Following the direction the nian beasts had fled, the two headed straight for Shu.
All traces of the misery from Fengdu’s fall and the devastation of countless lives had long since disappeared.
This land ringed by mountains and water had endured war beyond counting, had been reduced to barren ruins again and again, and yet now it was still a brilliantly lit, prosperous landscape of high-rises and city lights.
Tempered over and over, full of resilience, always able to climb back from beneath the abyss to the summit once more. No wonder a newborn dragon vein had gestated here.
The place was also rather special to the two of them. In a certain sense, it could even be counted as the site of a vaguely defined declaration of love.
And barring anything unexpected, the nian beasts’ den should be somewhere near Shu.
“Zhaozhao, look! A drone show!” Qin Shu suddenly stopped while passing through the city, hovering high above the river as he looked down over the dazzling nightscape.
Fireworks blazed in the distance, while drones above the river moved together to the music. As light and shadow shifted, the densely packed spectators below were washed in changing colors. The visual effect was spectacular.
“No wonder the nian beasts all poured out of their nest… They couldn’t stay home with all this going on.” Qin Shu watched in delight and could not help sighing. “This place is way livelier than Yun City.”
“Uncle Qin seems to be hiding in the crowd.” Pei Zhao tilted his head slightly as he spoke and pointed toward a man sitting on a viewing platform with an arm around Chang Liu Yi while eating grilled meat. “Xing Yong is there too.”
“…Huh?” Qin Shu looked down and instantly found Qin You Wei in the moving crowd. He stared in shock. “He really is!”
As for what those two middle-aged men had come to Shu to do, Qin Shu did not even need to speculate very hard.
There was a handgun hidden beneath Qin You Wei’s motorcycle jacket, along with two pairs of handcuffs. Xing Yong was pretending to be an ordinary man casually spending his New Year holiday and had even brought his wife along, but his eyes never stopped moving. He carefully examined every brick and tile around them and somehow never once looked up at the dazzling drones overhead.
The two hid themselves well enough from ordinary people, but even from a hundred meters in the sky, there was no escaping Qin Shu’s eyes.
“Don’t tell me those two actually ended up becoming coworkers. What fate.”
Qin Shu complained faintly and scanned the riverfront crowd again. For the moment, he did not notice anyone suspicious. “It looks safe enough right now. Forget it, leave them alone. Our problem is more important.”
Pei Zhao had no objection, so the two set out again, crossing the noisy, prosperous city and entering the quieter mountains beneath the night sky.
The markings on Zuo Zhe’s map were vague, and the heart of the dragon vein had been cleverly concealed in darkness, but Pei Zhao was very familiar with Shu and led Qin Shu directly toward the old site of Fengdu.
Although the ruins from back then had disappeared long ago and younger mountains and waterways had risen in their place, the traces left by the fleeing nian beasts were perfectly clear to the two of them.
After five uninterrupted minutes of travel, they climbed an undeveloped, uninhabited mountain and followed the trail directly to a cliff at its highest point.
The crescent moon hung before the cliff like a blade.
“What a good place. Where sun and moon meet, where purple qi arrives from the east. Who knows how many little spirits have absorbed moonlight here and slowly awakened intelligence?” Pei Zhao studied the local feng shui with interest and patted a crooked tree growing on the cliff. “Little tree spirit, have you seen any traces of human activity?”
The crooked tree, which had been pretending to be dead, shuddered all over. Trembling, it lowered a branch and pointed toward an utterly ordinary patch of grass.
“Thanks.”
Qin Shu smiled and patted it too, accidentally smearing a little blood from his sleeve onto the bark. The tree spirit was so frightened it uprooted itself and sprinted into the dark mountain forest.
The tree was not the only one startled. Qin Shu was equally shocked by the sight of a tree running away. He stared blankly as it vanished and did not manage to do anything to remedy the situation.
Pei Zhao laughed and paid little attention to the fleeing spirit. Instead, he stood on the level patch of grass the tree had indicated, thoughtfully extended a hand, and gently closed his fingers.
