Chapter 296: Fishing for Information

The Yin-Yang Temple was large, with more incense burned than at Shilin Temple, and a bustling market had formed around it.

Ding Songyan, like an ordinary pilgrim, wandered through the Daoist temple looking left and right. He noticed that all the Daoists, whether male or female, and even the Yin-Yang Order members in layperson attire, had delicate features with a touch of femininity. Some were plain, some good-looking, but none were particularly ugly.

Were they screened for looks during the disciple recruitment, or did the Yin-Yang Order’s martial arts improve appearance and bearing? Mm, the Xiangshe is described as "shaped like a hen pheasant, its body patterned in five colors," so it’s fairly attractive, but that isn’t in the traits, and shows up instead in physical abnormalities? Ding Songyan looked away and walked toward a guest-receiving Daoist at the side of the main hall.

The front and rear areas of the Yin-Yang Temple were separated, and the disciples’ living quarters weren’t open to pilgrims. No one could go in casually.

After the guest-receiving Daoist announced him, Ding Songyan was led to the gate of the inner courtyard, and he saw Jiang Lanting come out.

Young Master Brightstream wore a short pale white jacket with a plum blossom pattern and a white pleated skirt with red patterns. Her black hair was simply tied in a bun, set off with a few delicate and elegant pearl and jade ornaments. Her bright eyes were misty, her peach-blossom cheeks charming, her shaped nose small, her willow brows full of feeling, a beauty beyond description.

Ding Songyan was stunned.

"Miss Jiang?"

Jiang Lanting had really put on women’s clothes!

"How is it? This outfit looks beautiful, doesn’t it?" Jiang Lanting asked with a smile.

"Do you really want to get on the Peerless Beauties of the Jianghu list?" Ding Songyan answered Miss Jiang’s question in a rather tactful way.

Jiang Lanting said, pleased with herself, "It took me quite a while to learn how to do my hair and makeup. Even I was entranced when I looked in the mirror. But there’s no need to apply powder and rouge for you."

So you’re a narcissist, too... Ding Songyan nodded in deep agreement.

"Of course. Among friends, being relaxed is what matters.

"Has it been Miss Jiang lately?"

Jiang Lanting shook her head.

"It just happens to be today. I wanted you to see the skills I’ve learned from my fellow disciples. Tomorrow it might be Young Master Jiang again."

She looked at Ding Songyan and asked casually, "Why did you suddenly come looking for me? You don’t visit unless you want something."

"Didn’t you say before that you wanted to spar with me once more, Miss Jiang, to show me what the Boundless Forms Art really looks like? Well, here I am, coming to you myself," Ding Songyan said, having prepared his excuse long ago.

Jiang Lanting eyed Ding Songyan with suspicion.

"So eager?

"You’re not after my body, are you?"

Only Miss Jiang would say that. It’s the kind of joke only brothers can make... Ding Songyan said, amused, "My heart holds only my senior sister.

"Miss Jiang, you have to believe me. I’m really half a martial fanatic."

"Now I’m a bit curious what your senior sister looks like, to have you so devoted," said Jiang Lanting, who made no deliberate distinction between Young Master Jiang and Miss Jiang. The line carried both a woman’s curiosity and a man’s probing. "Did you give her the Jade Bloom Body-Nourishing Pill?"

"She came to the Flame Capital two days ago and has already consumed it. She was very pleased with the Jade Bloom Body-Nourishing Pill and asked me to thank you, Miss Jiang," Ding Songyan said, taking the opening.

Jiang Lanting turned and led Ding Songyan toward the Yin-Yang Temple’s inner courtyard, clicking her tongue.

"You didn’t even bring your senior sister to meet everyone. Second Ding, you’re keeping a beauty hidden away."

"She had urgent business and came and went in a rush," Ding Songyan said, glancing left and right. "Besides, I was afraid of disturbing your training, Miss Jiang."

A newly minted Grandmaster had plenty to do in the early period. Besides refining all the external apertures they could sense as quickly as possible, they also had to raise their existing martial art techniques to the Dharma Realm. Jiang Lanting had been working on this even before the second assassination attempt, but to this day hadn’t finished, and it normally took several months.

