Chapter 45: This Thousand-Year Tree Spirit Knows Luo Li
“There is a way,” Granny Huai said with a kindly smile, nodding. But she did not answer directly.
She slowly turned to the side, her cloudy gaze settling on the two little tree figures standing there timidly beside her.
“But this old woman has an unworthy request.”
She raised a hand, dry and rough like tree bark, and pointed at them. “This is Xiao Lü. She is sixteen this year. This is Xiao Cong. He is seventeen this year.”
“They... are this old woman’s only grandson and granddaughter.”
The two little tree figures obediently nodded their “heads,” and the leaves in their canopies rustled softly.
Sitting on that tree stump, Luo Li looked at Granny Huai, then at the two little tree spirits, her face full of confusion.
A moment ago they had still been discussing how to remove the mark, so why had the old woman suddenly started introducing her grandchildren in the next breath?
Was that jump not a bit too abrupt?
“I can’t understand a single word of this...” she muttered softly.
Chen Guan turned his head and took a long, deep look at the bewildered Luo Li, then slowly frowned.
He was an old hand of the jianghu. He could hear three parts of what was meant from the tone alone.
Granny Huai was using the favor of removing the mark in exchange for entrusting her descendants to him.
At once, he caught a whiff of something deeply wrong. This old tree spirit did not seem like someone whose end was near, so why would she be entrusting children to someone?
And even if she were, why would she entrust them to a human?
He fixed his eyes on Granny Huai and said in a low voice, “Could it be... that old Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape outranks even you, Granny?”
The moment the words “Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape” were spoken, the two little tree spirits, who had been fairly quiet until then, trembled violently as though they had heard something utterly terrifying.
Then they both clutched tightly at Granny Huai’s arms, the leaves on their bodies trembling.
Granny Huai turned around and gently patted their little arms, soothing them.
“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid. Go on. Take this Sister Luo Li to the back courtyard and let her play with Little Grass.”
Luo Li was not at all willing.
Staying with these little tree spirits, who were impossible to communicate with, was mentally exhausting. How could it compare with listening to Chen Guan and Granny Huai talking?
She had just been about to refuse when Chen Guan turned his head and shot her a stern look.
Luo Li flattened her mouth and could only stand up reluctantly, lift her skirts, and follow the two little tree spirits, who kept looking back over their shoulders, toward the back courtyard.
Once the three of them had vanished behind the fence, Chen Guan abruptly changed the subject.
“You already knew I would come here?”
Granny Huai fell silent for a few moments. Beneath the tree shade, she let out a long sigh.
“I would not say I knew.”
“I only guessed... that sooner or later, someone would bring that little girl here. I simply did not expect that the one who came would happen to be an Escort Master.”
“Hm???”
Chen Guan was slightly taken aback.
It was not surprising that this old locust tree spirit could tell his realm at a glance.
But how had she known that he was an Escort Master?
It was not as though the words Escort Master were written across his face.
Yet Granny Huai had no intention of explaining that. Instead, she directly answered the question he had asked earlier.
“This old woman can help you resolve the resentment mark on her body. As for that old ape, you need not concern yourself with it.”
Rather than feeling relieved, Chen Guan only felt his heart sink more heavily.
He guessed that the meaning behind her entrustment was that after he removed the resentment mark, she would suffer retaliation from that old ape.
Then he heard Granny Huai continue, “As payment... I hope you can take my two grandchildren and leave this place.”
Shhk!
Chen Guan stood up at once, seized the Horse-Cleaving Saber that rested nearby, and without another word, turned and started to leave.
“I’m an Escort Master. I only handle escort work. If the success of this escort is to be exchanged for Granny’s life, then the deal is far too poor. I won’t take it.”
“Farewell.”
He was not a fool.
Resolve a single mark, yet entrust your grandchildren in exchange—what did that mean?
It meant that the price Granny Huai would pay to remove this mark was her life.
“Wait!”
Granny Huai suddenly rose. There was a trace of urgency in her aged voice as she stopped him.
