Flames slithered up the gauze curtains like winding serpents, climbing the beams overhead, and everywhere they touched burst into fire.
There was not a trace of panic in Wen Shuyu’s eyes. Calmly, he tore off a strip of his sleeve, soaked it with tea, and covered his mouth and nose.
The main door was locked, the front windows nailed shut. It seemed the rear window was the only possible escape.
Dodging burning beams that fell from above from time to time, Wen Shuyu made his way to the back window and looked out.
Beyond the window lay an open world. If it were level ground, there would be hope.
But beneath that rear window stretched a bottomless cliff.
“Mm… so hot…”
Tang Li opened her eyes to complete darkness, unable to see anything.
“System… why aren’t you turning on the lights… it’s so hot… where’s my air conditioning…”
“…”
She tried to raise a hand to wipe the sweat pouring down her forehead, only to realize she could not move at all.
“Teacher System! Where am I? Have I been kidnapped?”
“…If you had woken a little later, you would not have needed to wake at all.”
Tang Li struggled frantically and found the space trapping her was tiny. Everything around her burned with terrifying heat, and with every movement the air grew thinner.
“It’s so hot… save me…”
“Stop moving.
After the followers of the Virtuous Prince knocked you unconscious underground, they bound your hands and feet, sealed you inside a mold, and poured clay around you.
Then they placed you, along with several Bodhisattva statues filled with lamp oil, inside this secret chamber. They planned to burn both you and Wen Shuyu to death.”
?!!!
“How is Wen Shuyu here? Did they knock him out and turn him into a clay statue too…”
The System hurriedly cut her off.
“He’s fine. Don’t worry about him, just focus on surviving. Listen to my instructions later.”
The fire in the room grew fiercer, already nearing the rear window.
Wen Shuyu stared outside, calculating whether he could use qinggong to step on the window ledge, reach the roof, and escape from there.
Bang!
A heavy crash sounded behind the screen, as though something massive had shattered onto the floor.
Wen Shuyu turned his head and saw an astonishing sight through the screen.
A woman struggled up from the ground, shrieked as she beat out flames licking at her sleeve, and rushed toward the rear window.
The moment Tang Li turned, she saw a ghost masked man half hanging from the window ledge, staring at her bedraggled state in shock.
“???”
“Wen Shuyu? Why did you really come here? They’re trying to kill you… ah, no time for that now. Are you hurt?”
She rushed forward and grabbed his sleeve.
Wen Shuyu brushed her hand away, then silently looked her over from head to toe.
Seeing only singed hair and scorched skirts, he quietly let out a breath of relief.
“Why are you here? Who are these people you speak of? How much do you know…”
“This isn’t the place to talk. Let’s get out first… watch out!”
Tang Li suddenly saw a flaming beam plummeting toward his head.
Without thinking, she threw herself at him and shielded him with her body.
“Tang Li!”
The composure behind Wen Shuyu’s mask cracked, exposing rare panic.
At the final moment before the beam fell, he pulled Tang Li beneath him.
The burning timber slammed into his back, smashed through the rear window, and with a groan of pain he coughed blood.
“Wen Shuyu!”
“I… I’m fine…”
He forced out a faint smile to reassure the terrified woman in his arms.
Then darkness flooded his vision.
As though losing all weight, he tumbled out the shattered window into the abyss below.
“Wen Shuyu!”
Tang Li lunged and seized his sleeve.
Because he had shielded her, he had been gravely injured and fallen over the cliff.
Her mind screamed only one thing.
The mission target absolutely could not die.
“Hold on to my hand! I’ll pull you up!”
Blood streamed from Wen Shuyu’s forehead like rolling beads. He could hear the wind shrieking in his ears.
Beneath his dangling feet yawned a bottomless chasm.
If he fell, he would surely die.
Looking up, he saw the usually petite woman gripping him tightly.
Her pale hand had already bruised under his weight, yet she still clenched her teeth and tried to haul him upward.
The fire in the chamber burned even higher now. Flames had begun crawling toward Tang Li, igniting her clothes.
“Let go!”
Wen Shuyu shouted hoarsely. The wounds in his head and back pulsed mercilessly, his vision growing dimmer.
Pei Ying was absent.
He was gravely wounded.
If she kept pulling, she would die with him.
“No! I won’t let go! Wen Shuyu, hold on a little longer!”
Even as dull agony shot through her wrist, Tang Li gritted her teeth and dragged him upward inch by inch, feeling as if blood flowed backward through her veins.
She could not let go.
Wen Shuyu was the target the System demanded.
If the mission failed, her own life rested on this man.
He was crucial. Important beyond measure.
She absolutely could not release him.
Wen Shuyu’s head grew heavier.
Pain surged from his wounds.
Darkness slowly swallowed what he could see.
He could see nothing at all.
