Chapter 1546: Omen of the Evil Fetus

Chapter 1546: Omen of the Evil Fetus

Mo Hua’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Yu’er’s temperament... has a problem?”

Gu Changhuai’s expression was complicated as he nodded and said in a deep voice, “Yu’er’s temperament has become somewhat moody... swinging between extremes...”

“But at the same time, his talent has grown even greater. His comprehension has become exceptionally sharp, he learns anything the moment he’s taught it. Some techniques, with no one instructing him at all, he masters on his own. Occasionally, he even says strange things that ordinary people cannot understand...”

Gu Changhuai let out a sigh.

Yu’er was the child born of a union between the direct bloodlines of the Shangguan and Wenren Clans. His spiritual roots were already excellent, and his bone structure was top-grade as well.

This should have been a good thing, but now, for unknown reasons, Yu’er’s talent had surged explosively once more.

It had grown so strong that it was almost absurd, frightening, even.

What made it especially unsettling was that this explosive surge in talent, combined with the mutation in his temperament, felt deeply unnatural.

Gu Changhuai spoke with a worried expression. “I went to see Yu’er. He’s perfectly fine most of the time, but when he’s alone, he talks to himself. It’s like muttering under his breath, yet also like he’s conversing with someone...”

“His temperament flips without rhyme or reason. One moment he’s calm, the next he’s irritable. Then he seems timid, as if afraid of something, and then his gaze turns fierce, his demeanor savage.”

“Occasionally, the cruelty and coldness that flash in his eyes send a chill down even my spine—and I’m an Archive Officer of the Dao Court Division, a man who has spent years hunting criminals and rooting out evil, who has seen every kind of sinner and villain imaginable...”

Gu Changhuai’s brows were tightly furrowed, as if recalling those vicious eyes still made his heart tremble.

Mo Hua fell silent, then asked, “What is the Shangguan Clan’s stance?”

Gu Changhuai shook his head. “What stance can they have? They can only try their best to keep it hidden, not letting Yu’er come into contact with outsiders.”

“The Shangguan Clan Head has also invited some eminent masters and strange individuals to examine him, but they all went mad...”

Mo Hua asked, “Mad?”

Gu Changhuai nodded. “Whoever tries to cure Yu’er goes mad.”

Mo Hua’s gaze turned somber. “How severe is the madness?”

“Not too bad,” Gu Changhuai said. “After about half a year of madness, they gradually recover. But over time, no one dares to touch Yu’er anymore.”

“Everyone has also come to see Yu’er as...”

A Freak.

Gu Changhuai thought this silently but couldn’t bear to say it aloud.

Hearing this, Mo Hua’s expression grew complicated, and he let out a soft sigh as well.

Gu Changhuai turned to look at Mo Hua, and thinking of all that had passed, felt a surge of emotion.

Yu’er, though born into a family of immense wealth and status, had suffered from a weak spirit and a bitter fate since childhood, plagued by nightmares and beset by calamity after calamity.

This poor child, the most peaceful and happiest days of his life, from childhood to now, were perhaps only that period of time when he followed by Mo Hua’s side, cultivating at Great Void Sect.

And ever since Mo Hua left Great Void Sect and departed the Qianxue Prefecture realm, those days were gone forever.

Yu’er could only face that formless nightmare and torment alone.

Even if he wanted to help, Gu Changhuai didn’t know how.

Gu Changhuai’s heart ached for Yu’er. He looked at Mo Hua again, and after a long silence, finally spoke slowly:

“Mo Hua, Yu’er... what exactly is going on with him? Do you know?”

Mo Hua sighed deeply in his heart.

Yu’er... he is the Evil Fetus of an Evil God.

He is the chosen Seed of Calamity, a naturally born superior Divine Fetus...

Mo Hua fell silent for a long while before sighing. “It’s probably a rebellious phase. The more obedient a child is when young, the more likely they are to rebel when they grow up. Yu’er might be exactly that...”

Gu Changhuai silently watched Mo Hua, his gaze seemingly saying:

Do I look like a fool to you?

