The entire sect is obsessed with love, but I'm the only one who's truly insane.

Lin Du went out the door and looked up at the sky.

The moon in the mountains always seems to be shrouded in a layer of mist, and when it falls to the ground, it appears pale and sparse.

She pulled a mirror from her bosom and knocked on the door. "It's me, Lin Du."

The door opened quickly, and Xia Tian looked down at the water mirror in Lin Du's hand. "What's that?"

"Something that my second senior brother and I recently modified based on the secret realm eye designed by my master, I call surveillance."

Lin Du smiled and said, "I modified the blueprints of Master's Heavenly Eye, reducing the range and some functions, but adding some sound transmission effects. However, the distance cannot be too far, and it needs to be maintained by sensing."

Voices could be heard coming from inside, but Lin Du seemed absent-minded. He looked up at the room and saw a black gold sword stick standing upright in the middle of the bed. Mo Lin had already lain down and seemed to have slept for a while. Now, he was struggling to lift his head, trying hard to open his eyes, even his eyebrows and forehead wrinkles were straining.

Huaimin is also awake.jpg

Mo Lin is currently unable to use his spiritual power, and after all the commotion during the day, he must be really exhausted.

Lin Du ignored him, found a stool and sat down, listening to the sounds in the water mirror.

Xia Tianwu didn't know why her junior uncle insisted on coming to their room in the middle of the night to test a newly made magic artifact, but the content of the conversation inside soon made her frown slightly.

"Could it be that so much time has passed and you don't remember?"

"In this Qinglu Village, the people of our village cannot leave. Although we have enough to eat and wear, we have been unable to leave for generations. If a daughter is born, she will never be able to leave this village. She will either become the bride of a man in the village or become the bride of the Moon Goddess. Only boys... only boys have the possibility of being chosen to leave the village in the Year of the Elephant Dance."

"I heard the village chief say that the boy chosen by the messenger to be sent away had a mark on the base of one hand. The messenger said it was the mark of the moon goddess, to make him remember his origin forever, so that even if he never came back, he wouldn't forget. Daoist, why did you come back? How could you have forgotten everything?"

"Does your return prove that you can also take people out?"

Lin Du lowered his eyes. Fifteen years old. No wonder he wanted his memories erased.

Summer's voice rang out, "If it's the heel of the palm, it's the Shenmen acupoint."

Lin Du nodded. "It's the Shenmen acupoint. I've checked it."

"Junior Uncle, didn't you read the medical book? What is the Shenmen acupoint related to?" Xia Tianwu suddenly asked her.

Just like being called on to recite in class, Lin Du endured the humiliation and thought of his master, whom Feng Chao had called a charlatan. He resolved never to let his second nephew tell his disciple that he was completely ignorant of even the basics of medical knowledge. He then said, "It is related to the mind and spirit, and can be used to treat palpitations, forgetfulness, insomnia, dementia, and mania..."

Lin Du suddenly fell silent. "Tao Xian is already a cultivator at the Cloud Ascension Realm, but he has undergone two Heavenly Tribulations, which can be considered a complete transformation. Yet the scar is still there, indicating that his Divine Gate acupoint was thoroughly destroyed?"

Xia Tianwu nodded. As expected of his junior uncle, his mind was much sharper than Mo Lin's.

Looking at the bewildered man in the water mirror, Lin Du even suspected that the woman was a ghost from the mountain village who had come to bewitch him. He stood aside, covering his ears, as if he wouldn't listen to anything if the man stood up.

"I have no choice," Granny Ma said. "I'm carrying a girl, you know? She only has two fates: either she'll keep having children after she grows up, or she'll be chosen by the Moon Goddess to become her bride. Either way, she'll only die."

Tao Xian was clearly startled. "How is this possible? This is absurd! You can choose not to have children. Does anyone think they can control you?!"

"We have no choice, we have to conceive in the spring... we have to conceive every spring."

"We are a village favored by the moon goddess, and we can only obey her rules."

Lin Du slowly frowned. "No wonder she looks so old, even though she's clearly a young girl."

