ATEG Chapter 128.2

He could tell something was wrong with Tushan Tiao’s condition, though he didn’t know the specifics. This grey-robed old Daoist was not easy to overcome — he feared he had little chance of winning. Better to withdraw for now and make plans afterward.

Chi Zhenzi’s sword intent fell one beat behind. His divine consciousness reacted at once, and several arcs of thunder light twisted into chains that materialized horizontally across their path. Xu Huan brought his blades down to sever them — two narrow willow-leaf edges flashed, and the thunder light was cleaved apart — but beneath it, another layer of chains appeared, formless and substanceless. Phantom-like, they passed through the blade and through Xu Huan’s body, leaving no effect at all — and then he felt his hand go slack.

Those chains were aimed at Tushan Tiao. To evade them, she released Xu Huan’s hand and deliberately moved toward Chi Zhenzi’s sword edge.

Xu Huan’s pupils contracted sharply. His willow-leaf blades flew back to shield her — but it was already too late. Tushan Tiao twisted hard and stretched her hand back toward him, as though trying to borrow his strength to escape the sword edge once more. Xu Huan lunged forward to pull her clear — but the sword’s radiance had already pressed against Tushan Tiao’s heart, and between his fingertips and hers, there was still one final inch of distance.

“No—” Xu Huan’s pupils nearly shrank to pinpoints. He watched Tushan Tiao reaching toward him, and he saw his mother — just one inch short…

He strained forward with everything he had, yet all at once felt his chest go numb — and he froze in place.

He saw Chi Zhenzi’s sword edge pass through Tushan Tiao’s heart — yet her body bore no wound. He felt the deep, heavy remnant of sword intent lodged in his chest, holding him motionless. And only then did he notice: from the tips of the five fingers Tushan Tiao had extended toward him, invisible and substanceless threads reached out — threads that were connected to his body.

She had used him as her death-substitute.

Xu Huan stared blankly at Tushan Tiao.

Tushan Tiao’s figure flashed. Like a fish slipping through the gap cut open by the sword light, she passed through the chains on all sides within a hair’s breadth, narrowly evading the bindings formed by the criminal judgment scroll, and fled into the distance without a moment’s hesitation or reluctance.

But the arc of sword light that should have been transferred onto Xu Huan appeared before her once more, for some inexplicable reason. With chains already cutting off her retreat and this obstacle blocking her path, the sword light descended. Tushan Tiao looked at that arc of sword light in disbelief, and the light in her eyes gradually darkened.

The chains coiled around Tushan Tiao’s corpse, locking down her soul, and returned to Chi Zhenzi’s hand — transforming into a strip of white silk whose ink markings were solid as iron.

Xu Huan coughed up a mouthful of dark blood, and only then could his numbed body move again.

That sword light which had passed through his heart had been an illusion — it had left behind only a trace of sword intent within him, rendering him immobile, and though it had injured his heart meridians, it fell short of taking his life.

Chi Zhenzi secured Tushan Tiao’s soul. Having already witnessed the Puppet Master Envoy’s technique of using another as a death-substitute, he had of course come prepared. With sword light shifting between illusion and reality at the finest margin, he had blocked Tushan Tiao — and spared Xu Huan’s life as well. Chi Zhenzi turned to leave.

“Wait.” Xu Huan called out instinctively, his voice trembling and hoarse.

Chi Zhenzi paused and looked at him. Seeing no malevolent or sinful aura about him, he raised his hand and tossed the white silk in his hand toward Xu Huan, saying, “You have most likely been deceived by this Puppet Master Envoy. Her crimes are grave — they are all recorded here.”

This criminal judgment scroll had only been effective against Tushan Tiao; it served no purpose now. Xu Huan caught the white silk without thinking. When he looked up again, Chi Zhenzi had already vanished. Xu Huan stumbled blankly forward two steps — seemingly about to give chase, yet having nowhere to search — the injury to his heart meridians still aching. He pressed his hand to his chest, unable to spare a thought to wipe the blood from the corner of his mouth, and bowed his head first to look at the white silk in his hand.

He could tell the genuine from the false. This kind of thing bore resemblance to the methods used in the Disciplinary Bureau — it only took effect when the transgressions recorded upon it were true, and only against those who had broken their oaths, and there was almost nothing that could block it.