Whose child’s rebellious phase looks like this?

Mo Hua thought for a moment, then asked again, “What about Aunt Wan then? With Yu’er like this, is Aunt Wan alright?”

Gu Changhuai frowned. “Cousin Wan’er... she’s fine, actually. Yu’er’s temperament is abnormal—moody and unpredictable—but only when he’s by Cousin Wan’er’s side does he settle down a little. Previously, some odd individuals and masters came to treat Yu’er, and some mishaps occurred. If not for Cousin Wan’er keeping watch outside, the consequences might have been even worse...”

And it might not have just been a matter of him going mad, either.

“That’s good...” Mo Hua slowly let out a breath of relief, and at the same time, his mind churned with thought:

A mother’s bond with her child...

No matter how ferocious the Evil Fetus was, Aunt Wan was still its ‘mother.’ In her presence, it wouldn’t dare act too recklessly.

At least for now, that was the case...

Thinking this, Mo Hua sighed slowly. “Yu’er will eventually have to grow up and endure trials. Many things in life, he has to bear on his own. Even nightmares, he has to break free from by himself, and pain he has to digest himself...”

Mo Hua’s tone grew wistful. “...Some things, even if you can help for a moment, you can’t help for a lifetime.”

Gu Changhuai was taken aback, mulling it over in his heart. Though he couldn’t bear to accept it, he could only nod with a sigh:

“That’s true...”

But even so, when it came to Yu’er’s safety, worry still lingered unavoidably in Gu Changhuai’s heart.

Mo Hua was the same. Though he said those words aloud, he was still deeply concerned inside.

Yu’er—that child—had grown up by his side since young, cultivating together at Great Void Sect, so obedient and pitiable. How could he possibly not worry or miss him?

Moreover, this matter might very well have served as a warning to him:

The matter of the Great Wilderness Evil Fetus... might very well not be over yet...

Mo Hua’s gaze sharpened slightly.

If there’s a chance... I wish I could go see Yu’er...

But given the current situation, that would likely be extremely difficult. He had no idea when he would see Yu’er again, nor what Yu’er would have become by then...

At the very least, he would have to finish dealing with the problems in the Great Spirit Field Realm first.

Mo Hua sighed inwardly, then turned to look at Gu Changhuai. Seeing his face slightly pale, clearly bearing the signs of a prolonged pursuit, a doubt suddenly arose in his mind, and he asked:

“Uncle Gù, does Lord Qingchou really want to kill you that badly?”

Gu Changhuai nodded. “Naturally. I want to kill him too.”

Lord Qingchou was the mastermind behind the uprising, while Gu Changhuai was an Archive Officer of the Dao Court sent to suppress it. Their positions were diametrically opposed, so of course it was a fight to the death.

Yet Mo Hua still felt there was an indescribable dissonance in all of this.

Mo Hua asked, “Uncle Gù, isn’t it the great clans who want you dead the most? Haven’t they made a move to kill you?”

Gu Changhuai said, “The great clans naturally want me dead, but they don’t dare kill me openly.”

Mo Hua said, “Because it would trigger accountability from the Dao Court?”

Gu Changhuai nodded. “Killing an Archive Officer personally appointed by the Dao Court is a grave crime.”

Mo Hua asked, “What about assassination?”

Gu Changhuai said, “The high-ranking members of the Dao Court can calculate cause and effect. Don’t think that just because you kill in secret, it isn’t killing. As long as the Dao Court wants to investigate, they will certainly find out...”

Mo Hua slowly nodded, then asked again, “But then, last time at the Jade Fragrance Pavilion, why did the Demonic Sects dare to kill you?”

Gu Changhuai corrected him: “Actually, those Demonic Sects didn’t really intend to kill me...”

Mo Hua suddenly understood and remembered, “Right, they wanted to harvest you through dual cultivation...”

Gu Changhuai didn’t want to discuss this further.

But Mo Hua nodded and said, “They wanted to ‘corrupt’ you with women’s charms. If you refused, they would forcibly ‘harvest’ you.”

