Chương 122: The Gilded Corpse (1/3)

Then the Cloud-Mirror Sect's main force would descend, treading upon the bloody road those dead rogue cultivators had carved with their lives—boots crushing bone fragments into the mountain stones, robes sweeping through ash that had once been flesh and ambition.

So that was the reason her master had been invited to decipher it, Shi Yan concluded, as the final thread joined itself in his mind with the cold satisfaction of a puzzle locking into place. The Sect had used him to verify the cipher—dangling bait before the old scholar's eyes while poison dripped from their honeyed words. Once he confirmed the map could be read, they planted a festering Dao-curse upon him so he could not spread it far and shatter their carefully arranged choke point.

The curse would eat through his meridians like acid through silk, slow enough to let him believe he still had time, fast enough to ensure his silence. They had no wish to destroy the map. What they wanted was for it to remain in circulation—slowly, sparingly—just enough to lure in a steady stream of expendable pathfinders to test the road ahead. Cannon fodder wrapped in dreams of fortune, each one bleeding out the traps and guardian beasts that would have otherwise fallen upon the Sect's own disciples.

This woman was not the hand behind the snare. At most, she was the cast-off tool, rushing headlong into a slaughter pit for the sake of filial duty—blind loyalty masquerading as righteousness.

Satisfied that she truly knew little—and thus posed no immediate danger—Shi Yan let the strength in his arm disperse like morning mist. The coiled tension in his muscles unwound, and he stepped away from the tunnel wall, boots squelching softly against the mud-slicked stone.

This is only my conjecture. His jaw tightened beneath the mask, and the iron contours pressed harder against his cheekbones. Better that they are merely witless than plotting something even more sinister.

As for the way she looked at him, as though he were some hidden source of calamity—eyes sharp and searching, probing for the crack in his armor—Shi Yan met her gaze without yielding. His own stare through the mask's slits remained flat and cold, the mechanical assessment of a soldier evaluating threat vectors.

"The Market has the Market's rules," he said flatly, his voice carrying no more warmth than the sulfurous air around them.

"Idle guesses are useless. We survived the retrieval. The goods are in hand."

She stared at him for a long while, the silence between them stretching taut as a bowstring. The faint drip of condensation echoed somewhere deeper in the tunnel, each drop marking time like a water clock.

Then she slowly pushed herself upright from the damp tunnel wall, palms peeling away from the slick stone with a faint wet sound. The acid-scorched cloak upon her shoulders shifted as she adjusted the broadsword at her waist, leather creaking softly as the scabbard settled back into position.

The desperate urgency of their escape had already faded, leaving behind only the absurd truth of their present circumstances—two strangers, bound by circumstance and mutual suspicion, preparing to strike at a power that could crush them both like insects beneath a grinding stone.

"At least we survived the Yellow Springs," she said, her voice carrying a bitter edge sharper than any blade. Her breath misted in the cold air as she spoke.

"And now two people are preparing to strike at one of the greatest hypocritical sects beneath the heavens. Yet I do not even know the name of the man wielding the hammer beside me."

She straightened, spine drawing taut with renewed discipline. Mud and filth still clung to her sleeves, dark stains spreading across the fabric like shadow-blooms. She brought her hands together and offered a proper cultivator's salute, right fist wrapped in left palm—the gesture precise despite the tremor that had not entirely left her fingers.

"I am Ye Bing. Ye of the sunless night, Bing of bitter frost."

The formality of the introduction rang hollow in the dank tunnel, as though spoken in a throne room rather than ankle-deep mud. Yet her voice carried weight—the kind that came not from bloodline or sect backing, but from walking alone through darkness and surviving what should have killed her.

"Some in the outer roads call me the Frost-Scarred Hunter. As you already know, I am a sword cultivator, and only a lone rogue." She paused, and something flickered across her expression—pride mixed with the bitterness of one who knew exactly how little her title was worth in the eyes of Great Sects.

"My purpose is likewise no secret: the Yin-Purging Lotus, to drag my master back from the Gate of Yellow Springs."

She lowered her hands slowly, the formal salute dissolving back into wariness. The scars upon her face caught the dim light seeping through the aqueduct grate above—pale, twisted channels carved into flesh like dried riverbeds cutting through barren earth. The light painted them silver-white against her skin, each line a testament to agony survived.

"And may this humble one learn Young Master's honored name?" A faint smile touched her lips, though there was mockery hidden within it like a dagger wrapped in silk—the kind of smile that said she already suspected he would lie.

"For one to withstand the spiritual pressure of a Netherworld Warden by merely outrunning its anchor must surely possess a most extraordinary foundation. Such means cannot belong to one without deep roots and a mighty backing."

Her eyes never left his mask, searching for any tell, any microexpression that might leak through the iron barrier.

Shi Yan did not answer at once.