The criminal judgment scroll clearly set out Tushan Tiao’s crimes one by one. Xu Huan read through them in sequence — Puppet Master Envoy, Xuanqing Sect, Dream-Eating Tapir, earth veins, Hundun… Things about Xuanqing Sect he had never known.

He read the last entry on the criminal judgment scroll — the oldest crime of all: cultivating a heretical art, causing grievous harm to a member of the same clan, using the victim’s elder sister to refine…

Xu Huan’s hand clenched tight around the white silk.

He remembered asking Tushan Tiao: his mother had already fully transformed — she was a great demon. How could she have fallen to that fate?

The night wind raked through the sharp, bare branches of winter trees, and the sound was like a keening shriek.

Xu Huan’s figure vanished. A cold wind rose from the ground — colder than snow, colder than ice.

That night, a cold wind swept through many parts of the Kingdom of Liang, passing over every stronghold of Xuanqing Sect, reaching into every shadow hidden in the depths. With each place it passed, the wind grew another measure more desolate and deadly — until at last it fell upon a desolate village at the northern border, and came to rest beside a body already long grown cold and stiff.

Faint remnants of a final thought still lingered on that body — a cultivator who had come to know the hidden face of Xuanqing Sect, used by Tushan Tiao as a death-substitute. He seemed, at last in the moments before death, to have understood what had happened — he had, without ever realizing it, become a pawn in another’s hand; every choice he had believed to be his own had been a path laid out for him long in advance.

Xu Huan stared at this body. The white silk in his hand crumbled to pieces, torn apart by the wind and snow, and froze into the mud and blood-melt on the ground.

The Puppet Master Envoy — Liang Kingdom’s Puppet Master Envoy… who was her puppet?!

……

In the moment when Bie Chunian forced a portion of Feiying’s soul back into his corpse, the fog that Hundun had blanketed over the Kingdom of Liang could no longer conceal everything completely.

In the royal capital of Liang, Li Quan started abruptly to his feet — but the moment he took half a step forward, he was forced to stop.

The power of Hundun had arrived, silently.

“Don’t be hasty.” The deep, vast voice of Hundun said. “Changyang — I have watched you lay down pieces for so long. It is time for you to see my game as well.”

Li Quan stood silently in place. Hundun had not come in person — only a trace of power conveyed through the arrangements made within Liang territory. Before this, all their moves against each other had been only piece against piece; this was the moment the two sides’ probing truly made contact.

“I have found some trouble for the Divine Court and the Min territory,” Chaos said. “Taiyin and Flame Lord will not be free to come to your aid for some time.”

Li Quan was only an avatar of Changyang. Even if Taiyin and the Flame Lord sensed that he had come into contact with Hundun, that alone would not be enough to make them drop everything and rush to his assistance. Of course, if Hundun intended to destroy this avatar — or even use it to strike back at Changyang himself — that would be another matter entirely.

But Hundun had not yet moved to that extent. Li Quan was only an avatar of Changyang, after all.

“You want Xuanqing Sect,” Chaos said, holding Li Quan fixed in place. “I can give it to you.”

……

A breath of wind fell into the Royal Palace of Liang — cold as a spring that never freezes at the very bottom of a deep, still pool.

Xu Huan landed in that quiet, desolate courtyard. He had seen Xuanqing Sect’s true face with his own eyes, witnessed with his own eyes that what was recorded on the white silk was real, and understood that this so-called leader of Xuanqing Sect was nothing but a puppet — understood that his entire life had been nothing but a joke.

The bloodstain at the corner of his pale lips had still not been wiped away. Eyes empty as a void, he looked toward the well in the courtyard, and the stone stele beside it.

He had come here.

But there was already another person here.

Xu Yurong stood beside the well, like a withered tree. She had grown much thinner, but appeared to have been looked after reasonably well — it was not outward conditions that tormented her, but her own heart.

Her eyes were vacant too — yet the moment they fell on Xu Huan, they blazed with startling brightness.

It was the brightness of long anticipation, of excitement on the verge of eruption — as though she was looking forward to what was about to happen, looking forward to it with an intensity she could barely contain. It was a terrifying, frenzied brightness.

Xu Yurong was holding a jug, her hand suspended above the mouth of the well. Her lips parted as though she meant to smile, but the excess of agitation and the bone-deep hatred twisted the expression out of shape.

“Xu Huan.” She stared at him with those blazing eyes, her thin arm trembling. “This is your mother’s grave, isn’t it? She died in this very well, didn’t she?”

