Chapter 76#

Pei Qian didn’t know the full details of An Wuxue and Xie Zhefeng’s past, but seeing An Wuxue’s downcast expression, he thought he didn’t want to hear about it. “I said too much,” he said awkwardly.

An Wuxue shook his head and said nothing more.

He only asked, “So this so-called wedding banquet was because Qu Jizhi wanted to join with you, but you weren’t willing—and the head of the Qu family knew about this but let him carry out this nonsense?”

When a junior is behaving willfully, don’t the elders know better?

“Does the First Seat remember why the Qu family adopted me in the first place?”

“To take Qu Jizhi’s tribulation—”

An Wuxue’s words caught.

“…Could it be they thought Qu Jizhi was your love tribulation for the Way of Heartless, so they just let it happen and allowed him to pursue you? But the idea of taking a tribulation for another is completely baseless. The Qu family was delusional; a tribulation destined for Qu Jizhi can’t be escaped, and you can’t take it for him.”

Pei Qian gave a bitter smile. “Exactly. I can die for Qu Jizhi, and I can take his tribulation to repay the Qu family’s kindness. But five hundred years ago, I had no sense of an impending tribulation, and there was no sign of my Way of Heartless being broken. This path was completely wrong.”

He even wondered more than once—Qu Jizhi stubbornly refused to let go, and the hexagram from back then mentioned a love tribulation for the Way of Heartless, but it didn’t specify who the follower of that Way was—could it have been Qu Jizhi himself?

Didn’t the entanglement between Qu Jizhi and him also fit the phrase “heartless yet with feeling”?

In the end, the Qu family found him to take the tribulation for their generation’s genius, but he ended up becoming Qu Jizhi’s true tribulation.

The heavenly dao is constant, and what is destined cannot be escaped no matter how one tries to avoid it.

Pei Qian was within the game but watched it from outside; he saw things more clearly than the Qu family.

More than five hundred years ago, Qu Jizhi insisted on becoming cultivation partners with him, and the Qu family actually helped him by pressuring Pei Qian. Using the debt of kindness, without waiting for his consent, the Qu clan began preparing for the wedding banquet and widely distributed invitations.

At that time, looking at the courtyard decorated with spiritual items for the banquet, Pei Qian said to Qu Jizhi, “In this world, life and death can be controlled and changed, but matters of love can only be determined by the heart and cannot be forced. Even if I engage in dual cultivation with you, my heart will not be moved. Why bother? Stop the wedding banquet; don’t do such a foolish thing.”

“A foolish thing?”

Qu Jizhi only laughed lightly. “You should be the one who knows me best; I never care about the process. As long as the result is what I want, what does it matter if your heart is moved or not?”

Pei Qian was furious and chose to ignore him.

Qu Jizhi just sat beside him, playing with an array disk, appearing quite at leisure. He would even play the zither or flute nearby; in short, he wouldn’t leave.

With Qu Jizhi watching him, Pei Qian couldn’t even flee.

It wasn’t until the head of the Qu family sent word for Qu Jizhi to discuss the wedding banquet that Pei Qian found an opportunity.

During his years in the Qu family, he knew his place. If it concerned cultivation or if someone was testing his abilities, he would only act as a foil for Qu Jizhi, never showing his brilliance. Fortunately, because of this, the Qu family underestimated his array path accomplishments. The restrictions placed on him weren’t too difficult, and he successfully broke them.

So, a few days before the Qu clan was to hold the wedding banquet, Pei Qian fled.

The Qu clan suppressed the news and secretly looked for him.

Pei Qian knew that if he traveled openly in North Abyss, Qu Jizhi would find him sooner or later.

He deliberately placed himself in a trapping array and stayed inside until after the wedding banquet was over.

After coming out, he heard that even City Lord Shangguan had personally attended the wedding banquet to offer her congratulations. However, neither Qu Jizhi nor the unknown cultivation partner of Master Qu appeared.

Although the Qu family hosted the guests as usual, the matter of the cultivation union came to nothing.

Pei Qian chose not to return, intending to stay away from Qu Jizhi for a while.