Beneath the mask, thoughts flashed through his mind one after another with the speed of rifle rounds chambering—each path leading to its own danger, each word a potential tripwire that could detonate this fragile alliance before it even solidified.

If he spoke the full truth—that he was a transmigrated soldier from another world, bereft of Heavenly Alignment, relying on a numbers-based biological System that turned corpses into raw attributes and processed cultivation like a military logistics algorithm—then Ye Bing would think only of possession, devils, and heterodox corruption. Her hand would drift to her sword hilt. Fear would crystallize into killing intent. At best, she would sever ties at once, vanishing into the tunnels before he could blink.

At worst, she would try to kill him where he stood, or report him to the Iron-Blood Prefecture out of sheer terror—painting him as a demon wearing human skin, a spiritual abomination that needed to be cleansed with fire and steel.

Naturally, that was nothing more than a cold jest in the privacy of his own thoughts. Such words could never be spoken. Not to anyone. Not in this world. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Impossible.

If he instead forged some flawless noble identity and claimed to be a Qi Cultivator from some distant Great Clan—spinning tales of jade pavilions and ancestral techniques passed down through generations—that too was unwise. Ye Bing was a rogue cultivator who had survived by walking the gray roads of the underworld, the shadow-markets where information flowed like wine and lies died screaming. Someone like her would surely have her own channels and informants, connections built through blood and shared desperation.

If he fabricated a false background, she would probe it sooner or later—casually dropping his supposed clan name in conversation with merchants who traded in secrets, testing the waters with the patience of an angler. Once her people uncovered nothing—no clan, no lineage, no sect record, not even a whisper of the name he claimed—she would know at once that he was a ghost with no past. A phantom walking in stolen skin.

From that moment onward, suspicion would poison any trust between them before they even set foot inside the Shattered Realm, and she would watch his back not to guard it, but to find the perfect moment to put steel between his ribs.

Also impossible.

Then there was the half-truth.

He could give her the name he currently wore, but lower himself deliberately—plant seeds of doubt that would grow into conclusions she believed were her own. If he lied too crudely and claimed to be a nobody, some dirt-road wanderer with nothing but luck and a stolen sword, her instincts would reject it like a body rejecting foreign qi. The dissonance between his equipment, his bearing, his sheer combat effectiveness, and such a claim would ring false as a cracked bell.

But if he handed her just enough pieces for her to "discover" a hidden backing on her own—fragments of truth scattered like breadcrumbs—she would cling to that conclusion even more firmly, precisely because she believed it to be her own insight. The human mind always trusted its own deductions more than any confession.

Shi Yan made his choice with the cold efficiency of a tactician selecting terrain.

"Shi Yan," he said calmly, the two syllables dropping into the tunnel's silence like stones into still water.

"An independent cultivator."

The faintly respectful smile on Ye Bing's lips froze as though flash-frozen by her own namesake frost, then vanished entirely. Her scarred brow knit together, the tissue there pulling tight and pale. Genuine confusion surfaced in her eyes like cracks appearing in river ice, mingled with the stiffness of one who felt she had been denied proper face—mocked, even, by a response so absurdly insufficient it bordered on insult.

"Independent?" she repeated, as though testing the word for falsehood, rolling it across her tongue like a wine taster detecting poison. Her voice dropped half an octave, shedding the polite veneer like snakeskin.

The deference in her voice faded, replaced by the cold sharpness of naked suspicion—a blade drawn from its sheath.

"Forgive my bluntness, Daoist Shi, but do not treat me as a fool." Each word fell hard and precise as hammer blows.

"A mere rogue cultivator does not walk through the Yellow Springs untouched. A rogue cultivator does not carry spatial storage"—her eyes flicked briefly to the pouch at his waist—"nor casually purchase a custom demonic heavy saber without even bargaining."

Her gaze swept over him in a single measuring pass, sharp and clinical as a physician examining symptoms—his massive frame that filled the tunnel like a siege engine made flesh, the plain iron pauldron on his left shoulder still bearing faint scorch marks, the immense one-hundred-and-fifty-pound blade strapped across his back with its wrapped leather grip and pommel dark as a starless sky, and finally the dense steam that had only recently burst from his pores and was now slowly fading into the damp air like departing battle-ghosts.

"And a rogue cultivator most certainly does not possess such a bodily foundation," Ye Bing said, her voice hardening with certainty that bordered on accusation. The words carried the weight of someone who had seen enough to know when the pieces didn't fit.

"You are an Extreme Body Cultivator. Dragon-Spine Realm? No..." She shook her head slowly, scarred features twisting with concentration as she reached for the memory.

"When you pulled me from that bridge, the blood-force within you felt like a furnace sealed in human flesh—heat radiating through your armor as though your very bones were burning coal. Yet you wear no insignia of any faction. The Iron-Blood Prefecture monopolizes nearly all high-grade Flesh-Forging manuals."

Her eyes narrowed to slits, calculating and cold.

