Zixiao in Search of a New Master (2)

Mu Weiyin watched with a calm face as Zixiao rushed out first to fight the ghost infant bound at the array’s core; she caught Lin Qianshuang, who wanted to sneak in a strike, and said, “Watch every move. Within three forms the Zixiao Sword Spirit will be beaten.”

Lin Qianshuang raised an eyebrow as Mu Weiyin angled the Thousand Rain Sword in her hand toward the ghost infant, showing her how the creature would counterattack. So Zixiao was just training material now?

For a half-baked demon-baby cultivator like her to get pointers from the City Lord of Tianshu, anyone else would be cheering inside at such luck.

Yet she felt the opposite. Ever since Mu Weiyin had given her the Thousand Rain Sword, the woman’s attitude had shifted so quickly that unease crept in.

Lin Qianshuang lifted her gaze. Mu Weiyin’s ink-dark eyes, misty as night, seemed to gather moonlight, burying every thought in their depths.

For an instant she thought she glimpsed affection there. Was that… only her imagination?

The woman in purple slipped her arm around the woman in white’s shoulders, and a sphere of divine pressure no one else could approach sent the crowd—including the Ghost Infant—onto high alert.

Xiao Lanle bit her lip as she watched; the Plain Inquiry Sword in her hand quivered, reacting to her surging emotions. She could see all too clearly that the look Mu Weiyin gave Lin Qianshuang was different from usual, and it always struck her as faintly “ill-intentioned.” When Lin Qianshuang answered with a trusting nod and a soft smile, Xiao Lanle felt something clap over her heart: stifling, irritating, panicky.

“Sect Leader.”

Chen Shangqing tapped her shoulder lightly with his scabbard and murmured, “Junior Sister Xiao, when do we withdraw the formation?”

Xiao Lanle came back to herself. Zixiao’s golden-dragon sword-qi had coiled around the ghost infant’s neck; the creature snapped at empty air, its long nails rasping against the golden light bleeding from the array with a crackling hiss. The Penglai Immortal Sect’s net-like formation, woven from layers of true qi, was showing hair-line cracks, and the dozen disciples sustaining it were ghastly pale, their energy almost spent.

“Withdraw it! Order them to withdraw the formation!”

Realizing the tide had turned, Xiao Lanle spoke in urgent alarm; the sword in her hand sliced hard across her arm until pain spiked through every nerve. Senior Sister Lin was throwing her emotions, her concentration, into chaos. With gu worms inside her, any surge of feeling could be fatal. “Senior Brother Chen, pull back and make for Tianshu City. A single vicious ghost is nothing; the City Lord can handle it.” She swept her gaze over Lin Qianshuang and Mu Weiyin, then turned to lead the Penglai disciples away.

Chen Shangqing stepped into her path. “But Senior Sister Lin is still here.”

“She is no longer a disciple of Penglai Immortal Sect.”

Chen Shangqing jerked his head up, staring at Xiao Lanle in disbelief. “Sect Leader, by saying that you admit Senior Sister Lin conspired with the python beast. Yet you swore you’d clear her name!”

Xiao Lanle’s voice came stiff and cold. “You saw it yourself: Lin Qianshuang has pledged herself to the Tianshu City Lord. She’s a demon cultivator beyond redemption; the late Sect Leader’s own father may have died by her hand. With Taotie sowing chaos, who knows which way this reed will bend next? She might remember old affections, and she and Liang Jingxuan, both bewitched by Taotie, commit unforgivable crimes.”

“Junior Sister, you’ve changed,” Chen Shangqing said, feeling the strangeness turn to ugliness. Sword-bright eyes dimmed with disappointment, he stayed where he stood, arms folded over his blade. “Then Chen asks to remain here and aid Senior Sister Lin, returning the mercy she once showed me.”

“Stay if you wish. After all, this Sect Leader clearly lacks the authority to command you.”

Xiao Lanle gave a light, uncaring laugh. Without a backward glance she led the Penglai disciples away, never sparing him even a single look.

Chen Shangqing’s eyes dimmed. “Junior Sister, you really are drifting farther and farther away.”

Tears trembled in her eyes, begging to fall, but her pride forbade them.

Xiao Lanle tilted her face to the westering sun until the light stabbed and scalding tears slipped free.

“Why is today’s sun so harsh?”

With a soft sigh she dabbed the trails away with a handkerchief, then faced the wind and the not-distant gates of Tianshu City, leading her disciples forward.

Inside the city, cultivators of the four remaining orthodox sects were already waiting. The four Beast-Sealing Towers lodged among them had fallen; only the last tower inside Tianshu City still stood. The Beast-Subduing Tower was unfinished, so the great array’s core could not yet be closed.

Xiao Lanle collected her thoughts and caught the murmurs of the four sect leaders.

Chen Sanxuan of the Lingxiao Sword Sect spoke first. “Every Beast-Sealing Tower has fallen except the one inside Tianshu City. Our people should stay and defend it together.”

He glanced at the silent daughter of an old friend, then told the others, “The demon tide will strike in a few days. We must shut the gates and weave a guardian array with our combined strength.”

