WPCID 44: Unrepentant

The body of the Punishment Sword was brought to the Elder Hall, while its soul remained in the Sword Bestowal Valley. To judge good and evil, the sword’s body naturally had to be returned to its place.

As Lu Buzhuo was being escorted away, he met Chu Xuan at the entrance, who had bandages wrapped around his abdomen.

“Senior Brother,” Chu Xuan approached and whispered, his sleeve moving slightly as he stuffed a small paper figure into Lu Buzhuo’s hand. 

“This contains a strand of my sword intent. Perhaps it can block some of the force.”

Lu Buzhuo squeezed the paper figure in his hand. His expression was not as grave as one might expect; instead, it held a trace of relieved lightness. He curved his eyes and whispered back, “The Punishment Sword may not necessarily judge me as evil. A trip to the Sword Bestowal Valley might actually be a good thing, saving you the constant trouble.”

“Trouble?” Chu Xuan frowned. 

“What wrong has Senior Brother done? If it weren’t for that—”

He swallowed the rest of his words, pouting his lips in a rare display.

“…” Lu Buzhuo couldn’t help but chuckle, causing all the elders to look at him in surprise. He suppressed his smile, cleared his throat, and said seriously, “If Senior Brother can even handle demonic energy, can’t I handle a mere sword? Don’t look so worried. Go back to Small Hidden Peak and wait.”

With that, he patted Chu Xuan’s shoulder and stepped out the door.

At the entrance of the Sword Bestowal Valley.

The head elder stopped and said, “Former Sect Leader, we can only escort you this far.”

“Oh?” The Sect Leader had no authority over the Sword Bestowal Valley, so this was Lu Buzhuo’s first time here. 

“Then how will you judge my good and evil?”

“There is a Sword Bestowal Stele in the valley. Place the Punishment Sword upon the stele and add a drop of your blood. The entire Sword Bestowal Valley will then temporarily become a forbidden area, inaccessible to anyone. After three days, if the Punishment Sword judges you as good, you may leave and return to Small Hidden Peak on your own.”

It sounded very straightforward.

Lu Buzhuo nodded, glanced at the Punishment Sword held in the elder’s hands, and took it with one hand.

The elder’s face changed. 

“How can you be so disrespectful to the Ancestral Master’s sword? Aren’t you afraid of incurring his wrath?”

“This sword is to judge my good and evil, to decide my life and death. If I were to be overly respectful, wouldn’t that seem like I’m trying to curry favor?” Lu Buzhuo glanced at him, his eyelids drooping as he drunkenly swayed the sword, nearly letting it slip from his grasp, which made all the elders’ faces turn green. 

“Besides, I don’t know if I’ll even make it out of here. Why do you care how I hold it?”

Then, in front of everyone, he performed a slightly clumsy sword flourish and felt satisfied. 

“Even a formation cultivator can flourish so beautifully. If my master were still here, he would surely be pleased.”

The elders: “…”

Lu Buzhuo paid no mind to their expressions, sheathed the sword, and walked straight into the Sword Bestowal Valley.

The valley was lush and green, with wild grass nearly covering the path underfoot. The Sword Bestowal Stele was also covered in vines, looking completely untended. He couldn’t see any traces of formation carvings and had no idea how it judged a person’s good and evil.

He pondered this as he followed the instructions, placing the Punishment Sword on the stone stele, cutting his finger, and dripping blood onto it.

…

The entire valley hummed lightly for a moment before falling silent, as if nothing had happened.

The world was a vast, empty expanse of white.

Lu Buzhuo looked down at his own hands, clenching and unclenching them several times, then looked around.

This Punishment Sword was indeed quite mysterious, capable of directly pulling a person’s soul from their body and into the sword itself. In this way, all external means were rendered useless; life and death were determined solely by this sword.

That made the situation a bit complicated.

There was more than one soul within his body.

Before long, the shadow appeared in the distance, looking bewildered.

Then, a panicked, flapping myna bird was added to the scene. Upon seeing him, its small, beady eyes, like a turtle’s, lit up, and it squawked “Daoist companion” with great excitement as it rushed over.

