Chương 111: For Once, Not Enemies (2/3)

While Shi Yan remained on guard, silently weighing her origins, the woman before him was calm to an unsettling degree—the kind of stillness that belonged not to the peaceful, but to those who had learned long ago that survival demanded absolute control over breath, muscle, and thought.

Though the dead iron and demonic bone blade in his hand weighed a hundred and fifty pounds and its edge rested near her throat—close enough that even the faintest shift in angle would split flesh—she did not raise so much as a thread of Qi to shield herself. No shimmer of protective energy. No tremor of defensive intent. Her aura remained flat, cold, and utterly unreactive, like ice left undisturbed beneath a frozen lake.

Such composure suggested two possibilities: arrogant certainty, or the good sense to know that the slightest panic would provoke his killing stroke. Either way, it marked her as dangerous.

"I saw the Weeping Funeral Procession pass by you as though you did not exist," she said.

Her gaze never left the iron mask upon his face, tracking the slits where his eyes lay hidden behind dark grilles. Her voice remained even, yet beneath that composure lay carefully hidden curiosity—a faint tremor in the cadence, so subtle it might have been mistaken for the vibration of distant thunder through stone.

She was not threatening him.

She was merely laying out the facts.

"And I saw you bargain with a Jiuli Fiend to forge a heavy weapon—one that would ordinarily peel the flesh from a living man's bones before the bargain was done."

Her eyes shifted slightly toward the massive blade in his grasp, tracing the fused seam where black iron met demonic bone. The sickly green glow of the corpse-lanterns reflected off the polished edge, casting faint ripples of light across her scarred jawline.

"It attempted to seize your vessel, did it not? I saw corpse-gas pour into your lungs." Her tone dropped, quieter now, as though speaking aloud a forbidden theorem.

"Yet instead of wearing your skin, that Fiend shrank back like a whipped cur."

Shi Yan did not reply.

His silence this time was heavier than before—weighted not by hesitation, but by cold calculation. He had no intention of lowering his weapon, though one with a keen eye might have noticed the leather at the joints of his gauntleted hand tighten slightly, creaking faintly as tension coiled through tendon and bone. The obsidian floor beneath his rear boot ground faintly against compacted ash, redistributing his stance by fractions to better absorb recoil if he had to strike.

"I did not come seeking battle," she said calmly, having sensed the change in his intent—the way his breathing had shifted rhythm, the way his center of gravity had sunk lower.

"I came seeking a key."

She lifted one slender finger and pointed past his shoulder toward the towering, weeping monolith standing in the heart of the plaza. Thin trails of condensation dripped down its surface, hissing faintly where they struck the bone-ash below and dissolved into acrid vapor. The fog around it churned sluggishly, repelled by some invisible pressure that emanated from the monument's core.

…

From her point of view, the man before her was an impossibility given flesh.

She had been following him ever since he descended from the upper catacombs of the Sump, trailing him through narrow passages choked with rot and echoing with the distant wails of the restless dead. Her boots had pressed into the same bone-dust he'd scattered, her breath had mingled with the same sulfurous miasma he'd walked through without flinching.

At first, she had taken him for nothing more than some arrogant young master who had come below to test the waters of the ghost midnight market—perhaps the reckless son of some outer sect elder, brimming with confidence borne from a handful of talismans and a spatial ring stuffed with spirit stones.

She had tailed him expecting the Ghost Market to devour him whole. When that happened, she had intended to quietly gather whatever remained after the local horrors had finished gnawing on his corpse—salvage the pouches, claim the artifacts, leave nothing but picked-clean bones for the ash to swallow.

But he had not died.

She had watched the blind, soul-starved ghosts of the funeral procession part around him as though he were no more remarkable than a weathered pillar of rusted iron. Their translucent forms had drifted past him on either side, their hollow eye sockets gazing through him rather than at him, their keening wails softening to murmurs as they passed. Not once had they turned. Not once had they lunged.

At first, she assumed he possessed some rare artifact or talisman that concealed a cultivator's Qi and caused him to seem mortal. Such things were not unheard of—concealment jades passed down through declining clans, ghost-silk veils woven from the shrouds of forgotten saints, seals carved by masters of the Dao of Emptiness.

