stroke by stroke, Yuan Ruzhou furrowed her brow: “This fog is getting thicker and thicker. Xu-shixiong, Chongguang, let’s hasten forwards ba.” 

Xu Xingzhi discarded the branch, pinned his folded-fan to his waist, then patted his butt to get up when Meng Chongguang caught his left hand as if it were a matter of course.

Meng Chongguang stated: “Shixiong, I’ll hold onto you, be careful not to get lost.”

Xu Xingzhi rubbed Meng Chonggaung’s head with his rosewood right hand, extremely gratified: “Thanks.”

Meng Chongguang squinted his eyes in comfort: “I want more.” 

Xu Xingzhi: “. . .”

The rest: “. . .”

Xu Xingzhi: “. . . Don’t make trouble.”

Meng Chongguang stubbornly argued: “. . . More.” 

. . . There was no other way, this old demon was practically a cat.

Xu Xingzhi sighed and directed to the others: “Turn your head around.”

After all, Meng Chongguang was the boss of this group, so it’d be such a disaster if they witnessed this side of him that was coquettish and greedy for pampering.

Xu Xingzhi stroked Meng Chongguang’s hair several times and even fondled his chin and neck as requested, only then was he finally able to coax this finicky old demon into moving. 

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

Meng Chongguang held Xu Xingzhi’s hand and walked in the lead sporting a very pleasant mood while the others followed behind them, momentarily speechless.

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Zhou Wang had initially wanted to send out a probe with a strand of spiritual power to see if there were any strange fluctuations in the vicinity, but as she started mobilizing her inner core, Yuan Ruzhou, who had sensed an abnormality in advance, clasped her wrist, indicating that she shouldn’t expose herself. 

Precisely at this time, the lot of them approached a “Yixiantian” formed by the face of the two towering stone walls.

This place was extremely narrow, the width was only about one and a half of a grown man’s shoulder span and it was impossible to move forward side by side.

They simply linked hands and filed into the narrow and unusual passage.

Meng Chongguang’s body in front blocked the light coming from the other side, it was almost equivalent to Xu Xingzhi groping his way forward in the darkness blindly, causing him to accidentally step on a stone and stumble a bit. 

He was barely able to stabilize his stride when the person in front of him reminded: “Qu-shixiong, watch your step.”

Hearing this weak and slightly feminine voice, Xu Xingzhi’s throat tightened as he grasped the wrist of the man walking in front with a flip of his hand.

The overly slender tactile sensation made Xu Xingzhi’s heart freeze as it skipped a beat: “Tao Xian?”

The man he caught a hold of turned his head. 

With the faint light leaking from the exit in front from when he turned back, Xu Xingzhi was able to clearly catch a glimpse of Qu Chi’s face.

“. . . Xu. . . shixiong?” Tao Xian finally realized that something was wrong, “Weren’t you at the front? The one I was pulling on was undoubtedly Qu-shixiong. . .”

Xu Xingzhi also remembered that Meng Chongguang was the first to enter the Yixiantian and he followed closely behind, so how was it that after a brief moment, the one who was leading became Tao Xian?

Before Xu Xingzhi could think of an answer, he was reminded of another point and his scalp instantly exploded with numbness. 

. . . The one who was holding his left hand was Tao Xian, then who was the one currently holding his right?

Moreover, since Tao Xian, who was walking in front of him, failed to notice any abnormality after so long, then. . . then who was it that was holding his other hand as well?

In the time it took for a flash of lightning to surge, Xu Xingzhi gritted his teeth and twisted his right wrist fiercely, making his rosewood right hand detach from his severed wrist.

His left hand reached for the area by his waist as he ordered sharply: “Against the wall!” 

Although Tao Xian was so frightened that his face turned pale, at least he was obedient enough. The moment Xu Xingzhi’s command came down, he immediately shrunk himself against the stone wall on one side.

Using the dagger that was given to him by “the Worlds’ Consciousness”, he took a horizontal step and slipped past Tao Xian through the space he vacated, stabbing at that patch of darkness fiercely!

A woman’s howl, like nails scraping Xu Xingzhi’s eardrums, ripped through the air!

Xu Xingzhi flicked his long right sleeve: “Hold onto me! Run!” 

The terrified Tao Xian saw the plain white sleeve floating before him and grabbed it like it was a life-saving reel then sprinted wildly into the dark with Xu Xingzhi.

The shrill ghostly cry behind him burst forth and charged forward like angered wasps as if they were chasing after the two’s footsteps.

The exit was also getting narrower and narrower, the crevice that could accommodate one and a half of a person had gradually reduced to the width of one and it seemed to lean towards the trend of shrinking even further!

Xu Xingzhi dragged Tao Xian all the way to the exit. Tao Xian was continuously stimulated with fear to the extent that when he was less than a meter from making it outside, his legs softened and he was about to fall forward! 