Lu Buzhuo: “…”

Had this soul-counting gone a bit too far?

The myna bird plunged into his embrace, losing two feathers. It tilted its head in confusion, then suddenly jumped up and pecked at his lapels twice, chattering angrily about something.

It was the spot where he had placed the small paper figure from Chu Xuan.

Lu Buzhuo’s gaze barely left the shadow in the distance. He casually pushed away the myna’s mischievous beak, stopping its pecking. 

“It’s not here, really not here, just a lingering aura… Stop biting, you little ancestor.”

The shadow finally looked at him. 

“What tricks are you playing now?”

Before he could answer, the silhouette of a giant golden sword slowly materialized in mid-air. Engraved upon it were eight large characters: “Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, Decided by a Single Sword.” It was majestic and awe-inspiring, impossible to look at directly.

Just a mere phantom caused the souls present to show faint signs of collapse.

Lu Buzhuo’s expression finally turned grave. With a flick of his sleeve, he sheltered the myna bird from Shen Zhou in his arms and took half a step back.

“This is no trick,” he said. 

“The good and evil of our two lives will likely be judged here.”

Shuyu Peak.

Shen Zhou was sitting cross-legged on the floor, tinkering with repairing the puppet.

His eyelid twitched for no reason. Deep within his spiritual altar, the myna birds perched on the branches suddenly flew into a chaotic frenzy. His soul grew inexplicably restless and agitated, and he opened his eyes.

…

He checked himself but found nothing unusual. He then looked at the black dots flying wildly in his spiritual altar and suddenly remembered that he had once given Lu Buzhuo a myna bird created from there.

The connection with that little thing wasn’t very strong; otherwise, he would have known back then that Lu Buzhuo hadn’t died.

But this time, for some reason, he felt a faint, inexplicable connection, as if he were being held up by the scruff of his neck and scrutinized from above, feeling his scalp tingle from time to time.

His wolf ears drooped.

Xie Xianqing happened to be passing by and, thinking it was another generous invitation, reached out to pet them.

Shen Zhou was bewildered and turned to glare at him. 

“…?”

“I thought you were letting me,” said Xie Xianqing. He was holding a box of pastries in his left hand and a few items of clothing under his right arm. It was incredible that he could still free a hand to pet ears while being so busy.

Perhaps due to the life-saving bond forged by that kick in Bian City, the two had become familiar quickly.

“I didn’t know what you like to eat, so I just steamed a few types of pastries. Your old clothes were torn, so make do with these two for now. There are no new ones; you’ll have to wait until next month… Didn’t I tell you to fix it tomorrow?” Xie Xianqing shoved everything into Shen Zhou’s arms, sat down next to him, and voiced a physician’s complaint, “Just like Lu Buzhuo, you don’t follow doctor’s orders.”

Hearing the name “Lu Buzhuo,” Shen Zhou instantly forgot the earlier palpitations and twitched his wolf ears in displeasure.

“It’s not the same,” he argued.

He dropped the half-repaired puppet and went back into the room with the pastries and clothes.

Inside the Punishment Sword, the judgment had begun.

Lu Buzhuo was on his knees, a long, blurry trail of blood behind him. His shoulders trembled, his fingertips nearly digging into the hard ground.

The shadow and the myna bird were nowhere to be found; he was the only one here.

The surroundings were no longer a vast expanse of white but a place familiar to his very bones—craggy rocks, dim light, and thick demonic energy filling the air.

The Myriad Bone Cave.

To be precise, it was the Myriad Bone Cave from the depths of his memory—

Eight soul-piercing nails had sealed the major acupoints all over the half-demon’s body and also held onto his dissipating soul. The wolf ears drooped lifelessly, and fresh blood pooled in the cracks of the stone, dripping softly.

The Golden Core was already gone, sent to the junction between the new and old sealing formations, which would ensure a thousand years of peace for the Kunlun Ruins.

