Just as White Snow was about to push the door open, Old Ironhead's Iron Hand clamped down on her wing.
"Wait." Old Ironhead narrowed his single eye to a slit. "It's a trap."
White Snow fought down the urge to charge inside, her golden eyes fixed on the altar. Qing Feng was only fifty zhang away. She could clearly see Master’s Wife’s lowered eyelashes trembling, the mottled bloodstains on her green robes. Every breath felt like someone carving a knife through her heart.
But she trusted Old Ironhead.
"Xiaoqi," White Snow said quietly. "Check the floor."
Tie Xiaoqi took a bronze mirror from her toolbox and slipped it through the gap in the stone doors, its surface facing down. Formation-Peeping Runes were engraved on its back, allowing it to reflect the flow of spiritual energy beneath the floor. It was a makeshift trick she had learned from the old woman with the missing leg back in Iron Bone Stockade, and now it proved invaluable.
One glance was enough to change her expression.
“Teacher Bai...” Tie Xiaoqi's voice tightened. “The entire altar floor is covered in a formation. It's triggered by contact. The moment anyone steps inside, it'll detonate.”
White Snow leaned over to look into the bronze mirror. Countless dark red lines wove a web beneath the surface, radiating outward from the stone platform at the altar's center in twelve main channels, each branching into hundreds of smaller channels. The entire altar was an enormous web of death.
"Can you break it?" White Snow asked.
Tie Xiaoqi bit her lip. "This isn't a mechanism. It's a formation. I can dismantle mechanisms, but formations..."
"Move aside," White Snow said in a low voice.
She pushed the stone doors open, but did not step inside. Standing on the threshold, she sent the