TDSDE 25

25. The Jade Bone Scripture

Xiao Qing had been good-looking since he was little. At first, he was treated like a commodity and brought back to the den—but for some unknown reason, the plan changed midway, and he was sent instead to the snow-covered northern regions of Dajing.

Zhou Xiaoxiao’s childhood may have been a lie, but at least it had a sugary disguise. Xiao Qing’s was different.

In that desolate manor deep in Mount Anyang, time for Xiao Qing seemed frozen in a perpetual winter.

Most of the time, Du Gujue stayed in the study on the west wing. He strictly ordered Xiao Qing to follow his daily martial training schedule and left him almost no freedom at all.

One day, while Xiao Qing was soaking in a medicinal tub, he saw through the crack in the door that Du Gujue looked hurried, seemingly heading out.

Xiao Qing was at that restless age—always chafing under Du Gujue’s strict discipline—so once Du Gujue left, he didn’t finish the usual poison-insect bath. For the first time, he snuck out of his room.

What he was most curious about, of course, was Du Gujue’s study, where the man spent long hours every day. He tiptoed in carefully and, unexpectedly, came across a thick stack of letters—all of them detailed records about him.

At first, Xiao Qing skimmed them the way one might glance through a book. But the further he read, the more his hands began to tremble uncontrollably.

That day, Xiao Qing sat dejectedly with those letters in hand, feeling as though even breathing had become difficult.

—So it turned out, he hadn’t been some nameless child who accidentally fell off a cliff. He was alive because someone had traded their life for his.

From that moment on, Xiao Qing never once complained about the baths or the training again. Whenever the poisonous insects gnawed at his flesh, he repeated two words silently in his heart.

Demonic Sect.

Over and over, through gritted teeth.

Du Gujue had told him more than once that Xiao Qing was the best talent he’d ever come across—and it was true.

When Xiao Qing turned eleven, Du Gujue told him he had completed the entire manual. With more practice, he’d soon be able to defeat half the martial world.

Xiao Qing didn’t care about status or fame. All he wanted was revenge.

A year later, after some careful probing, Du Gujue finally acknowledged that Xiao Qing had fully mastered the manual and was ready to face any expert in the martial world.

He said it offhandedly, but the moment the words left his mouth, he seemed to realize he’d said too much and quickly changed the subject.

“I can still remember every expression on his face back then,” Xiao Qing let out a short, bitter laugh. “It was such a poor performance. But back then, I actually believed it.”

That night, taking advantage of the deep darkness, Xiao Qing stole the medicinal powder hidden in a secret compartment of Du Gujue’s study. Under the moonlight, he traveled west.

After overcoming countless difficulties, he finally infiltrated the Demonic Sect. He carefully scattered the powder in key locations and lay in wait in the bushes for it to take effect—ready to strike down the Sect Leader.

As expected, the Sect Leader of the Demonic Sect appeared at the ambush spot. But the moment Xiao Qing charged out, he was slapped to the ground by a massive tiger.

It looked like a wild beast, but it was shockingly intelligent. It didn’t kill him—just toyed with him, back and forth.

When the tiger’s tail whipped into Xiao Qing’s waist again, he coughed up a mouthful of blood, staining the tiger’s fur red.

He looked toward the tall man standing nearby with arms folded, watching coldly, and was suddenly overwhelmed by despair and terror.

As the man walked toward him, Xiao Qing thought he was dead for sure—but instead, the man simply grabbed him by the back of the collar, lifted him up, and asked with half-lidded, sleepy eyes, “Where did you get that powder?”

At that moment, all Xiao Qing wanted was to tear his enemy apart. He said nothing and even tried to land a palm strike on the man.

He’d once shattered a tree thicker than a man’s arms with ease, so he assumed this man would at least suffer a broken bone or two—but his full-strength blow felt like it landed in soft sand. It didn’t even scratch him.

Still, Xiao Qing refused to yield.

Seeing him struggle and stay silent, the Sect Leader had no patience for coddling children. He simply beat him. If the tiger hadn’t intervened at the last moment, Xiao Qing might have been crippled for life.

When he came to, the Demonic Sect Leader—who had just seemed like a god of slaughter—was now cradling the tiger, his voice gentle, softly stroking the shoulder where the tiger had been struck.

Xiao Qing had never seen anything like that and was stunned on the spot.

By then, he’d begun to sense something was wrong. He asked directly why the Demonic Sect had slaughtered the Zhai family of Nanyang all those years ago.

That one question shattered everything Xiao Qing had believed for years.

The one he thought was his enemy had been innocent all along. The master he had revered had only ever treated him as a plaything.

“No way,” Xiao Qing still clung to hope and immediately retorted, “The Demonic Sect has committed countless atrocities—there’s no way you weren’t involved!”

The Sect Leader answered lightly, “What benefit would we get from wiping out the Zhai family?”

Xiao Qing instinctively replied, “The Zhai family was wealthy—enormous assets!”