Rumble!
Light and shadow in the air abruptly distorted as an earthshaking roar erupted.
Pei Zhao simply ripped an entire mass of stone and soil out by the roots without even dirtying his hands. After thinking for a moment, he temporarily moved the hill-sized chunk aside and placed it on an open stretch of cliff opposite them.
A huge hole had been forcibly opened beneath their feet, leading directly into a hidden cavern inside the mountain.
Qin Shu stared at Pei Zhao’s effortless excavation in a daze, then looked down into the cavern. More than a dozen enormous pairs of crimson eyes, each as large as a bronze bell, silently opened in the darkness, packed densely together and staring straight back at him.
But Qin Shu’s attention was still on Pei Zhao for the moment. “Zhaozhao, how come this time when you use your power, I can’t see that… that color that looks like chaos?”
“Because I’ve made peace with this power. For years and years, I saw it as filth from beyond this world, as evil, as something parasitic from a demon, a force that once swallowed you…”
Pei Zhao answered softly. After a brief silence, he continued, “But it is also a part of my soul now, one of the reasons I have been able to continue existing. It cannot be separated from me. Whenever I thought about what happened back then, I felt awful. I often couldn’t face myself, couldn’t fully enjoy the strength it gave me.”
Qin Shu pulled him into his arms and pressed Pei Zhao’s hand over his own heart. “None of that was your fault. When it comes down to it, I’m the one who caused this. Now that you can see me alive and kicking, you can finally enjoy it?”
“Mm. Sometimes I get trapped in my own thinking, but one word from someone else is enough to make it click. This power is also what let me survive until now and wait safely for you.” Pei Zhao poked Qin Shu’s deliberately flexed chest and curved his lips slightly. “A dragon does not necessarily survive an age of chaos. Fullness invites loss. If I had lost this ability to resonate with the void, maybe I would be trapped in the abyss now too… waiting for you to remember who I was, waiting for you to fish me out.”
“Then this is definitely better. If things had gone the way you said and you turned into something like Ao Run inside the void, I absolutely would’ve cried at you.” Qin Shu paused. “Don’t tell me Teacher Xu was the one who talked sense into you?”
Pei Zhao looked up, leaned close, and lightly kissed him. His cold lips covered the corner of Qin Shu’s mouth and picked up a rare trace of warmth.
“It was because you were very good to me,” Pei Zhao emphasized quietly. “Of course, he deserves some credit too.”
“Then should we invite him over for dinner after New Year? Bring that chubby little girl too.”
“He’d be frightened to death. Better not. We can just send him a gift separately.”
“True. Teacher Xu is really timid. Zhaozhao, you’re still the thoughtful one, so considerate.” Qin Shu could not help sighing again. “Why can’t anyone else see what a good personality you have? You’re especially kind.”
To be fair, even Pei Zhao himself did not know how to answer that.
He knew perfectly well what kind of person he was and also felt that some of Qin Shu’s filters over him were absurdly thick… But if he actively contradicted Qin Shu, it seemed the filter would only become thicker. It was an unsolvable mystery.
So tonight, after the two of them had finally talked everything through, Pei Zhao began trying to break the filter through action.
For example, he deliberately stopped restraining his power. Sticky darkness capable of corroding light surged from beneath his feet and swallowed both the moonlight and the afterglow of distant fireworks.
Faint whispers slowly flowed through the darkness, like hallucinations gnawing at the brain after a mind split apart. Dragon aura with an uncanny presence spread outward and transformed into twisted, deformed, brilliantly colored koi that drifted silently through the suddenly cold mountain forest, appearing and disappearing.
Dark-gold scale-light swept over Pei Zhao’s pale face. Several slick, hollow fish eyes tore through the thin layer of skin beneath the changing light, while clusters of compound eyes crowded and surfaced inside his pupils before being swallowed once again by the spreading sticky darkness.
