The hostage in his hands had already been stolen away by Pei Yuan Jin.
Guo Ju Ying thought resentfully.
But that hostage had not been worth very much, at least not enough to make Pei Yuan Jin lose his reason. That plump one, however… Guo Ju Ying could not help remembering the impulse he had felt the first time he saw Fu Xi Yan, the urge to pin him beneath his body.
Fair-skinned, soft. His hands would surely feel wonderful.
Even at a critical moment like this, inappropriate images still surfaced in his mind. A wicked flame quietly flared in his heart and altered his escape plan.
He thought the original plan could still work. He only needed to change the target.
He silently memorized Fu Xi Yan’s position, then dropped from the sky like a hawk diving toward prey and attacked Pei Yuan Jin. His strikes were fast, vicious, and precise, filled with the agility of a king of the skies. If one attack failed, he immediately withdrew, adjusted his position, and waited for the next opening.
No one except Guo Ju Ying himself noticed that the positions he chose were not meant to deal with Pei Yuan Jin, but to draw closer to Fu Xi Yan, who was still running toward them.
There was one great difference between humans and beasts: humans understood military strategy.
For example, making a feint in the east while attacking in the west.
He watched Fu Xi Yan step closer and closer into his attack range. The fire in his heart burned higher, but his movements became more restrained.
Just a little farther.
One more step.
One more…
Fu Xi Yan suddenly stopped and looked uneasily toward the sky, apparently deeply wary of Guo Ju Ying. From above, Guo Ju Ying saw him hesitate, then slowly turn the toes that had been pointing forward, as though preparing to withdraw from the battlefield.
At that moment, Fu Xi Yan was not the only person facing a choice. Guo Ju Ying was too. Should he risk grabbing him, or flee while he still could?
Pei Yuan Jin seemed to sense something, and his attacks became even fiercer.
The sky was sliced into countless fragments by the Crimson Dragon King’s sword energy, trapping Guo Ju Ying in one tiny square after another. The squares kept shrinking, and the space in which he could survive grew narrower and narrower.
Attack or retreat. He had to choose.
But Pei Yuan Jin intended to leave him neither option. The Crimson Dragon King cleaved upward, and the churning yellow dust across the battlefield was forcibly split in two like a steamed bun cut down the middle.
That crystal-clear passage formed the shortest straight line between Pei Yuan Jin and Guo Ju Ying.
It was also a line deciding life and death.
Pei Yuan Jin stepped into the air. Those two seemingly ordinary steps instantly closed the distance between them, his arrogant bearing making it seem as though he did not even regard the Martial King before him as worthy of attention.
One patch of earth could hold only one king. When two Martial Kings met, one had to advance and the other had to retreat.
Guo Ju Ying tapped one foot lightly and changed direction in midair, apparently preparing to flee into the distance. The Crimson Dragon King’s sword energy followed close behind. Both moved too fast for the naked eye to distinguish, but Guo Ju Ying knew that the sword energy borrowed the spiritual energy of Heaven and Earth. It was constantly becoming stronger and faster. If they continued along this straight line forever, it would eventually catch him.
But he would never give it that chance. His figure suddenly blurred, as though someone had pressed copy and paste, turning one Guo Ju Ying into several and sending them flying in every direction at once.
Some flew high, others flew low.
Some flew far, others flew near.
More than a dozen Giant Eagle Martial Artists suddenly appeared in a swarm. Even someone without trypophobia might immediately develop a compulsive urge to reject all that ugliness.
Fu Xi Yan stood where he was, narrowing his eyes at the battle. His mouth hung slightly open, as though startled by the sudden change. His Cloudsilk-Gauntleted hands were raised before his chest and trembled faintly.
Guo Ju Ying reached for those hands.
More than a dozen fake Guo Ju Yings were still darting everywhere, so the real one appeared without warning and with eerie suddenness. Fu Xi Yan seemed stunned. His body abruptly dropped lower, as though his knees had gone weak.
Most people in the world possessed instinctive reactions.
When something fell, they instinctively reached out to catch it. When someone slapped them, they instinctively closed their eyes. And when…
Fu Xi Yan crouched, Guo Ju Ying instinctively dropped with him.
Then he seized those hands.
Even through the gloves, he could feel how soft they were, springier than cotton, almost like the clouds he had imagined.
At the same time, he saw a pair of eyes. There was no panic and no fear in them, only deep hatred.