Xu Xingzhi let out an expletive, forcibly turned back, seized Tao Xian’s collar with his left hand, turned sideways, roughly hauled the slender body before him, then followed up with a kick to his back, and aggressively booted him out of the halved rocky crevice!

Xu Xingzhi, himself, crouched down and rolled over on the spot, finally arriving on the outside, disheveled.

He cast his gaze behind him and noticed that the Yixiantian from before had completely disappeared in the billowing fog while the ground was littered with large piles of corpses that had been crushed into pieces.

It was unknown where the others that were engulfed by the treacherous Yitiantian were sent to, as only Tao Xian and Xu Xingzhi, the two of them, remained. 

Tao Xian knelt on the ground with a very distinct footprint demarcated on his back.

Xu Xingnzhi felt a little apologetic, reached out and wiped his back: “How are you?”

Tao Xian wiped his face indiscriminately and rose to his feet: “Many thanks, Xu-shixiong, if it weren’t for. . .”

“Zhou Wang definitely learned to be so talkative from you.” Xu Xingzhi directly interrupted his nonsense, and flipped the dagger in his left hand around as he held it in a backhanded position, “This is not the time for idle gossip. Let’s not continue onwards and stay, we will just wait for them here.” 

Tao Xian leaned against Xu Xingzhi’s arm, his lips pale: “Where have they all gone? Will Qu-shixiong run into trouble?”

Xu Xingzhi comforted him: “Don’t worry. He will be just fine even if the two of us were to die over three hundred times.”

. . . This sort of considerate consolation only made Tao Xian shiver in fear.

Xu Xingzhi was vigilant against the surging fog all around him and feigned ease as he lamented: “You sure are unlucky to be paired with me of all people.” 

Tao Xian: “. . . Xu-shixiong, I. . .”

Xu Xingzhi raised his sleeve horizontally, guarding Tao Xian behind him, alert with his surroundings as he spoke steadily: “However you can rest assured, I vow that before you will ever die, I will die first.”

Tears glinted in Tao Xian’s eyes.

Through the thick rolling fog, he could vaguely perceive some sort of liquid dripping from Xu Xingzhi’s right cuff with a dida sound. 

. . . Xu Xingzhi’s severed wrist had incurred a new abrasion from the removal of his rosewood right hand.

Tao Xian probed in a trembling voice: “Shixiong, your hand. . .”

Yet Xu Xingzhi seemed to have come to the wrong conclusion: “Why, are you afraid that as a disabled person I wouldn’t be able to protect you?”

He raised his intact left hand and waved it in front of Tao Xian: “There aren’t many hands, but one is already sufficient.” 

As soon as Xu Xingzhi’s voice fell, he saw several ghost fires drifting in his field of vision. Like lanterns lit in a ghost market, each one was about the size of a human head, intermixed with green and blue, bobbing up and down like fish flipping belly up.

Xu Xingzhi clenched the dagger and couldn’t help but sigh in his heart.

“The Worlds’ Consciousness” gave him this dagger to kill Meng Chongguang, but as a result, the first time he used the dagger was to protect Meng Chongguang and the second time was to protect one of Meng Chongguang’s subordinates who didn’t even have the strength to truss a chicken.

. . . He really was a young deviant with a rebellious nature. 

But so what?

Everything Xu Xingzhi did was done because it pleased him to do so, and he wouldn’t change that even if he was given a thousand pieces of gold.

In a short while, the ghost fires had already swarmed over and surrounded them.

From a distant place, a ghostly voice of an indistinguishable and androgynous tone came forth: “Those of the savage wasteland, if you want to see the Ghost King, you need to answer three questions. If you answer wrong, your heart will be gouged out; if you lie, your heart will be gouged out; if you try to escape, your heart will be gouged out!” 

Xu Xingzhi questioned: “Do both of us need to answer?”

The ghostly voice laughed bizarrely: “Only one needs to answer.”

Xu Xingzhi frowned slightly, held his breath for a brief moment, and asserted: “Ask ba.”

Tao Xian frantically tugged at the back of his clothes: “. . . Shixiong?” 

Xu Xingzhi turned his head back halfway and whispered: “If we don’t answer, then should we turn around and leave now? Look at these things, do they look like they’re vegetarians that could be taken care of easily?”

Tao Xian was anxious: “But what if the Ghost King deliberately makes things difficult for us and quizzes us with complicated questions, making us unable to answer. . .”

Xu Xingzhi replied: “A wrong answer would still give us more time than an outright rejection would. Let’s listen first and go from there.”

A phantom shadow gradually materialized a meter away from Xu Xingzhi: “The first question, what is the young master’s honorable age?” 

Xu Xingzhi: “. . .”

Tao Xian: “. . .”

Xu Xingzhi now suspected that this Ghost King came especially to choose a son-in-law or a husband. It was practically the same as tossing a xiuqiu, except this method was slightly bloodier.

The Yixiantian that just collapsed and shrunk in on itself was just used to test whether they were both healthy and agile and as for those who were inflexible and slow to respond, they would have already been laying there in pieces. 

