Has the City Lord Had a Nosebleed Today? (2)
As Acting Sect-Leader, she had been ambushed in Xiaoyao Cave; someone inside Penglai Immortal Sect was making a move for the head seat, and the clan must already be in turmoil.
Xiao Lanle pinched a sound-transmission talisman beneath her sleeve, pressed it to her lips, and murmured a few careless words.
The yellow slip drifted upward, then sank to the ground before it even left her side.
The trial secret realm was sealed from the outside world; her talisman could not break through.
The landscape around her was achingly familiar: every hill and pavilion of the Immortal Mountain where she had trained and lived.
Lanle regarded the illusion with perfect calm. The Shark Pearl hovered at her wrist, veiled in a thin shimmer of mirage-light.
“Junior Sister Xiao, can you hear me? Hello, hello?”
A voice suddenly rang from the Shark Pearl.
Xiao Lanle heard Lin Qianshuang’s call. At first she assumed it was another trial illusion, but when a second, familiar female voice spoke beside the first, she knew it truly was her senior sister.
City Lord Mu Weiyin cut in at some point. “If you speak to Lanle like that, she’ll never believe you; she’ll think it’s part of the trial. Let this city lord explain.”
Lanle stiffened. Why was Senior Sister Lin with the Lord of Tianshu City?
“City Lord, your subordinate understands the ways in and out of the Acting Sect Leader’s trial far better than you. Let me tell my junior sister—ah… that hurts.”
“This city lord warned you to move less. Hold me tighter. If it hurts, don’t scream, or you’ll draw something we don’t want.”
“Your subordinate thinks, City Lord, it would be easier if you took off your outer robe… Let me climb up now, or I’ll keep getting in your way.”
Xiao Lanle heard the rustle of fabric and the intimate murmur of two people talking. The sound felt wrong; she couldn’t help calling out, “Senior Sister, where are you two? What are you doing?”
Before either woman could answer, the Shark Pearl’s light died and the voices vanished. Only the scroll holding Lin Qianshuang’s method for breaking the Acting Sect Leader’s trial drifted into her hand.
Lanle’s mind flashed back to the scene at the heart of the lake, the one that had stung her with jealousy. Could the Lord of Tianshu City be forcing Senior Sister Lin into that sort of thing again?
Their words echoed in her ears, conjuring one sordid image after another.
Senior-sister Lin’s words had probably been spoken just to protect herself, yet inside she was unwilling. Maybe she had been planning to slip away the moment the City Lord removed her robe.
Mu Weiyin was definitely forcing her—otherwise why would she cry out in pain?
The more Xiao Lanle dwelled on it, the hotter her shame and anger burned. She thought of the Penglai Immortal Sect tottering on the brink and wondered who among her seniors could still hold the line.
She gripped her spirit-sword until her knuckles whitened. The treasure inside her chest answered her rage, its power turning into a murderous sword-light that shredded every evil phantom blocking her sight. Beyond the green shade, yellow sand whirled, and a threatening demon beast was already stalking toward her.
The trial unrolled one level after another. The Shark Pearl circling Lanle flared several times, then dimmed again; the remnant will of the secret realm had sensed an intruder and was choking the pearl’s spirit-network.
Meanwhile Lin Qianshuang drove her sword into the cliff-face and hung, swaying, above a bottomless gulf. A shell-shaped spirit artifact hovered beside her ear as she tried once more to reach Xiao Lanle. After the third failure she let the connection drop.
Mu Weiyin stood on a side-thrust stone spur that jutted out beneath Lin Qianshuang. She had stripped off her magnificent outer robe and wore only a thin under-robe. Seeing Qianshuang release her sword, she asked, “Your spiritual sense can’t find her breath anymore?”
Qianshuang answered, “City Lord, the spirit link between this subordinate and Junior Sister Xiao has snapped.”
Mu had clearly expected that reply. Without pause she continued, “Come down. Keep using the same method and follow this spur; you should reach the very bottom.”
Lin Qianshuang glanced at the intricate, shifting mechanisms on the cliff-face spurs, then at the now adult-sized Mu Weiyin, who was rolling up her sleeves as if ready to catch her the moment she dropped. The gesture made her feel awkward.
She regretted jumping down so impulsively. Mu’s injuries hadn’t hindered her spirit arts at all; Qianshuang had meant to save her, yet now she herself seemed to have become an embarrassing burden.
“This city lord’s robe is a spiritual garment that repels water, fire, and poison. The weak ought to know they are weak. If you don’t want to die, jump, and stay close.”
Lin Qianshuang told herself she wasn’t that feeble, yet facing this domineering woman she obediently did as told. The old ginger was still the spiciest1; tagging behind a veteran beat groping alone.
She eyed the whirling blade-darts below, shot through a gap like wind-driven lightning, and turned into a small silver beast that landed in Mu Weiyin’s arms.
Ragged saber-winds slid past her head and soles like a guillotine’s cigar-cutter; hidden mouths in the soil spat black bolts that curved in from left and right.
Crouched against Mu Weiyin, Qianshuang’s heart hammered. She remembered triggering a mechanism the instant she jumped, dodging the first volley, then nearly impaled by the second. Had Mu Weiyin not kindly flung her a defensive relic, giving her the breath needed to block with her sword, she would have been knocked down and minced into paste.