He abruptly realized something was wrong, but his foot had already touched the ground. A piercing pain shot up from his sole. A tiny arrow, driven by someone’s control, stabbed through the bottom of his foot and traveled along the bone of his leg toward his knee.
Guo Ju Ying violently blocked the arrowhead with true qi and forced it back out along the route it had entered, little by little.
His grip tightened, but the expected sound of bones shattering never came. At the instant the arrowhead was forced out, Fu Xi Yan had already slipped both hands smoothly from the Cloudsilk Gauntlets and used Shattered Stars, Lingering Shadows to dodge away.
Shattered Stars, Lingering Shadows might be one of the finest qinggong techniques in the world, but in the eyes of a Martial King, every movement Fu Xi Yan made stirred the surrounding spiritual energy. Naturally, he could not escape Guo Ju Ying’s grasp so easily.
At this moment, every trace of Guo Ju Ying’s earlier lust toward Fu Xi Yan had vanished. He had only one thought left: kill him!
Spiritual energy surged. Fu Xi Yan suddenly felt the intangible air around him transform from gas into something solid, blocking his escape route and pushing his body backward.
But there was more than one Martial King on the field, and how could the other allow his fated partner to fall into the hands of an old lecher? The fact that Guo Ju Ying had merely held Fu Xi Yan’s hands through gloves had already made the Crimson Dragon King’s sword intent soar, as though it longed to hack this old pervert into a thousand pieces.
The Crimson Dragon King’s indomitable sword energy cut between them, then bent at a bizarre right angle. It struck Guo Ju Ying’s eagle claw with a sizzling sound like meat burning over charcoal.
Guo Ju Ying’s figure flashed and reappeared seven or eight zhang away, merging into another of the images.
The dozen-plus fake Guo Ju Yings were all illusions, but he could jump at random from one to another. This was one of his ultimate trump cards, never used except at the edge of life and death. Usually, however, this move was not meant for escaping. It was meant for killing.
Because although the technique sounded miraculous, to experts at Martial King level it was simple enough to counter. All they had to do was destroy the illusions one by one.
So the more opponents died after seeing it, the fewer people knew the secret. And the fewer people who knew it, the more effective it remained.
But right now, the future was an incredibly distant concept. A person had to survive until tomorrow before thinking about how to live tomorrow.
Guo Ju Ying could not help moving his injured knee. It had been so long since he was last wounded that he had nearly forgotten what injury felt like. So when the tiny grain of sand Fu Xi Yan had brought into his body with the arrow traveled along the artery and entered his left ventricle, he felt only a faint discomfort. A Martial King’s vitality was so strong that it could make him overlook subtle abnormalities.
Only when the grain of sand began wreaking havoc inside his heart like Sun Wukong did he suddenly realize Fu Xi Yan had left another trap inside his body.
Fu Xi Yan stared blankly as the black speck of Guo Ju Ying fell from the sky, then excitedly ran toward him.
He had improvised that backup plan at the last moment and never expected it to work. Yet somehow, the least likely possibility had become reality. Heaven must truly have opened its eyes.
He ran as fast as his two legs could carry him. When he passed Pei Yuan Jin, he did not even slow down.
Guo Ju Ying lay on the ground. The atmosphere around him had become extremely strange. Spiritual energy flowed slowly and circled his body, almost like an angelic halo.
Bright red blood seeped slowly from the area over his heart, one bit at a time, one drop after another, yet it still spread into a small red stain across his clothing.
He slowly sat up and came face-to-face with Fu Xi Yan, who had hurried over.
Fu Xi Yan stopped abruptly at exactly the right distance, standing in the delicate space between Guo Ju Ying and Pei Yuan Jin.
Guo Ju Ying bent his uninjured leg and quickly stood. “You think one grain of sand can kill me?” His true qi wrapped around his heart like Nuwa repairing the heavens. The wound caused by the grain of sand was slowly closing, and the bleeding had already stopped.
Fu Xi Yan was not particularly surprised.
If a Martial King could die this easily in his hands, he would have to start worrying about Pei Yuan Jin’s safety instead. He said, “But it did injure you…”
He had barely begun speaking when Guo Ju Ying turned and fled without looking back.
A person capable of surviving long enough to become a Martial King naturally cherished life more than those who had already died. Guo Ju Ying hated Fu Xi Yan down to the bone and wanted nothing more than to grind his bones to ash, but Pei Yuan Jin was still behind him. At a moment like this, hatred and anger were useless emotions. Staying alive was the only thing that mattered.