Perhaps after Qu Jizhi calmed down, he would let go of his obsession?

But he hadn’t expected that in order to find him, the Qu family would seek out the descendants of his biological parents’ bloodline within the vast North Abyss. Using the blood of those mortals as a guide, they tracked his whereabouts.

But Qu Jizhi didn’t appear immediately, only secretly monitoring Pei Qian’s movements.

Pei Qian always thought he had hidden well. For decades, as he wandered the First City, he didn’t hear any further news about the young Immortal Master of the Qu family.

He almost thought Qu Jizhi had let go.

But he hadn’t.

Qu Jizhi spent decades creating the Guan Ye Array.

Only then did that fellow show himself.

When Pei Qian saw Qu Jizhi again, he had no idea of his intentions. Seeing that Qu Jizhi seemed much easier to talk to than before, he lowered his guard and followed him back to the Qu family.

—Back to the Qu family within the array.

The moment he stepped into the Guan Ye Array, Pei Qian realized that the Qu family before him wasn’t the real one, but a false phantom.

Qu Jizhi hadn’t let go at all; instead, he had become increasingly obsessive, even imprisoning him within the array.

“Can you stop being so sick?” he said. “Let me out.”

Qu Jizhi approached, playing with the ends of his hair, and said leisurely, “Don’t you like hiding in trapping arrays? I’ve specially created one for you.”

“This array is set in the Qu family estate. I’ve set the flow of time to the period after you came to my home until before you fled the wedding banquet—as long as you are in the array, you will always wander through the past where we grew up together.”

Qu Jizhi even personally taught Pei Qian the mechanics of the Guan Ye Array, saying with a smile, “This array can only be broken by finding and destroying the array core within the illusion of the past. I can tell you directly: the array core is me.”

“If you want to leave, you can. Kill me.”

Pei Qian laughed in anger. “You know perfectly well I can’t kill you.”

“Then you can only be trapped in the past until your heart is moved, until you are willing to stay.”

Pei Qian brushed away Qu Jizhi’s hand as he approached again and said crossly, “Even if the creator can’t change the course of the array, there’s a guide to move freely within it—give me the guide.”

Qu Jizhi didn’t answer.

The man simply walked away.

…

Hearing this, An Wuxue said with a solemn expression, “Though the Qu family was kind to you, they didn’t specify that they would force you into matters of love when they adopted you. Moreover, their adoption of you was for their own ends, not out of kindness. For them to use that debt of gratitude to coerce you afterward is truly muddled!”

He asked Pei Qian, “Since you couldn’t touch the array core, how did you eventually get out?”

Pei Qian was silent for a moment before saying, “At that time, I hadn’t reached the late stage of the Tribulation-Transcending realm, and it was impossible for me to break the array by force. I was trapped in it for a long time—so long that I completely lost track of time. Often, when I opened my eyes, it was the past between Qu Jizhi and me, and when I closed them, it was various other memories…”

He turned his head and looked at the seemingly endless Qu family estate outside the window.

“Qu Jizhi wanted me trapped in the past with only him in my eyes, and he actually succeeded. This second time entering the Guan Ye Array, I keep remembering the unpleasant things between him and me, otherwise, I wouldn’t have brought everyone to an illusion from over five hundred years ago. Now when I see the Qu family estate, I can recall everything from my childhood until I left the family—I know it by heart.”

“Because I saw it so many times, hundreds of years ago, when I was trapped in the Guan Ye Array, I almost gave up.”

“…Almost?”

“Yes, almost. Qu Jizhi chose the Qu family as the place to imprison me; it was here that he succeeded, and here that he failed.

“While I couldn’t escape the Qu family within the torrent of time, I gradually became intimately familiar with every part of the estate and discovered a book of cursed array techniques sealed by the previous head of the Qu family.

“It was a volume recording advanced cursed array techniques. The book was sealed in an unremarkable courtyard of the Qu estate. Because the previous head’s cultivation was so profound, none of the current generation of the Qu family had found it. Only someone like me, who had been trapped inside for an unknown number of years, could find something was amiss due to being too familiar with the place.”