Furthermore, those three questions mentioned would be nothing more than inquiries made during a blind date interview.

After answering according to the current age of the original owner, the phantasmic shadow announced its next question: “The second question, what hobbies does this young master possess?”

Xu Xingzhi: “. . .”

These two questions were similar to a mother-in-law interrogating the son-in-law who was meeting the parents. 

Xu Xingzhi replied: “Other than loving to ogle beautiful women, I don’t have any bad hobbies. I do not dabble in gambling, drinking, and prostitution, these three activities at all.”

The ghost shadow smiled briefly: “Third question. . . This young master, if only one person could survive between you and the person next to you, how would you choose?”

Xu Xingzhi was startled momentarily and turned his gaze to Tao Xian.

Tao Xian had just recovered some color when it immediately drained from his face, instantly becoming pale as a ghost. He backed up a step and his indistinct Adam’s apple rolled up and down. 

The shadow of the ghost repeated: “Young master, please don’t hesitate and use your actions to show me your answer.”

Xu Xingzhi silently took two steps towards Tao Xian and whirled the dagger in his hand until it drew a beautiful flower of lights in the air.

Tao Xian collapsed onto the ground in a sitting position, his face full of despair: “Xu-shixiong, I’m begging you. . .”

Xu Xingzhi cracked his neck: “Tao Xian, don’t blame me.” 

Behind Xu Xingzhi, a pair of skeletal hands that were as white and withered as dead wood also quietly approached the center of his back. Its nails were sharp as a knife as they scraped against Xu Xingzhi’s clothes imperceptibly.

Xu Xingzhi sneered coldly: “. . . This is my answer.”

He raised his hand high, swung it backhandedly and nailed the dagger straight into the skull that materialized behind his head!

The skeleton had probably seen countless scenes of companions killing each other and obviously didn’t expect such a twist. After a gleaming dagger was wedged into its forehead, it stumbled two steps before spreading its hands and screaming at the heavens. In a short moment, it contorted its body and shrieked in agony before it vanished into a puff of scattered ashes. 

Xu Xingzhi turned around, facing the skeleton whose soul was forced to dissipate, picked up the dagger that fell to the ground and happily gave his answer: “Go f*ck yourself ba.”

At the same time, the terror on Tao Xian’s face faded away as he struggled to climb to his feet.

Although he was timid, he still believed in Xu Xingzhi wholeheartedly. He had just received a promise from Xu Xingzhi and so he wouldn’t be suspicious of Xu Xingzhi. Earlier, he had received the message Xu Xingzhi had passed on with his eyes and immediately reacted to cooperate with Xu Xignzhi, putting up that farce to paralyze the monster’s vigilance.

The two didn’t dare to linger here any longer and rushed to the depths of the heavy fog together under the pursuit of the crazed ghost fires. 

Tao Xiao ran panting: “Shixiong, they didn’t want to ask any questions in the first place! They only wanted hearts! I saw that monster that was behind you just now—he wanted to gouge out your heart!”

Xu Xingzhi gritted his teeth.

They first asked about their age, then asked about their hobbies, and before that, they ran a physical assessment for their bodies. It wasn’t for any sort of husband or son-in-law appraisal, it was merely to find a heart from a suitable vessel!

No matter if they answered correctly or wrongly, never mind if they eventually slaughtered their comrades, they would both meet the fate of having their chests opened up for the retrieval of their hearts despite all that! 

Just when Xu Xingzhi was about to speak, his footsteps abruptly screeched to a halt.

A man with bright eyes, a handsome and elegant countenance, and long uncombed hair, was looking indolently at the two who suddenly broke into his palace. The smile hanging on the corner of his lips was inexplicably reminiscent of a deadly viper flicking its forked tongue.

The impenetrable fog suddenly dispersed and what surfaced in front of the two of them was actually the interior of a palace made of stone. All the stone carvings were exquisite and picturesque. Most of the statues used to decorate the palace were lifelike, but Xu Xingzhi didn’t dare to ponder too much into what was truly hidden inside those realistic figurines.

“A very precise answer.” 

The man’s voice was exactly like the man himself, leisurely like a house cat. He observed Xu Xingzhi and responded softly: “Over the years, you were the only one who entered my illusion, but didn’t kill your companion in order to answer my third question. I like this benevolent and righteous heart of yours, offer it to me ba.”

The author has something to say:

Shixiong: . . . If I book it, then I’m really f*cked.

Chongguang Rescuing his Wife is about to premiere online, and the third episode of Shixiong’s Memory Rewind will be launched soon. 

Author's Chapter Summary:
Two people, Ghost King, Line of the Heavens

The translator has something to say: In the end, it’s still about obtaining a heart. . .

And Meng Chongguang has something to say—Why are there always people trying to tear us apart!

The editor has something to say:  Xu Xingzhi can’t catch a break hahahah