Chapter 250: Call For Help
The reason Lu Yun decided not to attack the Saintess was not only because he hoped she would help him solve the cultivation method problem, but also because Lu Yun was not afraid of Su Yingxiu telling Sun Yuanlang the secret of the treasure vault.
Don’t forget, Lu Yun has Kou Xianzhi’s posthumous letter in hand, which is a trump card that can put Sun Yuanlang and Taiping Dao in great peril! With that posthumous letter, Lu Yun had nothing to worry about.
The reason is simple. If Su Yingxiu is absolutely loyal to Sun Yuanlang, she would not risk telling him the secret of the treasure vault, which could lead to his downfall—with Su Yingxiu’s intelligence, she surely knows that the precondition for him not publicizing the posthumous letter is that the secret of the treasure vault is not leaked!
Moreover, even if they could escape from underground Mount Mang, rediscovering and reopening the treasure vault and transporting the treasures inside would require a massive operation, making it impossible not to alert the Initial Emperor and the Xiahou Clan. So, even retreating ten thousand steps, even if Sun Yuanlang really learned the secret of the treasure, in the foreseeable future, he would have no chance to lay hands on this treasure. Therefore, there was no need to worry about Gaozu’s Treasure Vault being taken by someone else first.
By the same logic, in the visible future, he himself also had no hope of swallowing this treasure. Rather than strictly guarding the secret now to prevent it from leaking, it would be better to cooperate with Sun Yuanlang at that time and each get what they need.
In the end, even though Sun Yuanlang was currently his greatest threat, Lu Yun did not regard him and Taiping Dao as mortal enemies, but as objects that could be mutually utilized. This was the real reason why Lu Yun had always shown mercy to the Saintess.
After all, Lu Yun had too many enemies to face, and Taiping Dao happened to have no irreconcilable grudge with him, and the enemies they faced overlapped greatly. Lu Yun really did not want to kill Su Yingxiu for reasons that did not threaten his own safety and become Taiping Dao’s mortal enemy.
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Su Yingxiu was actually gambling too. She had a gut feeling that Lu Yun would not harm her, so she put on that appearance of letting him do as he pleased. But Su Yingxiu herself had no confidence, so until Lu Yun’s palm struck the water, she was tense to the point of suffocation…
Fortunately, her intuition was correct, and Lu Yun ultimately did not attack her. This made Su Yingxiu feel relieved, while a trace of an indescribable sweet feeling surged in her heart.
“Husband, I’ve really fallen for you…” Su Yingxiu said in a sweet and cloying tone, her passionate gaze enough to melt a person alive.
“Cut it out.” Although Lu Yun was completely oblivious to romance and did not believe this demoness would develop feelings, he did not respond with a cold glare as before.
Clearly, the decision Lu Yun had just made had unknowingly brought the two closer together.
“Even if we are going to seek aid, we can’t just go back like this.” Lu Yun looked at the water surface, frowning as he said.
“Of course,” Su Yingxiu was in a great mood and nodded with a smile: “We need to clean up the scene first so they won’t notice anything unusual.”
“Mm.” Lu Yun nodded, glanced at Kou Xianzhi’s remains, and said softly: “Let’s first move True Person Kou’s body.” Before seeking aid, the most important thing was to ensure that the matters of Kou Xianzhi and the treasure vault were not detected by those sharp-eyed grandmasters.
Su Yingxiu nodded slightly, and went with Lu Yun to the treasure vault, selected a bronze chest, and with great effort brought it back to Kou Xianzhi’s side to collect his remains.
Su Yingxiu stood by, watching Lu Yun carefully collect Kou Xianzhi’s bones into the bronze chest. She parted her red lips lightly and hummed a mournful elegy.
‘At my birth, there was yet no action; after my birth, the Han dynasty declined.
Heaven is unkind and brings chaos and separation; Earth is unkind and makes me encounter this time…’
‘The barbarians force me to establish a family; they send me far away to the ends of the earth.
Clouds and mountains ten thousand layers, the road home distant; fierce winds a thousand li, raising dust and sand…’
In the weeping and plaintive song, a tragic scene of barbarians ravaging China and the sons of Han fleeing to the horizon unfolded vividly before Lu Yun.