“Killing an Archive Officer of the Dao Court would be a grave taboo, one that would stir cause and effect.”

“But corrupting you with women’s charms, or harvesting your yang essence, that would be hard for the Dao Court to investigate. After all, such matters are private, and spreading word of them would be unsavory.”

“Even in the worst case, if Uncle Gu were harvested to death, it would still be a scandal, a loss of face for the Dao Court, making it difficult to pursue justice openly.”

Gu Changhuai said helplessly, “It’s enough that you know this in your heart, no need to say it aloud...”

Mo Hua nodded and added, “So whether it’s the Earth Sect, the Kun Province Aristocratic Clans, or the Demonic Sects, none of them can easily kill you directly.”

“But once you arrive at the Qingchou Prefecture, the situation changes.”

“Lord Qingchou is a villain and the mastermind behind the uprising, lawless to begin with. Killing you, an Archive Officer of the Dao Court, would be only natural to him.”

“The Earth Sect, the aristocratic clans, and the Demonic Sects all wish for nothing more than for you to die in the Qingchou uprising. That way, they rid themselves of a thorn in their side without staining their own hands with cause and effect...”

Gu Changhuai said nothing, though his expression was indifferent—clearly unsurprised by this.

But Mo Hua still felt there was something about this matter that didn’t add up. After pondering for a moment, he suddenly asked in a low voice:

“Uncle Gu, did the Dao Court send you here for some other... undisclosed purpose?”

Gu Changhuai’s brow twitched, but he still said nothing.

Mo Hua asked, “Is that so?”

Gu Changhuai sighed. “Didn’t you just say it yourself, it’s undisclosed? How could I tell you?”

Mo Hua furrowed his brow and continued to ponder.

Gu Changhuai, afraid he would press further, could only say, “You may mull it over yourself, but don’t ask aloud. I can’t say anything.”

“Some matters... are not as they used to be.”

“And besides...” Gu Changhuai sighed again, “The urgent task at hand is to resolve the uprising in the Qingchou Prefecture. The situation has deteriorated, there’s no more time to wait...”

“If the unrest is allowed to spread, it won’t just be the Qingchou Prefecture, much of the Great Spirit Field Realm may fall into turmoil.”

“And when that time comes... even if the Earth Sect doesn’t kill me, the aristocratic clans don’t kill me, and the Demonic Sects don’t kill me, I, as the Archive Officer specially appointed by the Dao Court, will still be unable to escape blame...”

Mo Hua was taken aback, then nodded.

The unrest in the Qingchou region, strictly speaking, had nothing to do with Uncle Gu. He had merely happened to be there and needed to suppress it.

But the problem was that many things in this world simply didn’t follow reason.

If the Great Spirit Field Realm truly descended into chaos, Uncle Gu, as the Archive Officer, would be a natural scapegoat.

No matter what he did or whether he was at fault, the Dao Court would hold him accountable.

If enough slander and false accusations piled up, his very life could be in danger.

The Dao Court might very well borrow his head to quell some of the resentment...

Mo Hua’s heart tightened slightly, and he asked Gu Changhuai, “Then what do you plan to do about the uprising?”

Gu Changhuai pondered for a moment, then shook his head. “It’s difficult... For now, the only option is to first rally the Dao Court Division cultivators stationed locally in Qingchou, then find a way to suppress the rioters and bandits, and set a trap to eliminate the mastermind...”

Mo Hua asked, “Are there still Dao Court Division cultivators in the Qingchou Prefecture itself?”

“There are,” Gu Changhuai nodded, “but probably not many left.”

“After the riots broke out, the mobs would have rushed straight into the local Dao Court Division and killed the cultivators stationed there.”

“The Dao Court Division cultivators are highly skilled, but their numbers are limited after all. Besieged by waves of refugees, they could only be defeated in the end, some killed, some fled. I estimate few remain...”

“But if we truly could gather these local Dao Court Division cultivators together, they would be no small help...”

“Then what if...” Mo Hua asked, “the local Dao Court Division can’t suppress the riots?”