"Aren’t you afraid of disturbing me by coming today?" Jiang Lanting bluntly saw through Ding Songyan’s lie. "Isn’t it just that you were busy being lovey-dovey with your senior sister and afraid we’d interrupt?"

As she spoke, she turned into her own courtyard. It had three rooms and a tree in the yard, its early plum blossoms open, clean and fresh, with a fragrance stealing through the air.

While Ding Songyan looked around, he suddenly sighed.

"Sometimes I’m quite envious of you, Miss Jiang."

"Envious of what?" Jiang Lanting teased, her bright eyes smiling. "Do you want to have both, too?"

That’s really not necessary... But in a metaphysical sense, a yin-yang unity may be a future goal... Ding Songyan didn’t take Miss Jiang’s bait.

"I’m envious that you got to study under a Supreme Master."

Jiang Lanting burst out laughing.

"Isn’t that the same question as before? Do you want to have both, too?

"I was born this way, which is why a Supreme Master took an interest in me."

Ding Songyan gave an exclamatory response.

"I thought Perfected Xiang and you, Miss Jiang, had some connection from the start."

All his roundabout talk had been aimed at saying this line without leaving a trace.

"Not at all." Jiang Lanting shook her head.

Ding Songyan thought it over and said, "Speaking of which, I remember you mentioned before, Miss Jiang, that you and Perfected Xiang had already talked about the Ghost Yu Way’s assassination attempts. Is your master the one currently guarding the Flame Capital’s Yin-Yang Temple?"

"Yes," Jiang Lanting answered openly.

She then pointed at the main room.

"I’ll get the incense burners. You wait at the stone table."

Last time she’d lost the incense smoke contest, and this time she meant to pay it back in kind.

Looking at Miss Jiang’s back, which now carried a touch of graceful elegance, Ding Songyan thought over the information he had just gathered.

It really is Perfected Xiang who’s at the Yin-Yang Temple right now...

But there’s no direct evidence linking him to Jiang Weichen yet. Maybe Jiang Weichen is just an ignored sweeping Daoist at the Yin-Yang Temple...

The government will surely notify every righteous Supreme Master in the Flame Capital about the Demon Sovereign hiding in Shilin Temple. What was Perfected Xiang’s reaction when he heard?

That’s not an easy thing to ask. Besides, Miss Jiang, uh, Young Master Jiang trusts me so much and is so easygoing that fishing for information from him is making me feel a bit guilty...

Guilty or not, I still have to sound her out...

Jiang Lanting had just carried two green jade burners to the stone table in the courtyard when other guests came to visit her.

When Fairy Brightstream went to the inner courtyard gate to welcome them, Ding Songyan sat on a stone stool. He didn’t go into the main room uninvited or rudely look around, but through the Chaos Realm he got a rough sense of the room and found nothing suspicious.

Before long, Jiang Lanting led Bai Qilin and Xie Fengchao, who was wearing a sable fur coat, back into the courtyard.

Seeing Ding Songyan, Xie Fengchao was quite surprised.

"Second Ding, why are you here too?"

"It’s my day off, so I came to keep my promise and spar with Miss Jiang." Ding Songyan stood and went over.

Since it was Miss Jiang today, he couldn’t just call her Fourth Jiang.

Xie Fengchao nodded first, then, while Jiang Lanting chatted with Bai Qilin, asked in a low voice, "Do you often come see Miss Jiang in private?"

"Not at all. Only that time I helped her block the second assassin." Ding Songyan wasn’t sure what Fifth Xie meant.

The other two times, Jiang Lanting had been the one to come find him.

Xie Fengchao grunted.

"Lanting has been a bit off lately. I’m afraid you won’t be able to hold yourself back and will do something nasty to Miss Zheng."

"What do you mean, off?" Ding Songyan gathered his voice with true qi and asked curiously.

Xie Fengchao’s voice slipped into his ear on a gust of wind.

"A few days ago, when we were drinking, Lanting actually joked that if no one worth liking turned up and Lanting wanted to experience a woman’s full feelings, Lanting would give the opportunity to one of us."

