Tome of Troubled Times

Chapter 270: Mutual Assistance

The announcement of the Tome of Troubled Times made several people cough up blood when they saw it.

Situ Xiao had just escorted the martial artists who had been caught back to Yanmen Pass. When he looked up at the sky and read the announcement of the tome, he cursed, “Damn it, no wonder he asked me to bring the guys who were captured back to camp! He wanted to go out and take all the credit for himself! I’m not even a part of the martial artist camp, why am I the one completing the mission for him?!”

With a smile, Cui Yuanyong received the young master of the Qiao Clan along with Qiao Er’s head, which Situ Xiao had brought back, before issuing an order. “Pass this down: brother Situ is now our deputy leader.”

Situ Xiao stomped his foot in utter rage. “Now I know how the two of you ended up as family.”

Cui Yuanyong raised his head after hearing Situ Xiao’s comment and said helplessly, “Well, I can only wonder how well things are actually going to go... Even back when Zhao Changhe was still at the mountain stronghold, I already could not help but wonder how Yangyang might fare against Yue Hongling in the future should they actually become family.”

Situ Xiao asked hurriedly, “Wait, what?! Yue Hongling and Zhao Changhe actually got so close so early on? Give me more details!”

“Come to our martial arts camp. We can continue this over a bottle of wine.”

“Fine.”

“Ok, so back then, Yue Hongling had reached down to...”

Cui Yuanyong worried about how his little sister would fare in the family hierarchy that seemed all but certain to appear, but Cui Yuanyang herself actually did not think too much about it. At the moment, she was sitting at home with her chin propped up on her hand as she muttered to herself, “He’s already ranked sixth. I knew it; it was never a problem for Big Brother Zhao to enter the Ranking of Man in three years.”

Right in front of her, Cui Wenjing frowned and said, “Shouldn’t you be practicing the sword art I taught you just now?”

“Huh?” Cui Yuanyang smiled apologetically. “T-the wind is too strong. I-I can’t hear you clearly.”

“You used to train so hard. Ever since you went to Langya and came back, you’ve been blushing every day and even sneaking peeks at erotic works!” Cui Wenjing angrily stood up, then grabbed a feather duster and threatened her with it. “If you keep this up, do you think you’ll ever be able to match up to Yue Hongling or Tang Wanzhuang?! How can I have such an unambitious daughter? Do you need me to spank you before you start working hard again?!”

Cui Yuanyang quickly ran away.

Before she could get far, however, Cui Wenjing grabbed her by the collar and said, “Go to the ancestral hall. The Qinghe Sword has been humming recently, and I think it might mean that its sword spirit has returned. Go and see if you can have it recognize you as its master.”

“Huh? Shouldn’t it be big brother who goes instead?”

“It’s not like only one of you can go and try. Do you really think I would only rely on you?” Cui Wenjing was frustrated, “Do you think your performance has been good enough?”

Cui Yuanyang had nothing to say to that.

*

At the headquarters of the Four Idols Cult.

Xia Chichi sat cross-legged on the altar, opened her eyes while in meditation, and tilted her head to look at the sky.

Beside her, a protector bowed and said, “Saintess, your rank has been pushed down...”

Xia Chichi’s mouth twitched.

A group of people clamored, “Saintess, we can’t tolerate it! This Zhao Changhe, we were already being so magnanimous when we refrained from killing him, yet now he’s even gone and surpassed you!”

Isn’t that a good thing...

Xia Chichi’s face remained expressionless. “The Tome of Troubled Times specialized in stirring up trouble. Only fools like Cui Yuanyong would rush to challenge others just because they were surpassed. If there’s someone behind the Tome of Troubled Times, they must be laughing inside whenever they see the chaos caused by some simple changes in rankings.”

The crowd looked at each other in confusion. Their saintess’ words made sense, and they realized that they had been a bit too hasty. But then, why did it seem like their saintess was quite irritated, to the point where her words even seemed to be squeezed through her teeth?

