Chapter 1547: Ups and Downs of Human Life

Chapter 1547: Ups and Downs of Human Life

In times like these, when the Great Wilderness was ravaged by famine, feeding a single person—putting a full meal in their belly—was no small trouble.

And if one were to feed a whole crowd of refugees steadily, even keeping them full day after day, it would cost a mountain of Spirit stones and drain an enormous amount of resources.

Disaster relief was a thankless task.

Throughout the ages, relief supplies from all sides, passing from top to bottom through layer upon layer of embezzlement and extortion, rarely reached the refugees in any meaningful amount.

Factoring in such attrition, the true cost of relief efforts would balloon into an utterly staggering figure.

It was a massive, money-losing venture.

Whether it was the Dao Court, the Earth Sect, the great clans, or any other power—it was all the same.

Anyone who knew how to keep accounts, anyone with the mind of a merchant, would never do such a thing.

So rather than take a loss, pouring in manpower and resources to keep these refugees fed, it was far simpler to cut them down in one stroke and be done with it.

With no people, there was naturally no need to waste grain.

If you couldn't solve the problem, you could solve the people who had the problem.

Moreover, what was happening now in Qingchou Prefecture was a full-blown riot. These refugees all wore the label of rioters on their heads.

Whether they truly were rioters or not, it was better to kill the innocent than let the guilty slip away.

And some went even further, slaughtering everyone indiscriminately, black or white, and counting it as a great merit.

One rioter, one Merit Point.

Heads rolled, and battle honors piled high.

Mo Hua's expression was icy cold.

Gu Changhuai's face was grim as well.

Cruel as these things were, they were very likely the reality of the situation.

Mo Hua pondered for a moment, then asked, “And the Dao Court just lets this go?”

The moment the words left his mouth, Mo Hua's reaction was immediate, his pupils contracted slightly. “Could it be... the Dao Court is deliberately letting it happen?”

Gu Changhuai looked at Mo Hua, impressed by his sharp perception, and let out a sigh. “I'm only an Archive Officer. I wouldn't dare presume to comment on the arrangements of the Dao Court's upper echelons. But in the current situation, the Dao Court's apparent inaction is, in fact, the best course of action.”

“The Dao Court may also be waiting...”

Waiting for the riot to spread, for enough refugees to die, for the number of mouths to feed to shrink, and only then send troops to suppress it.

By then, it would be simple. All they'd have to do was kill.

Starve out one batch, let another batch kill each other off, suppress and slaughter yet another batch, and in the end, only a small amount of relief supplies would be needed to keep the survivors alive.

After all, no matter how many people died, in the Dao Court's ledgers, they were ultimately just an abstract string of numbers.

And numbers could be altered at will.

In the end, who died and who lived, no one cared at all.

Mo Hua's gaze dimmed. He glanced at the refugees around him, then couldn't help but look up at the sky, a sudden feeling stirring in his heart.

At this very moment, perhaps some Heavenly Secrets Powerhouse of the Dao Court was looking down from high above, calculating the cause and effect of Kun Province...

From up in the sky, looking down, the refugees filling the city might truly seem like ants—dense and countless.

But standing on the ground, amid this blood-soaked, wounded land, among these suffering refugees, one could see that these densely packed ants—men and women, old and young alike—each wore a different face of sorrow. They were living, breathing people, one after another, with lives that were broken and hanging by a thread...

Looking from above, one saw the grand design of Heavenly Secrets.

Looking from below, one saw the rise and fall of mortal lives.

Heaven, Earth, and Man...

Mo Hua's pupils grew deep and unfathomable, his thoughts rising and falling with the scene before him, adrift and unsettled.

Gu Changhuai noticed that Mo Hua had suddenly fallen into deep thought, a subtle and indescribable mystical aura emanating from him, and did not disturb him.

Only when Mo Hua had reined in his aura, snapped back to his senses, and withdrawn his thoughts and Divine-Sense Thoughts back into his Sea of Consciousness did Gu Changhuai speak:

“Let's set out. We'll head to Qingchou City first.”

“Mm.” Mo Hua nodded.

No matter what, it was best to take action first, time and circumstances waited for no one.

…

Afterward, Mo Hua and Gu Changhuai set off for Qingchou City.