“Young man, do not leave in such haste. This old woman never intended for you to bear the karmic burden, nor do I blame you. This... was always part of my own destined end.”
Chen Guan stopped in his tracks and turned back, his gaze fixed fiercely on the old woman. This time, he stopped circling around the issue and asked directly,“Do you... know Luo Li?” “Or rather, do you know the person standing behind Luo Li?”
Granny Huai leaned on her cane. A complex memory flickered through her cloudy eyes.
After several moments of silence, deep weariness appeared on her face.
“To say I know her would be going too far. It is only that, one month ago...”
She paused, and her voice grew low.
“A vanguard of five thousand Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes passed by this Huai Blossom Hollow of mine, a black mass pressing down like storm clouds.”
“The ape general leading them came in on the way and asked me for a cup of Hundred-Flower Jade Dew to quench his thirst. It was from him... that I learned the purpose for which they had left the depths of the Ten Directions Marsh.”
“Five thousand?!”
Chen Guan’s brows snapped together, and he instinctively glanced toward the back courtyard.
He truly had not expected the scale of this so-called pursuit to be this terrifying!
Having those human deathsworn was one thing. But he had never imagined that the Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape clan, one of the true overlords of the Ten Directions Marsh, would dispatch an army of five thousand!
This was no pursuit.
This was marching to war.
Watching Chen Guan’s shocked expression, Granny Huai continued, “That was when I knew the one they were seeking would certainly come here, to this old woman, and ask me to remove the resentment mark.”
“But I did not expect it would be such a frail little girl.”
“As for her identity... since she herself has not told you, it would not be proper for this old woman to speak out of turn.”
“Her arrival here is my fate, and also the tribulation of Huai Blossom Hollow.”
At this point, Granny Huai slowly raised her head. In her cloudy old eyes there now appeared a desolate sorrow, along with a hint of pleading.
“This old woman has no hope of escaping this great calamity. Borrowing this favor is only going along with the flow.”
“At most... I have three days left.”
“I only ask, young friend, that for the sake of these two children, who have never done evil, you grant this old woman her wish.”
When Granny Huai finished speaking, she set down her wooden cane, clasped her hands, and bent her stooped body forward again.
“Why?”
Chen Guan asked directly, his tone clearly carrying confusion.
He had originally thought that this old demoness knew Luo Li and had some connection to her, and that was why she had chosen to help.
Yet her attitude now was the exact opposite.
A thousand-year-old demon, meeting a little girl for the first time, was willing to help her at any cost—even at the price of destroying all of Huai Blossom Hollow.
Granny Huai did not answer at once.
She slowly turned around and lifted her head, her clouded gaze passing through the dense branches overhead and landing on the ancient locust tree that blotted out the sky.
Her lips moved softly.
“Why?”
“These past thousand years, this old woman has often asked Heaven and Earth the same thing. Why?”
She reached out a hand and gently stroked the rough bark of the trunk, her voice distant and worn with age.
“Take the ancient locust tree before us. It has taken root here and has been nourished by the spiritual essence of Heaven and Earth for more than three thousand years.”
“And yet even now, it is still only an ordinary old locust tree, never having given birth to so much as a trace of intelligence.”
“And this old woman—after cultivating for only two hundred years, I had already awakened intelligence. After cultivating for five hundred years, I had already taken human form. And now I can even be called king in this place and shelter the lives beneath my protection.”
“Why is that?”
She slowly turned back around and looked at Chen Guan. There was no joy in her clouded eyes, only a deep helplessness.
“If this is true of the human path, why should the path of spirits be any different?”
“All my life, this old woman has bitterly sought that answer.”
“Only at the very end did I learn that this was simply fate itself.”
“My locust spirit lineage lives within the Ten Directions Marsh, yet we came to possess an ability we were never meant to have. That alone determined our ending.”
“This old woman’s choice today is nothing more than obeying Heaven’s will.”
At that, she bowed deeply to Chen Guan once again and said with utter sincerity, “I only ask, young friend... grant me this.”