Uh... from what I know of Fourth Jiang, he was really joking, and joking as Young Master Jiang... Ding Songyan raised his eyebrows and teased Fifth Xie, "Are you scared?"

"A little," Xie Fengchao admitted honestly.

"Scared the joke will become real if it goes on?" Ding Songyan asked with a smile.

Xie Fengchao exhaled.

"Who wouldn’t be?"

"There are plenty of people who wouldn’t mind at all, perhaps they will even be overjoyed," Ding Songyan teased. "I thought you were afraid you wouldn’t be able to hold yourself back if the joke came true."

Xie Fengchao fell silent.

Ding Songyan laughed and patted his shoulder.

"It’s only human."

"What’s only human?" Jiang Lanting looked over, glancing around gracefully.

Ding Songyan smiled and said, "It’s only human for martial artists to be competitive."

He then sat at the stone table. Jiang Lanting held back her smiling and stuck a fairly thick incense stick into each burner.

She still used the Celestial Stars Sword Art, curling her finger and flicking it so a stream of green smoke shot toward Ding Songyan.

This time Ding Songyan didn’t use brute force to break her technique. Pressing his fingers one after another, he turned the smoke into swords, each plain and unadorned but striking right at the flaws in Jiang Lanting’s swordsmanship, and Jiang Lanting’s green smoke drifted apart in wisps.

He not only met each of her moves as it came, avoiding strength and striking weakness, but also counterattacked from time to time, to experience how the Boundless Forms Art derived the Brightnight Sect’s swordsmanship.

Jiang Lanting held herself back and truly only used half her strength. Her swordsmanship had both form and spirit, but Ding Songyan kept hitting her exactly where it hurt.

She pressed her lips together and showed the full subtlety of the Boundless Forms Art in deriving other schools’ martial arts, her beautiful eyes either blazing with brilliance, or full of determination.

I’m already a Grandmaster. Do I really have to be outdone by Second Ding in swordsmanship?

Their smoke battle ended in a draw, and neither side came out ahead until the incense burned out.

"That’s not Brightnight Sect swordsmanship," Jiang Lanting accused, knitting her dark brows slightly.

Ding Songyan smiled faintly.

"Miss Jiang, can you really not see it, or do you just not want to admit it?

"Every move I made was pulled from the framework of my sect’s swordsmanship, to counter and break moves. You can think of it as ’Anti-Brightnight Sect Swordsmanship,’ but it’s still part of our sect’s swordsmanship."

Jiang Lanting was silent for a moment, then exhaled.

"Only by training Brightnight Sect swordsmanship to a profound level and studying it exceptionally thoroughly can you do this. Your swordsmanship is higher than your realm."

Ding Songyan did meet both conditions Miss Jiang described, but what he had just relied on was still the prototype of the Unified Way Sword.

Jiang Lanting wasn’t satisfied but couldn’t keep dragging Ding Songyan into more sparring, so she turned to Bai Qilin to take the field.

Ding Songyan and Xie Fengchao sat to one side, watching the two insert fresh incense sticks and compete.

"You seem to have something on your mind?" Ding Songyan glanced at Fifth Xie, who wasn’t as lively as usual.

Xie Fengchao was silent for a moment, then said, "My third grandfather went into seclusion to become a Heaven-Man and failed again.

"He’s the most promising one in our Xie family in the past few generations, but he’s already failed three times. What comes next, sigh..."

Young Master Xie couldn’t help shaking his head.

Ding Songyan understood what Xie Fengchao meant.

According to what Twelfth Madam Luo had said today, once someone had accumulated enough and honed their mind, they could usually become a Heaven-Man in one or two seclusions. If they failed three times in a row, it showed the path they’d taken before was very likely wrong, and correcting it was extremely hard, a long-standing problem hard to reverse, or they’d have to abandon the original Heaven-Man method entirely and start over.

Just as Ding Songyan was about to say something, a delicate-featured Daoist entered the small courtyard and said to Jiang Lanting, "Master Granduncle Jiang, the Perfected One has something that needs your presence."

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