Chapter 1068: Hes a fake (2/2)

But Long Feiye had an even greater provocation in mind. “Gu Beiyue,” he said, “Once everyone’s escaped, destroy Heretical Sword Sect for this crown prince. Only leave Heretical Sword Depository standing!” He was not only challenging Bai Yanqing, but telling the world’s people that his master’s Celestial Mountain Sword Sect would always be the authority of the martial arts circles and not to be challenged![9]

With Gu Beiyue in charge, no one had any worries. He remained at Heretical Sword Depository while Han Yunxi and Long Feiye returned to Celestial Mountain peak. Gu Qishao followed behind them with his head bowed. He loved hustle and bustle, but he’d been nothing but silent this entire trip, if only because the sword on his back was so darned heavy. The weight made it difficult for him to even speak.

Long Feiye and Han Yunxi used their lightness techniques to push against the tree branches and fly up high. Gu Qishao found it difficult to keep up, only for the Moye sword spirit to emerge on its own as a faint red glow. It circled around Gu Qishao a few times before settling onto the Ganjiang blade at his back.

Sensing sword qi, both Han Yunxi and Long Feiye looked back to see a warm red glow hovering by the Ganjiang treasure sword like two lovers whispering sweet nothings into each others’ ears. Long Feiye privately resolved to give Han Yunxi the Moye sword no matter what, while Han Yunxi determined to take Moye for herself as well.

Gu Qishao had no other thoughts beyond wishing he’d get to the peak faster so he could find a place to lie down!

--

When they finally reached the mountaintop, Gu Qishao flopped down on a roof while gasping for breath, too exhausted to bother with Han Yunxi or the rest. Currently, the place had calmed down. All of the other peaks were filled with disciples from the 55 Depositories working to clean up the corpses, bury the dead, or chase after leftover enemies still hidden in the hills. Granny You and a few disciples had taken over Lockheart Courtyard. Fortunately, they hadn’t lost any of the various secret cultivation manuals on Nirvana Heart Arts inside.

As soon as Long Feiye and Han Yunxi arrived, Head and Second Honored Elders urgently asked them about Third Honored Elder’s affairs. When Long Feiye told them the truth, they and Granny You were left floored.

“No disciple of my Abstinence Courtyard would ever betray the sect!” Granny You was certain.

“Could it be someone from Lockheart Courtyard?” Second Honored Elder asked.

Anyone Bai Yanqing had his eyes on would have to be an important member of Celestial Mountain Sword Sect. They thought it over and determined that only females of Lockheart Courtyard had a chance to qualify.

At this moment, an Abstinence Courtyard disciple hurried over and exclaimed, “Honored Elders, Elder, Duanmu Yao is missing!”

The Abstinence Courtyard disciples were in charge of putting the mountain peak in order, but the underground dungeons weren’t an important place to clean up. That was why things had been delayed until now. At last, everyone realized what was up! Without a doubt, Bai Yanqing had rescued Duanmu Yao and used her to understand the layout of Celestial Mountain. That was how he managed to soundlessly take over the entire sect in such a short amount of time.[10]

Who knew that Duanmu Yao could still raise such waves after her looked were ruined and her martial arts skills in tatters! They really underestimated her![11]

“We should have killed her ages ago!” Granny You was depressed. If it wasn’t for Master Jianxin’s sake, how could she, as head of the Abstinence Courtyard, simply lock Duanmu Yao up and do nothing?

Han Yunxi’s eyes flashed bitterly cold as she said, “She better not end up in this princess’s hands!”[12]

It was obvious that Duanmu Yao had fled with Third Honored Elder to seek refuge with Bai Yanqing. Heaven knows where he’d gone?[13]

“Feiye, the matter of dual cultivation is urgent. It’s best if you two seek out a blacksmith first,” Head Honored Elder said.

After a burst of internal strife, Celestial Mountain was now heavily injured.[14] There were a hundred things to take care of and it’d be best if a senior disciple like Long Feiye stayed behind to oversee the recovery process, but Head Honored Elder knew where the important things lay.[15]

Long Feiye hesitated briefly before he murmured, “I’ll leave after master wakes. Head Honored Elder, I remember there were plenty of high-quality fakes of the Ganjiang treasure sword in Sword Depository?”

“There are a few. You’re thinking of…” Head Honored Elder trailed off, wondering.

Han Yunxi smiled and muttered, “We’ll meet a plot with a plot! No one can know that Long Feiye’s subdued the Ganjiang sword!

1. C’mon guys, aren’t you forgetting someone important? A certain female + Celestial Mountain disciple with enough of a grudge against the sect (and you all) to team up with the enemy? The same female who you left here long ago and didn’t bother checking for after your anti-climatic takeover of the peak? *facepalms* It’s at times like these I doubt the author really means it when she says our protags are all “geniuses.”

2. Hey BYQ, how come the author lets you be sect leaders of two sects, huh? Granted, it’s “former sect leader” for Hundred Poisons Sect but pfft.