Repeated pregnancies are extremely harmful to the mother's body.

"This Moon God is probably an evil entity." Mo Lin's brain finally started working.

"You should stay put. It's not your turn to play the hero now." Xia Tianwu directly exposed Mo Lin's restless intentions.

Mo Lin was deflated. He hugged the quilt and stayed on the bed, not getting up. He closed his eyes, trying to avoid seeing it.

"Could Granny Ma be related to the Moon Goddess?" Xia Tian asked without a care in the world. "She allowed us to find this place, isn't she afraid we'll expose her secrets?"

Lin Du tapped the table. "Where is that wandering immortal we met in southern Yunnan now?"

Mo Lin opened his eyes again. "I'll make the contact."

That's all he's good for. If we don't let him participate, he'll be restless and unable to sleep.

Lin Du turned his gaze back to the water mirror and suddenly noticed that Tao Xian's posture was not quite right. He grabbed Xia Tianwu with one hand and quickly summoned the Floating Life Fan with the other. He darted out of the house like a whirlwind and arrived in front of another house. Then he kicked open the door and opened the folding fan in his hand with a whoosh. A beautiful white light swept across the room.

The movements were so fluid and seamless that neither of the two people inside the room could react in time.

"Don't move."

Lin Du held his fan and pointed at Tao Xian, "I told you, if you come again, I will kill you. No matter how many bodies you have left, I will kill one for every one that comes."

Fine white frost had climbed up every part of the room and was growing inch by inch. In an instant, the room felt like it had been transported to the frigid northern desert, and the temperature dropped rapidly.

Tao Xian stirred his spiritual energy, breaking free from the frost on his body. He stared intently at the person before him. "Lin Du, if you want Mo Lin to live, then you have no choice but to abide by the rules."

"Rules are meant to be broken." Several short blades suddenly appeared in Lin Du's hand. "I don't follow the rules, so don't try that on me."

The moment the eight short blades flew into the air, the icy mist that Tao Xian had broken free of suddenly began to glow faintly. Then, intricate array patterns formed between the eight short blades, and they fell vertically like eight meteors, like a giant bell, crashing down on Tao Xian with a muffled hum.

The tip of the short blade struck the ground with a resounding clang, then firmly anchored itself vertically in the brickwork, aligning with the Bagua (Eight Trigrams) symbol.

Despite his harsh words, Lin Du's move was a trapping formation, not a killing formation.

"Anyone who reveals the village's secrets to outsiders will be punished by the Moon Goddess, don't you know that?"

Tao Xian stared at the woman on the ground, raised his hand and summoned a long sword, attempting to cleave the formation.

The woman on the ground, who had just been shielded from the frost, clutched her stomach and looked at Tao Xian in a panic, "How...how...are you the messenger of the Moon Goddess?"

"But your mother and sisters were once like cows kept in a pen in the village. When they died, they were probably barely recognizable as human beings. Don't you feel any pain at all? Now, you are the one chosen by the Moon Goddess to leave, so you are unwilling to help me?"

"This, this is all wrong, it shouldn't be like this. You know the outside world better than I do, you should know... People shouldn't be like this..."

"I can do this, but my daughter, my daughter can't do this anymore..."

"She should be able to marry someone she loves, someone who loves her in return; she should have the choice..."

As the sword scraped against the edge of the formation, the spiritual energy collided and rubbed together, bursting out with dazzling light. The eight short blades began to tremble on the ground, and the blade surfaces collided with the bricks at high frequency, producing a faint sound.

The woman's sobs drowned out the other rustling sounds. Lin Du channeled his spiritual energy into the folding fan and stared into Tao Xian's eyes.

In that instant, Tao Xian snapped back to reality, looking at the golden barrier before him and the shadowy figures behind it, and blurted out, "Master Lin, what are you doing... I, I've been caught cheating?"

Lin Du: ...

She raised her hand to her forehead, then turned around and met the menacing gazes of the men outside the door. They were carrying various farm tools and sticks, led by the village chief, looking at the woman crying uncontrollably and the outside monks inside the house.

That's it, things are really complicated now.