Chapter 408 - The Tianxiang Chamber

“What did you just say?” “The Sect has no such thing as a Divine Corpse!?”

Whatever things Xiao Chen and Su Lianyue expected to hear, this was definitely not it. No Divine Corpse exists here at the Corpse Refinery Sect? Then why is the Sect amassing the malignant auras of grudge and hatred?

A frown wrinkled on Su Lianyue’s face. “Can you be more clear, Senior? What is the Sect doing then, if there is no Divine Corpse?”

“Who can tell? Some devilish errand for some sinister folk, I guess! The Sect has nothing as remotely close to what you all call the ancient Divine Corpse, nevermind the remains of an Immortal King. The whole thing is nothing but a millennia-long farce. Whatever that thing is called… it’s only the corpse of a simple girl. But one thing boggles me – how could a woman of the common folk has so strong a grudge that all the anger of the entire world put together would still pale in comparison?”

“Hold it right there,” Xiao Chen felt his head spinning, “What did you say about a woman of the common folk? What strong grudges? Everyone here has been gulled for thousands of years?!”

“Yes,” Yu Yangzi muttered with his abruptly-strangely-calm voice being the only sound in the chilly silence suddenly, “Indeed… The woman’s name was Red Sleeve!”

“Red Sleeve?”

Xiao Chen and Su Lianyue exchanged a look that was limned with doubt and suspicion. So this diabolical order has been operating for millennia with a woman called Red Sleeve at the helm and no one here was any the wiser?

“So you mean to say that this Red Sleeve is the one who had weaved this myth about a Divine Corpse, the remains of an Immortal King, to all the High Chieftains and Elders since Heaven knows when? Telling them that this Divine Corpse would be the object of their deliverance from the eternal bondage to the Administration?”

“Spot on,” Yu Yangzi remarked with a wicked chuckle, “More so, with the Soul’s Life Source of everyone here in the grasp of Red Sleeve. It was a myth passed down through endless generations that people began to cling firmly to it like ants on the scent of sugar. Those who wished to disprove this myth were hunted down like dogs and executed as traitors of the order and had their souls delivered to the Administration and their remains reused as Corpse Puppet. No one, not even the High Chieftain himself, is free from such fate!”

So this Red Sleeve must really is a dangerous person, Xiao Chen and Su Lianyue shared the very same fearful dread. That would explain the fear and awe everyone has for the woman in red, the lady-in-waiting of Red Sleeve.

“But… Err… Senior,” Su Lianyue asked again, sounding positively doubtful, “Has there not been any attempts to overthrow her rule?” Members of the Corpse Refinery Sect were not known for their loyalty and faithfulness.

“Overthrow? Hardly,” Yu Yangzi allowed, “High Chieftains of the past have all had their souls consumed by Red Sleeve or sent to the Administration of Heaven. Even in my state, I’m one of the handfuls of lucky ones… Her might is beyond your comprehension and she is eternal. Imperishable. Not even the Nether Emperor can do anything to her. Fuelled by her anger, her hatred, and her malice, there is no power in the worlds and those beyond that affect her. She has, in fact, the most intense and purest grudge and anger ever known!

Xiao Chen understood what little he knew about Rancorous Qi and Malicious Grudge. The Rancorous Qi from the residual emotions of a dying man would later become what we know as Malicious Grudge, the aura of unrest and hatred of the dead. The aura of Malicious Grudge could reanimate a corpse into a mindless and soulless being driven and sustained only by the intent of revenge. An abomination damned to never enter the Samsara.

It was what happened to Wang Luo, the student of the Ziyang Sect he once met. Wang Luo was murdered in cold blood and the vestigial grudge and unrest would slowly grow into the aura of Malicious Grudge and a reanimated Wang Luo would have risen from dead, back to exact vengeance if not for Xiao Chen’s interference to lay him back to rest peacefully.

Malicious Grudge auras aging more than a thousand years are known as Heavy Grudge auras which are further classified into several levels. The Corpse King that Xiao Chen fought against radiated only an ordinary Heavy Grudge aura. But what Red Sleeve has was the very worst of them all. A fit of anger and hatred that would never fade, one that could only be birthed if a person is brutally, cruelly, and wrongly killed.

Xiao Chen frowned. He could not understand how could a woman of the common folk, like how Yu Yangzi described her, could possibly develop such strong and intense fury? Even the Corpse King he had encountered before exuded only the strong emotions that seemed ordinary in contrast. What experiences did Red Sleeve have during her life that had rendered her so?

The more he listened, the more Xiao Chen felt dazed and giddy as dread burgeoned in him. For brief seconds he was silent until he finally asked, “Senior. The people who are taken on every seventh day of the seventh month; is Red Sleeve indeed behind all these abductions?”

Su Lianyue’s face turned to stone almost at once. Yu Yangzi shook visibly for a brief instant before he answered, “Yes. Red Sleeves sends her men to abduct girls born on the seventh day of the seventh month every three hundred years. It has been a practice for three millennia.”

Three thousand years?! How many innocent girls had perished at her hands?! Su Lianyue and Xiao Chen wondered in unison. The dread growing in Xiao Chen became stronger and disturbing as he asked again rapidly, “Then what are these girls abducted for?”

“I don’t know,” Yu Yangzi replied, his head shaking slowly, “I do know, however, that she has taken one of our unused cave halls for herself and named it Tianxiang – meaning lighting incenses…”

“Tianxiang?” Xiao Chen and Su Lianyue looked at each other again in bewilderment. Red Sleeve and Tianxiang… Putting both together would form a Chinese idiom, hongxiu (Red Sleeve) tianxiang, that means the companionship of a gentle and fair lady… How eloquently put…

The revelation made them flutter as the recollections of the few nights they had just gone through came back to them vividly and the chilly air around them only made them want to hug each other tightly for warmth. The distressing wintriness made both men and women eager for each other’s company the more they wallowed in the premonition of the despairing news.