Qin Shu: “That’s it! So cool!”
Pei Zhao: …
He said nothing and lowered his eyes slightly. At the same time, every nian beast inside the cavern died, and at the same time their bodies were split open. The wild-grass-covered mountaintop was silently transformed into a sinister place awash in surging blood.
Qin Shu: “The soil here is definitely going to be insanely fertile next year. The weeds will grow up to my chest, you believe me?”
Pei Zhao: …
He gave up.
Nothing worked on Qin Shu.
Those eyes that could see through everything seemed to turn into fully automatic prosthetic eyes the instant they looked at him.
Meanwhile, Qin Shu was delighted that he had not needed to expend any effort dealing with the nian beasts. He decided Pei Zhao was simply a little obsessed with cleanliness and did not want him getting covered in even more blood, so he had solved the problem with the most direct violence possible. Extremely considerate.
“Come on, come on. Let’s go down and look.”
He wrapped an arm around Pei Zhao with great interest and jumped directly toward the bottom of the cavern, not remotely worried that any surviving beasts might still be hiding in the dark. Someone as reliable as Pei Zhao killed everything faster than Qin Shu did, and eliminating the roots was standard procedure.
But when Qin Shu landed in the cold cavern and felt Pei Zhao gradually withdrawing the power he had released, while the smell of blood soaked into the earth and cracks in the rock rose into the air again… Qin Shu was no longer quite as delighted.
His nose was sharp enough to distinguish species by scent. The smell of nian-beast blood remained on the clifftop, while the overwhelming bloody odor inside the cave came entirely from humans.
Fresh humans, dead not very long ago… more precisely, they should all have died this morning. Much of the blood had already begun drying, with only what had seeped into the earth remaining slightly damp.
Nian beasts went out to eat people during New Year. Qin Shu had never heard of them dragging humans back home before eating them. In that case, there was only one explanation… the humans had walked into the beasts’ nest themselves.
“Look for clues and identify them first.” Pei Zhao realized the same thing and frowned slightly. “On the left. There’s a bag torn in half, but it’s very old.”
“Let me see. The passport is still here, but the inner pages are corroded. This color… probably foreign.”
Qin Shu searched through the damaged bag. A moment later he found an identification card entirely in English, tightly sealed inside a holder. Some information remained visible on the yellowed card.
“It belonged to the expedition team Zuo Zhe funded. They died decades ago. Looks like the fracture is here. We found the right place.”
Pei Zhao nodded. “But they aren’t the ones who died today.”
After circling the cavern several times, the two confirmed that nearly all of today’s dead remained inside the nian beasts’ stomachs. The only thing absorbed by the ground here was blood. As for pieces of human bodies, not even scraps remained.
It was a grim way to put it, but ordinary nian beasts only ate children. They might attack adults, but they should not have this kind of appetite for meat that was no longer tender enough… A distortion of desire was usually inseparable from distortion of the body.
As the place where the newborn dragon vein had first emerged, the contamination here was probably among the most severe.
Most of the severed limbs and flesh inside the nian beasts’ stomachs had already been digested. They had checked before entering the cave. Aside from blood-soaked scraps of clothing, none of the people divided among the beasts had carried any identification.
Pei Zhao also found one gold ring and one jade-bead bracelet. Other than that, there were no clues.
“I’m guessing they weren’t good people.” Qin Shu rubbed between his brows as dark-red color surfaced in his eyes and his gaze swept across the branching tunnels ahead.
Following faint footprints washed with blood, he took Pei Zhao’s hand and headed deeper into the cave. “This isn’t a tourist area, and unauthorized entry is normally forbidden. But there was a lot of meat inside those nian beasts… Either a whole group came to climb wild mountains, or they were poaching, gathering medicinal herbs, or…”
Before Qin Shu finished the speculation, he stopped and frowned.
“Smell that?” Pei Zhao frowned too.