The area outside Qingchou City was chaotic, and with so many people around, moving about would inevitably be inconvenient and invite unforeseen trouble. After a brief moment of thought, Mo Hua decided that he and Uncle Gu should first find a way into the city to assess the situation.

Gu Changhuai, in turn, instructed Gu An and Gu Quan: “Find a remote spot elsewhere, rest and recover your strength properly, and conserve your energy. Do not act rashly without my orders...”

Gu An and Gu Quan frowned, somewhat worried about Gu Changhuai, but then it occurred to them that their Lord Gu had the extraordinarily capable Young Master Mo by his side, theoretically, he was safer than anyone.

If they encountered a problem that even Young Master Mo couldn't solve, then tagging along would be pointless.

Better to stay behind, recover from their injuries, and then help Lord Gu and Young Master Mo afterward.

Gu An nodded, cupped his fists, and said, “My lord, please be careful.” Then, addressing Mo Hua, he added, “Young Master Mo, we entrust him to you.”

Mo Hua nodded.

With that, the group wasted no further time and split up to go their separate ways.

The cultivators of the Dao Court Division under Gu Changhuai's command stationed themselves in a remote area to recover from their injuries.

Mo Hua and Gu Changhuai, meanwhile, concealed their forms and made their way toward Qingchou City—a city battered and broken by war, yet still standing defiant amid the chaos and calamity.

Mo Hua himself was well-versed in the Minor Five Elements Concealment Technique, so concealing his presence came naturally to him.

Gu Changhuai had spent so much time around Mo Hua that, as the saying goes, “Those who associate with ink (Mo) become stained black.” He now also kept several sets of precious concealment robes stored in his storage bag.

The two concealed their forms and advanced toward Qingchou City.

Walking all the way through the surging tide of disaster victims, starving refugees, displaced wanderers, fleeing masses, and riotous mobs, everything they saw around them remained a tapestry of misery and desolation.

Those in tattered rags, gaunt and skeletal, were too numerous to count.

Occasional acts of abuse and slaughter broke out, plunging everything into chaos.

Many disaster victims stared with numb eyes, their brows darkened with an ominous pallor—clearly their fates were already sealed, despair filling their hearts as they merely endured one day after another.

And these wretched souls, as far as the eye could see, stretched on like a dark cloud, beyond counting.

Even Mo Hua, who had seen much, felt himself growing numb, able only to let out a helpless sigh.

Gu Changhuai's feelings ran even deeper than Mo Hua's.

After all, he was a young master from the Qianxue aristocratic family, raised in luxury and indulgence from childhood, clad in fine silks and fed delicacies. Even after becoming an Archive Officer of the Dao Court Division and hunting down Criminal Cultivators, he had encountered his fair share of suffering souls.

But never before had he personally traversed such a massive tide of disaster victims, standing within arm's reach of them, witnessing this convergence of human misery, looking upon these people reduced to something less than human. The complex emotions churning within him surged back and forth like the tides.

Before this, he had only seen records of the 《Famine Disaster》 in the historical texts of the Dao Court.

At the time, he had merely read the words, and they had left him unmoved.

Now, having witnessed it with his own eyes, he finally understood the true weight of those two characters, the human suffering they contained was truly beyond the power of ten thousand words to express.

Every living person around him was the embodiment of suffering made manifest.

Through this dense crowd and the thick, unending tide of misery, Mo Hua and Gu Changhuai walked on in silence.

The atmosphere was so heavy and oppressive that neither of them spoke much.

Along the way, the refugees and rioters they encountered were all of low cultivation, with Golden Cores being very few and far between, there was no chance anyone among them could detect the two.

And so, the pair passed through the vast tide of rioters and walked straight to the foot of Qingchou City, looking up.

There they saw the towering walls of Qingchou, their surfaces battered and stained with dried flesh and blood.

Clearly, since the outbreak of the riots, countless brutal battles had been fought near the city walls.

At this moment, the city gates of Qingchou were tightly shut, the City Gate Formation sealed, and the surrounding area cleared and fortified—no outside cultivator was permitted entry.

What exactly lay within the walls remained unknown to anyone.

