The Tianshu Mirror Revealed (3)

Xiaochi clutched the hem of Qianshuang’s robe and hid behind her, her clear eyes wide with fear as she watched the black mist hammer the Eight Trigrams ward. “It’s so scary,” she whimpered. “Where did Sister go? I want her back. She’ll get hurt. Someone bring her back, please. Xiaochi is frightened.”

Qianshuang watched the child’s tears with cold indifference, too preoccupied to offer comfort. Sword in hand, she turned to scan Tianshu City’s skyline. A sudden weight on her back made her whirl, blade half-drawn, but the moment she saw who it was, a warm pair of arms circled her and a steady calm poured through her; her sword hand dropped.

Xiaochi lifted her tear-streaked face and hugged Qianshuang tight. “Sister Lin, you’re afraid too, aren’t you? Don’t worry. Xiaochi will protect you.”

Protect her? This little simpleton who knew nothing?

Qianshuang gave a soundless laugh, yet she returned the embrace, guilt flickering in her eyes. “Thank you, Xiaochi. But I… don’t deserve your kindness.”

Xiaochi was nothing more than a jar that held a shard of the Upper God; once the shard was lifted out, only an empty husk would remain.

She had stayed with Mu Xiaochi, and she’d done it for selfish reasons.

One death, or the risk that the entire world would be erased early because the plot had been altered, Lin Qianshuang naturally chose the former.

She stroked the child’s hair. Xiaochi beamed up at her, eyes shining with perfect trust; the small body pressed against her felt warm, the heartbeat and breathing in her arms loud, vivid, alive, and Qianshuang’s ears rang with the sound.

A pang of guilt stabbed her. Reading the novel, Mu Xiaochi’s death and the City Lord’s awakening had been a thrilling, crowd-pleasing moment, but living inside the story, being one of them, she found it heartbreaking.

Looking at the girl’s foolish grin, Qianshuang answered with a gentle smile. For someone born to be nothing more than a vessel, this simple-mindedness was a mercy; when everything was stripped away, at least she would feel no pain.

The instant the City Lord of Tianshu struck, the battle seemed to turn. The various sect heads stayed on the sidelines and dared not intervene; given Mu Weiyin’s cultivation level, anyone who stepped between her and Taotie would only be shredded by her overwhelming sword intent.

Mu Weiyin was no ordinary cultivator. The sword array she loosed could not wound Taotie, yet it pinned the beast so tightly that every time it tried to advance it stumbled into another prison of blades. Swords raining from the sky or stabbing up from the earth merely scraped its tough hide, but even so a few scales were flayed away.

Taotie, tangled and furious, had meant to storm Tianshu City and break into the mortal realm to reclaim its long-lost talisman, yet Mu Weiyin’s web kept snaring its steps. Killing this human would take too long; better to shift targets and keep her occupied.

Its jade-green beast-eyes swung toward the two women embracing inside the protective circle. After a moment’s stare it whipped one claw, summoning a black-scarlet whirlwind that lashed straight at Lin Qianshuang.

The Eight Trigrams Circle shattered the instant the whirlwind brushed it.

Lin Qianshuang’s pupils shrank. She hurled the Thousand Rain Sword, releasing thousands of swirling sword-radiance to meet the wind, then dragged Mu Xiaochi diagonally aside. The little black-red tornado swallowed the sword-light, ground it to shards, and dissolved into a wisp of dark qi where the pair had stood.

With a backhand motion she reclaimed the Thousand Rain Sword and, in the same breath, raised a ring of ice around the two of them. A ribbon of fiendish qi streamed out of the sword formation’s hovering cage of light, lashed around several wisps of black mist, and hammered them into the ground like nails.

“…”

Taotie extended a paw, eyed the cyclone it had summoned, and felt a crisis of confidence. This defied reason. Barely five years earlier it had been sealed inside the God-Emperor of Kunlun’s Ancient Cloud Travel Records; since then it had fought through the siege cycle five times. The first four attempts had failed, yet even at its weakest outing it had still crushed every jade establishment cultivator born inside the Records. Apart from that eye-catching City Lord of Tianshu, none of these mortals should have posed a threat. Still, they were repelling it now. Could the humans themselves be… broken?

The more it thought about it, the more plausible the guess seemed. On a whim it clawed at Lin Qianshuang; a blade of data instantly rebounded.

【Primordial Chaos Platform Gentle Reminder: Apologies. You lack administrator privileges and may not examine the detailed information of Selected No. 1204. Task data on soul harvesting is now ninety percent complete. Please wait for the boss to return once memories are restored. 】

Selected.

The beast eyes tucked beneath Taotie’s armpit blinked and fixed on Lin Qianshuang. The woman was a Selected; that meant she might well be the very blade God-Emperor Taiqing¹ had once kept in Kunlun, the Immortal Lord of Dongwang who had butchered tens of thousands of demons.

Or more precisely, the one he should greet as Baize, the white beast whose name, like his own, had been carved on the ancient roll of gods. She had fallen in the war of extermination, and her flesh and divine bones had been smelted by that unfathomable sovereign into the god-slaying sword Di Hong; afterwards she had vanished together with the emperor.