Still shaken, she lifted a paw and felt her flank; a deep gash throbbed, proof the arrows could slice iron like clay.
From Mu Weiyin’s collarbone to shoulder the flesh was shredded. Watching made Qianshuang ache, yet the city lord seemed unaware, lifting her arm freely, flashing across jutting rock like light itself to evade the sweeping weapons.
Lin Qianshuang could tell something was off with Mu Weiyin. After trading blows with Chen Shangqing the woman ought to be short of breath, yet here she was brimming with energy; it made no sense.
She tested the waters. “City Lord, I can see the trap clearly. If you’re unwell, this subordinate can carry you out.”
Mu Weiyin’s voice chilled. “Unnecessary. This city lord has no need of protection from a fledgling like you. Mind yourself.”
Qianshuang pressed her lips shut and asked no more, unwilling to anger her.
Two violet blurs arced across the tangle of hidden corridors like wild calligraphy. To Qianshuang it felt like a roller coaster through purgatory; the silver down on her hide stood on end, whipped into chaos as though ready to tear away. Mu Weiyin, in contrast, descended in languid grace, robes settling without a crease, neither hem nor the hair behind her ear stirred; every line of her declared: I’m a max-level powerhouse.
Lin Qianshuang slipped from Mu Weiyin’s arms and shifted into human shape. She glanced up; the trap mouth above the passage had sealed again, else falling stone would have doomed them.
She turned back, meaning to ask where they should go next, only to find the city lord sprawled unconscious, body shrunk to a child’s. That earlier calm had been nothing but a mirage.
Qianshuang knelt. The capture array the Penglai elders had planted was still locked around Mu Weiyin; the righteous cultivators had not withdrawn.
So every sign of “I’m fine” had been acting. With almost no spiritual power left, the woman had forced herself to carry her along.
Too proud to admit weakness, choosing pain instead.
Qianshuang gave a rueful half-laugh. She remembered that tiny twitch of an eyebrow on Mu Weiyin’s usual “wooden-face”; the city lord had been enduring agony. Without circulating true qi to shield her, her flesh was as fragile as any cultivator’s.
Still, thirty-odd righteous cultivators forming a ring to ambush one person was shameless.
Qianshuang rolled her eyes; most of them had come only for the ride, chasing merit by clinging to someone else’s sleeve, and probably knew nothing about the city lord at all.
A grey orchid snapped underfoot.
She caught Mu Weiyin’s arm and helped her up.
The blossom that had fallen was a strange, dusky blue, and it puzzled her: they were deep beneath the ten-thousand-zhang earth palace where every channel ran with poison; nothing green should live here.
Before we dropped, she recalled, a breeze came out of the dark. Maybe somewhere inside this maze is a pocket open to the outside where people can actually breathe.
Qianshuang steadied Mu Weiyin and walked with her along the carpet of fading, ghost-blue butterfly petals. A woman’s voice, soft with reproach, drifted past her ear.
“Linsha, this is the hundred-and-twentieth promise you’ve broken. You’re heartless.”
Through the haze of orchids stood a beautiful woman in an ochre gown, her dress and bearing unmistakably those of a demon cultivator. The mark that floated above her brow was already dissolving into flecks of spiritual light: a Great Perfection expert on the verge of ascension.
Qianshuang was about to call out when a hand settled on her shoulder.
Mu Weiyin had woken. She glanced at the woman with no change of expression and said weakly, “Ignore her. Up ahead is that cultivator’s remnant palace. These visions are only scraps of memory left by the dead. Pretend you see nothing and keep walking.”
Sure enough, a Penglai swordswoman appeared out of thin air, stepped through them as if they were air, and walked slowly toward the demon cultivator among the flowers.
These visions truly were illusions, just as Mu Weiyin had said.
Yet the robes on that cultivator were unmistakably Penglai’s, and she had descended on a sword; she was clearly a sword cultivator.
Lin Qianshuang watched the demon cultivator and the human cultivator cuddle and coo. When the human cultivator turned her head, Qianshuang stared in disbelief: the swordswoman was also a woman, and her brows and eyes bore more than a passing resemblance to Xiao Lanle.
Since when had Penglai’s righteous disciples, so proud of the Great Dao, taken demon cultivators as Dao companions?
She listened as the female demon repeatedly called the swordswoman “Xiao Linsha,” and finally placed the name. The Founder’s memorial tablet enshrined in Penglai’s Spirit Lantern Hall was carved with those three exact characters: Xiao Linsha.
The legendary first sect-leader of Penglai Immortal Sect had been a woman—something rarely seen in stallion-harem tales.
No wonder, after the male lead in the original story snatched the Founder’s inherited spirit pearl, the lingering wisp that emerged was a woman’s ghost. He’d actually thought the guardian wraith was not only gorgeous but carried real presence.
Now it was clear beyond doubt: that remnant had belonged to the Founder herself.
Lin Qianshuang blinked in surprise, then her imagination ran wild, weaving a sweeping, gut-wrenching tale of love and strife, betrayal and reconciliation straight out of a Jinjiang2 melodrama. Could this underground palace be, not the Founder’s tomb, but merely the hidden love-nest she had shared with that demon cultivator?