"They are overbearing to the extreme. They would never permit an unbound Body Cultivator of your strength to wander the Outer Wards without brand or collar—without their seal burned into your flesh and their leash wrapped around your throat. They would either recruit you by force or erase you."

Her hand tightened upon her scabbard as her gaze fixed upon the dark slits of his mask, searching for the truth behind the iron. When she spoke again, her voice carried the edge of a final test.

"If you are not of the Prefecture, and not of some Great Clan, then whose dog are you?"

The insult landed deliberately, a calculated provocation meant to crack whatever facade he wore.

"I am not unbound," Shi Yan replied smoothly, stacking falsehood upon truth exactly as intended—building a structure just stable enough to bear scrutiny but hollow at its core.

He reached into his spatial pouch with unhurried precision, fingers closing around the black-jade token—smooth and cold as river stone in winter. He withdrew it and tossed it through the dark with a casual flick that spoke of utter confidence.

Ye Bing caught it effortlessly, her sword-cultivator reflexes snapping the token from the air before it could fall. Her thumb brushed across the carved character—Retainer—and her eyes widened at once, pupils dilating as recognition struck like lightning. The hostility within them dissolved into sudden understanding, suspicion transforming into something far more complex: respect mixed with wariness, and beneath it all, the faint relief of one who had just confirmed the tiger in the room was caged, however loosely.

"The Silk & Ash Chamber," she said under her breath, turning the heavy jade over in her hand as though weighing not just its physical mass but the authority it represented. Her fingers traced the carved seal with the reverence one might show a religious icon—or a death warrant.

"An Inner Retainer of the Vermilion Pavilion."

She tossed the token back with a quick, sharp motion.

Shi Yan caught it without looking, slipping it back into his pouch with the same casual efficiency.

The guarded tension in her shoulders loosened, the rigid combat readiness melting into something closer to cautious collaboration.

In her heart, the scattered clues rapidly assembled themselves into a whole, each piece clicking into place with the satisfying inevitability of a puzzle solved: The Chamber of Commerce possessed wealth vast enough to rival the other three great factions, their coffers deeper than mine shafts and their trade routes spanning the realm like spider silk—yet maintained the appearance of neutrality, never openly taking sides in the endless power struggles that convulsed the cultivation world.

It had secretly nurtured many cultivators in the shadows—so-called retainers—feeding them precious demonic beast flesh and rare body-refining medicines beyond the public eye, cultivating private armies that answered to Deaconesses and Pavilion Masters rather than Sect Elders or Clan Patriarchs.

It explained his frightening equipment—gear that would bankrupt a dozen rogue cultivators, provided without hesitation or debt.

It explained his utter lack of unnecessary emotion—the cold, mechanical efficiency of a weapon honed for a single purpose.

So he was not some noble young master wandering the world in search of fortune and enlightenment, but rather a blade raised in secret by a merchant giant—fed on beast cores and alchemical elixirs until his body became a fortress of muscle and tempered bone?

Yet Ye Bing did not appear relieved at all. Instead, her scarred brow furrowed more deeply, creases forming like cracks in dried earth, and a heavier wariness passed over her face like a shadow crossing the moon.

"The Vermilion Pavilion," she repeated, now openly skeptical. Her voice dropped lower, taking on the cautious tone of one approaching dangerous ground.

"That explains the equipment, but not the mission. Why would an Inner Retainer accept a rogue, hidden bounty to break into a Shattered Realm?" Her eyes bored into his mask, searching.

"For someone of your standing to be wading through mud like this... your Deaconess can no longer support or deploy you openly, can she?"

Shi Yan's brow rose slightly beneath the mask, the only outward sign of his genuine surprise.

Oh? So she did not know about the matter concerning the Cloud-Mirror Sect Patriarch.

"Explain," he said, the single word carrying the flat command of someone accustomed to receiving intelligence reports.

Ye Bing let out a short, mirthless laugh—a sound like breaking glass, sharp and bitter.

"You speak like a blade kept too close to its sheath—seeing only whatever lies directly before its edge. You truly do not know?" She shook her head slowly, something almost pitying entering her expression beneath the scars.

"The news is already spreading through the shadow markets like poison in a well. Fellow Cultivator Shi, your faction's situation is far from good. The Vermilion Pavilion has already come into open conflict with the Main Branch of the Silk & Ash Chamber. In the Jade Terraces, the upper echelons are moving to strip Deaconess Su Yin of her authority, freeze her martial resources, and carve apart the pavilion under her command—like vultures descending on a dying beast."

Her voice carried the grim satisfaction of someone delivering bad news they'd already suspected, confirmation of fears rather than revelation of surprise.

Behind the iron mask, Shi Yan's eyes narrowed to slits, cold calculation racing through synapses trained by military intelligence briefings.

So it was true.

A falling faction...

And the news had already spread this far?