Lu Yun solemnly finished collecting Kou Xianzhi’s remains and was about to close the chest lid when Su Yingxiu suddenly said softly: “Wait a moment.”
Lu Yun paused and looked at Su Yingxiu, only to see her holding the nine-section staff with both hands in front of the bronze chest. The Saintess looked deeply at the staff representing the supreme authority of Taiping Dao, then resolutely placed it into the bronze chest.
“Don’t you think it’s a pity?” Lu Yun said softly. He knew that with this item, the Saintess could even stand equal to Sun Yuanlang.
“Not a pity. With my strength, I can’t keep this sacred object at all.” Su Yingxiu saw it openly and said indifferently: “Besides, this thing is so big, there’s no way to hide it from others later, wouldn’t that invite disaster?”
“Mm.” Lu Yun nodded, satisfied with Su Yingxiu’s upright attitude.
After placing the nine-section staff, Su Yingxiu personally closed the latch on the bronze chest. The hegemon Kou Xianzhi, ten years after his death, finally had a resting place and could sleep eternally in the nine springs.
?
‘Yellow artemisia on the border withers branch and leaf dry; white bones on the battlefield scarred by blades and arrows.
Wind and frost piercing, spring and summer cold; men and horses hungry and exhausted, muscles and strength depleted.
Who knew I would return to Chang’an; sighs to the breaking point, tears streaming…’
In Su Yingxiu’s mournful and indignant song, Lu Yun carried the bronze coffin and sank underwater. With tremendous effort, he finally returned Kou Xianzhi’s coffin to the underground palace.
Carefully placing the bronze coffin on the ground, Lu Yun panted roughly and said to Kou Xianzhi in the coffin: “True Person Kou, you clearly sat in meditation underground back then because you did not want to die on the Founding Emperor’s territory. But circumstances demand flexibility, so please endure for a few years. The day I open the treasure vault will be the day I give you a grand burial with full honors.”
Actually, Lu Yun originally did not need to care so much about Kou Xianzhi, but whether it was the influence of that line ‘my resentment vast as the long sky, though the six directions are vast, they cannot contain it,’ which made him feel a sense of empathy, or out of respect for a legendary figure, in any case, he did his utmost to give Kou Xianzhi a lavish burial…
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When Lu Yun returned, he saw that Su Yingxiu had already cleaned the ground spotless, with no trace of the original scene left. To prevent those grandmasters from noticing anything, she had carefully extinguished the campfire and swept all the ashes into the river, letting the rapids wash everything clean.
Now, only the cave entrance leading to the treasure vault remained. That cave entrance was underwater, making it inconvenient to block, but it had its advantages too—at least the chance of discovery was much smaller.
“What should we use to block this?” Su Yingxiu looked at Lu Yun with some worry.
Lu Yun smiled, leaned down to grope underwater for a moment, then held up two fist-sized stones, one in each hand, showing them to Su Yingxiu.
“Haha, these are what Ancestor Master left when digging the cave back then!” Su Yingxiu’s eyes lit up at the sight, and she laughed as she jumped into the water: “How did I forget about this?”
“Let’s get to work quickly.” Lu Yun glanced at Su Yingxiu’s breathtaking devilish figure, felt a heat in his nose, and quickly turned his head away, throwing the two stones in his hand into the cave.
Su Yingxiu smiled smugly, deliberately puffing out her chest, then dove underwater, picked up two stones, and following Lu Yun’s example, threw them into the cave entrance.
As the saying goes, men and women together make work light. The two moved quickly, and in half a day’s time, they had blocked up the cave entrance.
Lu Yun shoved the last stone into the crevice of the cave entrance with force, sealing the entire entrance solidly. He patted it hard a few times, but it remained unmoving.
“That’s about it.” Lu Yun nodded in satisfaction.
“A bit more.” Su Yingxiu smiled slyly, scooped up sticky silt from the bank with both hands, and evenly smeared it over the stones, completely concealing the cave entrance.
“Actually, no need to worry too much.” Lu Yun said softly: “At that time, everyone’s attention will be drawn to that only cave entrance and will automatically ignore the surroundings.”
“Better safe than sorry.” Su Yingxiu giggled coquettishly: “The treasure vault belongs to me and Husband, we can’t let others covet it…”