“Mm. Very sharp. And these paths look man-made… They expanded ancient tomb-raider routes into something like this. With costs this high, it really must be an industry with enormous profits.” Qin Shu looked thoughtful.
They followed the familiar pungent smell forward, winding through the mountain for more than ten minutes and nearly making a full circuit through the internal passages. Finally, the cavern opened up again before them.
As expected, it was another… secret processing plant strikingly similar to the hall in Anping Town.
Several boilers had burned dry and posed an immediate fire hazard. The smell of chemical products was extremely concentrated, oxygen levels were low, and an industrial accident could happen at any moment. The odor was sharp enough that it could probably kill a cow that wandered in by accident.
Forget the people living near the mountain. Even the people working in this plant had no safety protection whatsoever. Even without nian beasts, they might have died here at any time for some other reason.
The nian beasts had come here too and left fresh, heavy footprints in the cavern. There was also the smell of crude firearms having been fired, though the weapons themselves had been chewed into fine fragments by the beasts.
Qin Shu fell silent for a moment, took Pei Zhao’s wrist, and touched the wooden bead mixed among the bracelet. “Qin You Wei, can you hear me?”
Noise from fireworks came from the other end. Qin You Wei quickly pushed his way out of the crowd, his tone serious. “What happened? Is something wrong in Jiangcheng? I can’t get back right now, but I can find someone to help you.”
“I’m not in Jiangcheng. I’m in a mountain ravine about two hours’ drive from you… You and Xing Yong came tonight to catch drug dealers, didn’t you? No need to keep staking them out. They never left. They all died in a cave.” Qin Shu laughed. “I’ll send Xing Yong the coordinates. Come over together and bring more people. There’s an illegal factory here.”
“…Huh?” Qin You Wei’s breathing suddenly grew heavier. After a moment of silence, he spoke again. “Huh?”
“Exactly how I feel.” Qin Shu could not help laughing again. “Happy New Year.”
As he spoke, he had already sent the coordinates to Xing Yong with an even simpler message: Find Qin You Wei. Bring more people.
Xing Yong replied with a single period.
They had known each other long enough to have that much tacit understanding. And with Chang Liu Yi beside him tonight, Xing Yong and Qin You Wei did not even need to drive personally. Naturally, there were ways for them to reach the cave early.
Five minutes later, Qin Shu nearly lost it when he saw Chang Liu Yi charging into the depths of the cavern while holding each man by one side of the collar. Both men sat dizzy on the ground afterward, unable to catch their breath for a long time.
Qin You Wei recovered quickly. Frowning, he put on gloves and immediately inspected the crystalline residue inside the boilers, checked for potential fire hazards, and made sure no other machinery was still operating.
“Everyone spread out. Nobody should come in here without a respirator.” He photographed part of the scene as evidence, then immediately pulled everyone back to a safe distance to prevent inhalation poisoning. Clearly experienced.
Xing Yong retreated without argument, put an arm over Qin Shu’s shoulder, and lowered his voice in disbelief. “Kid, that’s your dad?”
“Yeah.” Qin Shu nodded proudly.
“Huh. Now that you mention it, you really do look a little alike, especially the vibe. No wonder something always felt weird whenever I coordinated work with him.” Xing Yong hissed softly, trying to return himself to professional mode. “Whew… Old Qin told me everyone in the illegal factory is dead?”
“Mm. Nian beasts ate them.”
“…You’re not joking?”
“Not joking. There are also traces of Zuo Zhe’s expedition team trespassing here, from decades ago.” Qin Shu handed him the old identification card. “I’ll show you.”
Only then did Xing Yong notice that Qin Shu’s clothing was coated in blood. It had already dried, flakes crumbling away whenever the fabric was touched.
He sucked in a breath. “Finding something this good on New Year’s Eve? Your dad’s bonus and mine are going to multiply like crazy.”
Chang Liu Yi immediately smiled. “Wonderful. In that case, you’re definitely buying the wool outfit you said was too expensive before. I don’t want to watch you go bald and then get rheumatism in your legs when you’re old.”
