Chapter 649
The afternoon rainstorm came suddenly.
Nangong Wan was curled up on the soft couch on the second floor of the bamboo pavilion. The fire-washed cloth absorbed the sunlight and made her drowsy. The rain outside the window was like a waterfall, but Fu Shaoping was practicing sword by the pond. The black iron sword broke through the rain curtain, and every drop of rain that fell on him was turned into ice mist by the sword energy.
"Fool." She muttered, but the purple flames on her fingertips quietly slipped out of the window, weaving a fine net in the rain, catching all the raindrops that might splash his robe.
After an unknown amount of time, there was a slight creaking sound from the attic floor. Fu Shaoping came in with a chill, and ice still hung on the ends of his hair. In his hand, he was holding a string of silver fish frozen with sword energy - a specialty of the cold pond, whose scales could reflect the brilliance of the purple flame.
Nangong Wan pretended to be asleep, and felt his sword energy move slightly, and her wet outer robe instantly dried up. The string of silver fish was hung by the window, and the rainbow light refracted by the ice crystals fell on her eyelids, making her feel itchy.
"If you're pretending to be asleep, then get out." Fu Shaoping suddenly said.
Nangong Wan smiled and turned over. A ray of purple flame flew over and burned the hairband he had just tied into ashes: "No way."
-
When the wind chimes rang in the middle of the night, Nangong Wan was dismantling Fu Shaoping's sword rack.
The black iron sword tassel was entangled with her hair, which she had left behind on purpose during the duel yesterday. She twisted the long hair, and the purple flame burned along the hair, trying to force out the thing he had hidden in the interlayer of the scabbard.
“Click.”
The sword rack suddenly flipped over, revealing an ice jade box in the secret compartment. Twelve cold marrow pills were neatly stacked in the box, each wrapped in sword energy, and next to it was a frozen page of "Purple Flame Breathing Art" - it was exactly what Fu Shaoping dug out from the brain of the elder of the Xuanyin Sect on the night she went crazy.
There were footsteps coming from the bamboo ladder behind her. She calmly closed the secret compartment and hung her skirt on the sword rack. The gauze dress fell down, just covering the traces of the mechanism.
When Fu Shaoping came in with the medicine cup, he saw Nangong Wan leaning against the sword rack, her skirt half wet. He glanced at the slightly misaligned sword tassel, and suddenly raised his hand, freezing her left hand as she tried to hide it.
"Drink the medicine." He stuffed the medicine cup into her right hand. The soup was as black as ink, but it reflected the light of the purple flame.
Nangong Wan sniffed and smelled the scent of intoxicating nightshade. "Fighting poison with poison?" She raised her head and drank it all, her tongue deliberately rubbing against his fingertips that he had not yet retracted.
Fu Shaoping retracted his hand faster than the sword energy, but the tip of his ear was dyed with the color of the morning light of the cold pond. When he turned around, the hair on the sword tassel had long disappeared, leaving only a wisp of purple flame, quietly wrapped around his cuffs.
-
The wind chimes rang again, and this time it startled a pair of kingfishers on the top of the bamboo pavilion.
The cold pond was still, reflecting the two figures standing side by side. Fu Shaoping's sword energy carved a formation at the bottom of the pond, while Nangong Wan's purple flame embroidered runes on the water surface. If an outsider broke in, this place within a radius of ten miles would turn into a hell of ice and fire.
"Return to the ruins." Nangong Wan stroked the words on the door lintel and suddenly pressed his palm on Fu Shaoping's chest. "How long can you return?"
Fu Shaoping held her wrist, and the frost and purple flames exploded into tiny sparks where they touched: "Until you get tired of it."
"That's it." She smiled and pulled her hand away, but the purple flame remained on his collar, condensing into a small phoenix mark, "I am a person who is most loyal."
The black ice lotus at the bottom of the pond suddenly bloomed, and the assassin's eyeballs in the stamens had already turned into ice beads, reflecting the moment when the two shadows overlapped. The wind chimes swayed lightly, and the broken sword kissed the morning light. Ding——
There was a sunny slope on the east side of the cold pond. It had been permeated by Fu Shaoping's sword energy and Nangong Wan's purple flame for many years, and the soil had long been different from ordinary land. That morning, Nangong Wan stepped barefoot on the moist soil, and the purple flame on his toes spread like ripples. Wherever he passed, the hardened soil turned into fine spiritual soil.
"Fool, come here." She called out without turning her head, her fingertips drew an arc in the air, and the purple flames fell to the ground to form a ditch, dividing the slope into neat ridges.
Fu Shaoping stood on a rock beside the pond, a drop of condensed cold pond water dripping from the tip of his black iron sword. With a slight shake of his wrist, the drop of water turned into dozens of small streams, falling precisely into the ditch dug by Nangong Wan. When the water touched the soil burned by the purple flame, it made a crisp sound like metal hitting stone, and steamed up a mist with frost flowers.
"Ice and Fire Spiritual Field." Nangong Wan squatted down, picked up a handful of soil with a purple-gold luster, and smiled with narrowed eyes, "If the old man from the Xuanyin Sect knew that we used his secret method to farm, I'm afraid he would be so angry that he would crawl out of his coffin."
