Though doubts lingered in her heart and the price she paid was steep, Shui Die Lan now felt as if the vast sky had opened before her. Torn organs meant nothing, the chill invading her body meant nothing. As long as she could survive this calamity, a few years of recovery would be enough to restore her completely. When that time came, she would make these people pay.
Grinding her teeth against the pain, her speed surged once more, rising beyond its limits. The Blood Wanderer and the black-robed figure chasing behind were already at the level of gods, yet in the span of a thousandth of a breath, she forced open a gap of seven or eight feet between them and shot straight into the starry sky.
And then… she struck a net. An invisible, colorless net, soft yet impossibly resilient.
It wasn’t made of matter, but of the world’s abundant primordial qi, drawn together and woven tight by intricate qi mechanisms. It had been waiting here all along.
Caught off guard, her body faltered for the briefest instant. In that pause, tens of thousands of qi mechanisms shifted at once with a resonant hum, colliding and rearranging into yet another vast net.
Shui Die Lan’s momentum was fierce enough to sweep everything aside, unstoppable in its force, but the surrounding primordial qi, under the mysterious guidance of qi mechanisms, scattered and gathered, gathered and scattered again. Layer upon layer, nearly a thousand layers of energy nets took shape, steadily grinding away at her momentum until a third of it was gone.
Even though Shui Die Lan knew little about restrictive techniques, she could tell just how terrifying this method truly was.
At last she understood. Ever since the battle began, the clash of primordial qi should have shaken heaven and earth, spreading seven or eight li at the very least. Yet after all this time, cultivators dozens of li away still sensed nothing. It had to be the work of a restrictive formation.
And now, most likely, this was simply another change in that same formation.
But when was it set in place?
In that brief moment of hesitation, pain flared across her back as another wave of icy true breath bored into her body, nearly freezing her spine solid.
The pain left her no time to think. At the cost of further tearing her body apart, she forced her potential to its limits again. With a shrill, piercing cry, she broke through every restraint and shot a hundred feet forward in one leap.
Another palm had struck her back, but it was worth it.
Before her stretched a sky vast and open.
The figures of Blood Wanderer and the mysterious black-robed figure were already growing distant. She turned to look back. Hundred Ghosts, who had collapsed like mud on the forest floor, staggering to his feet. His eyes, fixed on her, were filled with utter disbelief.
Seeing that look, Shui Die Lan threw her head back and laughed with wild delight. When the laughter faded, she shouted harshly, “Wei Bufan, I swear I’ll never let you go! Hundred—ugh!”
The word “ghost” never left her lips. The tyrannical cold sealed in her organs clashed violently with the later wave of invading frost. Suddenly it erupted again. She spat out a mouthful of blood, but this time it vaporized in midair, hissing as it burned into smoke and vanished.
In that instant, cold turned to heat, yin and yang reversed. The icy energy ebbed, only for fiery poison to rise in its place. Her organs felt like a volcano erupting, molten lava surging and exploding within her.
Caught off guard, her five viscera and six bowels all ruptured at once under the upheaval of heaven and earth. Her qi spun into chaos, tangled and frantic, and in the blink of an eye it shattered the once-orderly circulation of her meridians.
Her eyes widened as she tried to summon strength again, but it was already impossible. A mere hundred feet away, her two deadly pursuers closed the gap in an instant. She didn’t even have the chance to fall before Blood Wanderer was upon her, descending from above with the force of thunder.
She raised her arms to block, but there was no strength left in her. The instant they met, the crushing power snapped her arm bones with a sickening crack.
And it didn’t end there. The mysterious black-robed figure appeared behind her without a sound. With a sweep of slender fingers, more than ten vital meridians in her body were severed, followed by four or five critical acupoints destroyed with ruthless precision. True breath pierced to the bone and marrow, its cruelty enough to chill the heart.
She opened her mouth, but only blood-flecked foam spilled out. Her vision blurred and scattered. Through the haze she caught Blood Wanderer’s cold smile. And then, from behind, came the unmistakable sensation of a woman’s soft embrace.
She was being held in the arms of the black-robed figure, carried swiftly into the distance.
A woman? Could it be…
A shadowy figure flashed through her mind, and then she let out a faint sigh. Unable to withstand the devastation of her wounds any longer, she finally lost consciousness.
....
Shui Die Lan was jolted awake by a fresh wave of pain. Every bone and limb in her body throbbed with agony, and the sword lodged in her abdomen had not been pulled free. With every breath it scraped against her wounds, grinding the pain deeper.
She drew in a sharp, cold breath and tried to circulate her qi to numb the pain, but there was no strength left anywhere in her body. At this point, she was weaker than an ordinary mortal.
How had she fallen to such a state?
Images from before she blacked out surged back into her mind like a tide. After replaying them again and again, she finally realized she had been caught in an enormous trap.
Not to mention the near-perfect performance meant to mislead her. Even after the sword struck from behind, every step of the enemy’s moves had been calculated, not improvised. It was all part of a carefully plotted, meticulously rehearsed plan.
From Blood Wanderer to Gu Pin’er, from Gu Pin’er to the mysterious black robe, from the formation’s setup to that final, fatal reversal of yin and yang. What shocked her most was not simply the unbroken chain of moves designed to seize her every thought, but the precision with which those calculations were carried out.
From the moment Gu Pin’er’s “interference” began, they had already laid out a prepared “path of escape” for her. And she, like a fish biting down on the bait, had thrown herself straight into the hook, following it step for step, without the slightest deviation.
The thought sent her emotions surging, and she coughed up another mouthful of blood. Her body grew weaker still, and she nearly fainted again.