An Wuxue thought back to the previous head of the Qu family—it seemed to be the person who had led the Qu family while he was the First Seat of Falling Moon Peak.

He was indeed a grandmaster of arrays whose age could be considered on par with Nan He, a senior immortal cultivator with extremely deep accomplishments in the array path.

He said, “I knew the previous head of the Qu family. He was a cautious man and wouldn’t have forgotten to tell his successors about the family heritage. If the Qu family didn’t know about those cursed array techniques, he likely sealed them away intentionally; they probably aren’t anything good.”

Pei Qian nodded. “The First Seat is indeed impressive. But what choice did I have back then? I only thought of digging it up to see if there was a way to escape the Guan Ye Array without destroying the core. But I didn’t find that; instead, I found something else.

“Something that had never been recorded in the books of array path curses in the two realms, and something no one had ever heard of.

“If Falling Moon were to find out about that curse, it would likely be listed as one of the forbidden curses.”

An Wuxue became curious. “What curse? I consider myself well-informed and knew many of the Qu family’s previous generation during the Immortal Calamity. I’d like to hear if it’s a curse I’ve heard of.”

Pei Qian said, “This curse is called—the Heartless Curse.”

Heartless Curse?

An Wuxue was startled.

He had indeed never heard of it.

Pei Qian explained, “As the name suggests, it seals the seven emotions of the person it’s cast upon, making them forget all love and affection. Moreover, it’s a long-term curse; as long as it exists within the person, even if they feel love again, the desire and emotion will be extracted by the curse and expelled from their soul, causing them to forget once more.”

“While the curse remains, one must be heartless.”

“The name ‘Heartless Curse’ is actually quite simple, which suggests it hasn’t been used by many people, and its effects are truly ruthless. But I was truly at my wit’s end back then; I could only think of one way.”

“You cast the Heartless Curse on Qu Jizhi?”

Pei Qian nodded, his face showing a hint of worry.

“I was almost driven mad by being trapped at the time and didn’t have time to study the Heartless Curse in detail. I only learned it briefly and then pretended to change my mind to lure Qu Jizhi to me. I took the initiative to engage in dual cultivation with him in the array, and when he lowered his guard, I cast the Heartless Curse on him.”

He spread his hands. “The fellow woke up and forgot all about love, so he naturally didn’t continue to trap me and let me go.

“After coming out, while Qu Jizhi had forgotten all his feelings for me, I spent two hundred years leaving the Qu family many arrays I had created and refining many spiritual treasures for them. It could be considered repaying their kindness a hundredfold. After that, I severed ties with them and left North Abyss.”

As Pei Qian finished, he noticed the tea before him had gone cold.

He simply raised the cup and drained it as if it were wine. With a dazed gaze, he said quite tiredly, “Since the North Abyss crisis is related to the Guan Ye Array, I don’t know what role the Qu family played or what Qu Jizhi has to do with it. He cultivated the Way of Floating Life. My casting the curse on him back then was a desperate measure, and since I was in a hurry to escape, I didn’t make it a lethal blow. He has likely broken the curse himself by now.”

As An Wuxue listened, a thought suddenly flashed through his mind.

Current events were unfolding beneath the surface, and Xie Zhefeng, as the world’s only Long-Life Immortal, was incredibly important. Yet he was hampered by his stubborn inner demons.

Since those inner demons were born because of An Wuxue, they were born of love.

The Heartless Curse could make someone forget love…

If Xie Zhefeng were to forget, it would be a happy outcome for both of them, wouldn’t it?

His gaze steadied, and he asked Pei Qian, “After you cast the curse on Qu Jizhi back then, did he truly forget all his feelings for you?”

Pei Qian nodded firmly.

An Wuxue reached out his hand.

“What are you doing?” Pei Qian was startled and suddenly shrank back. “Surely the First Seat isn’t going to punish me for using a forbidden curse now!?”

An Wuxue: “…No.”

Pei Qian relaxed. “Oh. Then tell me.”

“I want to be your accomplice.”

“Huh?”

“Give me the Heartless Curse,” An Wuxue said. “I want to use it too.”