Three’s Company (6)
A dull ache throbbed in her temples, and a sliver of unease crept through her heart.
From nowhere, a white-jade zither glided into view. Its seven strings quivered, releasing ribbons of light that curled around her like a shield; the poison-bugs’ feelers were incinerated before they came within a hair’s breadth.
She lifted a hand. A flicker of silver leapt into her palm, swirling in gentle consolation, its soft warmth brushing her fingertips in slow circles.
Lin Qianshuang’s lips curved in a quiet smile; every trace of tension left by the python beast melted away.
She raised her eyes to the spinning Cold Cicada Zither overhead.
Xiao Lanle was imprisoned inside a translucent barrier; the zither was the very thing she had flung out in desperation. On the lantern-hung bridge above, two figures stood silhouetted. Lin could not make out their faces, yet she knew with certainty that one of them was the City Lord.
Mu Weiyin had trapped Xiao Lanle and then purposely thrown her into peril; what exactly was she scheming?
A sudden possibility flashed through Lin Qianshuang’s mind. In the original story the Lord of Tianshu City had never stopped hunting for the divine artifact. To win the treasure map of the ancient cultivation ruins, could her real target be the Glazed Temple Gem?
Xiao Lanle was the woman the City Lord had acknowledged as her dao partner; how could she use her like this?
Lin Qianshuang bit her lip. If the City Lord truly thought as she suspected, the woman’s calculations were terrifying.
Without her noticing, the snake venom had begun to gnaw at her retinas. Sensing the intrusion, the demon infant in her dantian was abruptly wrapped in a surge of blazing golden light. A stream of gold flowed up her spine through the meridians, devouring the toxin, while that same spiritual force slammed into the nerves of her brain. Her lost five senses rushed back; a torrent of power battered her soul, and an indescribable strangeness seized every inch of her body.
What was happening?
Lin Qianshuang drove the golden light that surrounded her in her sea of consciousness back with a will of iron, and clarity returned to her eyes.
Clutching the sword of demonic qi, she pinched her thigh hard to stay awake; she could already feel something wrong inside her, as though some force were struggling to burst free.
Her gaze hardened. She did not know why Mu Weiyin was standing by and watching, but if Mu wanted her alive she would not abandon her. The first thing was to slay the python beast, if it escaped, every preparation would be ruined.
“Sister, if you still don’t act, pretty sister will be in danger. That snake is huge and fierce, so scary. Why are all these people bumping into each other, and why are so many floating in the water?”
Mu Xiaochi tugged Mu Weiyin’s sleeve and cowered behind her, eyeing the chaos below.
Mu Weiyin’s purple robes billoted in the air. She kept the barrier that stopped Xiao Lanle in place and said flatly, “The Glazed Temple Gem has not yet been fully purified; it can’t be taken out, we’re only short of the final step. Lin Qianshuang carries the bloodline of a divine beast; with the python’s cultivation it cannot digest her even if it swallows her. There is no need to worry.”
Mu Xiaochi tilted her head and stared up at Mu Weiyin. “Big sister, don’t you like that pink-clad bad sister?”
Mu Weiyin stroked the child’s hair. “Xiaochi, I walk the Emotionless Path, how could I fall prey to emotion? I know exactly what Xiao Lanle is scheming. Because she is the dao partner Heaven chose for me, I indulge her, yet a doubt has always lingered in my heart. Forcing Lin Qianshuang’s true beast blood into the open may give me the answer.”
Mu Xiaochi pouted. Clearly her sister cared more for the glittering treasure inside the pink-clad “bad sister” than for any dao-partner bond, and was using that cute, gullible girl as an excuse.
She still remembered the scroll she loved to play with: the figure painted there held her zither in the same posture as her sister’s long-lost friend. Because of that resemblance, her sister had deliberately ignored the painting and even lied to another beautiful red-robed woman, claiming the person could not be found. The zither in the picture was nothing special, yet even a dull child like herself could vaguely recall that blurred face, someone who had once stood beside them.
“Bad sister, always finding excuses to do bad things.”
Mu Xiaochi stuck out her tongue at Mu Weiyin, cheeks bulging with pastry. “I’m ignoring you. You’re awful. Xiaochi doesn’t like you anymore.”
Mu Weiyin was long used to Mu Xiaochi’s childishness. Seeing the girl’s attention fixed on the pastries, she lifted a high-grade protective talisman above her head; in the blink of an eye she stood before Xiao Lanle.
“It’s you.”
The moment Xiao Lanle saw Mu Weiyin, she stepped back warily. The Plain Inquiry Sword, still hacking at the blocking barrier, shot up to shield its master.
With a flick of her sleeve Mu Weiyin dissolved the barrier. A light tap of her fingertip sent the Plain Inquiry Sword flying; it struck the ground at Xiao Lanle’s feet.
Xiao Lanle drew it back with a few strands of true qi and gave a thin smile. “Ah Yin, what’s this? You’re the one who stopped me?”
Mu Weiyin said, “Lanle, you are now sect leader of Penglai Immortal Sect. Leave the slaying of monsters to your subordinates; why dirty your own hands?”
A servant? Mu Weiyin, do you really see her as nothing more than that?
Xiao Lanle glanced at the ever-stern Mu Weiyin beside her, then turned to Lin Qianshuang, who was locked in a fight of impossible odds with the python. Her eyes darkened. “If she has to die, she dies by my hand.”
The python’s second eye was gouged; it howled in pain, body writhing. Then its black maw gaped wide and a fierce suction yanked Lin Qianshuang inside, swallowing her in an instant.
“Shuangshuang!”
