I crouched against the wall, pinched up a bit of floating dust with my fingertips, and rubbed it in my palm. There was none of the sluggish resistance left by formation patterns. The floor was dry and cold, as though no one had set foot here for a long time. Yet that wisp of blue flame still danced in the crack beneath the door, dim and ghostly, like an eye unwilling to close.
I braced the medicinal pestle against the threshold and gave it a light pry. With a creak, the door opened half a foot. Nothing inside had changed. The medicine chest at the corner of the table still sat crookedly, knocked over when I searched for Calming Dew last night. But there was something extra in the air—a thread of faint iron tang, nearly imperceptible amid the incense meant to ward off evil. Anyone without years of experience distinguishing poisons would never have smelled it.
I slipped inside, shut the door behind me, and let the silver needles in my sleeve slide into my fingers. Just as I was about to seal the window, my wrist suddenly sank.
A hand reached from behind and firmly gripped my pulse.
"Miss Ye, this poison has to be purged like this."
His voice was low and steady, like a stone falling into a deep well. I whirled around, sweeping the medicinal pestle at him, but his other hand deftly knocked it aside. Ji Wuchen stood at the edge of the lamplight, his black robes unruffled and not a strand of hair out of place, as if he had been waiting here all along.
In his left hand, he held a piece of cloth bearing a Purple-Gold Python Pattern. One corner had been torn away, and its edges were still stained with dark green powder.
Ji Hantian's clothing.
"How did you know I was attacked?" I failed to pull free, and he instead used the motion to press me into a chair. "And how did you dare conclude that he would fake his death?"
He did not answer. He merely flung that torn corner onto the table, where it landed with a soft rustle. Traces of Demonic Powder wound across the fabric, like the tracks left by some living creature crawling over it.
"The powder he scattered tonight was refined in the Forbidden Ground where I was knocked off a cliff three years ago." His gaze fell upon my left arm. "The hole in your sleeve is in exactly the same place where my Dao bones shattered back then."
My breathing stalled.
It was three inches below the hollow of the shoulder. Ordinary people would not notice it, much less remember it. Yet he had described it with perfect accuracy, even the angle without the slightest deviation.
This was no coincidence.
I stared at him, lowering my voice. "So you deliberately let him hurt me? You used me to test the poison?"
"I'm not a physician." He shook his head. "But I know what this poison fears." As he spoke, he released my wrist. A faint layer of golden light appeared on his fingertips, and as it approached the wound, my flesh trembled slightly.
I instinctively drew back, raising the medicinal pestle across my chest again. "Don't touch me."
"I know the Blood Phoenix Body rejects external forces." He stopped, but his gaze did not shift. "But the aura in your meridians has long ceased to be pure. Three days ago, on the firewood shed roof, you nearly had your spine severed by spider silk. Who do you think held it off for you?"
My heart jolted.
That night, a streak of golden light had indeed flashed out of nowhere and blocked the fatal blow. I had thought it was an illusion, or perhaps the Blood Phoenix Body's own awakened defensive response.
"It was you?" My voice tightened.
"If you don't believe me, you can try it now." He raised his right hand, palm upward. The golden light slowly circulated, then suddenly split in two. One stream moved along his arm, while the other lightly leaped into the air, tracing an arc as it flew straight toward my left arm.
I reflexively circulated my cultivation to resist. Blood Qi surged within me, but the instant that light touched my wound, it seeped into my meridians like a bird returning to its nest, quietly merging with a force that had lain dormant for far too long.
A warm current spread through my eight extraordinary meridians, and the scorching pain immediately dulled.
"When... did you tamper with me?"
"It wasn't tampering." He withdrew his hand. "It was aura. Once the aura of the Pseudo-Primordial Body is planted, it travels with the bloodline and acts upon recognizing its master. It protected you automatically while you were fleeing for your life. That is not something I can control."
I fell silent for a moment, then gave a cold laugh. "Then are you here to save me so you can take back your 'thing'? Or are you afraid that if I die, your lead will be cut off?"
"I came to tell you two things." His tone was calm. "First, Ji Hantian faked his death not merely to avoid you, but to lure me out. He thought I would investigate the funeral and reveal a flaw in the Spirit Hall. I did not go, so he turned to using you as bait."
My fingertips trembled slightly.
No wonder he had found my hiding place so precisely and even laid a Demonic Powder trap in advance. He wanted to force Ji Wuchen to act through me.
"And the second thing?" I asked.
He looked at me, his expression unusually serious. "The secret conversation you witnessed tonight—when he said he wanted to seize the 'Pseudo-Primordial Body,' he was not coming for you. He was coming for me."
I abruptly lifted my head.
"He does not know that I have regained my mobility, but he knows that a constitution fluctuation that should not exist has suddenly appeared in this world." He paused. "And you bear traces it left behind. That is why he suspects there is a connection between us."
The room fell silent for a time.
The candle flame flickered, casting light over the faint red scar on his left cheek, as though an old wound were breathing.
I lowered my head to look at my arm. The skin corroded by Demonic Powder was slowly healing. Black blood seeped from the edges of the wound, only to be forced back bit by bit by that golden light.
"Why are you helping me?" I finally asked. "We have never been allies."
He did not answer at once. Instead, he took a jade vial from his robes, poured out a dark golden pill, and offered it to me.
"Take this. It will suppress the lingering poison," he said. "As for why I'm helping you... three years ago, you saved a dying cripple in the Black Market. Do you remember?"
I froze.
At that time, I had just escaped from the Ji Clan's side residence and survived by gathering herbs to sell. A youth had been thrown into an alley, covered in wounds and without a trace of breath. I had not wanted to get involved, but there had still been a flicker of light between his brows, so I fed him a drop of my essence blood.
When I returned later, he was already gone.
"It was you?" My voice was hoarse.
He nodded. "That drop of your blood kept me alive until the system activated. From that day onward, I owed you a life."
I watched him for a long while before finally reaching out, taking the pill, and placing it in my mouth. The moment the medicinal power dissolved, the restless blood and qi within me finally settled.
He turned to leave.
"Wait." I stopped him. "You knew he would fake his death. Why didn't you warn me?"
He halted before the door, his back straight as a pine.
"If I warned you, you would not have investigated," he said softly. "Some truths must be seen with your own eyes before you will believe them. And besides..."
He looked back at me.
"I also wanted to know whether, in order to uncover the truth, you were willing to place yourself in the jaws of death."
As his words fell, wind suddenly swept past outside the door, making the candle flame sway violently. I looked up and saw two shadows cast upon the window paper—one standing, one sitting, close enough to seem like old friends who had shared a room for years.
But there were only the two of us in the room.
Ji Wuchen noticed it as well. His brows furrowed as he was about to move, but the shadow vanished in a flash, as if it had never existed.
He stared at the window paper for two breaths and said nothing.
I gripped the medicinal pestle until my knuckles turned white.
In that instant just now, the extra shadow had been wearing the Cloud Pattern Official Robe Yan Jiuxiao often wore.
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