The Last One (7)

The stone gate of the Penglai Underground Palace, hidden behind the waterfall and keyed to the Star-Picking Sword, had been smashed beyond repair by Liang Jingxuan. It now lay in fist-sized chunks, choking the passage. The forbidden land’s seal survived only around the Nine Tripods that re-imprisoned the demons; the Spirit-Locking Array’s core had shattered when the fiends broke free, and the Demon-Suppressing Bell had split, every note of its power silenced.

Lin Qianshuang located the buried gate without effort. She stepped back and tipped her chin toward the rubble. “The door is there.”

Zheng Mingxia’s men moved forward at once, prying away blocks of stone. In moments the throat of the palace gaped open.

Lin Qianshuang let Zheng propel her to the front. She glanced back. Mu Weiyin, staring at the dust and splinters, had folded her small brows and would not advance.

Lin Qianshuang retraced two steps, knelt, and offered her back. “City Lord, forgive the indignity. Allow this subordinate to carry you.”

Mu Weiyin climbed on, plump lotus arms looping Lin Qianshuang’s neck. Over the woman’s shoulder she flicked a wary glance at Zheng Mingxia and the retainers beyond, searching for any sign of treachery. When she saw Zheng follow Lin Qianshuang like a sleepwalker, her small body relaxed.

Draped over Lin Qianshuang’s back, Mu Weiyin could study the woman’s face at such close range that every pore showed. Idleness bred comparison, and for no good reason she began to weigh the cunning junior who carried her against her destined dao-partner, Xiao Lanle.

The lashes curved a shade higher, the socket line a fraction rounder; if those eyes bent into a smile they would look gentler, sweeter than Lanle’s. A pale mole grazed the outer corner of the left eye, low enough to avoid wantonness yet high enough to soften the whole face with an air of innocent trust. No wonder people never noticed the lies.

Mu Weiyin let her gaze drift. The skin beneath the dust was whiter than ordinary flesh, almost bloodless, like fine porcelain. She followed the line of the throat to the delicate ridge of collarbones—and felt her nose sting as a cool trickle threatened to drip.

She turned away, perplexed. She had scrubbed Xiao Chi’s small frame countless times; she and Lanle often shed layers during training and she had never once reacted to bare skin. Was her nose allergic to this woman alone?

After brief reflection she decided it must be the girl’s unusual constitution: the blood had nourished her, but the scent of the body itself obviously provoked a mild, unwelcome reaction.

She wrinkled her nose and pinched it shut, then fished a gauzy veil from her storage ring and drew it across her face until only her gray black eyes showed.

Lin Qianshuang carried Mu Weiyin into the Underground Palace’s main burial chamber. The first sect leader’s sarcophagus lay inside the thin painted wall ahead. She sent a thread of demonic qi along the seams and heard liquid gurgling within. After Liang Jingxuan stole the Purple Lightning Fire, the palace’s hidden channels had filled with a clear, fiercely corrosive fluid; the wall was probably laced with mercury or some other poison.

She stopped. The stone brick in front of her feet was hollow, and she guessed the floor around her was studded with more of the same. This had to be the trapped, weapon lined corridor from the chronicle in which Liang Jingxuan had shaken off Chen Shangqing.

Zheng Mingxia watched her halt. “Cousin, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you moving?”

Lin Qianshuang studied the tomb painting on the rock face. “Behind this wall rests the Glazed Temple Gem.”

Zheng Mingxia hurried forward. A faint outline of a door was set into the rock face; where the handle should have been, a shallow disc was recessed, and a rusty brass key jutted halfway from its center, as if a gentle twist would swing the door open.

He stepped up, but the key would not turn, and his palm stuck fast to the disc. When he tried to yank free, skin tore with a wet ripping sound. He howled, then screamed at his hirelings. “Are you all blind? Help me pull this thing out! Ahh, it hurts like hell!”

The cultivators he had bought rushed to obey, channeling their qi as they gripped the brass key, yet it would not budge a hair.

Panic surged through Zheng Mingxia. “Cousin,” he called to Lin Qianshuang, “what’s happening? Why is the door stuck to my hand?”

Lin Qianshuang did not answer. She simply watched the men take turns tugging at the key to the main tomb, almost tempted to offer the fools a silent requiem.

The door was not the entrance to the main tomb but a lethal trap: once the key came free the mechanism would spring and everyone nearby would pay the price.

“Ah, I’m exhausted… finally got it out.” Zheng Mingxia clutched the key that had fused to his bleeding palm. The floor vanished beneath him, and he and the hired cultivators dropped into a pit laced with silver-white cobwebs. Sticky strands glued them in place; the more they struggled, the tighter the net held.

Lin Qianshuang stepped over the loose stone blocks and stood at the lip of the pit, looking down at her cousin squirming in the web. His robes were dark with fresh urine. She laughed softly. “Cousin, don’t be afraid. I only want to ask a few questions. Answer them properly and I’ll reset the mechanism and pull you up.”

