A Pawn's Passage

Qi Xuansu looked at the Yu King for a long while without speaking.

Even after scrutinizing the King, Qi Xuansu thought that it was merely the final flare of vitality before death. He posed no real threat.

The crux of the matter still lay with Chen Shuhua. Qi Xuansu had already dispatched two first-rank Spirit Guards who were equivalent to Pseudo-Immortals to arrest her. By all appearances, the outcome was nearly guaranteed.

With that thought, Qi Xuansu steadied his breath. He said, “The three Immortals you speak of, besides Chen Shuhua, must be Wu Luo and the True Lord Siming. But their divine descent vessels were already shattered by Great Sage Lan. I don’t think you have a third vessel.”

The Yu King did not deny it. “To forge a vessel capable of housing an Immortal is never easy, especially beneath the Daoist Mansion’s watchful eyes. Everything must be done in secret, so we can’t draw upon dragon qi as we wish. As you said, there is no third vessel.”

Qi Xuansu said, “Yang E is already executed, and Chen Shuhua has been cornered. It seems you cannot escape my grasp.”

The Yu King smiled. “Second Deputy Qi, you speak too soon.”

Qi Xuansu clasped his hands behind his back. His right hand was holding a curled sheet of human-skin scripture.

The King continued, “Since things have come this far, there is nothing that can’t be spoken. When the Fenglin war erupted, we all agreed it was a once-in-a-millennium opportunity, one we could not let slip. That was when we began preparing for today. Though the Fenglin Sonno-joi faction was suppressed by the Daoist Order, the arrow was already nocked, and we had no retreat left.”

Qi Xuansu said, “Whether you had a way out or not is already past. What I want to know now is, do you have any remaining trump cards?”

The King slowly closed his eyes, his aura visibly weakening by the second. “Though the third Immortal-level vessel does not exist, we managed to create one of the Pseudo-Immortal level.

“I expected that once you learned the truth, you would return to see me. If I used myself as bait and stationed a Pseudo-Immortal here in ambush, how would you respond?

“My fate was long sealed. If I can use what remains of myself to hook a big fish like you, then I have squeezed out the last of my worth. I would have no regrets dying together with you.”

As his words fell, the stone tiles of the bedchamber began dropping away one after another, revealing a pitch-black abyss below.

Everything except the bed plunged into the chasm, swallowed instantly by the bottomless darkness.

Qi Xuansu and Shangguan Ya stood suspended in the air, gazing downward.

The abyss resembled a massive bottomless well. At its deepest point, a pupil-like pattern slowly surfaced, formed by a black moon and a white sun entwined together.

There was no longer any summer heat, only a bone-piercing cold that was harsher than midwinter’s depths.

The Yu King slowly raised both hands, which were nothing but wrinkled, skeletal branches of flesh. With the emergence of that eye-like sigil, his hands began to restore themselves bit by bit, like flowers blooming and withering, life and decay cycling endlessly.

It was none other than True Lord Siming.

The Green Emperor and True Lord Siming corresponded to life and death. After the Green Emperor dissolved into heaven and earth, losing all sense of self, True Lord Siming seized the opportunity to steal part of the authority over life and, from then on, claimed dominion over both life and death.

True Lord Siming could make one die or live.

Back when Qi Xuansu and Zhang Yuelu investigated the killings at Bishan Temple, they discovered that the sinners had risked everything to attack the temple for the sake of seizing the living soul of Xiantian Beings to offer it up to an Ancient Immortal.

That Ancient Immortal was precisely True Lord Siming. One could say that Desmond survived only by borrowing True Lord Siming’s power.

In that sense, True Lord Siming was the very first ancient immortal Qi Xuansu ever encountered, even before Wu Luo.

Qi Xuansu sighed. “Daoist Shangguan, take the King away. Don’t let him die this easily.”

Shangguan Ya answered softly in assent.

In essence, the Yu King served only as a furnace, not as an ingredient. Chen Shuhua did not intend to refine him into a Longevity Stone. Instead, she was using his body as the vessel to refine dragon qi into one.

Thus, he was merely a ruined cauldron. Now that the refinement neared its end, the pressure on him had greatly lessened. With True Lord Siming’s power present, Shangguan Ya was confident she could keep him alive.

When the time came to settle accounts, the Yu King would be a critical witness and possibly the key to uncovering even more conspirators. Thus, he could not be allowed to die. This was also why Qi Xuansu insisted on coming in person.