Gu Changhuai let out a sigh. “Then the only option would be to petition the Dao Court and request Dao Soldiers to come suppress it. At that point, it would truly be nothing but slaughter...”

Requesting Dao Soldiers to suppress the unrest was already the last resort when no other option remained.

Dao Soldiers wouldn’t concern themselves with such details. They would only carry out the most brutal armed pacification in the shortest time possible, even if it meant rivers of blood.

Mo Hua didn’t wish to see that scene either, so he said, “Then let’s proceed with this plan for now. It’s best if we can avoid deploying the Dao Soldiers...”

He had witnessed with his own eyes and personally experienced the war between the Dao Court’s Dao Soldiers and the Great Wilderness’s barbarian troops.

“War is a matter of vital importance to the state—a realm of life and death, a path to survival or ruin. It must not be treated lightly...”

War must never be initiated rashly. Once battle begins and one is drawn into the flames of conflict, the costs would be enormous. Wherever great armies pass, not a blade of grass would remain, and countless killing karma would be incurred.

And war was far more complicated than it appeared on the surface.

Mo Hua had Proved the Dao through Divine-Sense, allowing him to perceive a portion of the Heavenly Secrets. He knew that once war broke out, the Heavenly Secrets would descend into Chaos, and the entire situation would be thrown into turmoil.

At such times, various Ancestors and great powers would seize the opportunity to open a new round of their games.

On the surface, it might seem like just a small-scale war to suppress riots, but under the calculations and machinations of various Heavenly Secret masters, no one could say what it would eventually evolve into.

If there were also terrifying experts of Martial Uncle’s caliber secretly orchestrating from the shadows...

Then the entire Great Spirit Field Realm, and even Kun Province, might gradually fall step by step, turning into a living hell on earth.

At this moment, the flames of war had not yet become apparent. Other cultivators might not have realized this, treating a pacification war within a small Prefecture Realm as something of little consequence.

But Mo Hua was exceptionally sensitive to the aura of such great calamities.

Disasters arise from the smallest beginnings; great winds rise from the tips of duckweed.

A small-scale war could very well become the spark that ignites unimaginable catastrophe...

Although Gu Changhuai didn’t understand cause and effect, he could sense from the grave expression on Mo Hua’s face that this was no simple matter, and thus he dared not take it lightly in the slightest.

...

The next day, everyone rested briefly and set out at the first light of dawn.

Following Mo Hua’s instructions, Gu Changhuai and the others had removed their Dao Court Division robes and changed into plain gray robes.

The Dao Court Division robes symbolized status and served as a deterrent, ordinary bandits and rioters wouldn’t dare provoke them lightly.

The aristocratic Clans and experts along the way wouldn’t make trouble either, and would mostly cooperate when matters arose.

But those robes also symbolized the authority of the Dao Court and drew too much attention.

Now, under Mo Hua’s leadership, their operations had shifted from open to covert, so naturally they needed to keep a lower profile.

And so, a group of gray-robed cultivators, led by a single black-robed cultivator, traveled across the blood-stained land of the Qingchou Prefecture.

Mo Hua walked as he extended his Divine-Sense, observing firsthand the current ecology and living conditions of cultivators in Qingchou Prefecture.

The results were extremely grim.

All along the way, it was already a scene of complete famine, even apocalypse.

The land was cracked and fissured, like skin covered in festering sores, oozing bloody, rotting pus.

The vast majority of villages were completely abandoned: walls collapsed, roofs caved in, nine out of ten homes left empty.

Mangled corpses lay strewn across the ground, half-devoured by demonic dogs, their eyeballs pecked out by bald vultures.

The few living people occasionally spotted were all wild-eyed and manic, bloodshot pupils burning—either killing or being killed.

In some small settlements, a handful of clan cultivators still gathered, but they too suffered from food scarcity, living hand to mouth, faces etched with grief, trembling in constant dread.

This scene persisted until Mo Hua entered within two hundred li (100 kilometers) of Qingchou City’s outskirts, only then did it begin to change.

