Beyond the Timescape

Chapter 938: A Gift From Zi Qing

Xu Qing led the way through the rain, followed by Fan Shishuang, with Erniu in the rear.

Their positioning made Fan Shishuang nervous. And considering he was in human territory without any backup, his anxiety only continued to mount.

***

After the three of them left, Fourth Prince’s banquet hall was completely silent. Everyone looked around without saying a word. Of course, that silence was only a foil to the tempests raging in their hearts and minds. They were shocked. Incredulous. And there were many other emotions assailing them.

They only knew how Xu Qing’s tin Firemoon lands ended. They hadn’t heard about what led up to Xu Qing becoming the Grand Darkheaven. They also had no idea what sort of tensions had cto exist between him and the Firemoon chosen.

What had just played out gave them sclues. After all, when all was said and done, it was common knowledge that Xu Qing had defeated Sir Firedark to secure his spot as the Grand Darkheaven. But clues were just clues, and they could really only guess at what exactly had happened that would make Fan Shishuang afraid of Xu Qing’s mere presence.

After all, Fan Shishuang was a Smoldering God! He was an amazing chosen from the Firemoon Darkheaven echelon, and he was famous throughout Revered Ancient. Though he had spent almost his entire twith humankind in seclusion, which was slightly suspicious, there also wasn’t anything incredibly unusual about it. As a cultivator who had just stepped into the Smoldering God level, he was in a critical tperiod, so it actually made sense for him to spend tin meditation.

What was more, he wasn’t required to take part in the negotiations. He was only there to oversee matters and certify the signed treaty. The fact that he had reacted so quickly to prevent someone from talking about Xu Qing had only cacross as him being displeased in sway. Anyone who didn’t know the full story would probably assthat there was smajor conflict between Xu Qing and Fan Shishuang.

But now... the truth was revealed! The reason Fan Shishuang had been in seclusion the entire twas that he was avoiding Xu Qing!

What was more, the displeasure he had revealed when stopping that young noble from talking about Xu Qing was real. The conflict was real. But the truth was that, in his vigilance, Fan Shishuang was very sensitive to anything that could cause further friction with Xu Qing. As everyone present reached similar conclusions, they were struck to the core.

Princess Anhai looked a bit dazed as she thought back to all the times she had interacted with Xu Qing. It began in the Holytide Region at the banquet thrown by Seventh Prince. The next tshe encountered him, he was already the region lord of Holytide. She was the one who escorted him into the Imperial Region.... She had witnessed him being summoned by Grand Emperor Swordsage, leading the Xeno-Immortal School to prominence, killing Seventh Prince, and in general, shaking the imperial capital to the core.

She had previously assumed that Xu Qing had already reached his peak. But then he becthe Grand Darkheaven, was appointed as King Skycrusher, and was also named tutor for the imperial princes.... All of that made her feel like all she could do was look up and catch a glimpse of Xu Qing from behind.

Today, she had yet again witnessed how terrifying Xu Qing was. She and everyone else at the banquet had been careful to act appropriately around Fan Shishuang, and had been nervous in his presence. She could only imagine what kind of fearsreputation Xu Qing must have won when he was with the Firemoon Darkheavens.

Fourth Prince’s thoughts were in chaos, and his expression was flickering. However... there was a very strange gleam in his eyes.

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Fourth Prince was already wrapped up in weighing all of the pros and cons.

***

Xu Qing had no way of noticing what was going on behind him. Before long, he had led Fan Shishuang and Erniu back to his greater spirit mansion. Once inside, he sat down calmly and looked at Fan Shishuang, who was trying his best to look dour and forbidding.

As for Erniu, he was smiling broadly. “Brother Fan, back when I was in Firemoon Darkheaven territory, I saw how spectacular you are. You really have the highest level of mastery possible when it comes to puppets.

Erniu licked his lips. Xu Qing looked down, his face completely expressionless.

Fan Shishuang had been cursing inwardly, but showed no sign of that on his face. Now he could breathe a sigh of relief. As it turned out, they really did want him to do them a favor. There was no other hidden agenda. If he had been dealing with someone else, he might have dragged things out. But right now, he just wanted to leave as quickly as possible, and that meant both this mansion and these lands.

Therefore, it was without a word that he looked down at the jury-rigged puppet. He waved his hand, and the puppet collapsed into a pile of parts. He picked up one of the parts, took a deep breath to calm himself, and started studying it.

After taking a look, his expression flickered.

“This is old. Very old. I’d say that, at the very least, it’s been around for tens of thousands of years. It’s infected with corpse energy.... You know, this looks like the workmanship of the Fardarks. They were around in the tof Ancient Emperor Dark Serenity.

“Their puppetry involved living sacrifices. They would use blood as food, meridians as connective elements, bones as building materials, and then would use a host of other items to create puppets of flesh and blood.”

Fan Shishuang was really living up to his reputation of being a grandmaster of puppets, as he knew the entire history of the thing almost immediately.

Erniu let loose sighs of admiration, then followed them up with a loud cheer. Xu Qing made sure to put spraise into his gaze as well.

Fan Shishuang didn’t react visibly to those expressions of appreciation, but inside he couldn’t help but feel both proud and pleased.

