Chương 113: Do I Still Need Her? (1/3)

Oh? A classic betrayal.

Beneath the Iron-Yaksha mask, Shi Yan's brow raised slightly upon hearing her story—the minute shift of muscle invisible to the world beyond cold iron, yet carrying the weight of recognition all the same.

Beyond the tragedy of it, he had just learned a crucial piece of tactical intelligence: a sect as powerful and famous as Cloud-Mirror didn't even possess their own dedicated ruin-decoding team. They had to outsource black-ops intelligence to a rogue contractor, and then botched the cleanup.

Tsk. Sloppy procedural security.

Besides that, this woman's proposal aligned perfectly with his own operational needs.

Though his original host body had technically been a disciple of the Cloud-Mirror Sect, those inherited memories were virtually useless for this level of infiltration. The previous host had been a lowly outer disciple—and merely part of a peripheral branch, at that. While the original body had visited the main sect only a few times, most of his time had been spent in Skycloud City, far removed from the inner circles where true power and secrets dwelled.

In short, Shi Yan knew nothing of the main sect's ancestral grounds, let alone the topography of a sealed Shattered Realm—those twisting, rule-broken spaces where even experienced cultivators perished in silence.

Thus, this woman's intelligence, her eagerness, and the desperate motivation behind her goal provided the perfect missing asset. The math was finally clean.

"Done," Shi Yan finally said, his voice carrying the flat finality of a sealed contract.

Slowly, deliberately, he shifted his wrist. The massive, hundred-and-fifty-pound heavy saber lowered a few inches, the dense weight of dead iron and demonic bone carving a deliberate arc through the sulfurous fog. The razor-sharp edge withdrew from her throat, leaving behind only the faint memory of its presence—the phantom kiss of imminent death retreating by degrees.

However, before he could fully pull the weapon back, the woman let out a short, quiet exhale—frost-white breath bleeding into the green-tinged miasma like dissipating smoke. Then, her scarred expression hardened into profound, unyielding suspicion, the scar along her jawline catching corpse-light and throwing a thin, pale line into stark relief against her skin.

"Wait," she interrupted, her voice tight as drawn wire. Her spine straightened further, feet planted firmly on the obsidian beneath them, refusing to yield ground even as the oppressive weight of the Stele's corruption pressed down on the plaza like an invisible hand.

He had agreed too fast?

In her eyes, she was dealing with a disguised, wealthy scion—one whose motives remained shrouded, whose power remained unquantifiable, whose very existence defied the natural order of this cursed place.

"You are a young master of unknown origins, walking unseen where even ghosts are blinded," she said, her voice dropping into a tight, defensive cadence. Each word fell measured, controlled, as though she were laying down pieces on a board only she could see.

"I, on the other hand, am a rogue with nothing but a cipher in my head. My master trusted the noble word of a great sect, and his reward was a rotting curse in his marrow."

Her eyes flicked to the heavy saber—still half-lowered, still radiating menace—then back to the blank, iron slits of his mask. The green glow from the corpse-lanterns reflected in her pupils, turning them ghostly, hollow. She was not backing down.

"That Cloud-Mirror Sect—they call themselves righteous, and yet they still butcher their own." Bitterness threaded through her tone like poison seeping into clear water.

"I do not know you. I will not navigate a death-area and map coordinates for a man who could simply snap my neck the moment my mirror closes and my usefulness ends."

She reached beneath her acid-burned leather cloak, fingers disappearing into shadow.

Shi Yan's muscles instantly coiled, ready to trigger a kinetic strike—weight redistributing across his rear leg, gauntleted fingers tightening fractionally around the saber's hilt. Leather creaked faintly at his joints. Behind the mask, his eyes tracked every millimeter of her movement with cold precision.

But her hands moved slowly, deliberately, both palms visible as they emerged. She was proving she held no weapon, no talisman, no hidden spiritual construct meant to lash out in desperate retaliation.

Instead, she produced a thin, needle-like spike of black jade—no longer than a finger, yet radiating an aura so cold the sulfurous fog around it visibly recoiled, curling away as though the air itself refused contact. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"I propose a Karmic Twin-Lock," she offered, her voice tight as a bowstring drawn to its limit.

"It is a standard rogue-pact for those who have no reason to trust one another."

She held the black needle up in the dim, green light of the corpse-lanterns, fingers steady despite the tension coiling through her frame. The tip practically hummed with volatile, frozen malice—a sliver of distilled Yin-Qi so dense it seemed to drink in the surrounding light, leaving only a thin halo of frost beginning to form along its surface.

"I tap this needle to my radial artery, and you tap it to yours," she explained, voice clipped and efficient, as though reciting an old formula learned long ago.

"It binds a thread of lethal Yin-Qi between our pulses. If either of us acts with killing intent or attempts to betray the other while the contract is active, the karma recognizes the malice. The Yin-Qi detonates, instantly flash-freezing the betrayer's heart valves."

The cold precision of her delivery carried no theatrics—only the grim practicality of someone who had walked too many roads lined with corpses of the trusting.

In this kind of era, where even the Heavenly Dao could fall, and betrayal was as common as breathing, mutually assured destruction was the only currency that mattered.

"It guarantees cooperation, young master." Her fingers tightened around the needle, knuckles whitening slightly against black jade.

"If we are to walk into the jaws of the Cloud-Mirror Sect, I require insurance."

Behind his iron mask, Shi Yan stared at the needle, his expression invisible but his mind racing through tactical permutations with cold efficiency.