But how could Pei Yuan Jin possibly let such an opportunity go?
The Crimson Dragon King left his hand and shot directly toward Guo Ju Ying’s vital point. The strike resembled heavenly thunder punishment descending from the nine heavens. As it stirred the spiritual energy of Heaven and Earth, it also drained the spiritual energy around Guo Ju Ying.
The spiritual energy between Heaven and Earth ought to be endless, but if the energy in one area was absorbed too quickly and new energy could not replenish it in time, an extremely brief vacuum would form.
At that moment, Guo Ju Ying was desperately absorbing spiritual energy and converting it to true qi, trying to seal the wound in his heart. If nothing else, he needed to last long enough to leave and find a skilled physician.
But Pei Yuan Jin’s strike cut off his retreat. The true qi accumulated inside him had already been mostly consumed by the fierce battle. If he could not replenish it, then only death remained. And that dead end had been laid jointly by Pei Yuan Jin and Fu Xi Yan.
Fu Xi Yan’s entry into the battlefield had not been a weakness they exposed, but bait they deliberately placed.
Guo Ju Ying’s earlier hostage-taking had revealed his desire to negotiate. They had therefore predicted long ago that once he saw Fu Xi Yan, he would abandon escape and take the dangerous gamble of seizing another hostage.
The little arrow planted in the ground was the clearest proof of their careful preparation.
A Martial King sensed spiritual energy and through it grasped Heaven and Earth. So while that little arrow remained stuck in the ground, it was motionless, like a mousetrap silently waiting for prey to step into it.
If Guo Ju Ying never took that step, the arrangement would be useless. But he had foolishly acted out the other side’s script one step at a time, like a marionette dangling from their strings.
A puppet…
Fu Xi Yan knew Puppet Arts.
Countless thoughts flashed through Guo Ju Ying’s mind in that instant, but they passed like a revolving lantern, none remaining.
Xi Mo Ya, the Red Peng egg, Huayue Tower… none of those mattered anymore. The only important question was how to escape. Or perhaps, how to drag the enemy down with him.
Killing Pei Yuan Jin might be beyond his ability, but Fu Xi Yan… Fu Xi Yan… if Fu Xi Yan died, Pei Yuan Jin would be half dead too.
Illusions filled the sky. Ten, twenty, thirty…
Countless figures. Countless Guo Ju Yings.
Fu Xi Yan watched the one charging toward him and was just preparing to draw his dagger when the other man slammed a palm directly onto Fu Xi Yan’s true essence.
How should he put it?
Exactly what I wanted.
A tremendous suction force erupted from Fu Xi Yan’s true essence. After tasting Pei Yuan Jin’s true qi, the Taotie Gu had lain quiet for several days. Perhaps its appetite had been opened, because recently it had been restless, almost dissatisfied no matter how much it received.
Guo Ju Ying’s true qi leaned toward cold and sinister rather than Pei Yuan Jin’s scorching heat, but it suited the Taotie Gu’s appetite even better. The rate of absorption was faster than ever.
Guo Ju Ying went from shock to fury, then accelerated the rate at which he converted spiritual energy into true qi. Unfortunately, Pei Yuan Jin had already turned back. Several sword strikes drained the surrounding spiritual energy and trapped him inside a sealed space crisscrossed with invisible sword energy.
Ge-ge-ge…
Terrified, agonized sounds came from his throat. His skin gradually aged, age spots appeared across his cheeks, and his black hair slowly turned gray and lost its luster, as though displaying his life draining away.
He desperately tried to gather spiritual energy.
Yu Su Huan had once said that when Martial Kings fought, the most likely outcome was one dead and one wounded. At this realm, if a person detonated their true essence, the surrounding spiritual energy would be affected and create a storm powerful enough to seriously injure the surviving Martial King.
But at this moment, Guo Ju Ying could not mobilize spiritual energy at all. Even the true qi inside his true essence had been almost completely drained. The wound in his heart began bleeding again, and for a time he did not even have the strength to raise an arm and strike.
Fu Xi Yan released him and watched him fall flat on his back.
Guo Ju Ying’s true qi had been exhausted and his true essence had shriveled to the size of an ordinary medicinal pill. He was clearly not going to survive much longer.
Fu Xi Yan thought he was still rather fortunate. Although he had been forced to kill, everyone he had killed so far had deserved it. That at least kept his conscience from tormenting him too severely.