But to deceive the funeral procession?

That had shaken her.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. The procession fed on Yang. It hunted life. It sensed the warmth of beating hearts and the glow of cultivated souls the way vultures sensed carrion on the wind. No talisman should have been enough to hide him—not here, not in the Yellow Springs, where illusion and concealment were stripped bare by the weight of death itself.

Then she had seen an ancient six-armed nether-smith attempt to seize him by force of spirit, only to recoil in violent terror, as though it had touched something it was never meant to perceive. The Fiend's body had convulsed, its limbs jerking backward in unnatural angles, its furnace-mouth vomiting black smoke as it scuttled away like a scorched insect fleeing flame.

Impossible.

She narrowed her eyes, her pupils contracting to pinpricks as her mind raced through every explanation she had ever learned, every forbidden theorem whispered in dark corners of sect libraries, every fragment of lore traded in blood and silence.

Not the slightest trace of Qi escaped him.

By itself, that proved little. Any seasoned cultivator could suppress their aura—even a Foundation Establishment junior could clamp down on their spiritual fluctuations if they were disciplined enough. It was basic tradecraft, the first lesson taught to scouts and assassins.

To suppress one's aura merely stilled spiritual fluctuations. It did not erase the Dantian. It did not sever one's connection to Heaven. It did not unmake the soul.

A concealment art could deceive spiritual senses and blur one's realm, masking the difference between Tier-1 and Tier-2, or hiding a Nascent Soul beneath the appearance of a mortal. Yet even the finest secret methods could not bury everything. Yang vitality still radiated warmth. Soul resonance still hummed at frequencies beyond mortal hearing. Karmic threads still clung to one's fate like spider silk stretched between lives.

The faint pressure carried by one who still walked beneath Heaven—the weight of existence acknowledged by the Dao itself—could not be wholly erased.

And here, within the Yellow Springs, such deceits ought to have been useless.

Yin perceived Yang.

Death perceived life.

This place stripped falsehood bare, the way acid stripped paint from iron. Illusions dissolved. Disguises melted. Even those who had lived a thousand years in borrowed skins found themselves exposed beneath the gaze of the restless dead.

Yet before her, there was nothing.

No spiritual pressure pressing against her senses like the weight of distant mountains.

No Dantian she could perceive—no swirling core of condensed Qi nestled below the navel, no reservoir of cultivated energy waiting to be unleashed.

No Yang essence bleeding warmth into the frigid air.

No stirring of soul—no flicker of consciousness that resonated with the fabric of the world, no ember of selfhood that marked him as a creature bound to the cycle of reincarnation.

Even his killing intent failed to disturb the world around him. When a true cultivator prepared to strike, the air itself trembled. Spiritual pressure rippled outward like heat-shimmer over sun-baked stone. The ambient Qi shifted, drawn toward the cultivator's will or repelled by it. But this man—nothing. Even the surrounding Yin Qi flowed past him as though he were empty air, unaffected and unacknowledged, a hollow shape cut from the world and left to drift.

Her heartbeat gradually slowed, each beat deliberate and controlled as she forced calm through her meridians.

Impossible. No mortal could enter the ghost midnight market. It was a fact—if not, the gatekeeper wouldn't even let any mortal in. The threshold itself was warded, bound by ancient pacts and blood-oaths that forbade the living from crossing unless they carried the mark of cultivation or the blessing of a spirit. Mortals who tried to force their way through were either repelled, driven mad, or consumed on the spot.

Unless...

A Heaven-defying concealment art?

A supreme relic that hid not merely cultivation, but existence itself?

Some forgotten inheritance capable of veiling Qi, soul, karma, fate—even one's place beneath the Heavenly Dao? The kind of treasure that ancient sects waged wars to possess, that caused empires to crumble and immortals to slaughter their own disciples in greed-fueled frenzy?

It was the only explanation she could accept.

Therefore...

He could not be mortal. Not to mention—how could a mortal withstand that?

Her gaze flicked toward the towering stele in the distance, its surface weeping black condensation that hissed and smoked where it struck the ground. The corrupting aura radiating from that monument was strong enough to warp the minds of Tier-3 cultivators. A mortal would not last ten breaths before their thoughts unraveled like wet silk pulled apart by invisible hands.