3. BYQ: I mean, I’m an old man and photographs and the Internet don’t exist. All I have to do is change my name and grow a beard and never use poison skills in public, probably.

4. Alternate Take: Sect Leader Hua is alive and well, if missing, and Bai Yanqing just happened to take his place because it was convenient. You can tell the author just wants to move things along and shoehorned in the characters’ assumptions here as fact instead of raising potential questions. Bit of an annoyance to me but yeah, I get it, PGC is about LFY and HYX fighting a clear-cut Big Bad instead of investigating potential sect leader deaths…

5. ...are you telling me no one’s ever managed to get into that Depository and check what their sect leader looks like? Admittedly, there’s no reason to, but the fact that they know exactly where his portrait is stored and just went, “oh yeah, well, whatever lol” is borderline weird logic.

6. Conversely speaking, why couldn’t Li Jianxin put down his pride and do what his friend couldn’t? C’mon HYX, don’t forgive those biased Celestial Mountain peeps so soon just because you’re on their side now. Remember when a bunch of their elders and disciples tried to kill you? Remember when Li Jianxin himself was hunting you down? Admittedly, Li Jianxin lacked real power in the sect for a while and was being used by Cang Qiuzi and his cronies to ever think of allying with HSS, but in the same way, the elders and disciples of Heretical Sword Sect were being led in circles by Bai Yanqing too.

7. I can see Heretical Sword Sect’s reasoning if their internal cultivation made them so unstable that they might have gone into deviation just fighting against the Celestial Mountain disciples. I don’t agree with them using fatal poisons that would kill off the disciples in seven months, but none of these people are poison experts. You think they knew? You think they could do anything against it even if they did, trusting in the decision of a sect leader they believed had their best interests at heart? HSS was weaker and desperate, it makes sense for them to use something...less direct. Imagine if you were a HSS disciple. You might even think it was a mercy your sect is only using this mysterious “sleeping poison” to put all the enemies into a painless coma. If HYX’s judging HSS just because they chose to poison their enemies, that makes her the biggest hypocrite on Cloud Realm Continent. I can accept villains being villains over this exaggerated self-righteous spiel. Or you know what, maybe I’m overreacting and being the biggest self-righteous commenter here, hahaha!

8. Unless HYX is sure BYQ will come to save the elders for some reason or another, this just sounds like petty venting against BYQ because she can’t get to him now. At this point she’s honestly dooming these elders to their fates, because we’ve seen plenty of examples in the past of how BYX just throws away anyone and anything that isn’t useful to him anymore, even disciples he’s trained for over a decade like Bai Yuqiao and Jun Yixie. Speaking of which, I miss their story arc...let’s get back to them soon…

9. Both of them are so petty here I just laugh. Also, I’m pretty sure if you didn’t do anything so flashy, half the world won’t even know a bunch of low-level mooks just poisoned 100% of your entire “mighty sect” and left 95% of them comatose for the past six months. If you guys couldn’t even get the intel in the past half-year, how could the rest of the martial arts world find out on their own? Even if the fleeing HSS disciples claimed they rekt your homies, who would believe them, an “evil and crooked sect” (aka “liars”), if Celestial Mountain kept quiet? For me, this just shows the world “hey hey look at us! Unless LFY’s home, any ol’ poisons experts can incapacitate us and we’re probably still recovering from our latest attack! Come get us now while the only strong fighters of our sect cough HYX LFY cough run off to do something else on their important plot missions!” Oh God, I want to rewrite this as a visual novel so much just to expose the gaping logic fails…

10. I love the fact that LFY and HYX are here implicitly wondering if Granny You’s faction had traitors when the actual turncoat was their fellow martial sister and former disciple to the sect leader. Ladies and gentleman, Celestial Mountain Sword Sect at its finest. You wouldn’t want to join any other faction!

11. No, you just didn’t bring your brains to work today. Knowledge of layout and topography doesn’t need martial arts or pretty looks to be effective, and heck if Duanmu Yao has 1) one of the highest status (and by extension clearance) before she fell to obscurity and 2) the most resentment against the sect and its leader.

12. Again, put this line back in the first 100 chapters and I kid you not, 100% of readers will assume you’re quoting Princess Changping or Duanmu Yao.

13. I dunno man, you told him where you were going in your letters + your intentions pretty clearly. I think you should start with, oh, maybe somewhere near Tiger’s Den? Or Jun Yixie’s camp in Northern Li? You know, some wild guesses here.

14. So again I ask LFY, WHY ARE YOU BURNING HSS DOWN AND MAKING A BIG FLAMING SIGN THAT SAYS “HEY WE GOT ATTACKED AND TOOK REVENGE, BETCHA WE’RE STILL RECOVERING NOW AND WEAK!”

15. Head Honored Elder: Yes, Feiye, leave quickly before you attract more disasters to us. We can deal with the fallout from you advertising our near-death experience to the rest of the martial arts world, but we can’t afford all the braindead enemies and trouble that follows you wherever you and that wife of yours show up!