Yan Feiran, master of the Heavenly Demon Spirit Palace, twirled a lock of hair, voice syrupy and mocking. “My Six Palaces of Heavenly Demon never meddle in worldly affairs, yet the City Lord still hasn’t arrived. Wouldn’t closing the gate on our own be rather unkind?”

Mingwu of the Wuji Buddhist Sect pressed his palms together. “Amitabha. The City Lord has committed countless evils, shielding rogue cultivators who once wrought terrible crimes. If this calamity rids the cultivation world of such rot, we gain two boons at once.”

Yan Feiran slid a glance toward Xiao Lanle and teased, “Why so quiet, Sect Leader of Penglai? Surely you haven’t grown tender toward that spy and Mu Weiyin?”

“Lock the gates; this sect leader is of course willing.”

The corner of Xiao Lanle’s mouth curved in a cold smile, her bird-bright eyes slashing toward Yan Feiran. Feeling the sting of that glance, Yan Feiran, made suddenly aware he had spoken too freely, gave an awkward grin.

Xiao Lanle could not be bothered to spare the androgynous sect master another look. She lifted the manual on the Celestial Myriad Phenomena Instrument that lay open in her lap and spoke in a voice as sharp as frost. “The Beast-Subduing Tower is unfinished, yet my survey shows it can pin Taotie for half a bell. Tianshu City should never have existed; it is only a nest of rogue cultivators. Let us seal the gates with the array already in place, feed every nameless exile inside to the Celestial Myriad Phenomena Instrument as a blood offering, and trap the beast beneath the corpses of the city itself.”

Chen Sanxuan’s eyes glittered with admiration. “Truly the wave behind drives the wave before¹; we old men never conceived so elegant a cruelty.”

“Who would have thought,” Yan Feiran murmured, spinning a black dart between his fingers, “that such a gentle-looking girl could teach even me ruthlessness.

Press the rogues into service against the demon tide, then sacrifice them all in one stroke: a bridge torn down the instant it is crossed. A flawless plan.”

“Amitabha,” Mingwu said, “this monk finds Sect Leader Xiao’s plan excellent. Why the sneer, Sect Leader Yan? Are you upset that she has stolen your glory? Even if the lord of the Immortal Alliance were placed on her head, it would never land on you, Yan Feiran.”

Mingwu regarded him with open disgust. The Heavenly Demon Spirit Palace had always claimed neutrality, yet the moment the former Tianshu City Lord exerted pressure, Yan Feiran had fawned without shame. A relic of the Wuji Buddhist Sect had been pilfered by one of its female disciples and was still missing. Had the previous generation oforthodox leaders not cleared out such heretical vermin, how could the title of one of the Five Great Sects ever have fallen to this sour-tongued Yan Feiran?

Yan Feiran spat, shot him a glare, and drawled, “Bald donkey, your imagination runs wild. Whoever wants the seat of Immortal Alliance Lord can have it; I, Yan Feiran, can’t be bothered. Don’t blame me, I’m just passing comment.”

Xiao Lanle stood at the threshold of Tianshu’s gate, motionless as a stone statue. The Plain Inquiry Sword hummed in its scabbard, yet she did not draw.

The gates drifted shut, the shadow widening until it swallowed her completely. A summer wind carried the chill, but her heart felt planted on a mid-winter snowfield, freezing, hardening.

Those who had harmed her, who had murdered her parents, were about to meet the fate they deserved.

Yet why was there no joy in her heart at all?

“Kill me. The instant I die, you will be the undisputed master of the Immortal Alliance.”

A voice ripped through her mind, raw as a wound.

The words were so familiar, as if she had heard them before…

Xiao Lanle lifted her head. The Shark Pearl hovered in the air, circling her in agitation. She opened her palm and it settled, quiet at last.

“You heard everything. I am going to kill the Tianshu City Lord. You were once her precious pearl. If you dislike my decision, you may leave my side and return to your first master.”

The Shark Pearl’s cold blue light throbbed in her palm.

“My lord, I will stay with you forever; I will never leave.”

Xiao Lanle closed her fingers around the pearl and murmured, “The words you just played for me, what were you trying to say? You know as well as I do: Mu Weiyin has already reached Tribulation Transcendence; her body is an immortal body, no one in this world can destroy her, and Lin Qianshuang’s life is bound to hers. My move tonight isn’t meant to kill her, only to borrow Taotie’s power and seal her inside the array eye that will hold Taotie itself.”

Tears slid down as she cupped the pearl. “I can’t bear it. After everything she’s done to me, I still can’t bear it. Shark Pearl, tell me, how do I forget a person, how do I cut away the seven emotions and six desires and set everything down for good?”

“Is there truly no way to have it both ways, to win what I want and still not betray every hope placed on me?”

The ghost-blue light flared once more, then dimmed. Her tears shimmered on the crystal surface, and inside each droplet she saw herself, haggard and broken.

“Sect Leader, the Sect Leader of Lingxiao Sword Sect asks you to accompany him to the Beast-Sealing Tower and secretly lay the demon-quelling array.”

Xiao Lanle viciously pinched her own arm; her tears had dried, and she stared at her reflection inside the droplet. Slowly she produced a gentle, dignified smile, brushed the dust from her robes as though nothing had happened, then turned, flicked her sleeve, and said to the waiting disciple, “Understood. Go help at the city gate; once the array is set, I will join you.”