The Sect Leader of the Demonic Sect shook the golden bracelet on his wrist, embedded with gleaming gems. “Just of this quality alone, we have four entire storerooms full in our sect.”

Xiao Qing looked at that dazzling chain, each jewel clearer and larger than a pigeon egg, and felt his words catch in his throat.

He tried saying that someone in the Demonic Sect must have had a grudge against the Zhai family and used the sect’s name to take personal revenge. But the Sect Leader replied with a blank expression, “If that were the case, what would be the point of killing them? That kind of petty revenge doesn’t even make it past the door in our sect.”

Xiao Qing already sensed the truth deep down, but still clung to each argument, trying to convince himself with just one of them.

When he said, “The Demonic Sect took a contract to kill,” he knew immediately something was wrong. He glanced at the Sect Leader—sure enough, the man was looking at him like he was a complete fool.

Everyone in the martial world knew the Demonic Sect had a secret pact with Dajing’s imperial court. One publicly known clause was that the sect should never kill the people of Dajing indiscriminately.

So if the Zhai family had been slaughtered, it had to be because they were deeply evil, beyond even the court’s ability to punish—and that, to Xiao Qing, was absurd.

He couldn’t come up with any more explanations. He just sat on the ground in a daze.

The Sect Leader hadn’t intended to bother with Xiao Qing anymore, but just as he yawned, he saw his tiger approach the boy and start rubbing its massive head—nearly the size of three human skulls—against Xiao Qing’s face.

Xiao Qing had always liked animals, but his master had made a habit of killing any creature that wandered into the estate, so over time, he had learned to keep his distance from anything furry.

Now, being nuzzled by the tiger, its coarse fur brushing against his cheek, Xiao Qing suddenly felt his eyes burn with tears. Without thinking, he threw his arms around the massive creature.

As he ran his hand through the tiger’s fur and looked up, he saw the Sect Leader squatting in front of him, watching thoughtfully.

“For Baby liking you this much, I’ll tell you one more thing,” said the Sect Leader. “Do you know about the Thirteen Dens of Xiao Lian?”

And so, Xiao Qing’s already shattered beliefs were once again ground into dust by the Sect Leader’s words.

The Sect Leader kicked him out of the Demonic Sect. After a long time of reflection, Xiao Qing did not return to Mount Anyang. Instead, he took the few bottles of medicine the Sect Leader had given him and went into hiding.

He hid for two full years.

Two years wasn’t long, but for Xiao Qing, his entire world had turned upside down.

The Zhai family, the Martial Alliance incident, even the truth about Du Gujue—he understood all of it clearly now.

There would always be slaughter in this world, but the Demonic Sect never took contracts like that. The Thirteen Dens, on the other hand, thrived on such bloodshed.

The Zhai family’s master and his wife had been kind all their lives. Their only mistake was trusting a woman whom their adopted son had rescued while traveling.

That woman was not some helpless villager—she had been the mistress of a local bandit chief.

The bandits, tired of living in hiding, sent the charming woman as bait.

Both adopted sons of the Zhai family were killed by them. The only surviving daughter, upon learning the truth, gave herself to the Thirteen Dens of Xiao Lian, begging them to wipe out the bandits who had taken over her home.

If that had been the end of the story, Xiao Qing would have felt only gratitude toward the Thirteen Dens—even if it meant living as a joke for Du Gujue’s amusement for the rest of his life.

But the girl who sacrificed herself met a tragic fate.

Xiao Qing would never forget her—wearing stitched-on dog hide, holding herself up with severed limbs in place of arms and legs, blood bubbling from her toothless, tongueless mouth as she whimpered toward him.

She begged him to kill her.

He did. But that was not all he intended to do.

The Jade Bone Scripture had two volumes: the first was Frozen Bone, the second Jade Marrow.

Xiao Qing had only learned the first. At the time, he thought the freezing medicinal baths with ice and poisonous insects had already brought him to the brink of death—but once he began practicing the Jade Marrow volume, the agony nearly made him pass out.

Xiao Qing no longer cared what Du Gujue’s intentions had been when he deliberately left the complete manual for him to find. Even if it was a trap, he would walk right into it without hesitation.

Du Gujue had once said Xiao Qing was an exceptionally rare talent—and that if he’d found him a few years earlier, Xiao Qing might have become a second Du Gujue.

But Xiao Qing did not fulfill that expectation.

He gave everything—his life, his body, his flesh and sinew—and in the end, he killed Du Gujue.

Xiao Qing would never become a second Du Gujue. And in this world, there would only ever be one Xiao Qing.

At that moment, Bai Yuanxiu suddenly recalled everything he’d ever heard as a child about the Jade Bone Scripture.

It was created by a woman betrayed by the man beside her, a woman shackled by love her entire life. She developed her own martial art and became an unmatched master who could kill with a flick of her finger. But not long after avenging herself by killing the heartless man, she too perished.

She hated the one who betrayed her—but also hated her own entangled love and hate.

And so, anyone who cultivated the Jade Bone Scripture—must never fall in love.