Chapter 22: Truly a Master!

Hearing this, Du Yuan could not help saying to Qian Youcai,

“Your ancestors accumulated blessings and hidden virtue generation after generation, never daring to forget them for twelve successive generations. Yet once it came to your family, you first forgot your ancestors, and then forgot your ancestral teachings as well.”

“And the fact that you are still alive after all this means you were indeed telling the truth. Your ancestors truly were kindhearted.”

Qian Youcai was so ashamed that sweat broke out all over him. He could only nod repeatedly.

“Rest assured, Daoist Master. After tonight, I will mend my ways without fail. Oh, and I must return home and inform my father and elder brothers. Our family will take up the ancestral teachings once more, accumulate virtue, perform good deeds, and bring joy to others!”

After saying this, however, Qian Youcai asked uneasily,

“There is one more thing, Daoist Master. May I be so bold as to ask what that foul creature you subdued just now actually was? It looked to me like a serpent demon.”

He sounded utterly certain in the latter half of his question, convinced that he could not possibly be mistaken. That thing had surely been a serpent demon.

But Du Yuan shook his head.

“Did I not already tell you? It was merely some neither-demon-nor-ghost, neither-here-nor-there thing, fit only to provoke laughter.”

In truth, Du Yuan himself had no idea what the thing actually was. But he had already described it that way—how could he change his story now?

Besides, that creature had indeed felt different from the horse demon Red Stone and from the Qian family members he had dealt with earlier.

Or rather, it seemed to be caught somewhere in between.

“Daoist Master, could you explain that a little more clearly?”

“You are not a cultivator. No matter how thoroughly I explain it, you will only half understand and trouble yourself needlessly. It is enough for you to know this much.”

“Ah… I see.”

Qian Youcai was deeply astonished. He had once thought that, having traveled alone throughout Jiangnan since his youth, he was already a man of broad knowledge and experience.

He had never imagined that before a true master, he would not even qualify as a frog in a well.

Yet, on closer thought, that was indeed the case. Before today, he had never encountered anything so sinister—not even once had his own ancestor appeared to him in a dream.

Seen in that light, he was perhaps worse than a frog at the bottom of a well.

“Daoist Master, you are truly a superior being, far beyond the reach of ordinary men like us!”

Du Yuan gave Qian Youcai a strange look. Why had this fellow started praising him without prompting?

After shaking his head, Du Yuan continued,

“You need not worry that creature will return. I was the one who killed it, after all. If it comes back, it will come after me.”

Qian Youcai looked puzzled.

“But Daoist Master, did you not kill it? How could it return?”

As he spoke, his eyes suddenly widened.

“Could it be that the one you killed was merely a lesser creature, and that there is an older and more powerful one behind it?”

Du Yuan gave him a sidelong glance.

“Hmm. You are not entirely dull.”

Qian Youcai immediately felt the world spinning around him.

The one just now had nearly beaten him to death. What would happen if an even more powerful one came?

The Daoist Master had said it would come after him, but what if it changed its mind?

At that thought, Qian Youcai hurriedly dropped to his knees.

“Daoist Master, you are a transcendent master with genuine abilities, but I am not! Please, give me some way to protect myself—or at least give me a talisman to carry!”

Qian Youcai had finally understood. In the face of such demons and evil spirits, gold, silver, riches, and even skilled martial artists were all worthless.

Only a master like the Daoist truly mattered.

Du Yuan pointed toward the ancestral tablets in his home.

“Do you know why that thing wanted to harm you?”

Qian Youcai shook his head in bewilderment. His generation had indeed done no great good, but he had never thought himself guilty of anything truly heinous.

At the very least, he had never done anything that would cause someone to hate him enough to want him dead.

“It is because your ancestors accumulated a considerable store of blessings. Those blessings should have descended upon you, their descendants.”

“Under ordinary circumstances, no one could take them away.”

“After all, what do the virtue and blessings accumulated by one family’s ancestors have to do with outsiders?”

“But the problem is that your family forgot its ancestors—and its ancestral teachings. You may as well have severed yourselves from your roots. That was how those demons and evil spirits found an opening.”

Again because of this?!

Cold sweat broke out across Qian Youcai’s body.

The others listening nearby, having no stake in the matter themselves, craned their necks to hear every word.

For one thing, they wanted to make up for the knowledge they lacked, so they would know what mistakes to avoid in the future.

For another, people naturally enjoyed watching a spectacle. The story of an unfilial descendant receiving his due punishment was precisely the sort of entertainment they relished in their otherwise uneventful lives.

“Please enlighten me, Daoist Master!”

Qian Youcai’s voice trembled. He struck his forehead heavily against the flagstones, producing a dull thud.

Standing before him with a lantern in hand, Du Yuan said,

“Normally, with the protection of your ancestors and the blessings they accumulated, ordinary demons and evil spirits would take one look at you and go around. Under such circumstances, they would certainly not approach you with the intention of causing harm.”

“But you forgot your ancestors and your ancestral teachings. As a result, neither the ancestors of your family nor the heavenly order above us stands on your side. Under those circumstances, if they kill you, would it not be reasonable for those blessings to fall upon them as agents of Heaven’s justice?”

Qian Youcai was horrified.

“Would that not be utterly unjust? How could they wipe out my family line and still take the blessings belonging to my family?”

Du Yuan answered with a smile.

“Are you certain it would be unjust?”

Qian Youcai lowered his head and stammered for a long while before finally saying,

“We… we have not gone so far as that…”

He still believed that his family had not reached the point of provoking the wrath of Heaven and earth, or of becoming so hated that everyone would rejoice at their deaths.

Du Yuan gave a soft laugh.

“That is precisely why I came.”

Qian Youcai raised his head in astonishment and stared blankly at Du Yuan.

After a long while, he once again bowed deeply until his forehead touched the ground.

“Daoist Master, I, Ziru, know my error!”

Ziru was Qian Youcai’s courtesy name. Du Yuan did not know enough about the customs of this era to understand what it meant for him to suddenly use his own courtesy name.

But he noticed something else.

The purple smoke drifting from the incense burner before the Qian family tablets was no longer merely a faint, indistinct thread clinging to Qian Youcai. It had become clearly visible.

If Qian Youcai had previously wanted to change only because circumstances had forced him to and fear had seized him, then now he had truly attained understanding.

Only then could the blessings accumulated by his twelve generations of ancestors genuinely descend upon him.

Du Yuan could not help taking hold of the lantern in the other direction and tapping Qian Youcai’s shoulder with its handle.

“Well done. It is not too late to reform!”

“Everything Ziru has gained today is thanks to the Daoist Master’s guidance!”

Qian Youcai did not rise. Instead, he bowed solemnly once more.

“Ziru offers his thanks, Daoist Master!”

Du Yuan nodded and withdrew the lantern handle.

At that very moment, he suddenly saw several more wisps of purple smoke settle upon Qian Youcai’s body.

At first there was one, clearly visible. Then there were three in all.

Exactly matching the three taps Du Yuan had given his shoulder.

And this time, Du Yuan was not the only one who saw them. Among the men standing behind Qian Youcai, several who possessed considerable virtue also caught sight of the scene from afar.

They rubbed their eyes in disbelief.

A moment later, every one of them was utterly convinced.

This was a true master indeed.