Mo Hua glanced up at the towering walls, then turned to Gu Changhuai and asked, “Do you think there are actually Dao Court Division cultivators inside Qingchou City who managed to survive?”

Given how things looked—gates sealed tight, bloodshed everywhere—the Dao Court Division cultivators in Qingchou City had probably been slaughtered long ago.

Gu Changhuai sighed. “Let's hope there are survivors...”

Even if the local Dao Court Division cultivators were low in cultivation and couldn't offer much combat strength, they could at least provide some information.

From what they could tell so far, there had to be more hidden truths behind this Qingchou riot.

These were things Gu Changhuai hadn't been able to investigate before—after all, he wasn't Mo Hua, whose mind was cunning enough to know everything.

Some matters that defied ordinary understanding were simply beyond Gu Changhuai's reach.

Now he could only hope that following Mo Hua into the city would lead them to survivors and yield some intelligence.

Gu Changhuai looked at the walls and asked Mo Hua, “Can you get past these walls?”

Mo Hua studied them for a moment—tall, sturdy, and sealing off the refugees outside—then sent out a Divine-Sense Thought and nodded.

“Should be fine... not too hard...”

It was probably a city defense system composed of Five Elements Formations at Third-Grade low tier or below.

If they tried to force their way in, with so many eyes watching, it would indeed be difficult.

But if it was just a matter of sneaking in quietly, there weren't many walls or formations within Third-Grade in this world that could stop Mo Hua.

At the very least, such a formation wouldn't exist in a relatively remote Third-Grade prefecture like Qingchou.

But before that...

Mo Hua frowned slightly, walked a full circle around the walls, and finally spotted a small patch of wild grass at the base of the wall.

He plucked a few blades, held them up to his eyes, and frowned. Then he couldn't help but ask Gu Changhuai in a low voice:

“Uncle Gù, have you ever come across any... wild grass in Qingchou Prefecture?”

“Wild grass?” Gu Changhuai was taken aback. “What kind of grass?”

“It's... very ordinary, very lowly... but also somewhat special, rather precious...” Mo Hua wasn't sure how to describe it.

Gu Changhuai frowned, not understanding what Mo Hua was going on about with his muddled words.

Ordinary and lowly, yet special and precious?

If it were ordinary, how could it be special? If it were lowly, how could it be precious?

Gu Changhuai thought for a moment but could only shake his head. “I don't recall anything like that...”

It wasn't surprising he had no memory of it, who would bother paying attention to roadside weeds? They were worthless things anyway...

But Mo Hua's brow gradually knit tighter.

He had originally thought that, amid this troubled era, he might find Straw Grass in Qingchou Prefecture to use as a medium for the Great Wilderness Straw Dog Fate Art within the Heavenly Secret Dao.

Yet reality had shown him that he had been thinking too simply.

All the way here, he still hadn't seen a single blade of wild grass that could be used to weave a fate-bound Straw Dog.

“This is the Great Spirit Field Realm, and it's a year of calamity...”

Gu Changhuai said thoughtfully, “Any grass with even a hint of spiritual nature or nourishment, along with the bark, has all been eaten.”

“Even if it weren't a famine year, the spirit farmers of the Great Spirit Field Realm make their living by farming. And farming inherently requires weeding...”

Gu Changhuai paused here, looking somewhat puzzled as he asked Mo Hua, “What do you need wild grass for?”

Mo Hua sighed. “I use it for fortune-telling.”

Gu Changhuai's expression turned subtle, unsure whether what came out of Mo Hua's mouth was truth or falsehood.

Mo Hua's nature was kind yet cunning—the truth he spoke might be a lie, and the lies he spoke might be the truth.

Gu Changhuai didn't press further.

But Mo Hua still seemed weighed down with worry.

He hadn't expected that even now, he still hadn't found suitable Straw Grass. This was becoming troublesome...

Without a Straw Dog, there was no medium to block calamity.

He would also lose his means of actively offsetting the calamity of cause and effect and killing tribulation.

The countless Vicious Ghost Baleful-Fate Schemes his Martial Uncle had laid remained latent within his Fate Pattern.

His Divine Sense Sword Transformation was still unable to be unsealed, and he could not yet take on the Killing Karma.

Otherwise, once the Fate Bane backlash occurred and drew his Martial Uncle's attention, that would be disastrous...