Fu Shaoping had stood behind her without her noticing, and tapped her head with his sword sheath: "Seed."
Dozens of jade boxes flew out of Nangong Wan's sleeves. When the lids were opened, various colors of spiritual light floated like fireflies. There were crimson seeds of seven-star crabapple, silver-blue embryos of moon-seeing orchids, and the most precious were the three longan-sized red flame fruits - she had fished them out from the magma of the Nanli crater at the cost of three sleepless nights.
The planting process was like a silent sword dance. Nangong Wan's purple flames wrapped each seed in a protective film, while Fu Shaoping's sword energy carved a spiritual array deep in the soil. When the last cold marrow grass was buried in the yin position in the northeast corner, the entire spiritual field suddenly rippled with a wave of spiritual light, and then returned to calm. Only the purple gold lines that occasionally flashed on the soil surface indicated the extraordinaryness of this place.
The days of tending to the spiritual field were more interesting than expected. Nangong Wan discovered that Fu Shaoping's control over the irrigation time was terrifyingly accurate - every day at 3:30 pm, when the first ray of morning light passed over the eastern ridge, his sword energy could always punctually induce the water vapor of the cold pond, forming dense spiritual rain above the spiritual field. She was responsible for using purple flames to adjust the temperature of different areas every day. The seven-star crabapple liked heat, so she let the soil around it glow dark red; the cold marrow grass liked shade, so she used purple flames to weave a light-transmitting filter above it.
Three months later, on a full-moon night, when the first moon orchid bloomed, Fu Shaoping took the initiative to speak, which was rare: "There's something in the south corner." Nangong Wan walked over with the purple flame lamp and found that outside the protective formation at the edge of the spiritual field, there was a clump of blood-red grass leaves. The red color was very unusual, with a metallic luster under the moonlight, and the veins of the leaves vaguely formed some kind of rune.
"It's just a weed." She casually cut off a piece of it, and the juice that oozed out from the broken end was like molten copper, burning tiny white smoke at her fingertips. Zi Yan instinctively counterattacked, swallowing up the strange burning sensation.
The next morning, Nangong Wan was yawning as she inspected the spiritual field when she suddenly stopped. The red grass that was cut off last night not only grew back, but also spread more than half a foot, with the front end already touching the boundary of the protective formation. She frowned and summoned the purple flame, which directly burned the red grass to the roots, and the soil was burned into glass.
However, three days later, when Fu Shaoping discovered the same red grass in the southwest corner during irrigation, the two finally realized the seriousness of the problem. Even more disturbing was that the place where the red grass grew happened to be where a seven-star crabapple was about to mature - the spiritual medicine had withered for the most part, and the remaining part showed a strange shape that had been "sucked" by something.
"It's not a weed." Fu Shaoping picked up a red leaf with the tip of his sword. The frost spread along the veins of the leaf, but was bounced away by some force when it was about to cover the entire leaf. The leaf suddenly ignited in his hand, and the spiritual power fluctuations remaining in the ashes made the two of them change their faces at the same time - that was clearly the breath of the Xuanyin Sect's secret method.
Nangong Wan's purple flames surged uncontrollably: "Before that old guy died, did he throw something into the cold pond?"
Fu Shaoping looked at the bottomless cold pond, and the sword energy drew a complex trajectory on the water. Under the water, the protective formation they carved on the bottom of the pond last year could be vaguely seen, and at this moment, some nodes of the formation seemed to be slowly eroded by some kind of red silk thread.
When Fu Shaoping's sword energy condensed into a frosty dome above the spiritual field, Nangong Wan's purple flame was moving like a snake along the ridge of the field. The moment the ice crystals and flames collided, a translucent glass barrier was formed, completely isolating the area where the red leaves had appeared - this was the combined attack technique "Ice and Fire Sealing Boundary" that they discovered on the last page of "Purple Flame Breathing Art" that year. They didn't expect that the first complete performance would be used on their own spiritual field.
"Roots." Fu Shaoping touched the ground with the tip of his sword, and frost seeped down through the cracks in the soil, leaving spider-web-like red veins wherever it passed. Those hair-thin red roots had penetrated the three-foot-deep spiritual soil and were extending towards the cold pond.
Nangong Wan bit her fingertips, and a drop of blood with a purple glow fell into the soil. The moment the blood touched the ground, two clusters of strange flames ignited in her pupils: "Let me see where this ghost thing's lair is." The purple flame rushed down along the blood-colored roots, and her consciousness followed like a shadow. After traveling dozens of feet underground in the darkness, the purple flame suddenly hit a huge root mass that was as red as blood. The thing sensed the intruder and shrank and squirmed like a living thing, and patterns very similar to the Xuanyin Sect's talisman appeared on its surface.
Suddenly, there was a crisp sound of ice breaking from the cold pond. Fu Shaoping's figure had disappeared by the pond, leaving only a slowly rotating vortex of ice. When Nangong Wan withdrew her consciousness, she found that her cuffs had been entangled with several red threads, trying to pierce her skin. The purple flames rose up and burned the red threads, but three cinnabar-like red marks were left on the inside of her wrist.
