Black smoke billowed over the archives.
When Li Sanshun arrived, flames were shooting out of all three windows. More than a dozen disciples rushed inside with buckets of water, but the defensive formation had sealed the main entrance.
A steward held up an Array Tablet, his forehead slick with sweat.
"The gates won't recognize the token!"
Xiong Baichuan swung his Copper Hammer.
"Out of the way! I'll smash the door down!"
"Not yet."
Li Sanshun leaned close to the crack in the door and inhaled a lungful of smoke.
The hot smoke stung his lungs, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
[Fire oil detected.]
[Fire-Starting Hemp and Red Phosphorus Powder detected.]
[Burning scrolls: faint.]
The fire had been burning for a while, yet there was barely any scent of burning paper.
The things burning inside weren't old records at all.
"Xu Zhenchuan was willing to set the fire, but not to burn the people inside."
Li Sanshun looked around.
The disciples carrying water were in disarray. Some were ramming the door, others were pulling apart the windows, and a few were carrying fire-extinguishing sand toward the back wall.
Four people hadn't touched the buckets.
They stood apart at the four corners of the building, each carrying a Fire-Sealing Jar.
"Peak Master Xiong, smash the wall on the right."
Xiong Baichuan turned and swung his hammer.
Boom!
Half the brick wall collapsed.
A wave of heat burst through the breach, and the disciples nearby hurriedly backed away. Li Sanshun, however, charged inside over the broken bricks.
The fire inside was raging.
Fire-Starting Hemp covered the passageway, and fire oil ran through the gaps between the bricks. All four rows of wooden cabinets were ablaze, with the flames racing toward the Xuan-Class old records and the West Mountain Mining Ledger.
"Water-Element Technique!"
Several disciples from the main peaks attacked at once.
Their streams of water suppressed the flames by the entrance, but the fire oil on the floor flowed outward with the water, spreading the fire even wider.
"Stop!"
Li Sanshun kicked over the sand chest beside him and used the Earth-Element Technique to block the drainage channel.
"Fire oil floats on water. Sloshing it around will only make the fire spread faster. Cut off the flames in four places first!"
Xiong Baichuan led his men inside. His Copper Hammer smashed through two rows of wooden racks, cutting off the path of the fire.
The four disciples who had been carrying Fire-Sealing Jars followed them in.
One headed straight for Xuan-Class Cabinet 3.
Another circled toward the old mining ledgers.
The remaining two rushed toward the Imperial Old Case and the Armory Transfer Order.
Once inside, the four didn't fight the fire. Each grabbed a file and shoved it into their robes.
Li Sanshun stood at the end of the passageway.
"Finally decided to take them?"
All four froze at once.
The disciple who had grabbed the mining ledger dropped his Fire-Sealing Jar and flung out a Fire Talisman.
The talisman struck a cabinet.
Bang!
The cabinet door split open, and all the records inside burst into flames.
The other three turned and ran.
Xiong Baichuan blocked the main entrance, holding his Copper Hammer across his chest.
"Take one more step, and I'll break your legs!"
The four didn't stop.
They crushed their Fire-Sealing Jars, releasing a cloud of red powder. The powder touched the flames, and the entire passageway went up in fire.
A burning beam fell from the roof, blocking Xiong Baichuan's path.
Using the smoke and fire as cover, the four rushed toward the breach in the right wall.
Just as they reached it, a Law Enforcement Chain shot into the archives and wrapped around the ankles of the two in front.
They fell among the broken bricks.
The other two drew short swords and lunged toward where the chain had come from.
Gu Qinghe stood outside the wall.
She was still wearing the plain robes she'd had on when she was confined to the Quiet Room, and a broken length of Sealing Chain trailed from her right hand.
"The archives on Law Enforcement Peak are on fire. I have the right to break the seal and save the records."
One of them swung his sword at her.
Gu Qinghe turned aside, letting it miss. Her chain wrapped around the hilt, and she yanked it downward. The sword fell to the ground, and she kicked its owner back into the archives.
The other had just begun forming a hand seal when Li Sanshun appeared through the flames and punched him in the stomach.
He doubled over, and the Fire Talisman in his hand fell to the ground.
Li Sanshun stamped it out.
