Someone yelled in surprise, "The goddess's pose had changed!" and then all of them sprinted around to run out of the cave, obediently following Hua gongzi's order.
However, amidst the chaos and trying to suppress the statue, he missed his children. So when he came out of the cave after everyone, his half covered face was disoriented with panic as he desperately called for their names.
"Baobei! A-Yu... RuLan! Children! Where are you?!"
"Here! We are here, ma!!" Hua Xuanyu called quickly, rushing towards his panicked mother with Shizui and Rulan.
"Are you safe? No injuries, right?" He exclaimed, checking the three boys from top to bottom. It was only after that he personally completed the checkup that he dared to heave a sigh of relief.
Then he glared at his nephew, as if to give him a warning before turning to Lan Jingyi and the other juniors.
"Send a signal and get your clan's... HanGuang-Jun up here!"
The juniors nodded a few times, and ran around while searching for signals. After quite some time, Lan Jingyi spoke, "The signal firelights... were all used up during the night at Mo Village." and Hua gongzi was left speechless.
"You guys didn't restock afterwards?"
"We forgot." At the master's scolding tone, Lan Jingyi replied bashfully, earning a death glare in return.
"I wish I could really beat you right now!" Hua gongzi threatened, worriedly looking at his kids and the entrance to that cave.
Seeing his mother's worry, Shizui decided to divert his attention, so he asked, "A-niang... How did you know that it was not a spirit-consuming spirit or beast, but the goddess statue instead?"
"How did I know? I saw. There were dead souls. If it was either a soul-consuming spirit or a beast, there wouldn't be so many dead spirits in the area. If only your sect teach decided to teach more practical things instead of those annoying, lengthy nonsense like cultivational etiquette, family trees, and history!" Hua gongzi added after his explanation, clearly dissatisfied with GusuLan teaching.
But before any GusuLan disciple could have a chance to comment against it, the donkey- lil-apple, who had been clinging to Hua Xuanyu's side halted, and ran toward the opposite direction. The sudden action of the donkey caught everyone's attention before it was attracted by a noise of chewing, complete with crunches and slurps from the bushes in front of them.
An immense figure was crawling in the bush, its huge head on the ground and moving using its stomach. Hearing the noise, it immediately lifted its head. Their eyes met and then everyone, following the donkey, ran in the other direction.
The boy in grey-Zizhen, was breaking down, "That is not supposed to happen! The YiLing Patriarch had said before, that high-level ones eat souls, and only low-level ones eat flesh!"
Hua gongzi couldn't help but to comment, "Why are you blindly worshipping him? Even his own inventions were a mess! No rules stay the same in all situations. You can think of it as an infant-when it lacks teeth, it can only eat congee and soup, but when it grows up, it would, of course, also want to eat meat using its teeth. Her powers had just risen greatly, so naturally she'd want to taste something new!"
The soul-consuming goddess stood up from the ground. Her body was tall. She used her arms and her legs to dance with uncontrollable excitement, seeming like she was extremely pleased. Out of the blue, an arrow came with a whoosh and pierced her forehead, the arrowhead appearing out of the back of her head.
Looking at the archer, Hua gongzi yelled angrily, "Young Master Feng! You little rascal! What do you think you are doing?!"
Feng Ling shot an apologetic look towards his uncle before setting three arrows onto the bow at once. Although she was shot in the head twice, the soul-consuming goddess was not angered, and advanced toward Feng Ling with the same smile plastered on her face. And that was everything that took for Hua gongzi to go on a hunting spree.
He lifted up his obsidian dizi up in front of his lips and took a deep breath. He didn't care what he was playing as long as it could divert that goddess's attention away from his nephew.
The shrill command tones of the flute was like arrows, slicing through the night sky and shooting into the clouds.
He didn't care when he heard the shocked voices of the disciples seeing the sight of his scarlet eyes lit up like raging fire and his body emitting a dark aura. It'd be fine as long as the dark energy was strong enough and the killing intent was keen enough, so that it could rip the soul-consuming goddess into pieces!
Hua SiZhui was mesmerized at his mother's display of power, while Hua Xuanyu ogled all over.
After a while, from within the forests of Dafan Mountain, a tinkling sound appeared.
It was sometimes faster, sometimes slower; sometimes pausing, sometimes continuing. It echoed in the silent woods, resembling the sound of iron chains colliding and being dragged on the ground. It came closer, and became louder. Everyone including the soul-consuming goddess, blankly stared into the dark of which the sound came from.
Hua gongzi put away his dizi and carefully looked into the direction and at the same time the noise also stopped. A figure emerged from within the darkness.
"... The 'Ghost General', it's the 'Ghost General', it's Wen Ning!" One young cultivator exclaimed in horror.
The title of the "Ghost General" was as infamous as that of the YiLing Patriarch's. Most of the time, the two appeared together.
The word only referred one person-the right-hand man of the YiLing Patriarch Wei Ying, who had helped with the tyrant's crimes, stirred up wind and waves, played the jackal to the tiger, overturned the world with him, and most of all, was a fierce corpse who should have been turned into ashes a long time ago-Wen Ning!
After the initial shock of seeing a familiar figure, it was Hua gongzi who broke out of the trance before anyone else as he once again started playing the dizi.
With an all powerful ghost general, it didn't take much time for the fight to come to an end and the goddess to be smashed into dust by him.
However, the tone he played a moment ago to command seemed to be filled with too much killing intent as Wen Ning turned towards the young cultivators as if they were his next target. Seeing that, Hua gongzi suddenly changed the notes into a more calming one, a tune that had been carved into his memory even though he couldn't remember the origin.
Not long after, he managed to calm down the ghost general and successfully send him away before he could go on a killing spree. Yet before he could celebrate his little victory, a slight pain on his wrist and a chilly scent of sandalwood caught him off guard as his heart skipped a beat.
When he looked over his shoulder, it was indeed the same cold man he had expected to see, but this time his expressionless eyes held a mysterious glint as if they were about to shed tears.
"Lan Zhan..." The name escaped through his lips even before he could stop himself and the man's low voice whispered into his ear,
"Found you."
***
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Waiting For You (A Wangxian FF)
FanficWhat if Jiang Cheng didn't loose his golden core? What if Jin ZixZuan and Jiang YanLi were saved and Jin Ling had the chance to grow up within their care? What if Hanguang Jun never managed to leave the cloud recesses after hearing the news of Wei W...