Chapter 896: More Children, More Debts!

Clang!

The newly buried coffin was dug back up.

Yet despite having been underground only a short time, the coffin was already mottled with rust and corrosion.

Zheng Fan turned to look at Xue San.

“Aren’t you afraid A’Ming will come back and fight you to the death?”

Xue San hurriedly answered:

“Master, the situation was urgent at the time. Second Madam could have gone into labor at any moment, so this subordinate had no choice but to use this method and seal the Daoist inside A’Ming’s coffin. If A’Ming gets angry when he returns, he can take it out on me. I can handle it.”

Zheng Fan bent down and patted Xue San on the shoulder.

“I was hoping you’d advance right now.”

“This subordinate... hopes so too.”

“But it didn’t work, did it?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t blame me,” Zheng Fan said.

“This subordinate would not dare.”

“Bring him out first.”

“Yes.”

The Daoist, his body still bristling with silver needles, was lifted from the coffin.

The inside of the coffin had already begun to show signs of corrosion, and several silver needles had fallen loose.

Clearly, during the time he had been buried, the Daoist had not remained unconscious throughout.

He had been trying to save himself and escape.

Fan Li carried over a chair for Zheng Fan.

Xue San stepped forward.

Without a word... he untied his trousers.

The Daoist slowly opened his eyes.

Clearly, he understood perfectly well what would happen if he continued pretending to be unconscious.

Third Master had only been making preparations anyway.

He tied his belt again and stepped aside.

The Daoist was laid flat, but several bricks had been placed beneath his back so that he could see Zheng Fan sitting in front of him.

“The greatest reverse scale in this Prince’s life is his family.”

“This poor Daoist is alone in the world. No sect. No relatives. Free and solitary. Your Highness, that opening line won’t do you much good.”

Zheng Fan nodded, indicating that he understood.

Then... he stood.

“Cut him apart and feed him to the dogs.”

“Yes!”

With that, the Prince turned to leave.

This was not haggling over vegetables at a market stall.

The higher a person’s position became, the less patience he usually had for this kind of pointless verbal wrestling.

You put on an air of carefree detachment.

I’ll grant you release.

Dig into the secrets behind you?

Forget it.

They still had the black-armored man sitting there half-converted into a lightning rod.

Zheng Fan genuinely had no interest in digging into yet another mysterious curiosity.

More importantly, this Daoist had almost threatened his family.

So he would simply send the man on his way.

In fact, had Siniang not reminded him that someone was still buried at home waiting for him to look at, Zheng Fan would not even have bothered coming here.

He could hardly refuse Siniang’s request.

But if some other Demon King had reported it—Xue San or Fan Li, for example—Zheng Fan suspected he would have cursed:

Bury the bastard properly and stop bothering me.

The Daoist’s spiritual perception was exceptionally sharp.

That sharpness manifested as a sensitivity to qi and intent.

Even with his body sealed, that instinct remained.

Old ministers who had survived decades of rise and fall in court could develop something not entirely unlike this “cultivation.”

And so the Daoist realized... these people truly intended to dismember him immediately.

This was not a joke.

“Your child is a Rootless Person. Do you know what that means?”

The Daoist shouted.

Zheng Fan actually stopped.

He turned back and looked at him.

“She’s a girl.”

The Daoist blinked.

Then he immediately understood the joke.

If his body had not still been covered in needles and heavily restrained, he genuinely wanted to form a hand seal, call down a thunderbolt, and die together with this Prince of Great Yan.

“This ‘root’ is not that root. A Rootless Person means someone whose existence lacks the connection it should naturally possess with this Heaven and Earth. The laws of the Heavenly Dao cannot properly trace or calculate such a person. That does not mean freedom. Heaven and Earth are impartial; they treat the myriad things as straw dogs. Heaven will not look at you twice merely because you possess princely wealth and glory, nor because you live in misery and ruin. But if your name is not written in that ledger at all, Heaven will pay particular attention to you. Heaven... will make you die. It is like one of the generals under Your Highness suddenly refusing your orders and slipping beyond your control. What would Your Highness think of that?”

“Heh. Rather appropriate timing.”

Wasn’t he squeezing in a meeting with this Daoist precisely because he was about to leave again?

And this coming trip was intended to pull back military authority and beat a few people until they remembered the rules.

“Heh-heh-heh.”

The Prince laughed.

“Your Highness, a fate like that of a Rootless Person is far rarer than some so-called spirit-child constitution. In this entire life, this poor Daoist has only read about it in ancient texts left by my master. This is the first time I have ever truly seen one with my own eyes. Your Highness, are you really not worried? Not worried that your child, in the future, might...”

Before the Daoist could finish, Zheng Fan walked back over and crouched in front of him.

He pointed at his own face.

“You say this Prince’s daughter is a Rootless Person and will suffer calamity later. Then look at this Prince. What am I?”

Suspicion entered the Daoist’s eyes.

He stared at Zheng Fan’s face for a long time.

Apparently... he saw nothing.

Zheng Fan shook his head.

For a moment, he wondered whether this Daoist was nothing more than a fraud.

Then he remembered the enormous commotion the man had caused after entering Fengxin City.

It had almost rivaled the disturbance Master Cang once created in Yanjing.

There was no reason for him to be that useless.

Perhaps the fellow simply wanted to live and had invented the “Rootless Person” story to seize the heart of a worried father?

Then, by sheer coincidence, from Zheng Fan’s own perspective, the blind cat had actually stumbled onto a dead mouse?

At that moment, the Daoist spoke.

“Your Highness, I cannot read it from your face.”

“Heh.”