Just then, she felt a gaze fall upon her. Turning her head, she saw the mysterious figure still hidden beneath the black robe. Their eyes met, and the sense she’d felt before losing consciousness returned. Forcing a mocking smile onto her pale face, she whispered, “Yin Chonghua… is that you?”
Her probing words drew no reply. The black-robed figure only tilted their head slightly and remained silent. Shui Die Lan hesitated. The person in her memory would never have acted like this.
From the smell in the air and the way light refracted, she realized they were in a fairly spacious cave. In the southeastern forest sea, there were countless such places. Perfect spots for killing someone and leaving no trace.
She herself had done such things more than once. But being on the receiving end of it… this was the first time in her life.
She had no time to dwell on the strange new feeling. The light before her dimmed as two silhouettes stepped inside side by side, blocking what little daylight filtered through the cave mouth.
Darkness swallowed the cave, but soon a soft glow spread into every corner. Hundred Ghosts lifted a pearl the size of a fist and set it into the stone wall.
Then his sinister gaze swept toward her, roaming brazenly over her body.
Shui Die Lan narrowed her eyes, staring at Hundred Ghosts’ face under the pearl’s glow. He looked unusually pale. This little insect, a man she had once thought she could crush with a single finger, had deceived her so completely that she’d ended up in this wretched state.
She coughed once, then chose to ignore Hundred Ghosts’ gaze. Instead, she addressed Blood Wanderer. “After more than a century apart, I never imagined the infamous Demon Wei and the elegant Yin beauty would join hands. Only now do I truly see that in this vast world, nothing is impossible.”
Blood Wanderer and the black-robed figure kept their peculiar silence. But Hundred Ghosts let out a low chuckle.
Shui Die Lan frowned in confusion. How could this brat have the nerve to act like this in front of two beings of such power?
What happened next startled her even more. Right before their eyes, Hundred Ghosts walked over and laid a hand on her cheek. He stroked her face, trailing his fingers up to the edge of her eye, then suddenly forced her eyelid open.
If they had been alone and she had simply fallen into Hundred Ghosts’ hands, she would have been prepared for such a scene. But right now in the cave stood Blood Wanderer and Yin Wanderer as well. Those two held themselves above everyone else. How could they possibly allow a lowly creature like Hundred Ghosts to behave so brazenly in front of them?
This question lingered in her mind until the forced kiss finally ended. Her strange blue lips had been bitten enough to draw flecks of blood, and only then did Hundred Ghosts lift his face with satisfaction. Turning back, he asked, “Changing eye color to boost power, what kind of technique is that?”
Seeing Hundred Ghosts speak so offhandedly, Shui Die Lan’s bright eyes opened wider than ever. In this world, the number of people who could address the two Wanderer in such a way could be counted on one hand.
Hundred Ghosts.... what gave him the right?
And then came the response from the two Wanderers, which nearly made her heart stop.
Blood Wanderer shook his head. “I’ve never heard of it.”
The black-robed man, the one who seemed to be Yin Wanderer, spoke as well: “Some sects do have shape-shifting arts that can alter the color and expression of the eyes. But none of them cause one’s power to surge after the change. Still, if this is her eyes’ natural color…”
His words were already close to the core secret hidden within Shui Die Lan, but compared with the tone he and Blood Wanderer had just used, they hardly seemed shocking.
With Blood Wanderer’s arrogance and Yin Sanren’s depth, how could they possibly address a little nobody in that manner? It was as if… as if…
A sharp smack rang out as Hundred Ghosts clapped fist to palm and praised, “Well said. I hadn’t thought of that.”
His gaze swept over again, and Shui Die Lan no longer knew what expression to put on. She could only face him blankly.
He let his eyes roam across her face, and after a long pause he said, “You look quite beautiful this way. Why go to such lengths to hide it?”
At that, a stab of pain shot through Shui Die Lan’s chest. He had pinched her again. And in that jolt of pain, a sudden thought rose in her mind: the case from more than sixty years ago, the one that had shaken the entire Tongxuan Realm.
Her scattered gaze drifted over Hundred Ghosts, who was basking in his own pride. The scene before her felt so much like a grotesque farce that she almost burst out laughing. And in that instant, an expression of sudden realization broke across her face.
Hundred Ghosts’s ghastly face loomed in close again, fire flickering in his eyes as he forced out the words between his teeth: “What did you just think of?”
Of course Shui Die Lan would never tell him. She only turned her gaze aside and kept silent.
Hundred Ghosts threw back his head in laughter and yanked off his outer robe, baring the flesh he had ruthlessly torn apart himself. Across his chest alone ran more than a dozen gashes, each half a foot long and deep enough to show bone. The wounds had scabbed over, yet blood still seeped faintly from them.
As the cloth ripped away, several cuts split open again, but Hundred Ghosts didn’t even frown. He only chuckled darkly and said, “Not talking? Easy enough. Soon enough you’ll be begging me to let you speak.”
Hearing his tone, and recalling the cruel methods he had just used on Flayer if Yin, even Shui Die Lan’s iron will could not keep the chill from crawling down her spine.
The next instant, he moved. With one rough pull he tore away a swath of her skirt, exposing the long jade-like legs beneath, wrapped only in the thin star-blue gauze of her trousers. His intent was all too clear.
Shui Die Lan’s lips trembled as she tried to push him away, but with her arms broken, the effort brought nothing but a fresh wave of agony.
Hundred Ghosts brushed her hands aside as if they were nothing, one hand closing over her chest. Just as he was about to rip the fabric away, Shui Die Lan let out a sharp, piercing cry.
And fainted.