Xia Chichi kept on looking at the final comment from the tome until it finally disappeared. Then, she gritted her teeth and said, “He’s just at the seventh layer of the Profound Gate, what’s so remarkable about that? I’ve already broken through to the eighth layer of the Profound Gate and am advancing to the ninth layer. Once I break through, I’ll enter the Ranking of Man directly. Why bother competing with a bunch of children for a placement on the Ranking of Hidden Dragons? What’s so good about being sixth on the Ranking of Hidden Dragons? If he’s so capable, he should go ahead and take first!”

The crowd could only say, “The saintess has lofty aspirations.”

Xia Chichi suddenly said, “Tell me, when a river reflects the sunset, is it the river embracing the sunset, or is it the sunset entering the river?”

The crowd could not understand her and was confused by her words.

What is the saintess talking about...

In any case, no matter how annoyed Situ Xiao, Cui Yuanyong, Cui Wenjing, or Xia Chichi were, it was someone else who truly felt the greatest rage.

Far at Jiangnan, within the territory of the Maitreya Cult, a white-robed assassin looked at the sky in confusion. After a few moments, he erupted in anger and exclaimed, “Sha Seven, you said he headed south! Is the sun fucking rising from the west now?!”

*

The two who had hidden in the mountains could not care any less about any of the storms raging outside. All they knew was that the barbarian army had sealed off the mountains, and Chi Li and the others had not entered the mountains to search for them.

After all, it was nighttime, and it would not be easy to find people in the mountains.

The two quietly fled, making their way up a mountainside.

They were in a vast mountain range that stretched for who knew how far. The Rocky Mountain that they had seen earlier was only a small part of this mountain range. Yue Hongling did not know why Zhao Changhe chose to enter the mountain range at this spot. It seemed like the peak they were scaling was worse than the rest, as it was comparatively smaller and bare, with only a few jagged rocks scattered around that they could use for cover. It was hardly a suitable place for them to hide and recover from their injuries.

She worried that they might be discovered at dawn...

He said that he knew of a secret area here, but it doesn’t seem like he knows where it is. Actually, how does he even know about any secret area here? I’ve been wandering around this area for three months, and I only came to this conclusion after gathering lots of information and scouting around. So who gave him the map he’s got in his hand? Could he have been deceived?

By this time, Yue Hongling was almost at her limit. She leaned weakly on Zhao Changhe and whispered, “How about we find a cave to tend to our injuries first? If we don’t take care of them, we might really end up not having the strength to deal with our opponents if we are found.”

Zhao Changhe’s injuries were also causing him severe pain. After riding for so long, his hastily-administered first aid had already been rendered useless. The true qi of a powerful expert on the Ranking of Man was still raging inside his body, making him extremely uncomfortable. Their strength now was far less than when they were first injured. And the longer this dragged on, the worse it would get.

But with the situation already having reached this point, they had to hold on.

He bent down and whispered, “I’ll carry you.”

Yue Hongling shook her head and said, “You’re not in a much better state than me.”

“No, but I’m stronger than you,” Zhao Changhe said as he leaned in and lifted her onto his back without hesitation. “Let’s go.”

Yue Hongling did not even have the strength to struggle, so she simply lay limply on his back. As she watched him stagger as he walked, she really was not sure what to feel.

Zhao Changhe trudged uphill with difficulty, firmly believing that the secret area was nearby. On the map in his hand, the shape of the mountain range was drawn clearly, with each peak’s entrance marked in great detail. He had been able to easily match the drawings on the map to the actual location, so the map had clearly not been carelessly made.

He took out the map again and took another look. There was a small annotation next to a mark and it said, “There is a pile of rocks halfway up the mountainside. While the rocks on the mountain might seem disorganized, there is a specific set of seven rocks that form a very precise shape similar to the Big Dipper. However, they do blend in with the other rocks, so they are difficult to distinguish.”

“Under the moon and stars, if you stand at the position of Beidou[1], you may sense a faint, unusual aura coming from the rock formation, suggesting a hidden alternate dimension. The exact way as to how to open it has not been explored yet. I had to leave for other matters when I came across it, planning to return another day if fate allowed it. With these thoughts in mind, I made this map and added the corresponding annotations.”

“The shape of the Beidou stone looks as follows...”

After that last note, there was a doodle that could be taken as a stone or just some random scribbles, seemingly without any pattern.

