Mo Hua and Old Mo exchanged a glance, but neither spoke.
Just then, Dashan, who had inhaled the hallucinogenic powder, woke up. Rubbing his forehead, he glanced at Old Mo and Mo Hua, then frowned.
"Why are there only you two? Where's the scholar?"
Old Mo remained silent.
Mo Hua's gaze dimmed slightly. After a moment, he sighed. "The scholar... lost his footing and died in the mechanisms."
Dashan froze at those words, then suddenly startled. Turning around, he saw the mechanism passage splattered with blood—and the scholar, already reduced to a mangled heap of flesh, the luster of his Golden Core having dimmed.
The ghastly sight drained the color from Dashan's face.
Then he abruptly turned to Mo Hua and asked, "The scholar... was proficient in Mechanism Arts. How could he possibly die in a mechanism?"
Mo Hua cast Old Mo a faint glance before saying,
"The scholar... didn't die because of Mechanism Arts. The hallucinogenic powder clouded his mind, causing him to take a wrong step and accidentally trigger the mechanisms. That was why he died. And before he died, he seemed to have been muttering something... Miao'er?"
Dashan was clearly no stranger to the name "Miao'er." At once, fury and anger rose in him. He spat and cursed,
"Damn it, I told him long ago that he'd die because of a woman. He ran to Jade Spring Pavilion every day, chasing that soul-stealing pleasure. Then, at the critical moment, his mind went astray, and he threw away his life."
Dashan looked once more at the scholar's unrecognizable corpse, his expression caught somewhere between mockery and pity.
"He spent his whole life loving women and mechanisms, yet because of a woman, he died miserably in a mechanism... Damn it, fate got him coming and going."
Mo Hua felt