Chapter 122: This Place Is...

After an unknown length of time passed,

Su Ming’s consciousness slowly rose from boundless darkness and icy cold.

The first sense to return was smell.

A fresh, damp-earth-laced bamboo scent pierced his nostrils.

Next came touch.

Beneath him lay a soft bed, a warm quilt covered his body, no longer the bone-chilling river water.

He slowly opened his eyes.

What met his gaze was a pale-green bamboo roof, sunlight filtering through the lattice and scattering mottled light across the floor.

The air was saturated with an extraordinarily rich, pure spiritual energy, and merely breathing it made his battered body feel a wave of comfort.

“Where is... this?”

Su Ming struggled to sit up, but an explosive, tearing pain in his chest forced a muffled groan from him, and he fell back down.

He looked inward at his body and found his condition still abysmal.

His meridians were severed in many places, his five viscera and six organs badly damaged; that palm strike, powerful enough to split stone, had almost shattered all his vitality.

If not for that miraculous pill keeping him alive, and the stubborn repairs of the Greenwood Longevity Art, he would already be a corpse.

Even so, to fully heal from these injuries would take at least a year or more, impossible to finish quickly.

“Master!”

He immediately called out anxiously in his heart.

“Master, how are you?”

Silence filled his Consciousness Sea; there was no reply.

Su Ming’s heart tightened. He hurriedly sent a faint thread of divine sense into the Xuantian ring.

Inside the ring’s space, Lin Yu’s Soul Body floated quietly at the center of the Spirit Gathering Array.

His soul had grown dim and translucent.

A faint glow emanated from the formation core, like a warm cocoon wrapping Lin Yu’s Soul Body.

Su Ming could sense his master’s soul essence had not dissipated; it had merely been overconsumed and entered the deepest level of self-repair.

Only then did he exhale in relief, but guilt and lingering fear followed immediately.

If his master had not spent his essence at the last moment, using his soul power to shock Zhao Qianshan and then using his remaining strength to shield him from the flying sword, he could never have survived.

“Master...”

Tears prickled Su Ming’s eyes. He clenched his fist and swore in his heart.

“Rest assured, your disciple will find heavenly materials and earthly treasures to restore your Soul Body to its former state!”

At that moment, the bamboo hut’s door creaked open.

Qingfeng and Mingyue entered, one after the other.

“You’re awake?”

Qingfeng’s voice carried a hint of scrutiny as his gaze swept over Su Ming.

Mingyue carried a steaming bowl of medicinal porridge, her face alight with a joyful smile.

“How do you feel? I made some spirit-rice porridge for you; it’ll help your recovery.”

Su Ming struggled to sit up and thank them, but Mingyue pressed him back down.

“Don’t move, you’re badly injured.”

Looking at these two, carved like delicate jade, childlike yet unworldly, Su Ming felt both gratitude and wariness.

“Thank you both for saving my life.” His voice was hoarse from weakness.

“Where is this...?”

“This is the Cloud Hidden Sect.” Qingfeng answered directly, his tone carrying a few airs of precocious maturity.

“We were training at the foot of the mountain when we happened to find and save you. Now it’s your turn to answer my questions.”

He pulled over a bamboo chair and sat, eyes burning as he looked at Su Ming.

“What’s your name? Who was the Foundation Establishment cultivator who died with you? How did he die?”

At that question, the air inside the bamboo hut immediately grew heavy.

Su Ming’s heart leapt.

He knew this moment would decide his fate.

The secrets about his master and that baleful broken sword must never be exposed.

His mind raced, running through the prepared account he had already rehearsed.

He lifted his head, letting a measured sorrow and fear show on his face.

“My name is Su Ming. I am originally from the mundane Great Xing state, passed the jinshi examination in the nineteenth year of the Jinghe era, and served as a Compiler at the Hanlin Academy.”

Qingfeng and Mingyue both paused at this opening line; worldly honors were distant and novel to them.

Su Ming continued, his tone low and clear: “That Foundation Establishment cultivator had no personal hatred toward me. He was commissioned by the Yongchang Marquis Manor to kill me and silence me.”

“Yongchang Marquis Manor?” Qingfeng caught the unfamiliar secular power name.

“Yes.” Su Ming nodded. “I offended the Yongchang Marquis in court, was framed, stripped of my honors, and exiled to the northern border. Zhao Qianshan was sent by the manor to wipe me out along the exile route, along with the entire escort.”

He recounted his experiences in the court, being framed for the alleged offense of jeopardizing state affairs, and the ambush during his exile—concise, clear, and to the point.

He even mentioned his friend Xu Qing and his teacher Zhou Wenhai, making plain that this was essentially a court faction struggle and that he had been discarded as a pawn.

“I don’t know what specific ties that Foundation Establishment cultivator had with the Yongchang Marquis. Before he died, his words hinted at repaying some old favor. Our fight wasn’t personal; it was for survival.”

He omitted every detail about Lin Yu guiding him in that desperate moment and the final soul-force strike, and he kept silent about the eerie baleful broken sword. He only described the final counter as a stroke of luck in a desperate situation: “He gravely wounded me, and at death’s door I clung to him and we both fell down the cliff into the river. Perhaps fate intervened—his wounds were worse and he drowned, while I was miraculously saved by you two.”

This account almost fully exposed his true background and plight—ninety percent truth, ten percent concealment (hiding Lin Yu and the baleful weapon). The logic was coherent, details believable, sketching a vivid portrait of a scholar caught in power struggles, struggling desperately to survive.

Qingfeng listened, brow slightly furrowed, tapping the arm of his bamboo chair as if digesting the treachery of the secular court and weighing the truth in Su Ming’s words. For someone raised in a sect, Su Ming’s worldly tale felt both alien and starkly real.

Mingyue, however, believed him completely, her eyes full of sympathy and indignation. “That Yongchang Marquis is wicked! And that Foundation Establishment cultivator, helping such evil! You... you’re so pitiful...”

Su Ming bowed his head, letting timely sorrow and fear show on his face. He said nothing more, simply took the bowl of spirit-rice porridge and sipped it slowly.

What he needed to do now was play the part of a persecuted scholar, unfortunate and cast out by power—this candidness was intended to lower the guard of these two mysterious sect disciples and win their sympathy.