THE YILING MATRIARCH

Chapter 22 : Dirty hands and a clean heart

As they found no trace of the Kiss of Decay's origins, all they could do was clean up the last of the bodies and clear the area of any last bit of evil spirits that lingered in the area; Wangji gave out the orders to purify the grounds as the other disciples watched Meifeng personally demolished the stones which held the trap in place.

The fact there was no trace as to what had created the Kiss of Decay to form in the first place was disturbing, as well as mysterious, since it could not have happened naturally. Standing beside Wangji as her job had finished before him, Meifeng spoke out loud to her partner.

"No traces? Seriously? Guess this means we'll have to look twice as hard for the soul of the body parts we've found so far. Wish they could at least tell us what happened to them." Wangji made a monosyllabic hum in agreement to this as Meifeng folded her hands behind her head in a relaxed state despite the situation they were faced with.

Lan Yuan, a young disciple who had grown strangely comfortable to be around the woman and, without remembering to act accordingly as a Lan, ran up to the pair and frantically told them news of the severed arm back in Gusu had escaped suddenly with a second wind of energy despite being carefully watched. With the arm free, their only other way to track down the rest of Jin Zixun was narrowed down to his head as they focused his energy into a compass to point their way to the next body part.

The compass was in fact an invention Meifeng had created that could detect even the smallest presence of any evil creature once it had a small taste of their aura. However easy it made Night Hunting for Cultivators, it could only indicate a rough location of the target and would stop working after twenty-four hours.

Linking the head towards their next destination, they were pointed to travel somewhere in a north-eastern direction... somewhere near the village of Qinghe. Little did Lan Wangji and Wei Meifeng know that, miles away from them, Jiang Cheng and his nephew were chasing after the same thing and would run into them sooner than they expected.

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Randomly pointing the compass in a direction to pick up their lead, an annoyed groan left Meifeng as she shook the tool she was sure was not working anymore. "No, no, no, no! You're supposed to work at least twenty-four hours, not quit on me before even twelve! Useless piece of junk!" Ignoring the eyes on her, Meifeng continued to abuse the compass as it spun lazily in the midst of a busy marketplace. Stuffing it into her knapsack, Meifeng pouted as Wangji stood by her side, not caring that they had an audience. "Ok, I can now say for sure that the magic in the compass has stopped working. Now what?" Wangji seemed to lose himself in thought at her question for a moment, looking carefully around him.

The open square was peaceful with the sounds of men showing off their expensive merchandise to potential buyers. Places of business urged passing tourists to come inside their establishment and fill their bellies with food and drink. The atmosphere itself was also light, much like the river-side village he recalled, yet there was nothing he could see that would belong to something evil. "The arm we encountered is pure evil. Nothing like it could leave this place without traces of its presence or, at least, trouble for us to follow." Wide eyes stared at him for a second before a blinding smile took its place and whipped around the lifeless compass on her pointer finger.

"Well, I guess that means we'll need to find another way to find our target." It was almost comical how quickly Wangji could watch Meifeng's short attention span being grabbed at this very moment by something behind him, yet tried to pretend that her conversation with Wangji still held her interest. Pulling her top in an act to fan herself, Meifeng gave him a shy smile. "Let's go eat that! I bet it'll be the perfect way to cool off in this weather until we think of something!" Following her pointing finger, a bright sign hung over an establishment advertising Cornetto ice-cream. For some reason, however, Wangji noticed several young male-female pairs were sitting under shaded seats with one bowl in-between them.