A Pawn's Passage

To be fair, Qi Xuansu was not particularly skilled in killing. He was not an assassin trained from childhood, so he did not know the most efficient or quickest methods to kill. His strength lay in keeping calm in the face of danger, which was forged through life-and-death experiences. He also had a flexible fighting style that adapted to changing situations.

Adaptability was not just about ingraining techniques until they became instinct. It also required thinking and being good at utilizing external conditions.

Under such circumstances, Qi Xuansu rarely displayed the overwhelming dominance that Li Changge did, partly because Qi Xuansu was born with lesser innate advantages and partly because external conditions varied from battle to battle.

The assassins of The Inn were different. They had been trained since childhood to know every weakness of the human body. They were masters of various killing techniques and were adept at using external conditions. However, their strengths lay in ambush, concealment, and assassination.

Simply put, assassins specialized in attacking unprepared enemies with a single fatal strike. If the first strike failed, the assassins had to flee.

In truth, if assassins lost the advantage of surprise and lacked superiority over their opponent in cultivation level, they were unlikely to win in direct combat.

If it came down to a fair, one-on-one duel, the Cook from The Inn might not have been a match for the Qingping Society’s Drenched Green Robes. But the Cook never fought fair. He relied on ambush and outnumbered the enemy, exploiting the fact that Drenched Green Robes always traveled alone. Drenched Green Robes was also overconfident in his cultivation, so he fell into the Cook’s trap.

In this regard, the three Deputy Grand Masters of the Daoist Order never put themselves at risk. Though their cultivation was already unmatched, they still secluded themselves in Daoist strongholds like the Jade Capital or their own fortified nests, protected by numerous followers and layered formations. Even an Ancient Immortal would find it hard to assassinate them.

Thus, despite the death of Drenched Green Robes, Qi Xuansu did not hold a pessimistic view toward the Qingping Society’s coming war against The Inn. He believed that if the Qingping Society seized the initiative, The Inn might suffer a disastrous defeat because assassins were skilled at offense, not defense.

Whether they could strike first depended on intelligence. In this regard, aside from the Ziguang Society, no other secret organization could match the Qingping Society, whose members all had dual identities and communicated mostly through single-line contacts, making infiltration into other organizations easy but penetration into their own ranks extremely difficult.

During this meeting with Madam Qi, aside from discussing matters concerning The Inn, she had also replaced Qi Xuansu’s fish talisman. His silver-crimson fish talisman was now upgraded to a golden-purple one, signifying that he was now officially a B-rank member.

The fish talismans of the Qingping Society were quite similar to the Daoist Order’s licenses, in which the higher the rank, the more functions they possessed. Compared to the silver-crimson fish talisman, the golden-purple fish talisman not only allowed Qi Xuansu to exchange goods during Dream Meetings but also had two additional functions.

The first function was straightforward. It was a magical receptacle with a larger storage space, allowing more items to be stored. Essentially, Qi Xuansu now possessed two magical receptacles. He could store sensitive items inside the golden-purple fish talisman while keeping less critical and more frequently used items in Feng Bo’s thumb ring.

The second function was similar to the communication feature of the Daoist licenses, which allowed binding to another individual. Without asking Qi Xuansu for permission, Madam Qi had already linked his golden-purple fish talisman to her jade-white one. So from now on, they could communicate directly without using mother-child talismans.

As for the binding itself, the golden-purple fish talisman could only bind to one person, while the jade-white fish talisman could bind to multiple. It was like a teapot that came with many teacups. Madam Qi’s talisman was the teapot, while Qi Xuansu’s talisman was merely one of the cups.

Using this as a pretext, Madam Qi announced that she would stop sending the Qingping Society’s allocated supplies to Qi Xuansu since they no longer needed mother-child talismans for communication. The other minor supplies were not even worth the cost of delivery, so she might as well cut them altogether. This meant that his Wuyou coins, pills, and mother-child talismans distributed by the Qingping Society had been intercepted by Madam Qi, and Qi Xuansu was now working for free.

Qi Xuansu had to thank Madam Qi for not batting an eye in the face of 20,000 Wuyou coins. Without her painstaking “guidance,” how could he have developed such noble qualities of integrity, restraint, and self-contentment?

After parting with Madam Qi, Qi Xuansu wandered around the black market for a while. There were plenty of tempting items, but all he could do was walk away with his empty sleeves billowing.

Qi Xuansu left the black market and went to buy himself a new set of clothes.

Currently, Qi Xuansu was still suspended from office and was supposed to do some self-reflection during this time. Initially, he had been indignant about it, thinking, Why should I reflect? What was there to reflect on?

However, one sentence from Shi Bingyun shut him up. “You left such a huge leverage for others to grab onto, almost leading to irreversible disaster. Shouldn’t you reflect on this?”

Qi Xuansu had no choice but to obediently admit his fault, promising never to make such a blunder again and to be ruthless when necessary. Yet when dealing with Yan Xiu, he had still been softhearted enough to catch the two human projectiles. In the end, he failed to save lives and even got himself injured. Clearly, he still had not reflected enough.