Even if no further culprits surfaced, the King still needed to be executed publicly as a warning to others. Letting him die here would be far too merciful.

Shangguan Ya grabbed the Yu King and leaped toward the exit.

In an instant, illusory tendrils surged upward from the abyss, lunging toward her.

Shangguan Ya did not even spare them a glance. Flames burst forth from her cloak. The moment the tendrils touched them, they shriveled like squid tentacles on a scorching iron plate.

On the other side, Qi Xuansu took a deep breath and unfolded the page of the Scripture of Zuriel he had prepared.

In truth, Qi Xuansu should not be using the Scripture of Zuriel this frequently. Even with the Longevity Stone Heart allowing him to recover faster, the interval between his previous use had been too short, so it would inevitably leave an impact.

But given the present circumstances, he could no longer afford to care about the aftereffects.

As the strange characters on the human-skin page entered his sight, an overwhelming pride once again surged through Qi Xuansu’s heart.

Qi Xuansu’s aura suddenly expanded to become domineering. The false power inflated his arrogance, so much so that he believed he was the ruler of this world and the center of all things. He even believed himself to be a true Immortal.

Qi Xuansu once again advanced to the Zaohua stage temporarily.

Qi Xuansu’s case was unique. Not all of his lineages could rise to the Zaohua stage. Only one lineage would improve each time, and it was not one that he personally chose.

The previous time, it was his frequently used Martial Arts Practitioner lineage that had advanced into the Shattered Void Realm.

This time, it was his Shaman lineage that ascended to the Zaohua stage corresponding to the Fruition Realm.

Qi Xuansu had long anticipated this. This false power tended to choose the strongest lineage first, so the Diviner, Banished Immortal, and Qi Refiner lineages could essentially be ruled out.

His Rogue Cultivator lineage was weak, so elevating it to another level would not amount to much. Since the Martial Arts Practitioner lineage had already been chosen once, the Shaman lineage was the most likely choice this time.

Although Qi Xuansu’s Shaman lineage was only in the Xiaoyao stage, his manifested Spiritual Body was far too unusual.

That was why Qi Xuansu had prepared 10,000 marks of divine power beforehand. He had been prepared for this moment, so he would not face the awkward situation of running out of divine power.

These 10,000 marks of divine power were enough for him to fully unleash the Fruition Realm of the Shaman lineage at its absolute peak.

After all, the Shaman lineage had an immense gap between its lower and upper limits. With sufficient divine power, a Shaman could even rival a Banished Immortal.

Qi Xuansu instantly manifested the Celestial Phenomena Spiritual Body and expanded the golden giant to over 30 meters tall. It rose straight from the ground through the bedchamber, standing on the void and towering over the Yu royal palace.

His Spiritual Body was unexpectedly similar to his Manly Immortal True Body, with three heads and six arms. However, this Spiritual Body was so massive it looked as if it could prop up the sky and squash the earth. Unlike the Manly Immortal True Body, this Spiritual Body shone with a resplendent gold light that made it seem like an illusion.

Four of his arms spread outward in sequence, holding Pure Bodhi, Green Cloud, a mirror, and a yin-fire greatsword. The remaining two empty hands crossed before his chest.

At the same time, the sigil formed by a black moon and a white sun manifested into a humanoid shape and grew rapidly. It started as no bigger than an infant. Then it grew to the size of a child, then an adult, and then as large as a Buddha statue

Finally, it reached the height of a towering pagoda, no smaller than Qi Xuansu’s Spiritual Body.

This figure wore a black Twelve Ornaments Robe embroidered with the full set of motifs. On its head rested a Pingtian crown with twelve strands of white-jade beads hanging as tassels.

True Lord Siming was always clad in imperial attire, which was a symbol of his identity as the Emperor of the Netherworld.

Since the bead curtain concealed his face, one could not see True Lord Siming’s features. Only his lower jaw and a short beard that curved slightly upward, like the edge of a blade.

True Lord Siming slowly rose from the abyss until he stood level with Qi Xuansu. The two faced each other, eye to eye.

When Qi Xuansu first encountered True Lord Siming’s descent in Jinling Prefecture, he had only seen True Lord Siming’s side profile. But Qi Xuansu felt as though they had met each other’s gaze.

Two eyes appeared, one reflecting the white sun, the other reflecting the black moon, almost turning him into a puppet and sending him toward eternal damnation.

But at this moment, Qi Xuansu’s six eyes met True Lord Siming’s gaze directly, without the slightest hint of fear or retreat.