A Third Jade {Mo Dao Zu Shi}

♬Chapter 41♬

The group went back to the stone castle. Lan Anhe told Chen Hong to stand by Huaisang's side to protect him while she, Wei Ying and Lan Zhan walked in front of them.

"Hanguang-Jun, Chenguang-Ji... It's the middle of the night. Why are you two going to my clan's Sabre Hall?" Huaisang nervously asks the siblings. "There is a matter at hand" Lan Zhan simply answered, "Clan Leader Nie, why did your clan need to kill thousands as sacrifices for sabres?" Wei Ying asked.

"No! You're wrong! Hanguang-Jun, Chenguang-Ji, let me explain! We didn't cause the death of those corpses! We spent a lot of effort to collect them!" Huaisang explained to them. "Why did you gather them?" Lan Anhe asks Huaisang, to which he answered, "To suppress the aggressive sabre spirits"

"Please explain" Lan Zhan said, "You know the ancestor of our Qinghe Nie Clan was originally a butcher. He was a sabre cultivator with a distinctively forceful style, very much the opposite of Chenguang-Ji's. However, being overly rigid makes one snap easily. Past leaders of the Nie Clan all met a sudden and bloody death of Qi deviation. Their sabres were all heavily influenced by their aggressiveness and killing intent"

"No wonder you wield a fan instead of a sabre" Wei Ying pointed out, Chen Hong was surprisingly interested in this.

Huaisang continued his explanation, "The sabre spirit only deems one person as its master. When its master is alive, it can be restrained. But once its master dies, if it is not fed with fiends, it will cause trouble"

"Oh, I get it. Since the sabre spirit wants to battle with fiends, your ancestors buried feral zombies alongside the sabre coffins so that they can fight with each other and keep each other in check" Wei Ying said.

"Exactly. The Sixth Clan Leader came up with this method, which gave us peace for several hundred years. But about a decade ago, a group of robbers found their way here. They heard about the stone castle and somehow mistook our Sabre Hall for a great tomb of enlightened immortals. Then they blasted their way into the castle. It happened shortly after I succeeded as Clan Leader. I brought some men to investigate it"

The group made it back to the stone castle and Huaisang was still explaining, "Strangely, the dozens of grave robbers had vanished into thin air"

"How can they vanish into thin air? They must have damaged the corpses and destroyed the balance within the castle. So, the Sabre Hall had to trap them inside to fill the vacancies" Wei Ying says before he patted Huaisang's shoulder and walked away.

"Young... Young Master Mo, you know quite a lot" Huaisang stuttered, "To prevent such incidents from happening again, you spread the rumor of the Man-Eating castle" Wei Ying said. "No. It started from the town. I merely exaggerated it a bit to prevent anyone from barging in" Huaisang corrected Wei Ying, "But the tomb was sealed within the castle. Yet the bloodstains were found outside of it" he pointed out.

Wei Ying gasped at that before him and the Lan siblings found some corpses.

"What... What's wrong?" Huaisang approached them and his eyes widened, "It's just like what happened ten years ago..." he mumbled. Chen Hong stood in front of Huaisang in case something were to happen. He didn't want to do it, but it would leave a bad taste in his mouth if the person that his mother loved dearly, were to die in a filthy place like this.

Wei Ying started examining the corpses, "The bodies were dissolved"

"Those are... the robes from our clan!" Huaisang slowly stepped back, "Young Master Jin and Young Master Jiang blew up a hole... so I sent disciples to find new corpses to fill it up"