The immortal is beside me

Chapter 15 Killing to Stop Killing
The frozen world began to flow again. Perhaps influenced by his usual tone, Qin Jiajia felt her basic thinking ability regained. She calmed down a little and repeated her previous words as briefly as possible.

"After returning from the observation post, their attitude suddenly changed. They wouldn't tell me the details, but I guess they must have dug up something about your past."

The faster a sentence is spoken, the faster the heartbeat becomes.

"They asked me to show goodwill to you, and my attitude seems good, but I don't know if this is a trap. Maybe they want me to act as a smokescreen to lower your guard, while they secretly prepare an armed crackdown on you. I've seen how they treat the monks in the observation post. If you are caught."

As he spoke, his tone grew hesitant. She noticed that Zhou Qing still had the same expression as when he was listening to a child's story, only his expression had changed from "a child who thinks he has discovered a hidden truth" to "a child who thinks he has discovered a major global crisis."

In the end she had to remain silent. In such a contrast, even she felt that she was behaving like a primary school student.

"It's a good thing to be able to think proactively, but you don't have to overthink everything." Zhou Qing smiled and said, "Although the Environmental Sanitation Bureau has many problems, it does include a group of knowledgeable people. The person who said this to you should be one of them."

"But if they really want to harm you."

"Then they will be the ones at a disadvantage."

Qin Jiajia paused for a moment. This sentence contained so much information that she couldn't process it all at once.

Did he have the confidence to fight against the entire officialdom? She recalled the puppet she had seen earlier that had yelled, "Zhou Fan, don't kill me!" Combined with Li Yulan's reserved attitude when discussing this matter, she shuddered for a moment.

Although she had vaguely felt that Zhou Qing, as a cultivator, was very powerful, it was only after hearing these words that she suddenly realized what kind of monster he was.

"Since you're already involved with the immortal way, they should have told you something about cultivation."

Just as he was stunned, Zhou Qing spoke again: "Besides this mission, what else did they tell you?"

He just brushed off the matter of life and death. Qin Jiajia pursed her lips, but continued, "There's probably a lot to say about this."

"It doesn't matter."

Zhou Qing scraped a drop of water from the wall of the beverage cup, flicked his finger, and the water drop fell on the stone bench in front of the green belt, as if stirring up invisible ripples. The stone bench covered with dust and fallen leaves became as bright and clean as new in the blink of an eye.

"Tell me slowly." Under Qin Jiajia's stunned gaze, he slowly walked to the stone bench and sat down. "We still have plenty of time."

The following month, the disciple returned to the sect, claiming that Zhou Wuqing had expelled him.

[In the second half of the month, the sect leader offered generous gifts and sent disciples to search for Zhou Wuqing again, but they were driven away again.]

In August, the Lingchuan elders were sent to search for the person, but were driven away again. They reported back that the person was arrogant and vicious, and should not be associated with. The sect leader remained silent upon hearing this.

In the confidential room, the reading of history books continued, but the faces of a group of specialists gradually turned red as they watched, as if they had followed the updates of hundreds of chapters and finally saw the protagonist whose entire family was wiped out mastered magical skills and was determined to take revenge, but when they arrived at the door of their enemy's house, they found that their shoes did not fit and turned back.

"The elder has a point. Zhou Wuqing is truly untreatable." Someone couldn't help but put themselves in his shoes when they saw this. "A major clan went to him wholeheartedly to ask for help, and he was so disrespectful. Zhuge Liang only needed three visits to his thatched cottage, yet he's even more arrogant than Prime Minister Zhuge Liang! I wouldn't flatter him if I were him."

"That's why you can't be Liu Bei. This is a ruthless man who single-handedly slaughtered over a dozen opposing sects, and he's also a lone cultivator, so it's normal for him to have a bad temper." Someone else expressed a different opinion: "To be able to survive in such a chaotic world as a lone cultivator and even become a powerful being, such a person must be extremely vigilant. Faced with a sudden invitation, he wouldn't easily trust him."

A few people chatted with each other, but after a few words, they shut up under Lu Zhenhai's gaze and continued reading.

In October 564 AD, the sect's Saintess Ye Qiansheng requested permission to go and find Zhou Wuqing in Liangzhou. After being chased away several times, she refused to retreat and finally had a conversation with him, asking him to help eliminate the evil and help Jiuli save the world.

Wu Qing said: "The world is in chaos now. People are either cut down or eaten. The so-called salvation is nothing but empty talk."

The Saint said: "According to my fellow Taoists, if all talk of saving the world is false, how can this chaotic situation be resolved?"

Wu Qing said: The world is in ruins, and everyone is in danger. The only way to stop the disaster is to kill.

[The Saint said: "Since this is the case, I dare to ask you to kill someone."]

The breathing around them suddenly became lighter. The commissioners, who had just been expressing their opinions, fell silent, stunned by the conversation that spanned fifteen hundred years.

The only way to eliminate evil is to stop killing.

This was the man's way of dealing with things. Simple and rough, just like his personality.

At the end of October, Zhou Wuqing joined the sect and was appointed a guest official. He was given a Six Paths Flower, a Heavenly Secret Jade, and several other gifts, including Zhu Mingmu and Yang Yanyu.

"Is this the guest official we usually understand?" The commissioners looked at each other in confusion.

In their understanding, the meaning of guest official is similar to that of honorary professor. They are just a title in the sect, but are not under the control of their superiors. They only come out to act as thugs when the sect needs them, and their loyalty is almost zero.

Jiuli paid such a huge price, but in the end only recruited a guest official?
The group of people remained silent, and Lu Zhenhai also said nothing.

He had heard of the names of the gifts given to Zhou Wuqing in the records. All of them were rare treasures from heaven and earth that were rarely seen in a century.

Based on the wealth of the cultivation world during the Wei and Jin dynasties, the value of those gifts was roughly equivalent to a sect's thirty years' worth of tribute. A smaller sect might exhaust its entire treasury and still not have even a single item. Given the Jiuli Sect's predicament at the time, this single gift was likely a waste of their most valuable treasures.

There is also the saint Ye Qiansheng who went to invite Zhou Wuqing to join the sect. The saints of the sect are often outstanding figures among the true female cultivators in the sect. Because women are naturally yin in constitution, they are often sent to perform various rituals and spells, and to a certain extent, they are regarded as the image spokespersons of the sect.

This historical record dates back over 1,500 years, and the saint mentioned in the record has long since passed away. Lü Zhenhai had no previous recollection of her deeds, but he still remembered a time when he visited the Jiuli Sect on behalf of the Environmental Sanitation Bureau. On the sect's ancestral wall, he saw the stone portraits of successive saints. When his eyes fell upon Ye Qiansheng's stone statue, the astonishing beauty froze him.

He was given treasures worth thousands of gold and was greeted by stunning beauties. Such exaggeratedly generous treatment was actually just to win over an unknown cultivator. Even though he already knew that this person had the power to fight against a thousand people alone, he still felt a little sad about the huge investment made by the Jiuli Sect.

The surrounding commissioners clearly felt similarly. Although their brains told them to focus on the course of history, their eyes were already unconsciously fixed on the three characters "Zhou Wuqing," each wanting to see just how hard this priceless piece of horse bone could be.

Under the gazes of everyone with different expressions, the information turned to the next page.

(End of this chapter)