“A grain of sand is insignificant and tiny, but if used properly, it can still injure you.”
Fu Xi Yan had a strange psychological urge. He wanted this accomplice to the new-city atrocity to recognize his own wrongdoing before death, just like villains in television dramas who finally saw the error of their ways and repented at the ending.
The endless repetition of that cliché proved there was a market for it. Fu Xi Yan was part of that market.
He said, “Maybe in your eyes the eighty thousand people who died in the new city were insignificant. They couldn’t resist, so you could slaughter them however you pleased. But the world is connected. Someone will always be furious at their deaths!”
Guo Ju Ying pulled at the skin of his face as though trying to laugh. In a hoarse voice, he said, “People can see your anger because you aren’t insignificant.”
Fu Xi Yan thought that in the end, he still lacked the eloquence of a screenwriter, the kind capable of making people see profound truth in just a few lines.
At this point, a villain was still a villain.
Fu Xi Yan nodded and decided to try another angle. “You’re right. That’s why the world has laws and rules. People need to know that whoever does evil will pay the price. Only then can villains be deterred.”
Guo Ju Ying said, “There’s one more thing you got wrong.”
Fu Xi Yan looked at him and wondered why the man still was not dead and whether he should help him along.
“Not eighty thousand. One hundred thousand.” After Guo Ju Ying said it and saw Fu Xi Yan’s expression freeze, a strange smile curled on his lips. He could already feel the surrounding true qi becoming abundant again. He thought, now was the moment!
The Crimson Dragon King suddenly pierced directly into the true essence he was about to detonate. The last faint trace of true qi dispersed beneath the sword tip.
Guo Ju Ying’s eyes widened. The hatred and unwillingness inside them almost seemed ready to burst out along with his eyeballs. His hands struggled upward slightly, then fell powerlessly back down.
A Martial King of his generation finally ended his evil yet brilliant life in haste upon this nameless patch of yellow earth.
An ominous feeling rose in Fu Xi Yan again. He turned toward Pei Yuan Jin. “What did he mean by one hundred thousand?”
With Minor Heat approaching, Cuihan Hall was already using blocks of ice to cool the room.
Qin Xiao Xun sat upright and repeatedly glanced at the person beside him.
He was no longer the same little palace eunuch.
Xiao Jin Zi and Elder Wei had both been transferred to the Rongcheng front to assist with defense. The person standing beside Qin Xiao Xun now appeared around thirty, with a fair, beardless face and neatly trimmed sideburns. His entire bearing was cultured and gentle.
His name was Zheng Yu, and he was no newcomer to the palace. During the previous emperor’s reign, he had already been the most favored figure in the inner court.
The former regent had wielded overwhelming power, yet Zheng Yu, despite serving inside the palace, had managed to help the previous emperor gather a group of diehard imperial loyalists. Many privately called him the “Inner Chancellor.” He was also an old minister the previous emperor had left behind to assist his son.
After the previous emperor died, eastern pirates began stirring. Zheng Yu volunteered to suppress them and had only recently returned. He then heard about the long string of major events that had occurred, including the failure of the new-city plan, the struggle for authority between Wu Xuan Yin and Ban Qing Yu, and Qin Xiao Xun being abducted and later rescued.
Zheng Yu had watched Qin Xiao Xun grow up. Qin Xiao Xun still respected and feared him somewhat and worried Zheng Yu would scold him over everything that had happened. Yet Zheng Yu merely brewed him a pot of tea with respectful composure and asked, “How have the surviving people from the new city been handled?”
Qin Xiao Xun said, “I’ve already had people spread word that an earthquake struck the new city. Those survivors naturally cannot be allowed to remain. Pei Xiong Ji has already left. Xuan Yin will send people to silence them.”
Zheng Yu shook his head. “There will always be fish that escape the net. Why not try telling the world the truth instead, Your Majesty?”
Qin Xiao Xun looked startled. “Uncle Zheng means…?”
“Someone laid a formation in the new city that took one hundred thousand lives. There were only two sides present at the time. One was the Spirit Sect. The other was the Immortal Treasury Palace. The Spirit Sect is Southern Yu’s state religion and has always loved the people as its own children. Naturally, the villain must have been the other side.”
