It’s Not Easy Being a Master, Chapter 75: Tear Demon

Yan Jin didn’t say anything. Only when Shen Zhixian finally let go of his hand did he lower his eyes, concealing the trace of unhappiness within those depths.

Red flashed over his eyes, but he quickly suppressed it.

After Shen Zhixian let go of Yan Jin’s hand, he changed the topic. Walking over to Xue Ci, he asked, “Did you just come in?”

Xue Ci and Lian Qin glanced at each other and shook their heads.

Xue Ci said, “I’ve been in for a while. It was dark when I first came in but, later, I walked through a very narrow path with night pearls on the wall. There was a stone door at the end of the path…”

Normal people would want to push open the stone door. But, Xue Ci didn’t. When he touched the stone door, he felt a strong, dangerous breath on the other side. He hesitated for a while but didn’t try to open it. Eventually, he dropped his hand and stepped back slightly.

As he stepped back, he stumbled over a night pearl that had appeared on the floor out of nowhere.

Xue Ci responded quickly and immediately used the stone wall to support himself. As he was thinking about how a night pearl could have fallen so silently from where it was embedded in the wall, he raised his eyes and saw a horrifying creature. Half of its body was buried in the stone door and it was looking at him hungrily.

The demon beast began to twist its body, as if trying to come through.

The terrain was very narrow and was not at all conducive to fighting. Xue Ci only hesitated for a moment before he turned and ran.

He used spiritual power and ran quickly, but the demon beast was very fast. With a roared, it fell from the stone door, dropped to the floor on all four legs, and began chasing after Xue Ci.

The demon beast’s smelly breath sprayed the back of Xue Ci’s bare neck and he could feel something wet and sticky there. Xue Ci thought of the demon beast’s disgusting saliva and he ran faster and faster.

But no matter how quickly he ran, the spirit beast also followed quickly. After a while, Xue Ci took a moment to look back. But, when he was about to turn around, he once again felt as if the demon beast was very close behind him and could even feel its breath spraying the back of his neck once more.

“Later, I ran out of the path with the monster still chasing me. There was darkness in front of me and I couldn’t use a spell to illuminate the path. Then, I fell into a pool of water…” Xue Ci continued, his frown deepening. “After I dropped into the water, I immediately knew that the situation was very bad. I tried in vain to find the banks but found that the demon beast was waiting for me there. On the water, there were also many other things….”

He tried to use a spell to raise the rocks at the bottom but found that they refused to bulge. The things in the water were already very close at hand. Xue Ci saw that there were too many of them and the only thing he could do was swim desperately forward. The surroundings were very dark so when he saw a ray of light in the distance, he instinctively began swimming toward the light. He didn’t know how long he’d swam before suddenly becoming aware that there were no longer any movements behind him at all.

Once he realized this, he began to sink. No matter how he struggled, he couldn’t remain afloat in the water. The water seemed to rush over him in all directions. He used a spell to protect himself from the water and, in the next moment, he found himself standing on the ground in the dark. The water had silently disappeared completely. A bright light entered his eyes and he involuntarily blinked.

When he opened his eyes, he found that he was in a stoop posture with his hand reaching out, as if to pick up the night pearl on the ground. There was a rumbling sound and the stone door flew open. Lian Qin suddenly wildly rushed out, looking as if he was going to smash someone with his guqin at any moment.

Shen Zhixian listened for a moment, then looked at the direction they were originally facing. Then, he looked back at the direction he and Yan Jin had came out from.

The two stone doors were almost identical.

Lian Qin calmly said, “There’s more than that.” He looked around and added, “There’s seven doors total.”

Of the seven doors, three were already opened; the three doors that they’d each respectfully came through. Lian Qin hugged his guqin and thought for a moment. “Behind each door is a narrow pathway, with murals on the two stone walls lining each path. But, these images were altered, making them unclear.”

For his part, Lian Qin also did not choose to open the stone door. He’d paused on the spot. After a moment, he chose to take a few steps back, but the door ended up opening by itself.