By all reasoning, with the Strange Dao descending, his Martial Uncle should now have greater matters to attend to and might not bother with this insignificant Martial Nephew of his.

But the problem was, his Martial Uncle wasn't necessarily a man who followed reason.

The Strange Dao itself wasn't particularly reasonable either.

Mo Hua couldn't fathom what other unreasonable and terrifying aspects might emerge from the Strange Dao—a fusion of the Heavenly Secret Deceptive Algorithm, that supreme calculation method, with his Martial Uncle's profound Dao Heart Seeding Demon...

Mo Hua sighed inwardly.

“I must hurry and weave a few more Straw Dogs...”

As it now appeared, this Cause and Effect Method—one that embodied the principle of Causality Transference, using Straw Dogs as substitutes for death—was nowhere near as casual as he had imagined.

This might truly be one of the most supreme cause-and-effect inheritances in all the Great Wilderness.

Now that he had left the Great Wilderness, even finding causal materials had become so difficult.

Straw Dogs: he had used them so carelessly back then. Now that times had changed, they had become so precious they were almost beyond his reach.

Mo Hua sighed inwardly and pondered alone for a long while.

Gu Changhuai didn't know what Mo Hua was thinking about as he stood there in a daze, but he was used to it and didn't disturb him.

It wasn't until after a while, when Mo Hua had finished his deliberations, that Gu Changhuai asked, “Can we enter the city now?”

“Mm.” Mo Hua nodded.

He set aside his worries and stopped thinking about the Straw Dogs. Instead, he raised his head, Divine-Sense Thought swirling in his pupils, perceiving the flaws in the walls of Qingchou City.

The Qingchou City Gate Formation was an extremely sophisticated Third-Grade Formation that had protected Qingchou City for nearly a thousand years, ensuring the city could weather storms and continue to endure.

But such sophistication didn't exist for Mo Hua.

What others saw as the impregnable walls of Qingchou City, in the eyes of a prodigy like Mo Hua, actually had quite a few flaws.

Moreover, Qingchou City had just endured a riot, and the City Gate Formation itself had sustained some damage.

Before long, Mo Hua discerned the gaps in the Formation Pivot's circulation along the city walls and located the weaknesses.

He led Gu Changhuai, and the two of them pressed themselves against the walls of Qingchou, their bodies parallel to the ground, walking step by step upward along the magnificent fortifications.

Where to go, what direction to follow, which wall bricks to step on, which formations to avoid—Mo Hua knew it all with perfect clarity.

Gu Changhuai didn't understand formation layouts, but he knew that following Mo Hua was never a mistake.

And so, on the towering, lofty walls of Qingchou City, Mo Hua and Gu Changhuai, like two ants—or perhaps two masters strolling leisurely up a mountain—bypassed every early-warning and defensive formation, and after a quarter of an hour, finally reached the summit of the city wall.

Standing atop the wall, Gu Changhuai felt a momentary daze:

“Qingchou City... we got in this easily...”

But he turned to glance at Mo Hua, and understood in his heart that the reason it was so easy was because of Mo Hua, that freak of a Formation Master.

With formations, what takes a quarter of an hour to accomplish requires a hundred years of cultivation.

And to be able to do what Mo Hua did—entering a Third-Grade Formation as if strolling through a courtyard, handling it with effortless ease—other Formation Masters, even those with exceptional talent, even those who had devoted their entire lives to the study of formations, would likely find it nearly impossible.

Gu Changhuai sighed inwardly.

Comparing people to people only breeds resentment, let alone comparing oneself to Mo Hua...

Mo Hua glanced at Gu Changhuai, and Gu Changhuai nodded.

Then, without further hesitation, unseen by any eyes, they openly crossed the parapet, the crenellations, and the beacon tower, and leaped down.

Like two invisible eagles, they plummeted into Qingchou City.

And within the great calamity, inside Qingchou City, it was, once again, an entirely different scene altogether.

…

Translator Notes:

近朱者赤，近墨者黑: “Those near cinnabar become red; those near ink become black.”

And Mo Hua has Mo (墨 - ink), so “近墨者黑” literally means “those close to Mo Hua become blackened (influenced by him).”

(End of Chapter)