Xu Huan looked at her. He did not ask how she knew, nor how she had come to be here. If Xuanqing Sect had never been his Xuanqing Sect, then the Royal Palace of Liang had likely never been his either.

He fixed his gaze on the jug suspended over the mouth of the well. From it he sensed a foul and filthy stench.

“Ah Ci,” Xu Huan said. “Put it down.”

Xu Yurong looked at him, and through the frenzied blazing of her eyes there suddenly passed a flicker of lucid, grief-stricken clarity.

“I will put it down,” she said. “But what will you pay for it? How much does she matter to you? Will you cut your own throat for this? Will you cripple your own cultivation? Will you sever your own arm? Will you bleed for this? Do whatever you are willing to do — do enough that I am willing to put this jug down. I can promise: at most, it ends when you die, and if you die I will not throw it. I have no particular interest in desecrating a dead person’s grave.”

Xu Huan stared at her. The cold emptiness in his eyes deepened and deepened.

“Ah Ci,” he said again. “Put it down.”

Xu Yurong’s beautiful features twisted. Teeth clenched, her fingers began to loosen. “So it seems she doesn’t matter so much to you after all.”

A wind passed through, cold as the deepest underworld spring. Xu Yurong felt even her bone marrow about to freeze — before she could even make out his movement, Xu Huan had already closed the distance. His ice-cold fingers clamped around her throat like iron, and the jug filled with filth was removed far from the mouth of the well, without spilling a single drop.

Xu Yurong took in all of this clearly. The clarity that had been in her eyes vanished at once. She clawed at Xu Huan’s wrist with both hands, gripping so hard her nails nearly split — yet she could leave not the slightest mark on that ice-pale arm.

All the tantrums and outbursts she had staged in the Royal Palace of Liang had been a performance. She knew exactly what behavior would put people off their guard. And yet she still could do nothing — she was only an ordinary person.

When that person had told her how to take revenge, she had instantly recognized it as a trap designed to make use of her.

But what did it matter? It was her only chance.

And she had failed to seize it. She could not bring him even a moment’s pain. The hand clamped around her throat tightened further and further, but no fear arose in her eyes — only a despair as deep as an abyss, and a hatred as absolute as madness, fixed on him without relenting.

They were very close. Close enough that in the darkness of night she finally saw Xu Huan clearly. She saw the bloodstains on his lips. She saw the white threaded through his hair. She saw his eyes.

She stopped struggling.

A corner of her mouth lifted — with effort.

He had gone mad too. A madman would not last long in this world.

Xu Huan’s darkened eyes fixed on her, as though her struggle had never registered at all. His hand applied force.

Ah Ci’s neck broke in his hand.

……

A gentle and mild wind descended quietly into the courtyard. Li Quan appeared in silence behind him. Once Ah Ci was dead, Hundun released its constraint upon him.

Xu Huan did not turn around. He seemed to have become a statue, voiceless and still, submerged in boundless darkness.

“You knew all along, didn’t you?” he asked Li Quan — and yet it seemed as though he needed no answer at all.

Whatever Xuanqing Sect truly was — even the Xingfeng Temple at Liang’s border and Marquis Wu had known. How could Li Quan not have known? Xu Huan had regarded him as a fellow traveler, had invited him to share in establishing the way of cultivation and in the virtuous enterprise of the Kingdom of Liang. Xu Huan’s vision had been obscured by Tushan Tiao, and like a puppet on a stage he had seen only the scripted illusion she had arranged.

Xu Huan turned slowly. He looked at Li Quan, and in his eyes there was a solitary cold that cut to the bone.

Why didn’t you tell me?

Li Quan looked at him, something in his eyes that seemed like sorrow and pity. Hundun was still speaking in his ear.

Above sets the example, below follows in kind — this is what it means to teach. Changyang was master of cause and effect, yet however great his ability, to take Xuanqing Sect by method, he still needed a catalyst. But Xu Huan could no longer serve as that catalyst. The path he had drawn out from the darkness — a path truly his own, aligned with the true Xuanqing Sect of twelve thousand years past — was already destroyed.

Now, if Changyang wanted Xuanqing Sect, he could only accept it from Hundun’s hands.

“I can give you Xuanqing Sect,” Hundun said. “But you must give me the Underworld in exchange.”

Changyang — what will you choose?