However, after Yao Pei submitted the report to the Golden Tower Council, Zhang Yuelu waved it off and declared that Qi Xuansu need not continue his reflection. Though he still had to remain suspended—unable to command subordinates or openly participate in investigations—until the official approval came through, he could at least move freely around the Imperial Capital. Thus, he had a rare period of leisure and could come to meet with Madam Qi.

In fact, when bidding farewell to Madam Qi, Qi Xuansu had hesitated about mentioning Zhang Yuelu’s request to meet. In the end, he decided against it. He wanted to delay their meeting as long as he could and only deal with it when he was forced to. He had no energy to deal with the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law conflict.

Ten years ago, Qi Xuansu would never have believed he would face such a problem. First, he was an orphan and had no mother. Second, he did not think he could even find a Daoist companion. After all, female Daoists had high standards. A ninth-rank female Daoist would look down on a male counterpart and insist on finding an eighth-rank Daoist for a partner. Back then, Qi Xuansu figured he might just join the Quanzhen Order, remain unmarried for life, and become a celibate Daoist priest.

But now, it was happening for real.

When Qi Xuansu was still naive and inexperienced, he had read too many novels. On one hand, he believed he might never find a Daoist companion; on the other hand, he fantasized about being caught between two women. Yet he had never imagined that while he was indeed caught between two women now and the dilemma was real, they were not his lovers, but rather his adopted mother and his soon-to-be wife.

Feeling a headache oncoming, Qi Xuansu decided to stop thinking about it altogether. He then made his way to the Taiping Inn’s Imperial Capital main branch, where he would wait for Madam Qi’s people to contact him.

Speaking of which, Qi Xuansu had built some rapport with the innkeeper of the main branch during his investigations. Now that his reinstatement was imminent, the innkeeper would not charge him any money and would even welcome the chance to forge a closer tie. Thus, it would be a waste not to take advantage of this free stay.

Around midnight, as Qi Xuansu was meditating, he suddenly sensed a disturbance from his golden-purple fish talisman, which was linked to his mind. He took it out and activated the paired communication function.

A light screen appeared before Qi Xuansu, displaying a giant eye that filled almost the entire view, startling him. Then he quickly realized that Madam Qi must have pressed her eye right up against her fish talisman because the closer the object, the bigger it appeared.

Sure enough, when Madam Qi pulled her fish talisman farther away, her half-body image came into view.

She’s so old, yet she’s still playing such childish tricks. Qi Xuansu grumbled inwardly, but he dared not show it on his face. He asked, “Have your people arrived?”

“Go to the Heaven Bridge,” Madam Qi ordered.

Qi Xuansu keenly sensed something amiss. “Weren’t you sending someone to contact me?”

“The plan changed last minute,” Madam Qi replied. “This time, a member of the Privy Council is personally leading the operation. I won’t show up, but you’ll go in my stead to bolster the numbers and back them up a little. Don’t embarrass me, and watch out for your own safety.”

Qi Xuansu gasped. “They’re sending an A-rank member right from the start? That’s a big move!”

Madam Qi snorted. “If it’s not big, it won’t boost morale or intimidate the enemy. Enough with the chatter and go there now.”

Qi Xuansu, accustomed to bargaining with Madam Qi, pressed further. “Know the enemy, know yourself, and you’ll never be defeated. Since it’s a last-minute change, I won’t ask about the enemy. We’re obviously up against people from The Inn. But at least tell me who’s on our side and their cultivation levels so I can be mentally prepared.”

Madam Qi said, “The leader is Dreaming Cloud, a Wuliang-stage Heavenly Being.”

Qi Xuansu immediately hesitated. “Even a Zaohua-stage master like Drenched Green Robes got killed. Will a Wuliang-stage Heavenly Being be enough?”

Madam Qi once again pressed her eye up against the fish talisman, so a giant eye was staring straight at Qi Xuansu from the light screen. “You’re just a Xiaoyao-stage Heavenly Being, yet you have the cheek to look down on a Wuliang-stage Heavenly Being? Do you really think Zaohua-stage masters are as common as wild flowers by the roadside, free for the picking?

“The Inn’s top six ranks are the Owner, the Innkeeper, the Runner, the Cook, the Accountant, and the Server. The Owner is the leader, and the Innkeeper is the strategist—both oversee everything. The Runner handles intelligence, the Accountant manages finances, the Server fills in the gaps, and the Cook is the chief assassin, responsible for assassinations. Aside from the Owner and the Innkeeper, the Cook has the highest cultivation, reaching the Zaohua stage. The Accountant, Runner, Server, and a few Heaven-ranked Waiters are merely at the Wuliang stage.

“As for the Qingping Society, apart from the six-member Privy Council, there’s also the Advisory Council. If every member from both councils were at the Zaohua stage, then there would be a dozen or so from Qingping Society and six from the Inn. Adding the elites of secret societies like the Ziguang Society, Cult of Fates, and the Lingshan Witch Cult, wouldn’t we already rival the Daoist Order or perhaps even surpass them? After all, the Daoist Order only has about 30 or so publicly recognized Zaohua-stage masters.”

Qi Xuansu retorted, “Aren’t you a Pseudo-Immortal yourself?”

Madam Qi replied proudly, “You can’t take me as an example. I also serve as the Mogul of the Seven Treasure Pavilion. Could anyone else manage that?”

Qi Xuansu was left speechless.