Chương 112: For Once, Not Enemies (3/3)

She believed, even if you, a young master born into wealth and privilege, would still be enticed by some treasure, right?

Yet, despite all of what she was saying, her gaze briefly fluttered downward to his weapon—a flicker of assessment, instinct checking whether the threat had shifted. The black iron blade did not move. Its edge remained angled toward her throat with the same cold precision as before, neither wavering nor retreating by so much as a hair's breadth.

But she paid it no mind, or at least, she showed no outward sign of concern.

"On the surface, Cloud-Mirror Sect has sealed the place under the excuse of suppressing a corrupted zone. In truth, they have already begun moving men in secret."

Her voice remained level, each syllable measured and deliberate, as though speaking of a matter already decided by fate itself. The frost-white mist curling from her lips dissipated slowly into the sulfurous fog surrounding them, mingling with the oppressive miasma that clung to every surface.

"Outer disciples, hired hands, transport beasts, formation materials." She tilted her head ever so slightly, the pale scar along her jawline catching a sliver of sickly green light from a nearby corpse-lantern.

"They are not guarding ruin-born scrap. They are preparing to swallow a supreme foundation before word can spread."

She paused for a moment, letting the implication settle like sediment in still water. Her eyes—sharp, calculating—fixed upon Shi Yan's cold iron mask, searching for any crack in that impenetrable façade.

"Do you know why?"

The question hung in the frigid air between them.

"The thing hidden in that Shattered Realm is Celestial Marrow."

Even in the dim plaza, surrounded by bone-ash and the distant hiss of black condensation striking stone, the name seemed to gather weight. It pressed down upon the space between them like an invisible hand, heavy with ancient significance and the promise of power that transcended mortal comprehension.

"A treasure from before the present era." Her tone did not rise, did not embellish—she spoke as one reciting immutable truth.

"For one cultivator, it may serve as the foundation to break through a major realm."

She let that truth breathe before continuing.

"For a sect, it is enough to tilt the balance of strength for decades." Her gaze rested squarely on the iron mask, pupils contracting slightly as if trying to pierce through the dark grilles and see the eyes hidden beneath.

"Such a thing cannot be bought. It cannot be begged for. Whoever wishes to obtain it must step forward before others do."

Yet despite all of this—despite the weight of her words, the gravity of the prize she dangled before him—she saw... nothing.

This cold masked man said nothing.

His breathing had not changed. His posture had not shifted. The massive blade in his gauntleted hand remained as steady as if carved from the same obsidian beneath their feet. Even the leather at his joints, pulled taut by the weapon's immense weight, gave off no new sound beyond the faint creaking that had been present from the beginning.

Thus, she continued, adjusting her approach. Her tone smoothed into something almost conversational—or rather, more personal, as if acknowledging an unspoken kinship between those who walked dangerous paths.

"And you, young master—a man who conceals his face in the Ghost Market, who carries black iron heavier than most men can lift, and who stands untouched before the Stele's corruption—is not the sort to be satisfied with the scraps tossed down by local powers, I guess?"

Her eyes flicked once more to the heavy saber in his hand, tracing the fused seam where dead iron met demonic bone, the unnatural marriage of materials that should never have been joined. The corpse-lantern light slid along its polished edge like oil on water.

"Whether you are a hidden disciple, a scion traveling incognito, or simply an expert walking a solitary road, the fortune inside that realm ought to interest you."

She let the words settle, watching for the slightest shift in his stance, the barest hint of reaction.

"The miasma there is no ordinary miasma. The traps are no ordinary traps. Those who rely on common methods to protect mind and soul will die before they ever glimpse the inner grounds."

A brief pause followed, measured and deliberate as a chess move.

"But you are different."

There it was again—that careful note between praise and testing, threaded through her words like silk wrapped around a blade's edge.

