Volume One: Youths Meeting in Humble Times Chapter 154: The Path of Faking Death 9

When people face the temptation of immense benefits, they can cast propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame to the winds. To them, nothing is more important than their own gains. And when those stronger than themselves are not around, they elevate themselves to a position of absolute leadership. They use all sorts of rhetoric about acting for the greater good to drive others to serve them, while still trying to maintain a shred of their dignity—wanting both to keep their face and throw it away.

Arriving along with Elder Yuan were Elder Gao of the Yellow Springs Sect, Elder Luo of the Divine Mechanism Gate, and Elder Lian of the Myriad Beasts Sect. This operation had been uniformly organized by Li Zhonghong of the Li family.

He, along with members of the five great families of Tianmen Town, had set out toward the ocean route, while members of the other six major sects were divided into two groups: one heading to Shen Tang's home, and the other to the Yet-Another Taoist Temple.

He would have liked to make arrangements for the people of the Imperial Pole Hall and the Great Sword Green Mountain as well, but those people did not seem to hold the Li family in any regard. No matter how many hints Li Zhonghong dropped, they chose to turn a blind eye. Thus, having no other recourse, he could only dispatch the city garrison officers in all directions to plug any gaps.

Li Zhonghong's thinking was quite self-centered. Putting himself in Li Yu's shoes at that age, he figured he would be thinking about how to escape. Therefore, that maritime route should be the place where Li Yu was most likely to be found.

As for the second most likely place, it would be the Yet-Another Taoist Temple. Yet, he figured no one would want to sit around and wait for death. Even if the Yet-Another Taoist Temple possessed hidden trump cards, it was ultimately just a tiny corner of the world. Even if it could shield someone for a moment, could it shield them for a lifetime? Once the opportunity for flight was missed, and outsiders swarmed in, even if the temple truly possessed hidden cards, would there be no one capable of breaking them?

After multiple analyses, he took the main force to the ocean route to track down Li Yu.

Yet, worldly affairs so often run counter to one's expectations; the possibility he deemed the least likely turned out to be Li Yu's actual choice.

At that moment, no one knew how ecstatic Elder Yuan of the Falling Oblivion Peak was.

He too had been stripped of a large majority of his cultivation. His original strength was not the highest to begin with, and after losing the greater part of it, what remained was merely that of the sixth realm. With such feeble cultivation, how could he possibly maintain a foothold on Falling Oblivion Peak?

Thus, he was similarly dejected, anxious, and worried. When he heard the call for help—when he heard that Li Yu, the little disciple of the Daoist on the Brink, was at Shen Tang's house—hope instantly flared within his chest, accompanied by joy and the seeming vision of recovering his cultivation and ascending to an even higher realm.

Yet such a vision was utterly illusory.

The other elders felt the same way. They were equally anxious about the decline of their own cultivation, so without even needing Elder Yuan to hint at it, they all chose to first fleece Li Yu for a while, extracting whatever benefits they could get their hands on.

The group moved imposingly and swiftly toward Shen Tang's home. Within the array, Li Yu felt the changes in the surrounding aura even more acutely. Sensing that the incoming presences were not those of the Li family, he said with a hint of disappointment, "The ones coming aren't them after all. It seems we still have to wait a little longer."

Shen Tang asked, "Wait for what?"

Since the conversation had reached this point, Li Yu no longer wished to keep things from her. After a brief pause, he said, "Waiting for members of my own clan to arrive!"

Clearly, Shen Tang had not expected to hear such words from Li Yu, and she failed to react for a moment. After a short while, she came to her senses and asked, "Are you at enmity with them?"

Li Yu nodded, his expression devoid of any emotion, as if that past had happened to someone else, and to him, it was merely something he happened to know.

Li Yu said, "I can't say too much right now. All I can say is this: that family is a man-eating family, and apart from a very few individuals, I don't hold a shred of fondness for anyone else there."

After pondering for a moment, Shen Tang continued, "So by waiting, do you mean you want to wait for them to arrive and then kill them within the array?"

Kill them? Li Yu certainly wished he could, but now was not the best time. If they died, it would inevitably prompt even more members of the Li family to emerge, which was by no means a good thing for Li Yu at present.

He knew that right now, he could only bide his time and keep a low profile, thereby buying himself more time to grow. When that day finally arrived, Li Yu would return to the Li family in person—repaying kindness where it was due, and exacting vengeance where it belonged!

"Now is not the time to kill them. What I'm waiting for is for them to watch me die with their own eyes. Only when they see my death with their own eyes will they truly be put at ease, and only then will our scheme of faking our deaths be considered perfect," Li Yu explained to her.

As they spoke, the four elders arrived at the entrance of Shen Tang's home.

The disciples who had arrived earlier hurriedly reported to the four elders, "We were just waiting at the entrance when we were sucked into a special space by a flash of white light. We assume it must be an array."

Elder Yuan of Falling Oblivion Peak had also studied array formations to some extent. Without foolishly rushing inside, he chose to observe from the outside for a long time before declaring, "There is indeed an array here, and furthermore, it's an array within an array, interlocking ring upon ring."