Taotie drooled as he studied Lin Qianshuang, seeing a walking banquet. Strings of saliva slid off his fangs. If he swallowed Baize’s soul he could break out of this dungeon called the Cloud Travel Records even without the Devouring Pearl; the endless loop of seal-cycles had grown intolerably dull.

Yet this was, after all, an old drinking-brother from the Sanqing paradise² beneath Kunlun. Gobbling her outright would be poor form.

He propped a claw under his chin and pondered: a polite greeting first, then the meal. That way no one could accuse him of devouring a sworn sibling, an offense that would bar him from regaining his divine rank and, worse, bring trouble on Yinglong who had spoken for him.

Lin Qianshuang, grasping Mu Xiaochi’s hand and parrying the black fog with her sword, suddenly found an upside-down youth hovering before her. A grotesque grin split his face, and rows of steel-comb teeth clacked as he ground them in welcome.

“Greetings, Little Bai. I am your Little Tao; do you still remember? Fancy meeting you here, old friend. Won’t you stay and reminisce?”

A thread of drool slipped from his lips and splattered across Mu Xiaochi’s cheek. Taotie offered the priceless morsel what he believed was a friendly smile, eyes locked on Lin Qianshuang while hunger twisted his features.

Mu Xiaochi wiped the saliva away, trembling so hard her spine rattled yet still squaring her shoulders and flinging an arm out to shield Lin Qianshuang.

Lin Qianshuang watched the beast prattle nonsense through a starving grin; plainly she had already been filed under “main course,” but it wanted to chat first. She rolled her eyes: sealed too long and starved for company, was it? Planning small talk with tomorrow’s leftovers?

She soothed Mu Xiaochi with a gentle wipe of the child’s cheek, pressed the soiled kerchief into the girl’s hand, then turned to the youth Taotie had become. The moment her gaze met his, the savage face cracked into another ghastly smile and the corner of his mouth twitched.

A black qi snatched Mu Xiaochi before anyone could react.

Lin Qianshuang jolted at the sight and stepped forward, lunging to catch the girl, but her fingers opened on nothing except the crumpled, used handkerchief.

Taotie already held Mu Xiaochi one-handed; he lifted her arm, sniffed it, and let strings of drool splash across her neck.

“Sister…”

Feeling death settle on her shoulders, Mu Xiaochi cast a desperate glance at Lin Qianshuang, then turned ashen and cried in terror toward Mu Weiyin, “Sister!”

“You said you wanted to reminisce,” Lin Qianshuang said coldly. “Then reminisce with me; bullying a feeble-minded child is hardly sporting.”

Lin Qianshuang measured Mu Weiyin’s distance from her, then, as a show of goodwill, shrank her sword and tucked it at her waist. She walked up to Taotie and spoke in a negotiating tone, “Release the girl. Hurting her can’t be your real aim, can it?”

Taotie tightened his fingers around Mu Xiaochi’s neck and bared his fangs at Lin Qianshuang. “Baize, if this sovereign wants your divine soul, will you hand it over?”

“Baize? You mean the soul inside my magic core belongs to Baize, the one from the ancient primordial myths?”

As one of the primordial divine beasts, Taotie did not misidentify people.

Lin Qianshuang brushed the magic core at her dantian, eyes darkening. The Canglan Beast had indeed not owned this core. Handing her a magic core that secretly housed Baize’s divine soul… whatever its purpose had been, it had not been simple.

She turned to Mu Xiaochi, who was writhing in Taotie’s grip, and drew mana through the hand resting on her core; a thread of golden light pooled at her fingertip. Calmly she said, “Very well, I will give you Baize’s soul from my core, but you will return the girl. One soul, one life: an equal exchange.”

Taotie glanced between Mu Weiyin and the ticking device in his hand. He recalled that, before the white divine beast Baize had ever shown up, the one who had sealed him away was this very City Lord of Tianshu, together with Liang Jingxuan, the Favoured One of the plane and now his own pawn. He still had no idea what sort of divine power the City Lord had obtained, but after killing the girl he now held, her strength had soared.

Baize currently wore a human guise and looked frail, yet might be concealing something; otherwise she would not stare at his true form so calmly. When he proposed swallowing her divine soul, her face had not even twitched. Thousands of years ago, on their first encounter, she had shrunk back, plainly wary.

Better to enjoy this appetizer first; perhaps, like the City Lord, he too would gain a surge of power. Afterward he could gulp down Baize’s soul at leisure.

The plan sounded flawless. At the thought of escaping this hell of the Cloud Travel Records, Taotie secretly thrilled. Impatiently he pinched the back of Mu Xiaochi’s neck; his human face ballooned tenfold into a gigantic, savage maw. With a casual toss he flicked the girl between his teeth.

Crunch, crunch, crunch. He savored the feel of flesh and bone grinding together, his first taste of human meat in five years. A little stringy for lack of youth, but still delectable to a born carnivore like himself.

Lin Qianshuang watched the bloody spectacle; the silk handkerchief shredded and slipped from her fingers. “We had a deal,” she whispered. “Return Xiaochi to me, and my divine soul is yours.”

Taotie smacked his lips with relish, feeling wonderfully cheerful as he flashed Lin Qianshuang a toothy grin. “Little Bai, when did you get so childish that you actually believed what I said?”