Despite this woman's words, it was the truth. She had told him a story despite approaching him in a rather suspicious way, despite holding all the disadvantages in their initial exchange. Now the situation was quite reversed, which made it funny in a grim, ironic sort of way. She didn't know his motive, didn't know his goal—only assumed and deduced based on observation and the scant evidence of his anomalous resistance to soul-taint. And she probably realized this, which was why she proposed this method.

But a normal cultivator would view the oath as an extreme but necessary precaution—a reasonable safeguard between two strangers walking into lethal danger together. Yet for him, it was an utter impossibility.

It could not be helped. Back in his past life as a soldier, military doctrine dictated that deliberately introducing a foreign, lethal biological agent into his own bloodstream to appease a temporary asset was a catastrophic breach of operational security. Rule number one: never compromise your own physical integrity for the sake of temporary alliance. Rule number two: never trust a weapon you didn't build yourself.

Second, and far more practically, he was Daoless. He had no Qi to bind, no spiritual foundation for the needle to anchor itself to. If the needle touched his skin, it would search for a karmic tether, find absolute nothingness, and likely shatter in her hand—exposing the terrifying totality of his anomalous nature in a single, irrevocable instant.

A novice might not notice the misfire, might chalk it up to faulty craftsmanship or poor-quality jade. But a veteran like her—someone who had survived this long in a world that devoured the unprepared—would instantly perceive the lack of spiritual feedback. The absence of resonance. The void where Qi should have answered.

She currently believed he was a wealthy expert hiding behind a supreme relic, a young master with resources vast enough to shield him from soul-corruption that would reduce Foundation Establishment cultivators to weeping husks. If the needle exposed that he didn't just have his karma hidden, but that he was fundamentally empty—a walking absence in a world woven from spiritual law—her cautious offer of alliance would likely turn into pure cosmic terror or profound hostility.

Not to mention, this was her tool—an artifact she trusted her life to, one she'd likely used before, one whose function she understood intimately. There was no doubt she would find him strange if it failed to activate, if the black jade simply sat inert against his skin like dead stone. He had just seen how the Jiuli Fiend reacted to his Daoless nature, the incomprehension and fury in its roar when its curse found no purchase.

To the inhabitants of this world, an empty vessel was an abomination—something that should not, could not exist within the natural order.

But he needed her ciphers to navigate the Shattered Realm, needed her knowledge of Pre-Epoch cartography and the logic of broken formations. But… in comparison, this woman needed something from him just as badly—needed his inexplicable immunity to the Stele's corruption, needed his physical capability to withstand what would destroy her in heartbeats.

The core problem remained: he was Daoless. He could not use her needle.

The sulfurous fog churned lazily between them, carrying with it the acrid bite of corrupted spiritual energy and the distant hiss of black condensation striking bone-ash. Somewhere beyond their standoff, the ancient Stele continued its slow weeping, poison dripping in rhythmic measure—a metronome counting down to inevitable disaster.

"Impossible," Shi Yan said, his voice sinking low, cold and unyielding behind the iron slits of his mask—each word dropping like a stone into still water.

Not only did he not retreat, he advanced half a step. No more than that, but the sheer physical density of his [55 Physique] pressed against the air between them, displacing sulfurous fog and corpse-light alike. The obsidian beneath his boot scraped faintly, the sound sharp and deliberate in the oppressive silence.

"I will not allow any foreign flesh, soul, or karmic thread to bind itself to this body," he stated, each syllable carved from granite.

"I do not swear Dao oaths, nor do I place my faith in such restraints."

He could not take the risk. Even if he had the system as backup, even if failure wouldn't immediately expose him, planting a foreign object in his veins felt profoundly wrong—a violation of the fundamental principles that had kept him alive in his previous life. Never compromise your body. Never trust a leash you didn't forge yourself.

On the other hand, he noticed the woman's fingers tighten around the black jade needle, knuckles pressing white crescents into her skin. Her breath quickened slightly, frost-mist pulsing faster into the green-tinged gloom. The Yin-Qi near her boots stirred more urgently, responding to the spike of tension coiling through her meridians even though she refused to circulate it.

"Then what stops you from killing me?" she asked, voice edged with bitter pragmatism. No pleading. No desperation. Only the cold arithmetic of survival.

"Once I look into my mirror and translate the path for you, my usefulness is over. What stops you from swinging that heavy saber and taking the map for yourself?"

That was true. It made sense—cold, brutal sense. After all, her master had been betrayed like that, given just enough value to be used before being discarded like refuse. He noticed how she looked at him—the dissipating warmth in her gaze replaced by crystallizing distrust, the increased vigilance in the subtle shift of her weight, the way her spine had gone rigid as though bracing for a killing blow that could come at any instant.

But— With an idle turn of his wrist, Shi Yan shifted the 150-pound Demonic Heavy Saber and laid its broad spine across his shoulder, as though its fearsome weight were no heavier than driftwood. The motion was casual, almost dismissive—yet the sheer mass of dead iron and demonic bone settling against leather and fabric produced a deep, muffled thump that resonated through the plaza like distant thunder.

Corpse-light slid along the fused seam where black metal met ancient bone, highlighting the polished edge that had just been inches from her throat.

"Because you are still of use," he said, voice flat and devoid of reassurance. No false comfort. No performative oath. Only cold operational logic.

"You alone hold the keys to deciphering the map. Without you, I cannot pass through those dangerous areas or find what lies at the end of this road. To kill you now would only result in my own loss."

The words hung in the sulfurous air, clinical and transactional—a statement of value rather than trust, an equation balanced on mutual necessity rather than honor.

He lowered one armored finger and pointed at the wet, ash-covered ground between her boots, where faint traceries of reactive Yin-Qi still coiled like serpents waiting to strike.