Lanke Chess Edge
Chapter 9: River Water and Well Water Do Not Mix

‘It’s coming?’

The merchants were stunned for a moment, before the blood drained out of their faces as they realized what “it” was referring to.

Ji Yuan was also terrified. In fact, he was even more frightened than these merchants were. He even trembled at every breath. But on the surface, he was calm, and looked a far sight better than the rest of the group.

The sound four paws walking was obviously different than the sound of footsteps. Ji Yuan closed his dry, sore eyes, and focused on his hearing.

The sound was very soft, but it had a heavy feeling, like a pad of flesh pressing the soil, dead branches, and leaves, all four limbs padding on the ground leisurely, as if strolling through a garden.

Perhaps it was just an illusion, but Ji Yuan felt that the howling sound of the wind and the swaying of the grass and trees was a little louder than before. The nocturnal birds in the forest no longer chirped, as if they were too scared to make a sound.

Was it a tiger? Or a tiger spirit?

Ji Yuan’s worn clothes were soaked with sweat. As the clawed paw-steps approached, Ji Yuan became more and more doubtful of the defensive capabilities of the few people in the temple.

The other people in the mountain temple didn’t even dare to breathe. They held tightly onto the weapons in their hands and shrunk behind the fire, looking towards the temple entrance.

Although they didn’t have Ji Yuan’s keen hearing, they could read the changes in the wind, and the surrounding flowers, trees and branches swayed in all directions.

The atmosphere was suffocating, and all of the merchants’ faces were covered in beads of sweat.

“ROOOAAAR-“

A fierce tiger’s roar echoed from outside the temple. In an instant, all of the surrounding birds screeched and fled in terror.

The people inside the temple were even more frightened, and many felt their knees go weak.

At this point, no one had the time to wonder whether Lao Jin and the others were still alive.

Ji Yuan felt panicked. The previous ghost and the current momentum of the situation all proved that whatever was outside of the temple was definitely not an ordinary tiger.

A group of cowering, fearful men¹ huddled to either side of him, plus Ji Yuan himself, a half-blind beggar afraid of death… forget the tiger spirit, even an ordinary tiger would wipe the floor with them.

But before Ji Yuan could curse heaven and earth in his heart, his thoughts were interrupted.

“You and I have never met, and I have never set foot inside the mountain temple.² Why do you wish to help them?”

A deep, rich voice mixed with the low roar of a tiger came from outside.

Ji Yuan’s heart skipped a beat. It really was a freaking³ tiger spirit!

Ji Yuan reacted immediately. The information conveyed through the tiger’s words made thoughts run through his mind like lightning. He was thinking at an unprecedented speed, and in the span of just a few breaths he had already considered countless possibilities.

After being so thoroughly frightened, the merchants also instinctively looked towards the beggar.

‘If it’s come to this, I’ll die either way, it’s better to take a gamble! ’

Ji Yuan grit his teeth, brushed away his previous fear and humble attitude, and spoke with a strong voice.

“Because you and I have no previous business with each other, I didn’t pay any attention to the evil spirit of that scholar when he arrived. But Zhang Shilin is a kindhearted man, and offered me a bowl of hot water to drink. To repay the favor, I will not let him die.”

After finishing his words in one breath, Ji Yuan’s heartbeat raced like machine gun fire, and he couldn’t calm down.

There was a moment of silence outside, and Ji Yuan felt like his heart was about to jump out of his throat.

The tiger considered the dilemma posed by his words for quite some time before his deep voice sounded from the outside once again, but what he finally said had nothing to do with eating people.

“Although I have never met you, I know that you have been increasingly losing your vitality in the month that you have been here. Why are you so full of life at this time?”

Ji Yuan was quietly relieved, and rushed to find a way to continue the conversation without a word of disagreement.

His mind spun, trying his best to squeeze his intelligence to come up with a solution for the problem of the tiger spirit.

Combined with the tiger’s previous words, Ji Yuan confirmed that his soul really did travel, which meant that he currently occupied someone else’s body. Furthermore, at least three key elements were explained through the other party’s question.

First, the tiger lived in the deep mountains, and the beggar lived in the mountain temple. Neither party had ever met the other.

Second, perhaps the identity of this beggar was not quite as simple as it seemed in the first place, seeing as the tiger spirit hadn’t touched him. Of course, it may have been because the tiger disdained eating ill people, or had a habit of cleanliness.

Third, the root cause of the tiger spirit’s doubts. The beggar should have been dying, but because of Ji Yuan’s arrival, the tiger spirit witnessed a body that was on the verge of death suddenly become full of vitality.

Ji Yuan only wanted one result at this point, and that was to frighten this tiger spirit, and, more importantly, to keep everyone safe, so that he could ensure his own safety as well.

It had been a while since the tiger had spoken, and if the beast’s patience was running low outside then he was in deep trouble, but Ji Yuan was willing to risk it. Some stories that he had read before, along with some middle school fantasies, quickly flashed through his mind. On the surface, it only looked like the beggar had been silent for a moment before speaking.

He deliberately slowed down his speech.

“There’s nothing I can really say. It’s funny. Back then, I knew that my time was short, and I was just waiting to die. But unexpectedly, I realized something and wanted to live before I died.”⁴

Outside the temple, the tiger’s eyes widened. Its sharp claws were so excited that it grabbed and tore into the ground. Living before dying! It was a simple phrase, but the deeper meaning it contained was terrifying.

Two days ago, he had seen thunder falling in a clear sky. The aura was so terrifying and unpredictable, he had never seen it before in his life. It was by no means comparable to ordinary thunderstorms and lightning.

Today, the tiger spirit suddenly understood: the source of that thunder was here!

He was a beast who had become a spirit through cultivation. He knew very well how difficult it was to cultivate!