This was a drawing that Master Yuan Xing must have left for himself, with the intention of having it help him identify which mountain peak to go to and which stone was the critical point.

Otherwise, with how similar all the mountains looked, having to find a specific set of rocks among countless other rocks would be nigh impossible. If he returned years later to look for the same place again, he would have likely long forgotten how to get to the same spot.

Now, Zhao Changhe greatly benefited from the notes that Master Yuan Xing had written. Staggering under the weight of Yue Hongling on his back, he made it halfway up the mountain. Sure enough, he saw a lot of jagged rocks scattered around. This kind of chaotic rocky landscape was common on such mountains.

The stones did not have anything special about them. They just seemed like a random pile of rocks with no discernible pattern, forming a natural scenery that one could find anywhere.

Midway on the mountainside, right out in the open, lay a seemingly ordinary pile of rocks. No one would ever think that this was the entrance to a secret realm. This was likely the very reason as to why no one had ever found it. Everyone who passed by it likely just overlooked it.

Zhao Changhe could not help but wonder as to how Master Yuan Xing had even come across the thought of there being anything special about a pile of rocks he stumbled upon on a remote mountain. Even if some rocks did form into the shape of the Big Dipper, it was not something that just anyone would notice, much less connect that random shape to a secret realm.

Zhao Changhe could not understand, but he did not bother dwelling on such thoughts too much. Following the shapes drawn on the map, he scoured the pile of rocks and eventually came across the Beidou stone described by Master Yuan Xing. He tried standing on the stone and closed his eyes to focus on his sensations, but he did not sense the unusual aura that had been mentioned.

Just when he was starting to feel rather frustrated, Yue Hongling suddenly spoke softly from his back, “There is something unusual about this place.”

Zhao Changhe quickly put her down on the stone. “How so?”

Yue Hongling closed her eyes for a moment and focused on her senses before saying, “There’s a sense of communication between heaven and man here... I’m guessing that this is something that can only be perceived by those who have come into contact with the Profound Mysteries. It’s normal if you can’t feel anything.”

Zhao Changhe rolled his eyes, but her words made sense.

Yue Hongling said, “There’s an extremely well-hidden star chart formation here. We must be right at the eye of the formation. The person who gave you the information about this place did not lie to you.”

“How do we get through the formation?” Zhao Changhe asked, suddenly getting a very strange feeling in his heart.

He recalled how when he and Chichi had been trying to break the formation back at Beimang, he had asked Yue Hongling such a question as well.

Yue Hongling, who had traveled widely and was knowledgeable about these things, had studied this area extensively. Even if he knew where the eye of the formation was, he did not know how to break it on his own.

Yue Hongling, strugglingly, got up and walked around the Big Dipper. She then said softly, “Fortunately, there are two of us here...”

Zhao Changhe: “Huh?”

“In this Big Dipper formation, there is an extremely slight misalignment at the end where Yaoguang[2] is. One person needs to stand on Beidou to stabilize the eye of the formation, while the other shifts Yaoguang. This correspondence between the head and tail of the Big Dipper will reveal the truth.”

As Yue Hongling explained, she stood next to a stone and pushed it with all her strength.

Click!

The rumbling sound of the stone being nudged suddenly turned into a crisp click, and then the Big Dipper in the sky shone brightly. A vortex then faintly appeared amid the pile of rocks.

Zhao Changhe was overjoyed and jumped off the stone. “Let’s go.”

Yue Hongling did not respond.

When he turned to look at her, he saw that she had fainted on the ground.

Zhao Changhe quickly picked her up and jumped directly into the vortex, disappearing from the mountain.

The moment he jumped into the vortex, the shifted stone rolled a bit more on its own, and the vortex disappeared. The stars moved stealthily, and everything returned to as it was before, with no sign that anything had happened there.

Not long after that, Chi Li soared to the scene. He did not even spare a glance at the pile of rocks, and directly rushed up the mountain.

1. This is the Northern Dipper, also known as Alpha Ursae Majoris or Dubhe. It is the second-brightest star in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. ☜

2. This is also known as the Eta Ursae Majoris or Alkaid. It is the easternmost star on the Big Dipper. ☜