Qin Xiao Xun said, “But there were also…”
Zheng Yu said unhurriedly, “They were good friends invited by the Spirit Sect to lend assistance. If the Spirit Sect are good people, naturally their friends are good people too. The Immortal Treasury Palace’s forces inside Southern Yu have already broken into smaller pieces and gone underground. Its influence is far weaker than before. Pei Xiong Ji and the others gained nothing this time and instead suffered a serious loss. For the short term, they have no strength to fight again. Among the next generation, Pei Yuan Jin has only just become a Martial King and has not yet matured. He still has his struggle with Zhao Tong Qu ahead of him, so he cannot possibly spend his energy on Southern Yu. More importantly, Your Majesty is emperor of the common people. What matters is what Southern Yu’s people believe. As for the affairs of the jianghu, let the Spirit Sect solve them itself. In truth, Your Majesty should never have interfered with the Spirit Sect’s internal struggle. Whether Wu Xuan Yin or Ban Qing Yu won would not have shaken Your Majesty’s throne. But by intervening, Your Majesty instead pushed Ban Qing Yu toward Rongcheng.”
Qin Xiao Xun sneered. “But when Pei Yuan Jin abducted me, Liu Guang Cheng, whom Ban Qing Yu bought off, clearly tried to kill me amid the chaos. At that point, the piece I left in the new city had not even moved yet! That proves she and Qin Zhao had already colluded in secret!”
Zheng Yu had not figured that out either.
After all, Ban Qing Yu had been devoting everything to preparing for ascension at the time. How could she have spared attention for the outskirts of Lin’an, much less predicted that Pei Yuan Jin would take the emperor hostage?
“Since you suspected Ban Qing Yu of secretly colluding with Qin Zhao, you should not have sent Xiao Jin Zi and Elder Wei to Rongcheng.” Zheng Yu sighed. “They are Ban Qing Yu’s subordinates. Sending them to the Rongcheng front is the same as delivering two powerful generals directly to Qin Zhao.”
Qin Xiao Xun’s expression shifted. “Should I summon them back immediately?”
“No need. I’ve already arranged for our informant inside Rongcheng to send Qin Zhao a message saying we will be sending two spies over. In the short term, Qin Zhao will not trust them. And if enough time passes, naturally I’ll find a way to turn those two into genuine spies.”
Qin Xiao Xun immediately relaxed. The gaze he gave Zheng Yu was filled with trust and dependence. Now that Zheng Yu had returned, every problem that had been troubling him suddenly seemed like no problem at all.
He asked with some anticipation, “Then Xuan Yin and Ban Qing Yu…”
Zheng Yu looked at him. “Your Majesty. You must think clearly. If Sect Leader Wu regains control of the Spirit Sect, I’m afraid she will not obediently stay in the palace as an imperial consort.”
Qin Xiao Xun smiled bitterly. “She never wanted to in the first place.”
Zheng Yu said, “But Your Majesty must eventually have an heir. Otherwise, a hundred years from now, the realm you fought so hard to preserve may fall into the bloodline of the former regent. How could the late emperor rest in peace?”
Qin Xiao Xun fell silent. In his heart, he naturally still hoped Wu Xuan Yin would change her mind, but he also knew Zheng Yu spoke the truth.
Zheng Yu continued, “Of course, regarding the matter of taking an empress, it would be best if Sect Leader Wu herself were the one to suggest it.”
Qin Xiao Xun did not want to hear any more and changed the subject. “Pei Yuan Jin is still in Southern Yu. Should we next…”
Zheng Yu said, “Your Majesty now has experts all around you. So what if he has become a Martial King? As far as I know, Martial Kings and Martial Gods do not lightly fight one another. Becoming a Martial King will actually bind Pei Yuan Jin’s hands more than before. Presumably he will not rashly break into the palace again. Your Majesty is the ruler of Southern Yu. Since the people were harmed, naturally you must denounce those responsible, but there is no need to mobilize the entire country. Simply have the prefectures along the route post wanted notices for show, then turn a blind eye and send them out of Southern Yu as quickly as possible.”
Qin Xiao Xun still felt lingering dread whenever he remembered encountering Xiao Sang and Xiao Zhang in the secret passage.
He sighed. “Better to guard against even the smallest chance.”
Zheng Yu remained as steady as a mountain. “With the Taoshan brothers here, Your Majesty can rest easy. And once the wanted notices are issued, the Immortal Treasury Palace will inevitably hate the others who helped the Spirit Sect in the new city. When the time comes, the Lingnan Sect Leader and the Giant Eagle Martial Artist will naturally have to make their own choices.”