Chapter 23: Spiritual Butterfly Respected Sage’s Scheme
The opponent’s strength was way beyond the Altar Master’s expectations; they were on completely different levels.
One casual palm strike from the lady contained enough force to scare people. The spirit ghost’s innate skill of a golden shield was literally as fragile as paper under the strength of such a strike.
Not only that, the woman even pulled out a golden paper talisman to deal with those two spirit ghosts. For a high quality good like that, he would have to sell away half of his life for it.
“She should at least be at the peak of the 2nd Stage – True Expert level, or maybe she could be at the 3rd stage – Houtian Battle Emperor level. Furthermore, there’s still that youth.” Even though the Altar Master had lived for so long, he still felt as powerless as a dog.
Regardless of ability or equipments, he is definitely not the lady’s match. If he had sneak attacked, his fate would not be any better than those two spirit ghosts.
No, if he had dared to act, his fate would’ve definitely been much worse than the two spirit ghosts. The spirit ghosts might still have some usefulness to them, but he definitely possessed no value to Soft Feather. As an enemy of no value, it was appropriate to send him to the grave.
There’s also that ordinary-looking boy. The man was unable to sense a trace of blood qi or true qi from him. Yet it was that ordinary guy who somehow managed to find the eye of that terrifying sealing array when he randomly found a place to sit. He had activated the array at the a crucial time, thereby capturing the two spirit ghosts and sealing them.
This kind of confidence and perception, and adding that to his ‘senior’ identity. When the Altar Master thought of it, he felt his legs quiver.
He was naturally a cautious person, or rather one would call him a cowardly man.
Because of his cautiousness, he was able to practice the Demonic Ghost technique, and create demon spirits and evil spirits all over the place, as well as healthily survive a hundred and seventy good years.
Still, he was bitter.
60 years. He wasted 60 years with the Ghost Lamp Temple and its spirit ghosts! 60 years of scheming and waiting, and it was all in vain.
No matter how cowardly he might be, he couldn’t accept this.
The Altar Master felt his chest turn stuffy. He raised his head to look at the starry sky, his voice mournful. “You’ve already taken away your own spirit ghost, you could have at least left mine for me.”
The Ghost Lamp Temple had two spirit ghosts. One was sealed by the Spiritual Butterfly Respected Sage. While the other belonged to the Altar Master!
Why was he unable to take the two spirit ghosts that had long matured? For what reason did he have to wait for the likes of Soft Feather to steal them?
It wasn’t that he did not want to take away the spirit ghost. During the time it took for the spirit ghost to mature, he practically thought about taking the spirit ghost away from Huang Dagen’s tomb for every single moment!
But he was unable to do this!
With regards to the Ghost Lamp Temple, there were seven insane hidden arrays surrounding Huang Dagen’s tomb that gave people goosebumps. Without including the trapping array and the array that Song Shuhang had triggered with the Poison Dragon Grass as the eye, there were five other terrifying arrays hidden outside the tomb. These were arrays that he couldn’t break through even if you gave him a thousand years.
If these arrays were to be activated, you had to wait until Spiritual Butterfly Respected Sage’s bloodline descendants arrived, only then could you get rid of it! As long as these seal arrays were not broken, then no one would be able to steal the spirit ghost inside!
The sealed spirit ghost could enter the array but not exit!
Indeed, the Altar Master hated this part – he could only seal the spirits inside but not remove them.
At this time, he did not notice the hidden array. So he thought that by taking over Huang Dagen and demolishing the Ghost Lamp Temple, he would be able to destroy the sealing array. Afterwards, he would happily treat the Ghost Lamp Temple as his personal belonging and wait for the spirit ghosts to mature.
Perhaps this Luo Xin Street was truly his land of opportunities. After living in hiding for a few years, he was able to chance upon a not yet matured spirit ghost and gleefully sent it to be nourished in Huang Dagen’s tomb.
But just as the spirit ghost matured, when he was about to extract it, he discovered the six other big arrays.
This definitely made him feel cheated.
Actually, if he had used his brain slightly, he should have realised — no matter what, this was the place where the Spiritual Butterfly Respected Sage was preparing spirit ghosts in advance for his daughter. How could the Spiritual Butterfly Respected Sage possibly be that careless? In retrospect, even if the Respected Sage didn’t think much of spirit ghosts, he had still bought this piece of land for the sake of getting the spirit ghosts, so there was no way that he was just going to just lay one feeble array to keep the spirit ghosts inside.