The evil soul in his spiritual altar was nearly hysterical: “What have you done! Lu Buzhuo, what have you done!?? The Golden Core… Where is my Golden Core!! Just a little more, just a little more and I could have obtained a complete soul!! Twelve years… a full twelve years!!!”

Lu Buzhuo coughed up a mouthful of blood.

Under the evil soul’s reckless counterattack, this body was already a spent lamp. His skin cracked inch by inch, and blood flowed from his seven orifices.

The wound on his wrist was deep enough to see bone. He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and, with another slash of the knife, pierced through his palm. He carefully smeared the blood on the ground. His half-lidded eyes were startlingly bright, and upon closer inspection, a faint white flame could be seen burning within—the light that only comes from a burning soul.

There was already a formation on the ground drawn with the half-demon’s blood. Where the new blood was smeared, the old and new merged, flowing like a river of blood from the underworld—demonic, strange, and emitting an ominous red glow.

As the red glow intensified, on the large rock, the gaping wound in the half-demon’s abdomen slowly healed. The soul, held back by the soul-piercing nails, was gradually drawn back into the body, and vitality was restored.

Heavenly thunder rumbled, circling outside the Myriad Bone Cave, unable to find where exactly the heavenly secrets were being stolen.

The Golden Core is the lifeline of a cultivator. If it is carved out, death is certain. The only way was to deceive the Heavenly Dao, to trade a life for a life.

Lu Buzhuo drew the last stroke of blood, laboriously raising his head to look at the half-demon at the center of the formation. But his vision was already blurry; he could only see a faint outline, unable to make out the face.

In truth, he and Shen Zhou were not that familiar.

In twelve long years, they had only met three times. A fleeting encounter on a snowy night in Bian City, then that brief meeting, and after that, the dual cultivation forced upon them by the evil soul.

Everything between them was so chaotic and rushed, like swallowing an unripe fruit whole, unable to even taste the sourness and bitterness, just stuck firmly in his throat.

Thinking back, he couldn’t even clearly remember the other’s appearance. Lu Buzhuo smiled, then felt his cheek touch something cold.

A moment later, he realized he had fallen to the ground.

Half of his eye was soaked in the blood from the formation, wet and cool, as if tears could not flow.

His soul was almost completely burned away, unable to suppress the evil soul anymore, but it no longer mattered.

If Shen Zhou’s Golden Core still existed, it would always be a variable; there was no telling when the evil soul might obtain it. So he simply played the villain, carved it out, and sent it into the sealing formation, cutting off all possibilities.

Then, using both their blood, he drew the forbidden life-for-life formation to save Shen Zhou’s life, drain this body of its vitality, and destroy the evil soul’s sanctuary.

A soul without a body would soon be devoured by the demonic energy of the Myriad Bone Cave. Even if it were lucky enough to survive, it would be incomplete and unable to cause any significant trouble.

He had calculated everything perfectly, except for one thing… he had never imagined that burning one’s soul to ashes would be so painful.

So much so that at the very last moment that year, the evil soul had seized control, expelling him from the spiritual altar, giving this body a chance to cling to life, leading to many more troubles later on.

The judgment continued.

Deceiving the Heavenly Dao, trading a life for a life—the Punishment Sword judged this as the greatest evil of his past life.

Inside the sword, he repeated the cycle of memory, tasting the pain of his soul burning again and again, being pushed before the Golden Core-less Shen Zhou again and again, hearing a voice constantly asking in his ear: “You are not a person of great evil. Are you willing to repent?”

The Punishment Sword was a just sword.

The common people were paramount, and the sealing formation was a contribution for the ages. As long as the person in this sword showed even a hint of repentance and stopped trying to save that insignificant half-demon, the judgment of his past life could end.

It was just an illusion, only an illusion.

But that person never stopped, not even once.

…

After an unknown number of repetitions, Lu Buzhuo had once again burned his soul to ashes. Covered in wounds, he collapsed beside the slowly reviving Shen Zhou and heard the voice of the Punishment Sword.

He let out a laugh, moved his lips, and whispered softly, “I am unrepentant.”