The situation was not good. It seemed to have opened right into a den of demon beasts. The narrow path was immediately covered with black qi, and a large swath of demons and monsters scrambled out from behind the stone door.

Lian Qin didn’t expect such a situation. He retreated while fighting. As the battle rose, all the demons suddenly disappeared. He saw that there was another door in front of him. After opening the door, he saw Xue Ci stooping down to pick up a night pearl.

Their experiences seemed very exciting. Shen Zhixian remembered the desperate hunger that he’d felt and suddenly thought that it was nothing when compared to Lian Qin and Xue Ci’s experiences.

Since this vision involved his and Yan Jin’s identity in their previous life, he didn’t go into much details. He just said, “We happened to be in the same place when we came in. We saw the door and, after walking through the path, came upon another door. When we opened it, we didn’t see anything. We just felt really hungry…. Later the stone walls began to close and we decided to go back. We only took one step when we suddenly ended up here.”

Because Yan Jin was still pretending to be a member of Mingzhou’s Chen clan, Shen Zhixian only gave a brief account of the depictions on the stone walls. He didn’t directly mention what Yan Jin had said about the wasteland monster’s behaviors and could only vaguely allude to it.

—So the “drumstick” that Shen Zhixian mentioned earlier wasn’t a joke?

Initially, Xue Ci and Lian Qin couldn’t help but think crooked thoughts. Xue Ci even breathed a silent sigh of relief.

This was good, this was good. The cultivator sects were not deeply connected with the Mingzhou clans, leaving a gap between the two. But, en route, after watching the Chen family’s child show such diligence to Shen Zhixian, Xue Ci couldn’t help but worry. He’d then continued to watch Shen Zhixian uneasily.

Along the way, he’d decided that he quite liked Shen Zhixian. He was strong and was neither arrogant nor hot-tempered. Instead, he had calm temperament. This kind of person was quite excellent and therefore must not be abducted by the people from Mingzhou!

Xue Ci pulled back his increasingly crooked thoughts and began to think about the secret realm once more.

Even though they’ve been here for so long, they still hadn’t seen a real, physical monster. This secret realm was really weird and confusing.

Shen Zhixian couldn’t even imagine the many twists and turns in Xue Ci’s mind. He speculated, “Each door is different. The mural was created by the original secret realm. It may be something profound but it was destroyed by the demons and was accidentally turned into something else.”

The danger they’d felt behind the stone door couldn’t be an illusion. But, since they’d entered without encountering anything really terrible, Shen Zhixian guessed that this was probably the secret realm creator’s original intention. However, it was destroyed by the ignorant demons and monsters so the destructiveness was lessened.

Xue Ci actually had a similar idea. He turned his head and wanted to ask what Lian Qin thought, but he saw at once that Lian Qin’s ten fingers were clasped tightly around the body of his guqin and his tears were streaming down. This, in contrast with his calm expression, was really weird.

Xue Ci was momentarily stunned, “What’s wrong?”

Shen Zhixian also discovered that something was wrong. His first reaction was to explore the surrounding area with his spiritual sense. He vaguely sensed something but before he could speak, Lian Qin had already stopped his tears and calmly said, “Tear demon.”

There was a faint, damp breath coming from a corner. They looked over and saw that, in the night pearl’s faint light, a stone door had opened. A round, water ball jumped out, leaving behind wet traces everywhere it touched.

The water ball made a rumbling sound and stumbled about, making several turns in place.

A dark object collided with the water ball, sending the object bouncing toward the stone wall. Before it could hit the wall, Lian Qin waved his sleeves, rolling up a gust of wind to block the object’s momentum. He held it in his hand and looked down. His pupils dilated slightly.

It was a xun.

At the same time, a young man dressed in blue hurriedly ran out from behind the stone door. He immediately saw the water ball on the ground and rolled up his sleeves to smash it.

Lian Qin’s expression shifted slightly. “Duan Yuan?”