The bottom of the pool was darker than expected. Fu Shaoping's sword energy condensed into a six-sided ice crystal lamp in front of him, illuminating the protective array carved on the black ice last year. The array pattern that should have been bright blue was now covered with red threads, and the ice coffin of the elder of the Xuanyin Sect in the center of the array, which should have been completely shattered, unexpectedly recondensed in a corner. The red mist as thick as blood oozed out from the cracks in the coffin and was slowly drifting towards the surface of the pool with the waves.
"Found it." Nangong Wan's voice suddenly came through the sound transmission bell, with a rare tense tone, "There is a record in the bamboo slips of "Purple Flame Breathing Sutra" that this is "Red Marrow Disease", a poison technique used by the Xuanyin Sect to deal with traitors - it refines a person's bone marrow into red seeds, which can absorb all the spiritual energy within a radius of 100 miles."
Fu Shaoping's sword tip pressed against the broken pieces of the ice coffin, and the frost and red mist collided and made a sharp hissing sound. When he returned to the bamboo pavilion, Nangong Wan was arranging the twelve spiritual herbs in a star map, and flames of different colors were dancing on each herb. Without even looking up, she threw a roll of yellowed animal skin and said, "The drunken nightshade should be replaced with double the amount, and three grams of cold pond black ice nourished by sword energy."
For seven whole days, the second floor of the Bamboo Pavilion was filled with the bitter aroma of medicine. Nangong Wan used the purple flame as the cauldron, and Fu Shaoping used the sword energy as the guide, but the potion they made was always a little short of the right temperature. Until the evening of the seventh day, when Nangong Wan accidentally put the medicine spoon stained with Fu Shaoping's blood into the flame, the black medicine liquid in the glass bottle suddenly glowed with a golden and red halo - the drop of blood temporarily suppressed the activity of the red leaf.
"Interesting." Nangong Wan stroked the bottle with his fingertips and suddenly poured the liquid medicine onto a red leaf by the window. The red leaf trembled violently, and then quickly withered as if its vitality was taken away. But just as the two of them breathed a sigh of relief, the withered red leaf suddenly exploded, and hundreds of red spores flew all over the sky, each of which flashed with an ice-blue light spot that originated from Fu Shaoping's sword energy.
Fu Shaoping's face turned colder than the ice in the cold pond. He swung his sword to freeze all the spores. When he turned around, the wind from his sword swept away a strand of Nangong Wan's hair. "Tomorrow I will go and destroy the remaining coffin at the bottom of the pond."
"It's useless." Nangong Wan held his wrist, and Zi Yan followed the meridians into his palm, "You saw it just now, that thing and your sword energy." Before she finished speaking, she was suddenly stunned - Zi Yan caught a very faint red mist in his spiritual veins, exactly the same as the one seeping out of the ice coffin at the bottom of the pool.
The night rain came suddenly. Fu Shaoping stood under the corridor and looked at the spiritual field covered by the rain curtain, and the frosty white sword energy flowed around him like a veil. When Nangong Wan approached with the newly refined medicine cup, he found that the five fingers of his right hand were unconsciously repeating a certain Xuanyin Sect sword technique.
"When you were a child," she placed the medicine cup on the railing, letting the rain wet her sleeves, "did you see this kind of red leaves?"
The sword energy at Fu Shaoping's fingertips suddenly lost control and cut the rain curtain in half. This always calm and self-controlled swordsman showed an almost embarrassing stiffness for the first time: "When I was seven years old, the walls of the Xuanyin Sect dungeon suddenly grew these red leaves." His voice was so low that it was almost drowned by the sound of rain, "When the red leaves cover the entire wall, the people in the prison will disappear."
Nangong Wan's purple flame lamp flickered in the rain. She suddenly reached out and ripped open Fu Shaoping's collar. Below the collarbone, three old scars that had long since healed were glowing with a strange red light.
"I have a plan." She put the medicine cup into his hand, with dangerous flames in her eyes. "Since conventional methods are useless, why don't you let me use the purple flame to refine its core directly. Just like I refined the cold poison in your body that year, but this time I have to start from the spiritual field and burn along the roots all the way to the bottom of the pool."
"No!" The medicine cup exploded in Fu Shaoping's palm, and the black medicine dripped through his fingers, corroding the bamboo floor into several small holes. He suddenly pulled Nangong Wan closer, and their noses almost touched: "That thing now has the characteristics of my sword energy. Once your purple flame penetrates into the core, it will be backfired into..."
Amid the sound of rain, the glass barrier broke apart. The two turned their heads at the same time, and saw that the "Ice and Fire Sealing Realm" in the center of the spiritual field was collapsing. A red plant more than ten feet tall broke out of the ground, and the dense lines on the leaves were clearly visible - they were countless twisted and deformed Xuanyin runes, and at the top of the tender bud, there was a drop of ice-blue dew that was the same source as Fu Shaoping's sword energy.
Fu Shaoping was delighted. (End of this chapter)