It was a pity, that for such a simple thing, the Altar Master who was blinded by greed had wasted sixty years without noticing this.
“No, it can’t end like this. At least… At the very least, I must get that spirit ghost back. That could be considered as my reward for all these years.” The Altar Master thought.
As long as he could obtain one spirit ghost, he would have the opportunity to break through the 2nd Stage – True Expert stage to enter the 3rd Stage – Houtian Battle Emperor stage, which would increase his longevity by another hundred years!
Even kneeling and prostrating himself would be fine, no matter what price he had to pay, it would be worth it.
Looking at the tomb of Huang Dagen that was enshrouded in the array, the Altar Master felt mysteriously sorrowful and walked away from Huang Dagen’s tomb with heavy footsteps.
……
……
After the Altar Master left, a tall and handsome young man appeared from the bushes. His wore a lazy expression on this face, and took out his mobile phone to make a call.
“Master, junior has found the Ghost Lamp Temple and sealed the spirit ghost. She has already returned to rest. I reckon that she will return to Spiritual Butterfly Island in a day or two.” The man earnestly reported, but there was a tone of laziness ingrained into it.
“That’s good. That little brat made me worry so much, there weren’t any accidents in the process, right?” From the phone, the voice of Spiritual Butterfly Respected Sage who was on the other side of the line was transmitted.
“Yes, there were no accidents.” The disciple reported.
“Very good. Continue to watch over your junior sister and report to me once you return to the island.” The Spiritual Butterfly Respected Sage said and then added; “Also, clean up the arrays I laid, so as to avoid the accidental activation of the arrays from causing civilian casualties. Sorry for the trouble, Jianyi.”
“Leave it to me, I will make sure to do a good job so you need not worry!” The man laughed, hung up and shrugged.
Actually, there had been some bumps that happened along the way. For example, that Altar Master, and there was also that young man named Song Shuhang.
Looking in the direction where the Altar Master had left, Liu Jianyi yawned. “Well, how should I say it, this guy can be quite tactful. Since he did not make a move, that saved me the trouble of making a move myself.”
The Altar Master was lucky that he did not have an opportunity to make a move. If he had dared to take up a pose of attacking Soft Feather, he would have been sent into the tomb with Huang Dagen and be his companion in hell.
As for that Song Shuhang, he was extremely troublesome! If Master found out that this girl, Soft Feather had barged into a man’s room in the middle of the night, and sat in that kind of position on his chest to converse with him, wouldn’t that send his master flying into a rage?
When that moment comes, would his master assign him the task of spying on Song Shuhang? So in regards to the matter regarding Song Shuhang, he definitely wasn’t going to inform his master.
It’s too troublesome. Liu Jianyi lazily thought. In any case, Soft Feather wasn’t harmed in any way, and didn’t lose anything of value. Instead, she received a lot of help from that man, Song Shuhang.
What is important is that he was a man who held conserving energy very highly. There was one time where he was too lazy to breathe, so he painstakingly learnt the Turtle Breathing Technique. In the end, he reached the stage of only requiring three breaths a month. His life’s motto was, if he can use one finger to settle something, he absolutely won’t use two fingers.
Something like creating more trouble for himself was something he would absolutely not do!
……
……
Soft Feather would never have expected that her discovering her father’s notes, and the whole journey to Ghost Lamp Temple was something that her father had secretly planned out for her. For this journey, Spiritual Butterfly Respected Sage even sent his disciple to take care of his daughter, it could be said that he had put a lot of thought into this.
In actuality, even if Mad Saber Three Waves didn’t invite his own destruction, Spiritual Butterfly Respected Sage would have found some other reason to temporarily leave Spiritual Butterfly Island.
Mad Saber Three Waves could only blame himself for leaping into the line of fire, which saved Spiritual Butterfly Respected Sage the time for finding an excuse.
**********
The next day.
June 3rd, 1st week of the month, clear weather.
Song Shuhang only managed to get up after struggling till it was 8AM.
This time, there wasn’t Soft Feather straddling his chest to make him get up.
But this made him feel more calm and easy, yet he faintly felt a little depressed. Human nature is dirty!
Once he got up, he picked up the phone on his bedside to give Soft Feather a call, “Have you gotten up?”
“I’m already awake, I just ended my morning meditation, are we going back now, Senior?” Soft Feather asked.
“Let’s go have our breakfast, then we’ll return.” Song Shuhang answered, the hotel did provide a complimentary breakfast buffet.