Upon hearing this, the other elders hurriedly asked, "Is there a way to break it?"

Elder Yuan replied, "If we wanted to break it from the outside, perhaps only our former selves could have managed it. Now that our cultivation is merely at the sixth realm, there is no way for us to break it."

Hearing this, Elder Gao of the Yellow Springs Sect became even more anxious. After all, among this group, his cultivation was the lowest—only at the fifth realm—and if he didn't find a way to stabilize it, he would definitely drop to the fourth realm. He hurriedly asked, "What should we do now then? We can't just watch them hide inside and do nothing, waiting for the Li family to come and take him away!"

Such a scenario could not be allowed to happen. Elder Yuan naturally understood this, so without pondering for very long, he made a decision a moment later:

"Fortune favors the bold. Since we wish to learn the secrets belonging to the Daoist on the Brink, we have no choice now but to start with his little disciple. Since he's hiding inside and we have no external means to break in, let us go in ourselves. There are four of us, and we still possess numerous methods and magical treasures—are we afraid we won't be able to match him? Besides, consider his age: he's merely a twelve-year-old boy. Even if he understands array techniques and can set up an array within an array, how much power can it truly hold? It's likely just a bluff, a trick meant to make us retreat without a fight."

His words unanimously won the approval of the others—no, rather than approval, it was a form of psychological self-construction. They were still somewhat afraid of this array, after all, because it had been set up by a disciple of the Daoist on the Brink, and heaven knows how much that disciple had learned from Li Yu!

They couldn't be blamed for their fear, for the Daoist on the Brink had cast far too large a shadow over them.

Yet things had reached this pass; they had no choice but to brace themselves and enter the array. If they didn't enter, there was no hope at all; if they entered, there might at least be a glimmer of a chance of winning.

A gambler's mentality was vividly and completely embodied in them.

Inside the array, Shen Tang asked, "Will they come in?"

Li Yu nodded and said, "They will. They are gamblers, and what's more, they are desperate gamblers staking their lives on their own futures. Furthermore, they all consider themselves the chosen ones, believing they won't capsize in a ditch like me."

Having heard Li Yu put it this way, Shen Tang grew a little curious as well. She asked him, "Why do you understand their minds so well?"

Li Yu smiled and said, "Perhaps—perhaps it's because I am a gambler too. It's just that what I gamble with is different from them. They wager everything they have on their own cultivation, whereas I wagered everything on my own life; I've always gotten by this way before. What we care about is different, so the odds of winning are different too."

Shen Tang did not understand. She looked at Li Yu in bewilderment, thinking: Why does this younger brother understand so much? Could it be that he learned all this while he was away?

Li Yu continued to explain, "In this scheme to fake my death, I never actually put my own life on the table as a stake. Or rather, I cast out a stake that merely looked like a bet: that stake is my master's legacy, and also one of the opportunities my master left behind for me. Knowing how formidable my master's Dao is, they naturally expect to glean something from me. To this end, they don't hesitate to wager their lives and their future cultivation. Once they win the bet, they naturally win the whole pot. Yet this stake is completely unimportant to me. I don't care about these things, so I can plan and scheme with such an air of indifference. From start to finish, I have played the role of someone inside the game while doing the work of someone outside it. But they have already been blinded by their desire to win, blinded in their eyes—how could they possibly perceive all my calculations? The one who wins is not someone who refuses to believe they can lose, nor is it someone who thinks they are bound to win; it is the person who does not care about winning or losing, and does not even take the gambling table to heart. When you harbor a fixation on victory and defeat, how can you ever claim to have a guaranteed win?"

Explained in this manner by Li Yu, Shen Tang began to understand a little. She looked at him and said, "So, only by not caring can one truly win, right?"

Li Yu added, "Correct. But it's not about not caring at all; rather, what you truly care about was never part of the gambling table in the first place!"

From the very moment those four elders decided to enter the array, their defeat was predestined.

Of this, Li Yu had never had the slightest doubt.

Within the array, the four elders arrived at the exact formation sector where Elder Chen and his group had previously been trapped. This time, Li Yu did not afford them any extra time; before long, he mobilized the surrounding black miasma to attack them. As expected, subsequent events unfolded precisely the same way they had for Elder Chen and the others.

Then came the rotation of one scenario after another. Every time they emerged from a trial, they thought they had reached a place of hope, only to find that what awaited them was still despair.

After such a repetitive cycle occurred multiple times, their state of mind deteriorated even further. Elder Gao of the Yellow Springs Sect saw his cultivation drop completely and utterly from the fifth realm down to the fourth.

Yet this could no longer stir any emotional fluctuation within him, for he was experiencing a profound sense of powerlessness and incompetence for the very first time.

Never before had their fear of death surpassed the terror they felt in this present moment.

And what filled them with even greater despair was the realization that all of this had been orchestrated by a twelve-year-old boy.

Cultivation was a gift bestowed upon the mortal world by the heavens, but little did anyone know that Li Yu was the gift itself—the reward incarnate!