The Crimson Dragon King moved through the sky like a mighty divine dragon. Everywhere it went, it swept the spiritual qi clean, then released sword auras that carved the gray-blue sky into dozens of pieces.
Yet the sword auras faded almost immediately. The only change was that the sky had grown a little darker.
Fu Xi Yan sat cross-legged on the ground. He had just finished circulating his true qi through a full major heavenly cycle when he opened his eyes and saw the same scene he had witnessed countless times.
In the mountains, time lost all meaning.
Inside the formation, the same was true.
Fu Xi Yan had once heard that a powerful martial artist could overcome ten techniques with sheer strength and cut through a formation as easily as chopping vegetables. He had believed it and secretly underestimated formations. Only now did he realize how limited his understanding had been.
Pei Yuan Jin’s sword could even slay Martial Gods, yet here he had been hacking at a formation like a woodcutter for ages without bringing down the tree.
Figuring Pei Yuan Jin must be tired, Fu Xi Yan patted the dust from his backside and stood. With a casual gesture, Fireworks in an Instant flew out in answer.
The two had already taken turns several times and developed an unspoken rhythm.
Pei Yuan Jin put away the Crimson Dragon King and watched Fireworks in an Instant poke here and slash there under Fu Xi Yan’s remote control. It was not as imposing as the Crimson Dragon King, but every stroke carried tremendous true qi.
Pei Yuan Jin smiled in satisfaction. Fu Xi Yan hadn’t taken enough time to consolidate his cultivation after advancing to Martial King. This was an excellent opportunity to temper his skills.
But the man himself had no such awareness. As he worked, he complained incessantly. “If we’d known we’d be stuck here so long, we should’ve brought food and water. We could sit out in the open, chew beef jerky, and have a picnic and camping trip at the same time.”
Because the sky changed only with their progress in breaking the formation, there was no way to tell how much time had passed. All Fu Xi Yan knew was that his stomach wouldn’t stop rumbling. He was getting seriously hungry.
Hearing that, Pei Yuan Jin had no choice but to revise his training plan and send the Crimson Dragon King flying again.
A tiny, almost invisible black spot had appeared where Fireworks in an Instant kept prodding. Before the sword could build on its success, the Crimson Dragon King rushed over and struck precisely that spot.
Pei Yuan Jin reached out and gently rested a hand on the Crimson Dragon King’s hilt.
Spiritual qi churned all around, surging wildly toward the man and his sword.
Fu Xi Yan stepped forward, seized Fireworks in an Instant, and swept his sword diagonally upward, dispersing the densely gathered spiritual qi. Taking advantage of that instant’s opening, Pei Yuan Jin gripped the Crimson Dragon King and pulled sharply down.
The scenery tore like a sheet of painted paper, revealing a much darker world behind it.
Fu Xi Yan spotted a flash of mirror-light, slipped through the opening like a swallow, and pursued it.
The light came from a middle-aged scholar’s hand. When Fu Xi Yan reached him, he had just finished drawing something on the ground with a brush, and half his body had already disappeared. Fu Xi Yan caught his other arm and pulled him back.
“Let go!” The man’s face twisted with pain.
“Song Lei Ming?” Fu Xi Yan glanced at the Bagua mirror and tried the name.
The scholar stared at him in shock. “Who are you?”
“Ren Fei Ying asked me to find you,” Fu Xi Yan replied.
The scholar’s eyes flickered. “You’ve got the wrong man.” He made to retreat toward the place where he’d nearly vanished.
Fu Xi Yan was so exasperated he almost laughed. Grabbing the man’s sleeve, he unfolded it to examine the Bagua mirror embroidered there, then set Fireworks in an Instant against his neck. “If you’re not the man I’m looking for, I’ve got no reason to keep you around!”
The scholar panicked. “I am! I am!”
Fu Xi Yan still did not lower the sword.
Song Lei Ming grumbled angrily, “I really am Song Lei Ming. Put that sword down. Where did Brother Ren find a brute like you?”
Fu Xi Yan said, “…First, undo the formation.”
He had noticed Pei Yuan Jin hadn’t followed him out. As for the score he would settle over Song Lei Ming willingly aiding a villain, that could wait until everyone was together.
“I can’t undo it. This formation is the work of my entire lifetime.” The man, who had looked fearful, suddenly grew animated when his professional expertise came up. “Even a Martial God trapped inside it would find no path to Heaven and no door to Earth.”
Fu Xi Yan adjusted his wrist, bringing the sword’s edge close to the man’s skin. “Perhaps you should consider what options you have left right now?”
Song Lei Ming put away his pride and glared at him. “If you’re here at Brother Ren’s request, how dare you treat me so rudely?”
“Could it be because I’m Brother Ren’s superior?”
Song Lei Ming was silent for a moment. “You’re from Immortal Treasury Palace?”
Fu Xi Yan laughed coldly. “You trapped us with a formation without even knowing who we were?” He plainly didn’t believe it.
Song Lei Ming said, “When he ordered me to set up the formation, he didn’t tell me who we’d be dealing with. I only knew they were extremely skilled in martial arts.”
Fu Xi Yan’s sword arm was growing sore, so he rested the blade on Song Lei Ming’s shoulder. “Who is ‘he’? Mo Xiao Ran?”
“I don’t know who he is. He never told me, and I never asked. He only had me study one formation and arrange another here.”
“What formation did he have you study?”