"What others cannot approach, you can. What others dare not touch, you may seize first." If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The fog churned sluggishly around them, repelled by some unseen pressure emanating from the distant Stele. The acrid vapor rising from where black condensation struck bone-ash stung the back of the throat, bitter and caustic.

Then her expression cooled by a fraction, the faint warmth draining from her voice as pragmatism reasserted itself.

"Of course, brute strength alone is not enough. The interior terrain shifts along Pre-Epoch lines. The old steles, burial seals, and broken arrays are meaningless to the ignorant. Enter blindly, and one will do no more than deliver one's body into a killing formation."

Only now did she unfold one arm from where it had been tucked against her side, slightly opening her hand in a gesture that was not quite an appeal, not quite a concession—somewhere between offering and acknowledgment.

"I can read those lines."

The plaza fell quiet except for the distant, rhythmic dripping of something foul from unseen eaves, and the faint hiss of the Stele's corruption eating away at the ash beneath it.

"You can endure what I cannot. I can decipher what you cannot. If we join hands for this venture, then Cloud-Mirror need not be the only one to feast."

A faint, restrained smile touched the corner of her scarred jaw, careful not to show teeth, not to presume too much familiarity.

"As for what lies within, it can be divided according to ability."

Outwardly, her offer was impeccable.

She had neither lowered herself into supplication nor spoken with the arrogance of one holding all the cards. She gave him face, offered tangible profit, and left enough unsaid for a dangerous man to imagine the greater half of the prize with his own mind—to let greed do the work her words could not.

But behind the calm of her eyes, behind the measured composure of her scarred features, her thoughts were taut as drawn wire, strung so tight they threatened to snap.

Take the bait, take the bait… take the bait…

So long as he agreed to enter—so long as he committed himself to the venture—the rest could be managed later. Variables could be controlled. Outcomes could be adjusted. She need only secure his agreement now, in this moment, before he walked away beyond her reach.

…

Yet unknown to her, behind the Iron-Yaksha mask, Shi Yan examined her in silence.

Interesting... she also knew about Celestial Marrow?

One of his eyebrows raised slightly beneath the iron, though the expression remained invisible to her scrutiny.

But still... knowing it didn't mean she was on the same side as him.

Not only that, her words were neat. Too neat.

She had said much about what he stood to gain, much about what only he could do, and just enough about her own use to make the arrangement seem balanced—a partnership of equals, each bringing indispensable value to the table.

That alone was enough to expose the lie beneath it.

If she truly held an equal position in this bargain, she would not be standing in a narrow plaza before an armed stranger, swallowing her temper and speaking of cooperation while a blade rested at her throat and the corrupting aura of an ancient monument pressed down upon them both.

So… In short, she needed him far more than she wished to admit?

His blade remained raised, unmoving as stone.

…

"No."

The word landed hard, cutting through her carefully woven narrative like a cleaver through silk.

And Shi Yan noticed this woman's smile fade, the expression draining from her face as if someone had drawn a curtain across it. The frost-white mist from her next breath came slower, more controlled—an involuntary tell that she was reining in her reaction.

"If you truly possessed the key to a supreme foundation, you would never be lurking in a shadowed alley, seeking to share such a heaven-defying fortune with a stranger."

His voice carried no heat, no accusation—only the flat, clinical assessment of a soldier identifying flaws in enemy intelligence.

"You have spoken well of my worth," he added, the leather of his gauntlet creaking faintly as his grip adjusted by the barest fraction, "yet you deliberately avoid the true matter—if I have no need of you, why would I come here at all?"

His blade did not tremble in the slightest, the 150-pound weapon held as steady as a mountain root despite its weight.

"In my view, anyone willing to divide an unexpected blessing so readily must be concealing a deadly snare," Shi Yan said, tearing through the bait she had so carefully laid, stripping away the ornamental language and revealing the bare bones of motive beneath.

"I have no habit of stepping into matters I cannot see through. Speak clearly. What danger is it that you cannot overcome alone? And for what reason have you truly come here?"