"After hiding all this time, is burning down your own archives all you can manage?"
Gu Qinghe didn't chase them after entering.
She went to the west wall and pulled aside an inconspicuous iron ring.
A mechanism turned inside the wall.
Four Fire-Blocking Stone Slabs dropped from the roof, separating the passageways. Right after that, the water channels overhead flipped open, pouring their stored water into the four sections of the fire.
The fire oil tried to flow outward, but Li Sanshun had already blocked the drainage channel.
The water kept rising.
The fire oil floating on top was trapped in the compartments formed by the stone slabs, unable to spread to the other cabinets.
Gu Qinghe went to the formation platform and pulled the Fire-Suppressing Nail from its base.
The Array Patterns in the archives went dark.
The underground waterway, which had been locked, opened in turn, and the dirty water mixed with fire oil flowed into the Fire-Blocking Pool. The remaining flames didn't last long before the main-peak disciples extinguished them all.
The four undercover disciples were also pinned to the ground.
Xiong Baichuan kicked apart the burned Xuan-Class Cabinet.
A dozen or so scrolls fell out, their covers charred black.
"What about the Old Infant Case?"
"Burned."
One of the undercover disciples was sprawled on the ground, yet still managed to laugh.
"All fifteen Infant Blood Old Files, the West Mountain miners' account books, and Gu Changyue's Furnace Sealing Order from back then—they've all burned to ash."
Gu Qinghe picked up a damaged scroll.
Its pages had burned to ash.
But the Imperial Old Seal on its cover remained.
She turned to Li Sanshun.
"Where are the real documents?"
"The Corpse Room."
The undercover disciple stopped laughing.
Li Sanshun took a small key from his robe.
After the Sealing Registry assassin stole the Mystic-15 Sealing Sword, he'd guessed that Xu Zhenchuan would clean up the remaining records.
Before heading to Furnace No. 7, he had asked Zhao Rui to switch out the Imperial Old Case, the West Mountain Mining Ledger, and Gu Changyue's Furnace Sealing Order, hiding them in the Cold Corpse Cabinet at the innermost part of the Law Enforcement Peak Corpse Room.
The corpse cabinet was cast from black iron and sealed on the outside with a Corpse Plague Seal.
Living people avoided it.
The spies wouldn't open it either.
Everything left in the archives was a fake, copied from the original records.
Each fake file had been placed in a different spot.
Whoever came for which file would reveal what order they had received.
Xiong Baichuan looked down at the four men.
"How long have you been on Law Enforcement Peak?"
No one answered.
Zhao Rui arrived with his men and set an Iron Casket on the table.
Inside lay the complete Old Infant Case, the mining ledgers, and the Furnace Sealing Order. Their seals were intact, and not even the edges of the pages had gotten wet.
"All the evidence has been recovered."
He also searched the four undercover disciples and found four orders.
Each one listed a single target.
The Imperial infant case.
The West Mountain Mining Ledger.
The Armory files.
Gu Changyue's Furnace Sealing Order.
Each bore the Deputy Hall Master seal of Xu Zhenchuan.
Gu Qinghe pieced the four orders together. The corners fit to form half of a Black Mountain Crest.
"A division order from the Old Dark Patrol Guard."
She looked up at the four men.
"Where is Xu Zhenchuan?"
One of them clenched his jaw.
Li Sanshun pried open his mouth and dug an undamaged Soul-Devouring Tooth out from behind his molars.
"Fang Shao died from one of these, and you still want to try?"
Rapid hoofbeats sounded outside.
A Law Enforcement disciple crashed through the breach in the wall, his left arm covered in blood.
"Steward Gu, Peak Master Xiong, Xu Zhenchuan took the Law Enforcement Hall's elite forces to the Judgment Platform!"
Gu Qinghe grabbed his arm.
"Where's my father?"
"Hall Master Gu had just arrived at the Judgment Platform when Xu Zhenchuan sealed off all four roads and produced the Imperial Treason Order in front of everyone."
One of the undercover disciples on the ground spat out a mouthful of blood and looked up with a laugh.
"What good will saving a few dead scrolls do you?"
"Deputy Hall Master Xu has already surrounded Gu Changyue. He wants the Gu father and daughter to confess together tonight!"
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