To ensure her judgment was not mistaken, she needed to know whether his protection only concealed his presence or if it could also withstand the corruption of this place.

"You have stood exactly one hundred feet from the Stele of the Sunken Celestials for more than four hundred breaths," she said, her tone level as frost-white mist drifted from her lips, dissipating slowly into the sulfurous fog around them.

She gestured toward the corpse lying sprawled beside the ancient monument—its limbs twisted at unnatural angles, its fingers clawed deep into the sockets where its eyes had been, dried blood crusted black along its cheeks and jaw.

"That man was a Tier-3 cultivator, one whole realm above many who wander this place. A Shattered Halo." Her voice took on a faint edge, the barest hint of grim respect for the dead.

"Even so, he endured the Stele's corruption for barely one hundred and twenty breaths before its soul-polluting force boiled his mind and drove him to claw out his own eyes."

Her gaze returned to the iron mask covering Shi Yan's face, studying the dark grilles, the faint reflections of green light dancing across the iron surface.

"Yet your breathing has not changed."

"Your stance has not shifted."

"You carry no Qi."

"You release no spiritual pressure."

Her eyes narrowed further, the pale scar along her jawline pulling taut as the muscles beneath tensed.

"The Yellow Springs perceives all living things. It should strip away every disguise."

She paused, letting the weight of her words settle into the frigid air between them.

"Whatever Heaven-defying art or supreme relic you possess..."

"... looks like even the laws of life and death cannot perceive you."

…

On the other hand, Shi Yan neither admitted nor denied her words.

Information was an advantage.

To affirm her speculation—or to correct her mistaken belief that he relied on some artifact—without gaining anything in return would be foolish. Letting an unknown opponent act upon false assumptions was often more useful than clearing away their ignorance. If she believed him invincible, she would hesitate. If she believed him dependent on a treasure, she might grow greedy—but greed could be predicted. Controlled. Exploited.

Thus, he merely kept his heavy saber angled toward her throat, silently calculating that with his [55 Agility], he could sever her neck in less than a breath if she tried to circulate the biting Yin-Qi gathered near her boots. The edge of the blade hovered steady, the weight balanced perfectly along the line of his extended arm. No tremor. No waver. Just cold, mechanical readiness.

Meanwhile, seeing that he had no intention of cooperating, her eyes narrowed slightly. But the corners of her lips curled up just a fraction—barely perceptible, a ghost of expression that might have been amusement or grim satisfaction.

His silence meant… yes?

So it's true. It is some kind of divine, Heaven-defying relic.

For a brief moment, her gaze flashed with naked, primal greed—the raw, unfiltered hunger that lived in every cultivator's heart, the desire to seize, to consume, to ascend by standing atop the corpses of those who possessed what one coveted. The instinct screamed at her to kill him. To dig out his soul with a soul-rending blade, seize his spatial pouch before its bio-lock faded, and strip the supreme concealment artifact from his dead hands while his blood still steamed on the bone-ash floor.

But that killing intent only blinked for a fraction of a second before her cold pragmatism utterly extinguished it, smothering the impulse like a palm pressed over a candle flame.

To strike at an unknown existence who could stand before the Stele and remain untouched by its corrupting radiance was no different from courting death. She had seen arrogance kill stronger cultivators than herself. She had watched greed turn Nascent Soul elders into howling wraiths. She had survived eighty-seven years in a world that devoured the weak not because she was the strongest, but because she knew when danger outweighed profit.

She had her pride; lowering her head to some nameless expert lurking in the dark did not suit her nature. Yet force had yielded nothing, probing had yielded nothing, and outright murder was clearly impossible.

So she chose a different path.

In the cultivation world, there was no lure more reliable than fortune, inheritance, and the chance to seize what others could not. Greed was predictable. Ambition was universal. Even the most cautious expert would hesitate before a dangled treasure.

"Upon that Stele are carved the true coordinates and inner topography of a Shattered Realm," she said evenly, "A Secret Realm presently tied to the Cloud-Mirror Sect."