Chapter Seventeen: The Strange Sword

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It was only after looking at the cards that Aunt Wu realized she had misunderstood Yu Wanjiao.

She turned to Yu Wanjiao and apologized.

“Immortal, I truly owe you an apology. It is only that Ping’an worries too much about me, and he has been deceived by quite a few people before. That was why I…”

Yu Wanjiao did not ask further questions. Understanding her concern, she said gently, “It is nothing. I sensed that Ping’an and I were connected by fate, so I took the liberty of coming to trouble you.”

“Miss Yu, you may call me Aunt Wu.”

Yu Wanjiao agreed.

Although she was unwilling to flaunt the name of the Profound Heaven Sect wherever she went, she had to admit that, at times, the sect still commanded a certain degree of awe in the mortal world.

Aunt Wu pulled Yu Wanjiao aside and sat down with her.

Though she had already begun to give up hope, when she met Wu Ping’an’s gaze, she still turned to Yu Wanjiao and asked, “Miss Yu, what do you make of the symptoms I’ve been experiencing?”

Yu Wanjiao pondered for a moment, then glanced at the curious Wu Ping’an beside them.

Aunt Wu understood immediately and sent Wu Ping’an away.

Only after he had left did Yu Wanjiao speak.

“Aunt Wu, do you find yourself unable to sleep every night, with unbearable pain throughout your body?”

Aunt Wu nodded.

“I’ve seen quite a few physicians, but they all reached the same conclusion: there is nothing wrong with me. Yet I know my own body better than anyone. Every night, I feel as though something is gnawing at me, causing excruciating pain. Sometimes, I even see things that aren’t there…”

Yu Wanjiao’s expression darkened.

When she had been speaking with Wu Ping’an outside, she had already sensed that the house was shrouded in black mist.

It was ghostly energy.

And the moment she entered, she had noticed that something was amiss.

After Aunt Wu finished speaking, she saw Yu Wanjiao rise and walk straight toward a certain spot.

There was a sword there.

Yu Wanjiao had just reached out to take it when Aunt Wu stopped her.

“Miss Yu, what is it?”

Yu Wanjiao withdrew her hand and did not continue.

She had sensed that, while Aunt Wu was speaking with her, the sword had been stirring restlessly.

Of everything in the room, that sword possessed the strongest ghostly aura.

But now that Aunt Wu had noticed her movement, Yu Wanjiao did not want to frighten her. She pretended that nothing was wrong.

“I felt an inexplicable familiarity when I saw this sword just now. I was curious, so I wanted to take a closer look. Please, Aunt Wu, continue.”

“Is that so?” Aunt Wu glanced at the sword on the table and smiled.

“This was my husband’s sword.”

She stepped forward and picked it up.

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“On the day I gave birth to Ping’an, my husband suddenly claimed that an immortal had appeared to him in a dream. He said he possessed extraordinary talent and was destined to become a prodigy of cultivation. He wanted to go up the mountain and seek immortality. Once he succeeded in becoming someone’s disciple and learned even the most superficial techniques, he would come back to see us…”

It turned out that, ten years ago, Aunt Wu and her husband had been a loving couple.

Her husband, Wu Zhuang, made a living as a blacksmith.

From the day Wu Ping’an was born, he seemed to become an entirely different person.

He muttered incomprehensible words every day and repeatedly gestured with his hands outside the house.

When Wu Ping’an was a month old, Wu Zhuang began forging iron again.

Believing that he had regained his senses, Aunt Wu was delighted and obeyed his every request.

She thought he was forging the sword for someone else.

But she could only watch helplessly as, after the sword was completed, Wu Zhuang descended into madness.

Only then did Aunt Wu realize what she had done.

Yet she was powerless to stop Wu Zhuang from leaving.

He merely said that he was going up the mountain to seek immortality and become someone’s disciple, without saying which sect he intended to join.

After asking around, Aunt Wu concluded for herself that Wu Zhuang had taken the sword with him because he intended to become a sword cultivator.

But once Wu Zhuang left, the family fell apart.

Only then did Aunt Wu learn that Wu Zhuang had borrowed a great deal of silver to forge the sword.

Now that Wu Zhuang was nowhere to be found and everyone knew that Aunt Wu was raising a child and could do little to resist, people came to her home and looted it, taking everything of value before leaving.

From then on, Aunt Wu had to calculate every coin she earned with painstaking care. She not only had to repay the spirit stones, but also raise a child, Chen Ping’an.

Then, a year ago, someone suddenly came to Aunt Wu’s home and told her that Wu Zhuang had sent a letter.

Aunt Wu was overjoyed and hurriedly opened it.

She recognized a few of the characters and knew that the handwriting belonged to Wu Zhuang.

But the letter contained almost nothing.

It merely told Aunt Wu to take good care of the sword.

She immediately recognized it as the sword Wu Zhuang had taken with him all those years ago.

Aunt Wu had not dared to think too deeply about it, yet she could not help thinking about it all the same.

For some reason, it was also beginning that very year that she started experiencing strange occurrences.

Yu Wanjiao looked at Aunt Wu strangely.

“Then why enshrine the sword?”

Aunt Wu looked down at the sword in her arms and smiled.

“Now, it is all I have left to remember him by. My husband sent back something he treasured above all else. Surely he wants me to take good care of it?”

That still seemed excessively elaborate.

Yu Wanjiao found it difficult to believe.

Even if a sword had developed a sword spirit, she had never seen anything quite so strange.

She faintly sensed that Aunt Wu was deliberately concealing something.

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But she did not ask any further questions.

Since Aunt Wu clearly wished to keep it hidden, she evidently did not want others to know.

There was no reason for Yu Wanjiao to make things difficult for herself by prying.

Aunt Wu suddenly seemed to remember something. She lifted her eyes toward Yu Wanjiao.

“Miss Yu, did the Profound Heaven Sect have a disciple named Wu Zhuang ten years ago?”

Yu Wanjiao shook her head.

“No. Cultivation depends on fate, but talent is important as well.”

Aunt Wu sighed and placed the sword back on the table.

“Miss Yu, what else did Ping’an tell you?”

Seeing that she had no intention of continuing to discuss the sword, Yu Wanjiao did not press her.

Still, she quietly took note of it.

“Ping’an suspected that something had attached itself to you, so he asked me to come and take a look.”

Aunt Wu smiled. “Miss Yu, were you able to discover anything?”

“Nothing,” Yu Wanjiao lied.

Aunt Wu wore an expression that suggested she had expected as much.

“Ah, I knew it would turn out this way. No one can save me.”

She let out a sigh, her voice filled with desolation.

Looking at Ping’an’s figure in the distance, she continued, “Ping’an is simply too worried about me. Before you, he had already brought several cultivators home.”

Yu Wanjiao frowned. “You simply let him bring strangers home whenever he pleased?”

Aunt Wu shook her head.

“For some reason, Ping’an can always find genuine cultivators with uncanny accuracy. They have all been women. You are the third. Like you, the first two could not discover anything either. I do not believe Ping’an’s claims about ghosts and monsters, but he refuses to give up. He has become obsessed with the matter, and nothing I say can dissuade him.”

Yu Wanjiao nodded thoughtfully.

“I was foolish.”

“Miss Yu, you give yourself too little credit. Ping’an was thoughtless to trouble you. If you are in a hurry to continue your journey, you may leave now. Ping’an will understand.”

She paused before adding, “After all, he is used to it by now.”

“Wait.”

Yu Wanjiao interrupted her.

“Aunt Wu, I have a plan that will make Ping’an abandon this line of thought.”

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