As for that man in the temple, whom he had thought was an ordinary beggar, if he was able to turn into a butterfly and be reborn from death,⁵ his cultivation realm must be extremely profound.

To be honest, this was also the first cultivator that the tiger spirit had encountered, but even if he had only met this one, he understood that this person was by no means comparable to ordinary cultivators.

At this moment, despite knowing that, to the humans, he was a fearsome monster, and that staying here for too long might be dangerous, the tiger spirit couldn’t help but ask with a small amount of anxiety.

“Sir, what do you think of my cultivation practice?”

Then, perhaps realizing that he had been too abrupt, he immediately added a sentence.

“I have been practicing in Niu Kui Mountain for more than a hundred years without guidance. Now, I have exhausted every method, but I am stuck at a bottleneck, and cannot progress any further. Sir, please give me some advice. This Lu Shan would be very grateful!”

He even used an honorific title. It was obvious that there had been a great shift in his tone. The conversation was now about the fundamentals of cultivation, which was a topic vaster than the sky. The tiger spirit couldn’t afford to be careless; his cultivation had been stuck for a long time.

Of course, even the Tiger Spirit understood that it was a taboo to ask about someone’s specific cultivation method. Monsters and creatures of all kinds had to struggle to learn how to cultivate by themselves. They would be overjoyed at any small results over a long period of time, and would not easily surrender their knowledge. Therefore he made sure to be careful when he questioned the hidden beggar in the temple, only asking for a little bit of information.

Since the two parties had no outstanding grudges, he naturally had to seize the opportunity to seek advice.

Thanks to the ghost, Scholar Lu, the tiger spirit learned some etiquette, and it felt that his words should be polite.

It was just that the resulting anxiety and unease made the tiger spirit pace about nervously after saying these words, glancing at the temple expectantly, while preparing himself for the worst. If the people in the temple attacked, he would have to fight back or escape as quickly as possible.

Ji Yuan originally thought that the tiger spirit would appear more wild, but he was surprised when he found it was rather educated. He couldn’t even imagine how a tiger would digest words, let alone speak.

Throwing away the absurd images in his head, Ji Yuan calmed down and spoke once more, still at a much slower rate.

“If I may ask, Lu Shan Jun,⁶ how many people have you eaten thus far?”

Ji Yuan knew very well that in this situation, the more panicked he felt, the less he could afford to show it. Instead, he needed to be stronger and more forceful according to the situation.

Hearing the question from the temple, the tiger outside suddenly panicked for a moment. His claws dug into the soil one more. Then he thought of something and breathed out.

Huuu…

A burst of phantom mist flowed out of his mouth and turned into a human figure in front of him. It was Scholar Lu.

The fierce tiger gazed at the mountain temple, where the torchlight cast shadows on the walls, and whispered to the scholar.

“You heard what he just said. How should I answer such that I don’t miss this wonderful opportunity? If you can help me this time, I promise to let your soul return to your homeland!”

However, Lu Shan Jun never thought that his quiet whispers could actually be heard by Ji Yuan, which also made the latter aware of just how much this tiger spirit cared about these so-called secrets of cultivation.

Scholar Lu bowed slightly to Lu Shan Jun, then glanced at the mountain temple.

“Previously, I went to the temple to induce them to fall asleep, but the plan was foiled unknowingly by Zhang Shilin. These kinds of people act according to their own hearts, and are terrible liars. But an expert? Lu Shan Jun had better answer everything truthfully, without hiding anything. Deliberate deception will not serve to achieve your goal.”

Hearing this, the huge tiger frowned, a slight struggle in his expression. Then he shook his head before opening his mouth.

“I dare not deceive you, sir. This Lu Shan Jun has been practicing for a long time. I have not been able to advance, and have had no choice but to eat humans for nourishment. I have eaten 53 people… But I eat people much like how people eat birds and beasts, and I have no intention of killing indiscriminately. I do not eat those who do not disturb me, and only eat the young and strong, not the old, the children, the sick, nor the disabled!”

Oh my god! 53 people!

Although Ji Yuan had merely asked a sharp question to elicit a continuation of the conversation, when he heard the tiger’s answer, his knees went a little weak. The merchants to either side of him could hardly bear his answer, and several trembled in fear.

1. Lit: “soft-legged shrimps” ↩︎
2. 河水不犯井水 “river water and well water do not interfere with one another,” idiom that basically means, “mind your own business.” See the chapter title! ↩︎
3. You all know the drill 😀 ↩︎
4. T/N: … wow, JY, real helpful, that’s like the most BS sentence I’ve seen him say yet. It’s practically an art form, saying absolutely nothing in lots of words: “yeah, I was dying LOL, then I decided not to” XD Luckily for our MC, the universe decides to give him a freebie on this one, so he gets a fun misunderstanding. ↩︎
5. I looked into this on a whim, and it turns out to be quite interesting. There are a couple possible meanings for the word “butterflies” in this sentence: 1) In the legend “The Butterfly Lovers,” Zhu Yingtai and Liang Shanbo, the protagonists of this romantic tragedy, turn into butterflies to be reunited in the afterlife – kind of as a metaphor for a bodily transformation and hope for reunion. 2) Butterflies are symbols of good luck, so it’s kind of like saying that JY has had the fortune to reverse death. 3) A general meaning of transformation and hope – metamorphosis, if you will, which is what the tiger is assuming happened to JY in his supposed cultivation ↩︎
6. “Jun” is an honorific that conveys respect, similar to saying “Lord Lu Shan,” since he’s the King of Beasts. If you’re curious, check out this post. I’m not going to be too picky with how I separate it out, so if you find it attached to the name at some points don’t worry too much about it. ↩︎