Xing Yong choked, dragged Qin Shu into a corner, and whispered, “…Qin Shu, come here. Do you know any expert who treats hair loss?”
“Mm. Expert medicine is expensive.”
“Forget it, then.”
“You can’t forget it. If you go bald and get ugly, how are you going to face your wife?” Qin Shu raised an eyebrow. “Good looks are a man’s best dowry. Look how thick my hair is, and look how well I married.”
“…Fine! Send me the WeChat contact.”
Grinding his teeth, Xing Yong added Daoist Lord Sifang.
It took a little over an hour before the rest of the reinforcements finally raced into the mountains.
The night had deepened, and every part of Shu was severely congested because of New Year celebrations. Managing to get a convoy into the mountains this quickly was already astonishingly efficient.
Qin You Wei barely chatted with Qin Shu. During the wait he went completely into work mode, constantly making calls and checking records, then took Xing Yong to the top of the cliff and recovered all the suspects’ tissue and clothing fragments.
Qin Shu had no time to chat either. While they waited for reinforcements, he and Pei Zhao had already begun stabilizing the space inside the cave, isolating the fracture and adding an extremely difficult-to-break illusion so outsiders could not accidentally enter.
Everyone had their specialty. Without Yuxu there, the two found the work somewhat troublesome and spent considerable effort making sure the space would not collapse instantly.
Qin You Wei mapped out the mountain route and cavern passages completely, and the later handoff and command work no longer required the two of them. Qin Shu therefore only informed Chang Liu Yi before hurrying with Pei Zhao to retrieve the deity trapped in the void.
The identity of the deity guarding this fracture was unknown. At least while Zuo Zhe had been alive, he had never managed to figure it out. He sent people here to investigate, lost an entire group, and still never found a trace of the god.
If that was the case, and the deity here had not been exiled by Zuo Zhe, then things became strange. Only a few possibilities remained: the god had entered the void voluntarily, the god had secretly fled, or the god had died somewhere else.
Considering the special geography, Qin Shu went fully equipped this time. He wore Yuxu’s pearl, put on his defensive robe, set up a simple offering table, wore the artifact Chang Liu Yi had refined, and tucked the Vermilion Bird feather Phoenix Village had given him tightly over his heart.
Pei Zhao even brought out his own dragon pearl. In a certain sense, the thing was almost a nonrenewable resource. But being overprepared was better than being careless.
The instant Qin Shu sat down and connected to the formation spirit, he knew their caution had been justified. Cold swept over his entire body. That familiar yet unfamiliar chill seeped into his marrow, then was quietly driven away by the warmth over his heart.
Shen-dragon power had the effect of dispelling illusions, so Qin Shu’s exploration speed was even faster than usual. Without hesitation, he drove straight forward and used every moment to search deeper into the void.
Half an hour later, he found a man.
The man floated silently in the void with his eyes closed, fully dressed… and looked exactly like an emperor.
Qin Shu was not exaggerating. He had never seen anyone look this much like an emperor. The man clearly appeared to be sleeping soundly, yet his features and bearing still carried imposing majesty, while his clothing completed the impression.
His dark ceremonial robes resembled those of an ancient sovereign and almost disappeared into the darkness of the void. Yellow-jade beads hung from both ears. A ceremonial crown rested on his head, its white-jade tassels swaying gently.
“Zhaozhao, who is this?” Qin Shu was intensely curious and leaned in for repeated looks. “Dressed this cool… he’s some major figure, right? Do you know him?”
Pei Zhao’s voice drifted eerily from every direction, carrying a trace of complicated emotion. “I know him. This is the Emperor of Fengdu.”
“…Huh?”
“Mm.”
Qin Shu stared, dumbfounded. “I thought He died ages ago!”
The instant he finished, the man with closed eyes abruptly opened them, revealing a pair of majestic phoenix eyes. “It’s New Year’s Eve. Say something auspicious.”