(1 Li = 500 meters; 200 li = 100 kilometers or about 62.1 miles.) 

Qingchou City was the largest Immortal City in the Qingchou Prefecture Realm.

Of course, Qingchou was a small territory; even its largest Immortal City paled in comparison to Houtu City in both scale and prosperity.

As for what the inside of this largest Immortal City in Qingchou Prefecture actually looked like after the riots broke out, neither Mo Hua nor even Gu Changhuai knew much.

Gu Changhuai had been hunted by Lord Qingchou and never had the chance to enter Qingchou City.

Now, with Mo Hua’s help, Gu Changhuai had temporarily shaken off Lord Qingchou’s pursuit, and thus had the opportunity to find a way into Qingchou City and take a look.

Qingchou City was the heart of the entire Prefecture Realm; it was only reasonable to assess the situation there.

And from a hundred li out, Mo Hua could already see numerous figures.

Unlike the desolate wilderness, a considerable number of cultivators had now gathered outside Qingchou City.

These cultivators were scattered across a radius of over a hundred li beyond the city, dwelling in camps, settlements, and even large-scale fortified villages.

At least two-thirds of all surviving cultivators in the entire Qingchou Prefecture Realm had likely congregated here.

According to the Dao Court’s classification, these cultivators were all rioters.

Mo Hua did not approach recklessly. He stood at a distance, casting a single glance, sweeping his Divine-Sense across the area and absorbing the living conditions of most of the rioters into his Sea of Consciousness.

Though these cultivators before him were collectively called rioters, their internal composition differed vastly.

Some were true rioters: like Lord Qingchou and his followers, originally bandit cultivators and Criminal Cultivators, hands drenched in blood, having committed every evil imaginable. They had seized the disaster as an opportunity to incite rebellion.

They killed not only Dao Court Division personnel but also other cultivators, wealthy landowners, rich households, and spirit farmers—slaughtering and looting all alike.

Beyond them, some rioters were cultivators from minor clans and small factions, forced into rebellion by the overwhelming tide of events.

Otherwise, they would have been the first to be torn apart by the rioters, slaughtered and stripped of everything.

The remainder were the local spirit farmers.

Spirit farmers were the most numerous, and their internal circumstances were far more complex.

Among them were naturally those with wicked hearts, those who simply went with the flow, and those harboring hidden malice.

But the vast majority of spirit farmers had risen up only because they were driven by sheer necessity, they simply wanted a single meal to survive.

Some of them, perhaps, could not even be called rioters, they were simply disaster victims, famine refugees, the starving, and the displaced. They gnawed on tree bark and ate wild grass, doing everything they could just to survive...

At this moment, all of these people gathered together, bearing the label of rioters, yet densely packed like ants, struggling to stay alive.

Under the weight of great calamity, the full spectrum of human suffering—countless hardships and miseries—unfolded before Mo Hua’s eyes.

Mo Hua gazed for a long time, his emotions tangled, unable to speak for a while.

Finally, he could not help but frown and said slowly, “Uncle Gù, there’s actually no need to suppress the riot.”

“Suppression won’t solve the problem. The vast majority of them are just... people with nothing to eat...”

“If we find a way to put food in their mouths, the riot will naturally resolve itself...”

“If they can’t eat their fill, the riot will never go away.”

Gu Changhuai was taken aback, then his expression grew equally complicated as he said in a low voice, “What you said is very true, but... under the current circumstances, that idea is unlikely to work...”

Mo Hua’s gaze faltered slightly.

Gu Changhuai continued, “They are rioters. The Dao Court most likely won’t think about how to fill their stomachs. And not just the Dao Court—the Houtu City Dao Court Division, the Earth Sect, the Kun Province Aristocratic Clans—none of them will do such a thing...”

As if realizing something, Mo Hua’s face gradually darkened.

Gu Changhuai’s expression turned grave as he said slowly, “You should have realized by now... getting these people fed is far, far harder than killing them...”

If you kill them all, naturally no one goes hungry anymore.

(End of Chapter)