Wei WuXian, “Why are you calling me so early in the morning?!”
Lan SiZhui, “E-early? … But, it is already nine.”
Everyone of the Lan Sect rose at five and slept at nine in a very systematic manner. Wei WuXian, on the other hand, rose at nine and slept at one in a similarly systematic manner, precisely four hours later than those the Lan Sect. Because he lay on his front for half of the night, his waist and back were both aching. He spoke in an honest tone, “I can’t get up.”
Lan SiZhui, “Uhm, what is wrong, this time?”
Wei WuXian, “What is wrong? I got done by your sect’s HanGuang-Jun.”
Lan JingYi’s angry voice also appeared, “If you continue to speak nonsense like this, you will pay for it. Come out!”
Wei WuXian spoke as if he had been wronged, “Really! He did me for the whole night! I can’t go out. I don’t have the face to see anyone.”
A few juniors stared at each other dumbfoundedly outside the door. People couldn’t go into HanGuang-Jun’s place without permission, so they couldn’t just go inside and drag him out. Lan JingYi raged, “You have no shame at all! HanGuang-Jun is not a cut sleeve. He did you?! I would be more than grateful if you tell me that you did not do him. Get up! Take away that donkey of yours and train it properly. It makes so much noise!”
Hearing his method of transportation being mentioned, Wei WuXian quickly climbed up, “What did you do to my Lil’ Apple?! Don’t touch it. It’s gonna kick you.”
Lan JingYi asked, “What is Lil’Apple?”
Wei WuXian, “My donkey!” Exiting the jingshi, he shooed the juniors to take him to his mount. He was led to a field of grass. The donkey was there, crying nonstop and making a lot of noise. The cries were because it wanted to eat grass, but a few dozens of round, white pompons gathered on the field, making it so that it couldn’t eat.
Wei WuXian was delighted, “So many rabbits! Here, here, let’s put them on a stick and start roasting!”
Lan JingYi fumed with anger, “Killing is forbidden in the Cloud Recesses! Make it shut up, right now. The disciples doing early readings have already come to ask a few times! If this keeps up, we will be scolded to death!”
Wei WuXian fed it the apple that was given to him for breakfast. As he expected, the donkey stopped making noise as it chewed on the apple, crunching its teeth together. Wei WuXian stroked the back of its neck as he thought about the passage tokens on these juniors and pointed at the round rabbits all over the ground, “I really can’t roast them? If I roast them, would I be chased off the mountain?”
Appearing as if he faced an imminent threat, Lan JingYi hastened to block in front of Wei WuXian with his arms stretched wide, “These are HanGuang-Jun’s. We just occasionally help him look after them. You cannot dare to roast them!”
As Wei WuXian heard this, he laughed so hard that he almost fell on the ground. He thought, What an interesting person Lan Zhan is! In the past, he didn’t even accept them when I gave them out for free, but now, he secretly raised a whole bunch. And he said he didn’t want them. Who was he kidding? Oh please, I bet he actually likes this sort of white, fuzzy things. HanGuang-Jun, holding a rabbit while keeping up a straight face. My gosh, I’m gonna die…
However, as he thought of the situation of him lying on top of Lan WangJi last night, his laughter stopped abruptly.
Suddenly, rings of the bell came from the the western side of the Cloud Recesses.
These rings were completely different from the ones that told the time. They were hurried and violent, as if a madman was striking it. With a sudden change in their faces, Lan JingYi and Lan SiZhui both stopped joking around with him, dashing toward the bell at once. Wei WuXian knew that something was wrong and quickly followed.
The sound came from a watchtower.
The watchtower was called the “mingshi”. It was the building the Lan Sect used to summon spirits, with walls made from a special material and incantations carved on them. When the bell of the watchtower started to ring on its own, it only meant one thing—that an accident happened to the people performing the summoning ritual inside.
Outside of the watchtower, more and more of the Lan Sect’s disciples started to crowd around, but nobody dared to go in without careful consideration. The door of the mingshi was black and made of wood. It was tightly locked, only able to be opened from inside. It was not only difficult to violently destroy it from the outside, but it was also forbidden to do so. It was extremely scary for an accident to happen during the spirit summoning ritual, since nobody would know what being it would summon or what would happen if someone broke in. And, ever since the mingshi was built, there were almost no cases where the summoning failed. This made everyone more worried.
Seeing that Lan WangJi didn’t appear, Wei WuXian had a foreboding feeling. If Lan WangJi was still in the Cloud Recesses, he would have hurried over immediately, as he heard the alarming chimes of the bell, unless… Suddenly, the black door bursted open with a bang. A white-clothed disciple rushed outside, staggering and stumbling.
As his legs weren’t steady, he rolled down the stairs as soon as he came out. The door of the mingshi instantly closed again, as if someone angrily slammed it shut.
In confusion, the bystanders quickly helped the disciple up. After he stood up, he immediately fell down again, his face covered in tears beyond his control. He held onto the people around him, “We should have… shouldn’t have summoned…”
Wei WuXian grabbed his hand at once, speaking in a low voice, “Which being’s spirit are you summoning? Who else is inside? Where’s HanGuang-Jun?!”
It seemed as if the disciple had trouble breathing, “HanGuang-Jun told me to run away…”
Before he finished his sentence, dark-red blood gushed out of his nose and mouth. Wei WuXian pushed him into Lan SiZhui’s arms. With the hastily created bamboo flute still by his waist, he went up the stairs in just a few strides. He kicked the mingshi’s door and commanded, “Open!”
The mingshi’s door opened abruptly, as if it was laughing wildly with a gaping mouth. Wei WuXian entered in a flash, and the door closed right behind him. A few disciples followed him in shock, but the door couldn’t be opened again, no matter what. A guest disciple rushed at the door, shock and anger on his face, and blurted out, “Who on Earth was that person?!”
Lan SiZhui held the earlier disciple up and spoke through clenched teeth, “… Come help me first. His qiqiao are bleeding!”
As soon as he entered the mingshi, Wei WuXian felt a dark energy coming over him.
The dark energy seemed like a combination of the energies of resentment, anger, and arrogance, almost visible to the human eye. Surrounded by it, one’s chest would feel a constricted sense of pain. The inside of the mingshi was about ten meters in both length and width. By its corners, a few people lay motionless on the ground. The object of this summoning was set in the center of the array on the ground.
It was nothing else but an arm—the one taken back from Mo Village!
It stood on the ground, as straight as a stick, with the side where it was cut off on the bottom. Four of its fingers were clenched into a fist, yet its index finger pointed toward the sky, as if it was angrily pointing at someone. The steady flow of dark energy that filled the mingshi was emitted by this.