FW (Eng)

Chapter 69: Returning

The Scorpion used his toes to lift his chin, beginning to laugh. "Ooo, it's Sect Leader Yu."

Yu Qiufeng shook all over. His eyes were dull, as if somewhat delirious. Struggling hard to raise his head, he looked at the Scorpion. "I... I'm not... not in my pl... not in my..." he uttered, stopping and starting.

The other shook his head, leaned in close, and spoke right into his ear. "That night, outside of Lake Tai's Zhao Manor, there were actually three total people that had died. One was Mu Yunge, Duanjian Manor's owner. One was Yu Tianjie, your precious son. There's one more... that none of you knew, as he died in a cave. He was the Long-Tongued Ghost of Ghost Valley. Do you want to hear about what happened with that, Sect Leader Yu?"

Once he brought up the name 'Yu Tianjie', Yu Qiufeng resembled a quickly-dying fish placed out of the water, twitching all over. The whites of his eyes were about to bulge out as he stared dead at the Scorpion.

"You had all long known about the Lapis Armor's existence before you went to Dongting, so you had your dear son wait at Lake Tai to intently watch the Zhang brat, and also take the chance to lie in wait for the Armor. Unexpectedly... Mu Yunge, that nervous wreck, coincidentally discovered that the Zhao's had a piece, and used the night to steal it. Yu Tianjie had believed himself to have been the only one watching him, but in reality... there were two others doing so that night, as well."

Yu Qiufeng seemed to understand something, but also understand nothing. He felt that this was all getting absurd. It seemed like there was an unseen hand holding a plan in the dark, and each and every of them was just an endlessly struggling pawn on an immense qi board.

"One was the Delighted Mourning Ghost. The reason why he hadn't the time to take the Armor was because he sensed the presence of someone else, someone he couldn't provoke at the time — the Ghost of Impermanence that represented the Ghost Valley's Master, Meng Hui. Unluckily... he's also another client of mine. Your son, believing himself to be clever, stupidly took the Armor off of Mu Yunge, and then, right as he excitedly thought to leave, Lao Meng had someone kill him. That someone had once been subordinated to Xue Fang, a general that later changed sides in Ghost Valley's internal strife — the Long-Tongued Ghost."

The Scorpion paused. Tears evenly flowed down Yu Qiufeng's windworn face, as did various unknown fluids, making him look both revolting and pitiful.

"What's even more unlucky is that the remarkable Ghost Master was meeting with his little paramour when the moon was above the branches of willows, so Lao Meng was too afraid to show his face. The traitorous Long-Tongued Ghost used his old Master's stunt to kill Yu Tianjie, then shift the blame for it, wanting to deliberately mislead the Ghost Master. Who'd have thought that the gentleman's pace would be too fast; so fast, the Long-Tongued Ghost couldn't dodge in time, and thus... he boldly made use of his murderous aura, resulting in..."

The Scorpion gently laughed coldly, shoved Yu Qiufeng away, leaned askew against the back of a rattan chair that a Poisonous Scorpion had gotten from wherever, and sighed with quite a bit of lament. "What type of person is the most tragic? Those who don't know their own weights, rashly entertaining high aspirations... Sect Leader Yu, do you know what's different between the heart grown in your chest, and the heart grown in mine?"

He lightly patted his own chest, looking at the man with a set-up-on-high pity, and shook his head. "The one I grew is a heart of ambition. The one you grew... is a heart of wish-ful thin-king."

Yu Qiufeng's expression cleared up a bit, and he suddenly spoke up with a mosquito-like voice. "I... Daoist Huang, Feng Xiaofeng... every one of us, the vague information we received before... had actually been all you... all you..."