Song Lei Ming looked bewildered. “Haojing itself. But I’ve never seen a formation like that. City gates and palace gates serve as entrances, rivers and wells as yin apertures. A hundred years of national fortune forms the eye above, and ten thousand li of mountains and rivers the base below. Perhaps I’m simply ignorant. Even now, I can’t fully comprehend it. Once this matter is over, I want to see Haojing for myself.”
At first Fu Xi Yan had pitied Song Lei Ming, a gifted man caught in a disaster he didn’t deserve. Now he saw that Song Lei Ming was so obsessed with formations he could disregard human lives. Perhaps he’d even welcomed the stranger’s request as a gift from Heaven.
“What did the person who approached you look like?”
Song Lei Ming heard the new chill in Fu Xi Yan’s voice and eyed the sharp blade on his shoulder. He became cooperative at once. “Long face, high nose, cold-looking eyes… a long middle section of the face, too.”
Fu Xi Yan assembled the description in his mind but didn’t recognize it. It could be Mo Xiao Ran, who often wore human bodies like clothing. Yet somehow the repeated emphasis on a long face made him doubt it.
Unable to decide, he put the question aside. “Remove the formation.”
“I can’t.”
If there hadn’t been a hint of pride in Song Lei Ming’s eyes, Fu Xi Yan might have believed him. Just as he prepared to press harder, the air twisted strangely. Sword auras and golden Buddhist characters appeared. Pei Yuan Jin, Jing Luo, and Yan Xie emerged from two directions. Qi Zhong and a group of Immortal Treasury Palace disciples followed; they’d been trapped even longer and looked exhausted.
Relieved that everyone was out, Fu Xi Yan grinned fiercely at Song Lei Ming. “Looks as if you’re no use anymore.”
Song Lei Ming’s face had twisted darkly at the sight of everyone escaping. Now he shouted in alarm, “Don’t hurt me! That formation was only the first layer. There’s a second one!”
“Do you really expect me to believe that?”
Fu Xi Yan was still sneering when a low rumble rolled across the sky, like approaching thunder. He had barely started to look up when Pei Yuan Jin caught him in his arms.
They stood between two steep cliffs. Above them, enormous boulders were rolling down.
The mountain was collapsing.
A thousand li away, Haojing was not suffering a landslide, but it was experiencing an “earthquake” of its own.
The old man stood on the inn’s roof surveying everyone as though he were Haojing’s sovereign. The city’s true sovereign, however, sat in the imperial palace and directed its fate.
Apart from the Yulin Guard, more than half Haojing’s troops had gathered near the inn. Among densely packed houses and deep darkness, countless archers lay concealed.
The old man seemed not to realize he’d become their target. He watched the soldiers slowly gather with a cold gaze.
Hu Yu studied his unruffled expression and suddenly said, “Something’s wrong.”
Cen Bao En agreed. “It looks like a diversion.”
Hu Yu said, “Go check on He Si Yu.”
They had expected reaching He Si Yu to be difficult. Yet Cen Bao En entered the inn without meeting any obstruction, and made his way to He Si Yu’s room with surprising ease.
Hearing the disturbance, the old man on the roof merely shifted his eyelids and remained silent.
Cen Bao En announced himself politely outside the room and requested an audience. When he heard nothing, he opened the door. Halfway inside, he sensed something wrong. There was only one person’s breathing in the room: his own.
He abandoned all formality, hurried to the bedside, and pulled aside the bed curtains.
He Si Yu lay peacefully with both hands resting on his chest. His heart had stopped beating.
“Dead?”
Cen Bao En checked several pulse points, then touched He Si Yu’s face and neck. No matter how he examined him, the person before him was He Si Yu’s dead body.
Had he known his days were numbered and therefore abandoned his journey back to Southern Yu, choosing to die at the inn? Had the visit to the clinic and the medicine been merely a dying man’s final struggle?
Then why hadn’t he kept his daughter beside him?
Cen Bao En couldn’t make sense of it.
He picked up He Si Yu’s body, intending to carry it to Hu Yu for examination. But just as he reached the door, an uproar erupted outside.
The archers lying in ambush had finally opened fire.
Tens of thousands of arrows came pouring toward the old man on the roof from every direction.
If he remained where he stood, it would take only moments to turn him into a porcupine so densely packed with spines that not another needle could fit. Yet if he moved, there was no clear escape to the east, west, north, or south.
Hu Yu knew perfectly well that if the old man truly was Mo Xiao Ran, that rain of arrows would be no more than a light drizzle to him.
The thought had barely occurred to him when the old man’s body suddenly sank through the rooftop. He broke through the roof and landed behind Cen Bao En.
Cen Bao En ran for his life; the old man followed at his leisure.
With He Si Yu’s body in his arms, Cen Bao En vaulted over the second-floor railing and jumped down. He rushed toward the exit with his head lowered. The Firefighting Brigade members hidden beside the door swung their blades at once!
As soon as Hu Yu saw the old man drop through the inn’s roof, he knew something was wrong. He reached the entrance just as Cen Bao En came out. “Where is he?”
Only after handing He Si Yu over to his men did Cen Bao En dare turn around. He saw the two men who had been lying in ambush outside He Si Yu’s room. Their long blades were still raised, but they faced each other and slowly fell.
Hu Yu and Cen Bao En hurried upstairs. One searched for the old man while the other examined the bodies.
Neither man had visible wounds, yet both hearts had stopped beating, as though they had suffered sudden attacks of illness.
The old man’s methods, accomplished in no more than a few blinks, were chilling.
Hu Yu searched every floor, every room, and every corner of the inn, inside and out, but found no sign of the old man. He questioned the guards outside, and every one of them said they had seen nobody leave.
It was as though the man had vanished into thin air.