The point of the heavy saber held steady before her neck, close enough that she could feel the faint displacement of air around its edge, the subtle pressure of its presence against her skin without actual contact.

"What do you really want?"

Her fingers tightened inside her sleeves, knuckles pressing against fabric in a tell she could not quite suppress. The Yin-Qi gathered near her boots stirred slightly, responding to the tension coiling through her meridians, though she made no move to circulate it.

For a moment, neither side moved.

The sulfurous fog continued its lazy drift. The corpse-lanterns flickered with their sickly green luminescence. The Stele wept its black poison onto the ash behind them, hissing and dissolving into acrid vapor that clawed at the throat.

Then Shi Yan said, "I'll give you three breaths."

The statement was not a threat. It was not posturing.

It was a countdown.

…

That was when the structure she had built in her mind cracked.

No circling. No posturing. No measured exchange of hidden meanings wrapped in courteous language and carefully calibrated deference.

He had taken the intricate dance of cultivator bargaining—the elaborate ritual of face-saving and implication—and crushed it into a single naked truth: one of them had leverage, and it was not her.

The woman exhaled slowly, the frost-white mist escaping her lips in a longer plume than before.

When she spoke again, the careful cadence from before was gone, stripped away like dead bark from a tree.

"Fine."

Her eyes met the slits of his mask directly, no longer searching for reaction but simply accepting the reality before her.

"I need you because I cannot read the Stele myself."

At once, the air in the plaza seemed to sharpen, the oppressive weight of the Stele's presence suddenly more immediate, more relevant to the conversation.

"I possess the cipher needed to interpret the coordinates engraved upon it. But the raw markings are corrupted."

Her voice had lost its smoothness, becoming rougher, more direct—the voice of someone who had run out of options and knew it.

"Any living cultivator who stares directly at them for too long will have their sea of consciousness invaded. If they are fortunate, they bleed from the eyes and cripple their foundations. If they are not, their dantian collapses where they stand."

She tilted her head slightly toward the ruined corpse sprawled beside the distant monument, its limbs twisted at unnatural angles, fingers clawed deep into the ruined sockets where eyes had once been. Dried blood crusted black along its cheeks and jaw, frozen in the rictus of final agony.

"The one you saw lasted one hundred and twenty breaths. That was already exceptional."

A brief silence settled between them, heavy with implication.

"The thing I seek in that Shattered Realm is not Celestial Marrow."

Now, at last, a trace of something real entered her voice—not fear, but bitterness sharpened into hatred, honed over long months until it had become a blade in its own right.

"It is a Yin-Purging Lotus."

Shi Yan did not respond, his masked face offering nothing, so she continued, the words coming faster now, as if a dam had broken and everything behind it came flooding through.

"Two months ago, my master unraveled the outermost restrictions of that ruin for the Cloud-Mirror Sect. Yet once his usefulness was exhausted, one of their elders repaid merit with malice, striking him with a rot-curse rather than honoring the promised reward. They intended to leave him lingering at death's door, lest he carry what he knew to another power."

Her expression grew cold, her jaw set hard as frost, the pale scar along its length standing out stark against her skin. The green corpse-light reflected in her eyes, giving them an almost ghostly quality.

"That Lotus is the only remedy still within our grasp."

When she spoke again, every word was plain and stripped of ornament, bare truth laid out like bones on a table.

"Whatever guards you is able to withstand the soul-taint of the Stele. You will draw near. You will look upon it. You will trace its markings according to my instructions. From afar, I shall observe through a mirror and decipher the path."

Her pride had not vanished—it still burned in the set of her shoulders, the way she held her spine straight despite the blade at her throat—yet now it stood exposed before dire necessity, forced into the open by circumstances beyond her control.

"You seek the greater fortune hidden within that realm. I seek for my master to live."

She paused for a breath, the frost-white mist curling upward.

"For once, these two aims do not stand opposed."