"...Would Qu Zhu not know where this place was?"
"He most likely would. Perhaps he has already taken it away."
"..."
"But since we are already indulging in wishful thinking, why not take it all the way?" Zhang Xiaozhu looked at him. "Perhaps Sima really is that deeply suspicious a man. The formation diagram drawn on his body was his final trump card, and where that card was concerned, he would trust no one."
Pei Ye fell silent.
Indeed, the two lords had already thought through everything he could think of. That took a considerable weight off him. Then, if this possibility really proved true, what would happen?
Qu Zhu would not flee far away.
That figure surfaced before his eyes again: the rainy night, the tattered black robe, the bloodstained gray hair, the eerily cold Play Mask... Behind that image, Pei Ye suddenly saw another version of him.
He had held no real power, but had spent twenty years with his life in someone else's hands. Then all that he had done for the Joy-in-Death Tower... what had it been for?
The [Heart of the Western Court], of course.
He had traded his freedom and life for the Joy-in-Death Tower's power, to obtain the thing that had oppressed the Hushan Sword Gate for thousands of years. Then, before he had obtained it, would he really leave to save his own life, even if the Joy-in-Death Tower had suffered utter defeat?
In the Snow Mountain valley, before the bronze hall, that furious, agonized young face seemed to appear behind the black robe. Pei Ye recognized it, of course-or rather, apart from Pei Ye, no one in this world recognized it anymore.
He would certainly try to take it away.
Zhang Xiaozhu said, "We did indeed discover several faintly discernible hidden