“When an infant is first born, its innate qi is at its strongest. That was why this poor Daoist could sense the child from so far away. But as a person grows, that innate qi gradually withdraws inward and may even disperse entirely. I happened to arrive in Fengxin City just as Your Highness’s... daughter was about to be born. Had I come two or three years later, once the child had grown a little, I fear I could pass her shoulder to shoulder in the street and notice nothing at all. But... if Your Highness would permit it... show me the lines of your palm. The patterns of the palm contain the deeper essence. Physiognomy of the face is, in truth, mostly entertainment.”

Zheng Fan raised his left hand and held the palm before the Daoist.

There was something Zheng Fan himself did not know.

Years ago, on the road to Yanjing, Master Cang and Baili Sword had encountered him outside Nanwang City.

At the time, Master Cang had already seen the sign of a Black Dragon upon Zheng Fan.

With the wind behind him... he could become a formidable warlord.

But Master Cang had been concealing his identity while entering Yanjing, so he had deliberately avoided creating any disturbance along the way.

Now... the instant Zheng Fan’s palm was revealed before the Daoist... the man’s expression began changing rapidly.

First calm.

Then shock.

Then terror.

Finally... distortion.

“Hahahahahahahaha!”

The Daoist burst into wild laughter.

Smack!

Zheng Fan slapped him across the face.

Then Zheng Fan frowned.

A sticky fluid had seeped from the flesh of the Daoist’s cheek and coated his hand.

“What the hell is this? Disgusting.”

The Daoist’s skin had always been diseased.

It blistered and suppurated easily, and both wind and sunlight caused him pain.

That was why, after emerging from seclusion and traveling through the world, he normally wore another layer of skin as protection.

At present, that outer skin was gone.

At first glance, the Daoist’s own skin merely looked unnaturally pale.

In truth... there was much more wrong beneath the surface.

Third Master immediately produced a handkerchief and wiped Master’s hand clean, confirming at the same time that the fluid was not poisonous.

The Daoist did not become angry after being slapped.

Instead, he stared at Zheng Fan.

“This is the greatest absurdity beneath Heaven. The greatest absurdity beneath Heaven! The mighty Prince Pingxi of Great Yan... a man who has practically carved out lands and established his own frontier... a vassal prince whose domain is all but a state, a man capable of altering the balance of all Xia... is actually... actually... a Rootless Person! Your Highness! Your Highness! Your Highness!”

The Daoist shouted in overwhelming excitement.

“Your Highness, how did you do it? How did you possibly do it? Not only did you avoid dying, not only did you avoid dropping dead without warning, you actually climbed to a position this high!”

Zheng Fan frowned slightly.

He was wondering whether the Daoist was somehow setting a trap for him.

Unfortunately, the Blind Man was not here.

Otherwise the two of them could have exchanged professional tricks from the jianghu.

Xue San, standing nearby, felt far less skeptical.

That day, he had personally seen the blue bird in the sky.

It had shattered the Buddha image.

It had fought the star head-on.

In the end, although the black-armored man had seized it in one hand, that had only succeeded because of an ambush.

Was Master’s fate actually good?

On a rainy day, while riding a horse from far away, he had once been singled out by the very first stone launched from a Chu trebuchet.

How damned terrible did a person’s luck have to be to achieve something like that?

As for why Master had remained safe all these years...

Bullshit.

The seven of them had been throwing themselves in front of blades for him!

And not only the seven of them.

Prince Jingnan himself had rescued their Master several times in front of armies numbering in the tens of thousands.

“Oh. Oh. Oh. I understand. I understand. I understand now.”

Realization flooded the Daoist’s face.

He repeated the words again and again.

Unfortunately, Prince Pingxi hated this kind of baiting, where someone clearly wanted him to ask “why.”

So Zheng Fan merely stared coldly at him.

The Daoist did not push too far.

He moved his lips.

Lowered his voice.

And asked:

“Your Highness, has that Mad Monk at Gourd Temple outside the city ever said anything to you... anything about your descendants?”

Coldness entered Zheng Fan’s eyes.

The old monk had once kowtowed until his forehead split open and bled, all while muttering:

More children do not mean more blessings.

That scene had remained burned into Zheng Fan’s memory ever since.

The Daoist continued:

“Your Highness, your daughter is not truly a Rootless Person. No. If a root can be traced backward, then a root exists. Because her father is rootless, she merely displays the appearance of rootlessness.”

The meaning was simple.

Because she was Zheng Fan’s daughter, she had released the aura of a Rootless Person before birth.

In principle, a Rootless Person “had no past.” Such an existence stood outside the normal laws and logic of the Heavenly Dao.

But when the child possessed a father who was himself a Rootless Person, then even though she still gave off a similar aura... there was, in fact, a path backward that could be followed.

She was a rooted person displaying the aura of the rootless.

In other words... a normal human being.

The corner of the Daoist’s mouth twitched.

Seeing no reaction from Zheng Fan, he seemed even happier to keep talking to himself.

“There is an old saying that children come into this world to collect debts from their parents. That saying really is not false. And when it comes to Your Highness... hahahahaha... it is especially appropriate! The Heavenly Dao shines clearly. Fate follows its destined pattern. A Rootless Person should never have existed in the first place. Heaven rejects such a being. And yet Your Highness forced your way step by step to the position you occupy today. Fengxin City already carries the atmosphere of a state about to be founded! Ah... Your Highness... you understand defying Heaven better than almost every Qi Refiner in this world. And unlike them... you have practiced it personally. Heaven... can no longer do anything to you! But Heaven... bullies the weak and fears the strong. And Heaven... is also a bitch! So keep having children, Your Highness. Have a few more. And in the future... the more of them there are... the more miserable their deaths will be!”

[End of Chapter 896]