Startled, the young man jerked, missing the water ball. It immediately bounced away. Hearing a familiar voice, the young man didn’t care about it and blurted out, “Senior Brother!”

Seeing Lian Qin holding his xun, Duan Yuan let out a sound and walked forward to retrieve it. “Senior Brother, woo woo… Quickly, give me back the xun. I need to get that tear demon…. Woo woo woo!”

He really couldn’t control himself. His tears had nearly run dry, and his eyes were swollen into walnuts. He couldn’t help but cry

Lian Qin frowned and returned the xun to him. Duan Yuan took the xun back and went to catch the slippery water ball.

The water ball sensed that the situation wasn’t too promising. It rolled all over, spreading its damp breath. Shen Zhixian felt his eyes starting to get slightly sour, as if he was on the brink of tears. He set his mind and isolated the tear demon’s breath with a spell—This water ball was the tear demon.

As its name implies, tear demons can exude a strange breath that can cause people who have low-cultivation or people who are careless to cry until the body’s water becomes drained, resulting in death. At which point, the tear demon would then approach and eat the person.

The water ball ended up rolling too close to Lian Qin’s feet and so Lian Qin raised his guqin and pulverized it.

The water ball screeched and turned into a puddle of water, its wet breath suddenly dissipating. Seeing that it was finally resolved, Duan Yuan let out a sigh of relief and finally spoke normally, “Finally, it’s over…”

Since he’d accidentally fallen into the tear demon’s trap yesterday, he couldn’t stop crying. He’d only seen this kind of tear demon in books and didn’t know much about it. He only knew that if he fell into its trap, he would shed tears. Only by killing the tear demon could he resolve it.

However, the tear demon was very slippery, and this place was too strange. While Duan Yuan chased the tear demon, he must also pay attention to whether there were other dangers around him. After chasing for most of the day, his eyes were swollen and he still wasn’t able to catch up.

Fortunately, he met his senior brother… Wait, why was senior brother in this place?

Duan Yuan, who wasn’t good at healing spells, rubbed his eyes. He could only look hard at Lian Qin with two walnut eyes. “Senior Brother…”

Finally, he also saw Shen Zhixian and the others.

Duan Yuan had seen Xue Ci before and recognized him as the master of Yao Sect. He quickly paid his respect, then turned his gaze to Shen Zhixian and Yan Jin but didn’t recognize them.

Of course, he knew that Qingyun Sect had changed hands. But, he’d gone out to gain practical experience and was only focused on cutting down monsters and removing demons. He hadn’t paid much attention to who the new sect leader was.

Lian Qin’s tone of voice sounded as if he’d never cried. He briefly introduced them to each other. Duan Yuan paid his respect to them and politely greeted them.

Xue Ci was much older than them and so it wasn’t a problem to call him a senior. However, Shen Zhixian and Yan Jin couldn’t receive this title and each moved sideways to avoid his half-courtesy.

Shen Zhixian said, “No need to be polite.” While, at the same time, he wordlessly shot Lian Qin a glance.

It was understandable for Duan Yuan to be influenced by the tear demon, but Lian Qin’s cultivation was equivalent to theirs. How was it that the tear demon hadn’t even arrived yet and he was already shedding tears?

Was it because their disciple relationship was so profound that they could sense each other?

Lian Qin had only shed tears for a moment, but his eyes were still slightly red. But, because of the dim light and Duan Yuan’s own eye discomfort, Duan Yuan couldn’t see them clearly. He only hoarsely called out, “Senior Brother,”

Upon suddenly seeing his senior brother, Duan Yuan was extremely happy. But now, his happiness retreated and he stood somewhat ill at eased. His shifted the xun uneasily in his hands, seeming very nervous. However, as he faced Lian Qin, he position was still very respectful.

Lian Qin’s body exuded an imposing and cold aura. He asked coolly, “Why are you here?”

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Xixi: A reminder, a xun is a globular flute