Yu Yangzi went on, “The Tianxiang Chamber has more than ten ladies-in-waiting, all of them Lady Ambassadors loyal only to Red Sleeve. The one now under your control is one of them. They never leave this stronghold. The abductions are carried out by the rest of the Sect before the girls are handed to them with no questions asked. Like their mistress, they suffer no inquiry in whatever they do. And most of all, everyone feared the summons of Red Sleeve; at times, she would request the presence of an Elder and two and speak to them. But in most cases, none of them ever returned, which further cast a thicker shroud of mystery over the Lady who is the hidden hand steering the Corpse Refinery Sect.”

“What about the girls who were taken last year? Aside from the thirty-one of them, what happened to the rest? Where are they now?” Su Lianyue asked tersely.

“What else?” Yu Yangzi began to chuckle ominously, “Dead, more like. No one ever survives the Ice Keep.”

“Dead?!” The syllable echoed off the walls of the bleak and empty building as it escaped the throat of a shuddering Su Lianyue. Then the sound of cracking knuckles resounded while Xiao Chen reeled in disbelief quietly. For three thousand years, countless maidens have been taken at the Sect’s behest… and all of them… dead…

Xiao Chen remembered his and Su Lianyue’s eavesdropping of the conversation between the woman in red and the Elders. They had mentioned the Ice Keep then and the very notion of it seemed to fill the Elders with panic. They would have rather suffered an instantaneous death rather than being sent endure the harsh torture of the Ice Keep, which lent much credence to how terrifying and appalling a place it was.

“Can you tell us more about this Ice Keep, Senior?”

“I’m afraid I do not have much to tell you. What I do know, is that the girls abducted would first be stripped naked by the Ladies Ambassador of the Tianxiang Chamber before they will be thrown into pits of icy water. For twelve hours every day, the girls will have to endure the skin-scathing cold until the Ladies Ambassador decide to lengthen the duration of their daily suffering until the girls began to give in to the cold and they die eventually…”

Su Lianyue felt a cold shiver running down her spine as if she had been tossed into the ice ponds herself. She glared at Xiao Chen suddenly who quickly yelped, “Come on, that has nothing to do with me! I would never be capable of such atrocity…”

“Well, if you think this is painful enough, just wait until you hear about the Ice Keep,” Yu Yangzi continued, “Those that survive the ice pools would eventually be sent to the Ice Keep where most, if not all, of them usually die right after. Those that managed to manage to pull through the first few days would still die in the end, but not without after a series of indescribably-anguishing torments…”

So many fair maidens, in the full flowering of their lives, subjected to such brutality and cruelty like the proudly-blooming blossoms of spring wilting suddenly in the snow… Xiao Chen brooded quietly. The Rancorous Qi that left from the resentment and regret of their untimely and bitter deaths would surely be immensely strong… What is this Red Sleeve after for doing this? Was this pure malice for vengeance upon all womenfolk? Or was she trying to amass more Malicious Grudge?

But what is she after, Senior? What is the reason Red Sleeve is doing all this?”

Yu Yangzi replied, “I don’t know. The girls taken must be born on the seventh day of the seventh month, and they must be in their late teens or early twenties. Some might have already achieved the state of Immortal Body. Anyway, the Elders would suffer the most terrible punishment for any mistakes. Some even painful than death.”

Xiao Chen’s expression turned sour. He would not have involved himself in this abominable fallacy if not for the date: the seventh day of the seventh month. The very same birth date of Hua Weiyang… Yet why of all the days, it has to be this…

Before this, Xiao Chen had the foreboding of trepidation if Weiyang was Red Sleeve or one of her lackeys. But now that he had heard how relentless and inexorable Red Sleeves’ methods were, he was nothing if not fully convinced that Weiyang was none of them. His Weiyang would never be capable of such evil and monstrosity…

He took in a deep breath to recollect himself. The waves of revelation had unsettled him again and again. “So where is this Tianxiang Chamber, Senior?”

That was a question that made Su Lianyue and Yu Yangzi shocked beyond words and the latter was the first to ask the question that they both shared, “Why? Do you intend to sneak into that evil place? Not even nine lives would save you!”

Xiao Chen rubbed his fingers anxiously. He knew how daunting and dangerous an attempt it would be, but he had to go. He knew it. Hua Weiyang was the most important person in his former life as much as Ling Yin was. Dead or alive, he needed to see it with his own eyes.

“So be it. But the only thing I know about this Tianxiang Chamber is that it sits in the mountains rear of the Summit of Mystics. It’s absurdly vast there, so I don’t know which for sure.”

“I’ll thank you for the information all the same,” Xiao Chen allowed, bowing humbly. His gaze wandered to the four thickset iron chains restraining Yu Yangzi. “The magical restrictions here are too powerful for me to save you, Senior. But is there anything I can do for you?”

That earned him a weak chuckle from the former High Chieftain of the Corpse Refinery Sect. “Nay, I’ll ask nothing of you. But if one day, you are able to kill that swine Ye Wuxin on my behalf, rest assured that my soul shall be at rest on that knowledge.”

“As you wish,” Xiao Chen muttered, hardly wishing to know more about Yu Yangzi’s vendetta against Ye Wuxin. He turned to Su Lianyue beside him and said, “Let us go then, my lady.”

They strolled out and shut the stone doors. The woman-in-red was still standing demurely outside, still under the effects of the Voodoo Curse. Xiao Chen said, with his eyes still transfixed upon the mind-controlled woman, “I believe you’ve found your answers, my lady. But I still have questions left unanswered. There’s no need for you to traverse into further perils with me, my lady. We’d best be off on our own ways outside.”