The moment the beast gulped her down, something inside Xiao Lanle seemed to collapse. The underside of the Glazed Temple Gem flared with a hidden pattern, a fragment of a shattered sigil, as though answering her desperate plea. The artifact melted into mist within her dantian and streamed into the Plain Inquiry Sword. The blade blazed, sword-qi shrinking to a whirling halo about her wrist.
Mu Weiyin had expected the Gem’s reaction. Feeling Xiao Lanle’s bloodlust, the Tianshu Mirror inside her resonated; a gold pattern rippled across her ink-black left eye.
Mu Weiyin covered her mutating left eye with one hand and gave a soft, mocking laugh. “Still the same old hypocrisy.”
Xiao Lanle vaulted skyward, riding a white dragon woven of sword-qi, and swept forward on a ribbon of light. Her wrist snapped back; the halo around it burst into a storm of tiny blades that rained down and skewered the python’s skull in every direction. The beast had already lost a chunk of its tail; now its scale-armored, supposedly impenetrable head split open in several crimson gashes. Roaring, it lunged at her, jets of green venom whipping upward like tentacles to coil around her sword and slither toward her arm, hungry for her blood.
Xiao Lanle tore the poisonous tendrils away, slammed her blade through the python’s lower jaw, and sent a gout of blood spraying in the wake of an animal scream.
“Give my senior sister back, give her back, you bastard!”
She leapt onto the python’s crown, eyes wild, hacking and stabbing in a frenzy, voice cracking with every hoarse cry. Sword-light shot from her wrist and chained the monster’s head in place; the tip of her weapon hovered over its one remaining intact eye. Her pupils—bright as finches—narrowed to cold, cruel slits.
“Cough her up,” she hissed. “Even if it’s only a corpse, I’ll see it with my own eyes. Otherwise I’ll gut you and peel your scales off, one by one, slowly.”
The python’s stomach, already uneasy after swallowing Lin Qianshuang, throbbed from wound upon wound, and the impossible pressure rolling off Xiao Lanle pinned it in place.
Beast-core aura could mend flesh, but not in a heartbeat; the sword now kissing its throat would soon be probing its dantian. Another clash and a thousand years of cultivation would be scraped away by this “frail” human girl.
The monster stared at her, more savage than any beast, then at the rainbow shimmer of the blade under its jaw, and cursed itself for provoking this living Buddha.
Its coils shrank, green mist swirling, until a gray-robed youth stood in surrender.
A forked tongue flicked; poisonous vapor rolled out, depositing Lin Qianshuang on the ground, whole and unmarked.
Xiao Lanle bound the gray-clothed demon with a rope of sword-light, heedless of the slimy, stinking gastric juice smeared across her senior sister’s robes. She cradled Lin’s head in her lap, patting the bloodless cheeks.
“Senior sister, wake up… Senior sister!”
Lin Qianshuang had stewed for several minutes in the python beast’s reeking stomach. The gastric juice could not touch her; demonic qi kept every drop of corrosion at arm’s length. Yet the force in her dantian kept lunging for control, so she had to sink into meditation and face it down.
“I’m all right.”
Lin Qianshuang clasped Xiao Lanle’s hand, drew a calm breath, and looked at the neatly trussed demon. “Kill the python; its beast core can be ground into a powder that cures snake-venom and will save these townsfolk.”
Xiao Lanle watched her senior sister open her eyes unharmed, speak in a level voice, and show no concern for herself, only for the mortals. The joy in her heart felt doused by a bucket of ice-water. In that moment of elation she had forgotten: there was no road back for them.
“Miss Lin, thank you for the advice; I will decide for myself.”
Xiao Lanle’s face was blank as she shook off Lin Qianshuang’s hand and rose. Her back moved against the pale light leaking through the clouds, sketching a long, thin shadow on the ground, a deep trench that now lay between them, impossible to cross.
Lin Qianshuang lay where she was, vision swimming. She watched Xiao Lanle walk toward the bound python beast with sword in hand, the bloody beast core pinched in her fingers. One after another, senior cultivators rode their swords down beside her, hurrying past to herd the snake-venomed townsfolk beyond the main gate, while bowls of steaming antidote brewed from the core were handed out under Xiao Lanle’s direction.
Her meridians felt frozen. A feeble warmth trickled from her palm to her fingertips; when she lifted her hand, a blinding white glint danced there, and the golden light in her dantian threatened to drink every trace of her demonic qi. Inside the python’s belly, that same golden glow had dissolved the venom, and the effort of calming her mutated magic core had burned even more demonic qi. The price was sudden, ravenous hunger; she craved demonic qi like air.
She held out as long as she could. When someone passed her a cup of broth made from the beast core, she gulped it down, but the powder could not fill the void. The faint outline of the magic seal surfaced on her forehead, flickering; at any moment, it might reveal her true form. She had to leave now.
The wounded mortals were carried to nearby tents. Yet on one grass mat lay a beautiful woman in green who still stared into space, motionless as carved jade; the bowl of snake-core medicine beside her was already empty.
“Fairy, are you hurt? Why won’t you drink the antidote?”
One of the wounded Lingxiao Sword Sect disciples happened to be carried to the woman in green and offered the reminder kindly.
Before his hand reached her shoulder, a blinding light flung him back. When his sight cleared, the girl was gone; in her place stood a majestic silver lion-shaped demon beast.
“Monster! A monster!”
The sight of the colossal creature stunned him. He had never faced a beast of such rank. Only after a long moment did he snatch up his sword from the ground and, forgetting his injuries, swing wildly to drive the fearsome thing away.