Zheng Mingxia’s nose ran; his eyes were squeezed into slits. “Cousin, you have to save me! When you were imprisoned in the Demon Realm I was the one who told Senior Brother Liang; that’s how you escaped. You can’t repay kindness with cruelty!”

The corner of Lin Qianshuang’s mouth curled in mockery. Who asked you to fetch the hero and ruin everything? You almost trapped Xiao Lanle in the Demon Realm as well.

“Tell me: who ordered you to hunt for the Glazed Temple Gem? And who told you Xiao Lanle carries its secret?” She studied his pitiful face. “With your wits, Cousin, I don’t believe you could subdue every elder of Penglai on your own. You haven’t the guts to swagger through the sect killing people for treasure.”

“Speak. Who’s really behind this?”

Lin Qianshuang idly spun the sword of demonic qi between her fingers. Watching Zheng Mingxia’s terror, she let a few blade-thin gusts graze his skin, then said in a chill voice, “Keep hesitating and I’ll hack off both hands. Or, Cousin, if you’d rather be a neat little ball, I can trim your arms and legs—saves you the trouble of walking.”

Zheng Mingxia shook so hard his tears and snot smeared together. “I’ll talk, I’ll talk! Don’t kill me! It’s the Chen family head, he ordered me! I never saw the man’s face, don’t even know his name, but he was once a disciple of our Penglai Immortal Sect and has countless ties to Tianshu City!”

Swish-

A hidden device snapped open. An arrow shot straight through Zheng Mingxia’s throat; his eyes rolled back and he went limp. The cultivators beside him were riddled by poisonous bolts from every direction, their corpses pinned grotesquely to the pit walls.

Lin Qianshuang froze, then rose. She had not touched the trigger. Who had released the concealed mechanism? She looked up. Chen Shangqing stood on a stone disk set into the wall; with practiced ease he turned the wheel and sealed the trap once more.

Chen Shangqing… how could he know the mechanism here? This was the forbidden zone of the Penglai Underground Palace; he had never set foot in it once. Why, then, was he so adept at turning this disk, as if he had used it countless times before?

A dreadful suspicion flashed through Lin Qianshuang’s mind. In the original text, Chen Shangqing had been a Penglai disciple from start to finish, yet now he was linked to the Lord of Tianshu City and had been planted at Xiao Lanle’s side as her trusted aide. From the very beginning he had doubted that she was the genuine “Lin Qianshuang,” yet he had never exposed her, content to drop veiled warnings in every conversation.

When Liang Jingxuan stormed Penglai to seize the sect leadership, neither Immortal Jinghua nor True Lord Qingyun had appeared in the plot, but Chen Shangqing had fetched them to Penglai and drummed up support for Xiao Lanle. And now, in a world where he had never walked this corridor of the Underground Palace, he moved through it as though he had already read the pages, intimately acquainted with every trap.

Could it be… the supporting male lead of the original story had also been reborn?

Lin Qianshuang stared at Chen Shangqing in shock. “Senior Brother Chen, you… how do you know the mechanism here? Have you been here before? Yet there’s no trace of anyone.”

She remembered Zheng Mingxia’s words; her eyes widened. “You’re the Chen family head?”

Mu Weiyin, still carried on Lin Qianshuang’s back, studied Chen Shangqing with calm gray-black eyes. “Chen Shangqing, head of the Chen clan, what is your purpose in hiding beside this city lord?”

Chen Shangqing did not reply directly. He stepped closer to Lin Qianshuang; his sword-bright gaze seemed to bore into her heart. “The Lord of Tianshu City and Liang Jingxuan once joined hands to wipe out the Chen family. I was misunderstood by Junior Sister Xiao, died tragically in the hall, then returned to life. I killed the puppet clan head who conspired with the city lord, endured disgrace, and won the lord’s trust. I did it for the Chen family, and to stay near Junior Sister Xiao, yet she remained with Junior Brother Liang. Then you appeared, Senior Sister Lin, and changed everything.”

The cold light in his eyes softened. “Senior Sister Lin, you clearly perished in the Demon-Slaying Formation long ago. Why have you reappeared unscathed in the Penglai Immortal Sect as a demon cultivator? Are you, like me, someone who has lived twice? Speak plainly: I have watched you in secret for some time; you are no longer the person you once were.”

Lin Qianshuang tightened her grip on her sword, unsure how to answer. “More or less. But Senior Brother Chen, you seek the Glazed Temple Gem and now control the entire sect. What exactly do you intend to do?”

Chen Shangqing’s gaze shifted to Mu Weiyin, still a child, and he spoke each word like ice: “Steal another’s strength to climb high, slay a god, repay blood with blood. Nothing more.”