Perhaps the blow to his head had struck some vital place. His gaze dimmed, and suddenly he thought of something.
Again and again he warned himself.
Do not listen. Do not believe again.
Do not soften again.
At the gambling house, he had risked exposing himself to help her.
That kiss he had expected and lost had been like a pebble cast into dead water, stirring endless ripples.
His heart had not dared waver.
The lesson of his previous life he did not dare forget.
At the side hall of Wanshan Temple, he had heard Tang Li tell that woman she still loved her husband, that she regretted asking for separation.
That moment his chest had ached unbearably.
He had resolved to move out of the little courtyard the next day, to go far from her. If he could not see her, his heart would not hurt.
Yet fate had mocked him once more.
She had leapt after him into the abyss.
Before losing consciousness, Wen Shuyu thought that if she held even a trace of true feeling for him, then perhaps dying together like this was not so bad.
Better to be resentful lovers beneath the earth than endlessly entangled through lifetimes.
Yet still he could not bear it.
He lifted his head toward the person he could no longer see.
“Tang Li… I’m sorry…”
“?”
One by one, Wen Shuyu pried apart the fingers clutching him.
Without a trace of panic, even smiling faintly, he dropped into the abyss.
“Wen Shuyu!”
Tang Li’s scream sounded blood soaked.
Panicked, she frantically hit the System’s pop up.
“Teacher System! Cheat ability! I want to cheat ability now!”
“…An important character about to go offline was detected. Does the host wish to advance one hundred taels to exchange for cheat ability, Golden Body Shield, one minute immunity from all damage?”
Without hesitation Tang Li shouted, “Exchange! I chose an exchange!”
“Understood, host. You need to hold the mission target for the ability to activate. Countdown begins now. Sixty seconds, fifty nine…”
!!!
He had been falling for ages and only now it tells me I have to hold him for it to work?
Why not wait until he hits the ground first!
The System continued its mechanical countdown.
Tang Li did not dare waste even a second.
She jumped. Plunging into the cliff.
The wind screamed past her ears as she dropped at terrifying speed, her skirts blooming in the air like a flower in full blossom.
The biting cold wind stabbed her eyes.
Through the pain she forced herself closer to the falling man.
At the very last moment—
She caught him.
This time, she held him tightly in her arms.
“Su… Tang? Am I already dead?”
“With me here, you won’t die.”
Tang Li hugged him close, letting the wind roar around them.
At that moment, she felt impossibly heroic.
It was another day when snow blanketed the city, though Wuyou Prefecture was far warmer than the capital.
Wuyou Township lay southwest of the capital, a district bordering Jiangnan, known for its simple people and carefree peace, thus its name.
“Fresh radishes! Sweet as can be! Five wen a jin!”
An old vegetable seller brushed snow from her greens with callused hands while loudly hawking her produce.
Peddlers and market women shouted through the silver white streets, life bustling with smoke and warmth.
A candied hawthorn vendor threaded bright red berries onto bamboo skewers, coating them in syrup that glistened beneath drifting snow.
The fragrance caught a child’s attention.
He tugged at the woman beside him, insisting on buying one.
The young woman paused, shook her head, then still took out two coins to buy a skewer. Bending down, she handed it to the child and warned him that if children ate too much tanghulu, little worm immortals would grow in their teeth at night.
Before she finished speaking, a clear cold voice rang from the far end of the street.
“Get out of the way!”
The woman barely had time to turn before a blazing red figure leapt into view.
It was a clay figure in Daoist robes.
Seven feet tall, crowned with white gauze, its mud molded limbs moved stiffly and unnaturally, yet it bounded forward at shocking speed, as though drawn by some unseen force.
The child dropped the tanghulu and burst into tears as the woman clutched him protectively.
Panic erupted through the street.
People scrambled for cover, screams and curses rising one after another as chaos spread.
Then a slender figure emerged from the crowd.
She wore flowing water blue robes, her slanted coiffure pinned with a silver hairpin carved with frost blossoms.
Her steps were light and swift, as though wind carried her as she pursued the evil thing ahead.
The clay figure sprang onto a merchant’s awning and kicked over a stall toward her.
Yuchi Shuang’s form flickered and dodged, still chasing close as a shadow, giving it not the slightest chance to escape.
Wherever the clay monster passed, devastation followed.
Stalls overturned, vegetables, fruit, and trinkets scattered everywhere.
Yuchi Shuang vaulted onto a rooftop, running lightly over tiles, robes snapping in the wind.
At her waist, the unsheathed Condensing Frost Sword gleamed with chilling light.
Her eyes were cold as ice stars, filled with unquestionable righteousness.
On her left wrist was a silver bracelet etched with intricate patterns, glimmering eerily in the snow.
Suddenly the clay evil turned.
With a sweep of both hands, countless pale ghost banknotes shot toward her like a storm.
It was Ghost Guanyin.