Erniu blinked a few times. “Brother Fan, you’re absolutely incredible! It seems toyou’re not going to have any trouble getting this puppet back into perfect working order!”

Fan Shishuang coolly replied, “It’s going to be difficult. But as long as you just giveall the materials, I can do it.”

Erniu smiled. “Unfortunately, these are all the materials we have. But given your level of skill, Brother Fan, I’m sure you can make at least seven or eight versions. Er. Never mind. You know what, just keep it to five. That’ll do. Whatever you make beyond that you can just keep as a reward!”

“The materials here aren’t even enough to make one puppet. I’m going to need equipment forging materials such as earthlike megacrystals and crimsonsoul iron. Those types of things.”

“We don’t have any of that,” Erniu said with a glare.

Xu Qing’s expression darkened.

Gritting his teeth, Fan Shishuang looked at Erniu and then Xu Qing. After a moment he took a deep breath. “Both of you have to promise that, after this, we have a completely clean slate!”

When Erniu saw that a compromise had been reached, he smiled. “Agreed!”

Xu Qing thought about it and then nodded.

Fan Shishuang gritted his teeth and waved his hand to summon a host of equipment forging materials. As Xu Qing and Erniu watched, he started rebuilding the puppet.

***

A month passed in short order.

During that time, Fan Shishuang went above and beyond. As Xu Qing and Erniu watched closely, he slowly put all the puppet pieces back together and made sure they operated smoothly. He used a lot of equipment forging materials.

Xu Qing didn’t say much, but Erniu offered a lot of encouraging words and expressions of praise.

Although Fan Shishuang started to get annoyed with all that, it did result in him using more and more materials. In the end, he even took out sof the flesh, blood, and souls of various vicious beasts he had killed. By adding those elements into the puppet parts, he was able to make them very agile and lifelike.

On the final day, he performed an incantation gesture to finish the job. There were now two gigantic puppets clad in black armor standing in front of them. Both puppets emanated cold auras and terrifying pressure. Surprisingly, they were actually stronger than the versions Xu Qing had fought in the cave.

“That’s the Smoldering God fleshly body level!!” Erniu said, looking visibly moved.

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Truth be told, puppets like these were unheard of in human lands. In fact, even in all Erniu’s past lives, he didn’t remember seeing anything like them.

“It’s my first tever making puppets of this caliber,” Fan Shishuang said. The reality was that even he felt a bit jealous of these puppets. Being a puppet grandmaster, he knew better than anyone how valuable they were.

Fan Shishuang sighed inwardly and stowed any greedy thoughts. Standing, he looked coldly at Xu Qing and Erniu.

“Can I go now?”

Erniu hurriedly got to his feet and offered smore words of praise.

Xu Qing also flashed a smile. “Fellow Daoist Fan, you truly are amazing!”

Fan Shishuang betrayed no change in facial expression. However, inside he actually felt pleased with how Xu Qing and Erniu were treating him. A bit of excitement flared within him, only to be overwhelmed by grief. Actually, he had experienced a lot of mood changes like this in the past month. Right now, all he wanted to do was leave, so without another word, he flew out of Xu Qing’s mansion and headed back to his garrison.

The two subsidiary species had long since left the imperial capital....

Naturally, Erniu and Xu Qing each took one puppet. Erniu left looking very pleased. He planned to study the puppet further, as he had specifically asked Fan Shishuang to add stracking functions to it.

In that manner, tpassed.

Soon, there were only two days left until the ancestral sacrifices.

Around that time, Xu Qing, who was in the spirit pool in his mansion, opened his eyes and looked outside.

Someone had delivered a wooden box. It was waiting at the front door. The person delivering it was a boy.

“I’m here on orders from the imperial preceptor to give you this item,” he said. With that, the boy bowed and left.

Shortly after, the box crumbled to pieces, revealing what was inside.

It was a cloth doll that wasn’t the work of a cultivator. Rather, it was from the mortal world. From the look of it, it had been ripped apart into many pieces, then put back together. Its facial expression made it seem like it was crying.

Deathblade's Thoughts

In the title of this chapter, you can see that I’ve introduced the nZi Qing. This is the transliteration of the Chinese that I’ve been rendering “Violet and Cyan.” I will continue to use “Violet and Cyan” both as part of the full title and the nof the kingdom. However, in upcoming chapters, it sometimes uses those characters on their own as the nof the Crown Prince of Violet and Cyan. Not only will transliterating it as a nmake the reading a lot smoother, but also, it is a good visual reminder that these two individuals have the scharacter “Qing” in their name. In the case of the nof the kingdom and the associated title, I render it as “cyan.” That character could also be rendered as Green, such as I did with the Green Spirit Pharmacy. I don’t want to get into the weeds by providing a long explanation for why I’ve chosen to render these various terms and characters this way. Suffice it to say, I put a lot of thought into it, although sof it is also intuition and guesswork, as when I coined all of these terms, none of these later chapters had been written. From the very beginning, and even now, it’s not really clear whether the nof the kingdom preceded the character’s name, or in contrast, was named after him. The way it treats “Zi Qing” or “Violet and Cyan” did not initially sound like a nto me. To sum this all up: there is a certain point in supcoming chapters in which the crown prince will be referred to simply as Zi Qing, and I figured now was as good a point as any to introduce the concept.