Screams were uttered again and again, only to be drowned out by the sound of flowing water.
A young man in green stood on the shore, arms crossed, watching those people rise and fall. Just as they were about to climb up, they were pressed down by vines again, choking until they couldn’t make a sound.
At first, when they begged for mercy, you could still hear a few feeble “Spare us, we really just wandered in by mistake.”
Later, it turned into sobbing, “We were wrong, we’ll tell you everything.”
Finally, it escalated to cursing, “Lou Shidi, aren’t you afraid the Sect Leader will find out?!”
When these people were either unconscious or the few remaining were too dazed to speak, only coughing, Lou Shuangzui finally withdrew his spiritual power.
He reached out and grabbed someone familiar—not Liu Qing, as the one who stands out is usually just a useless target. He grabbed Wu Si, who always fanned the flames or shifted blame without drawing attention.
In the midst of the pain from his scalp being pulled, Wu Si barely regained some clarity. His eyes were filled with fear, but he still tried to maintain a calm facade, “Lou Shidi, aren’t you afraid we’ll report this to the Sect Leader? Even if we’ve broken the sect rules, private punishment is not allowed, right?”
Using authority to pressure others, he seemed smarter than Liu Qing, indeed the hidden strategist.
Lou Shuangzui scrutinized Wu Si for a moment—not a remarkable appearance, just average, with the air of those officials who speak of righteousness but are quick to abandon their families and kick others when they’re down. Overall, not likable.
So, the ruthless prince casually pushed his face back into the water.
“Glug, glug, glug…”
Caught off guard, Wu Si didn’t even manage to produce a few bubbles before choking on water. The fear of death made him struggle involuntarily, but the hand gripping his hair held him firmly underwater.
Once, twice, three times.
Each time, he was pulled up just before drowning, only to be pushed back down after catching a breath. Finally, when allowed to speak again, Wu Si had learned his lesson.
“Lou Shidi, Lou Daren, what do you want to know? I’ll tell you everything,” he pleaded repeatedly.
Lou Shuangzui didn’t answer, instead quietly staring at Wu Si for a while. Those golden eyes were like a beast’s, cold and unfeeling, filled only with scrutiny, analysis, and a disdain that Wu Si hated but couldn’t do anything about.
After a while, the boy chuckled softly. Wu Si felt a pain in his neck, and a dark green vine quickly disappeared into the ground. He watched in confusion as the same mark appeared on the others, only to heal instantly.
“Don’t play tricks, or even if you leave Sword Peak, I can still make you die,” those lips, red like petals, curled into a malicious smile. Lou Shuangzui gestured, and the unconscious Liu Qing’s face turned pale, his breath suddenly weak, on the brink of death, before recovering, though still pale.
Facing Wu Si’s grim expression, the first disciple of Sword Peak smiled, his eyes curving, speaking softly, “Once I’ve treated you, a bit of residual poison remains in your body. If I want, I can make you die at any time.”
“I’ve tested it. If I don’t trigger it, even the Sect Leader can’t detect anything unusual. You can play your tricks, but whether anyone will believe you is another matter. Just pray you’re never alone outside, or else… Chen Yue Sect might silently lose an outer disciple, don’t you think?”
Wu Si gritted his teeth, staring at Lou Shuangzui for a while. Helpless, he could only nod.
Seeing that this person couldn’t pull any more tricks, Lou Shuangzui finally released his grip with a cold laugh.
“Come on, I’ll ask, and you answer.”
First, as expected, the mastermind behind targeting inner disciples, even orchestrating the outer disciples to come up the mountain for group bullying, was none other than Wen Weili, the Peak Master of Transformation Peak.
As for how they got up the mountain, aside from Wen Weili being a former Sword Peak disciple familiar with formations and mechanisms, they also buried some jade stones with formations while interacting with servants, which could help obscure the formations.
But strangely, despite going to such lengths, Wen Weili hadn’t done anything particularly excessive. The most he instructed the outer disciples to do was bullying and causing trouble, nothing more.
But if it was just that, why go to so much trouble, as if preparing for internal chaos in the sect, like suppressing the strongest sword cultivator Lian Chaoxi, akin to suppressing military power in a coup?
“That’s… all I really know,” Wu Si shook his head bitterly, glancing at the sun unintentionally, “Keeping us here is useless. Why not let us go back? The Peak Master might not care, but if we’re late, the supervising senior brother will still need to register us.”
He was testing, testing if Lou Shuangzui would really let them go. He must still be holding something back, but Lou Shuangzui no longer cared about that.
The boy looked down at him, those golden eyes dazzling in the sunlight, the kind of festering poison and malice that almost made one’s heart tremble. He lowered his voice, smiling excitedly.
“What do you think… if you all disappeared, would my exiled Uncle Wen panic and do something he shouldn’t?”
The suffocating feeling was unavoidable. Wu Si’s eyes widened in helplessness, but he couldn’t stop the darkness from closing in.
In the last second of consciousness, he heard Lou Shuangzui’s laughter, “It’s the moral ones who are most easily restrained, the good ones who encounter these troubles. Following the rules, guarding against thieves for a thousand days, where in the world is there such an easy thing?”
In the end, Lou Shuangzui knocked them all out, temporarily locking them in a warehouse that Qian Mo found. The girl was intimidated by Lou Shuangzui’s decisive and unhesitating style, becoming an accomplice in a daze.
The morning light was brilliant, red, orange, vermilion, and purple, a radiance that no jewel or jade could replicate. The light tore through the night, like tearing open the curtain of a play.
Today was as usual, except the Suspended Mirror Platform was missing that light green figure—Mu Yunge had overexerted herself and was taken by her master to retreat and recuperate.
There shouldn’t have been any major issues, but the Eleventh Elder’s face didn’t look good. His worries were written all over his face, his brows furrowed, and several clumsy disciples were harshly criticized, making the class unusually quiet.
There was no news from Transformation Peak, and Wen Weili hadn’t caused trouble, as if he hadn’t noticed the disappearance of the disciples. Lou Shuangzui immediately realized something had changed, so he subtly asked Yan Zhige after class.
“Oh, that. Yesterday, Mu Yunge was severely exhausted, so the Sect Leader and others were mostly at Divination Peak. Then they found out He Zhibai Shixiong was missing. From last night to this morning, the Sect Leader searched almost all the peaks, except Sword Peak, Magic Peak, and Transformation Peak.”
Yan Zhige scratched his head, “Your master is in seclusion, and the remaining mountain forest is too vast. Magic Peak has too many people, making it hard to manage. As for Transformation Peak…” he chuckled, “You know.”
Lou Shuangzui’s mind quickly started racing. He didn’t trust Transformation Peak, so his first thought was that Wen Weili wanted to frame Sword Peak. But then he realized, first, this was a preconceived bias. Second, no matter what, even Yan Zhige knew, yet he, the only disciple acting as the Peak Master’s proxy, knew nothing, which was very unusual.
Very unusual.
Did the Sect Leader know something related and suspect Sword Peak, or was it that clearing Sword Peak’s name would alert the culprit?
With Mu Yunge and He Zhibai’s issues at the forefront, a few outer disciples, especially those not entirely clean, Lou Shuangzui didn’t believe Wen Weili would dare to bring this to the Sect Leader. Besides that, Sword Peak hadn’t done anything else.
And Sword Peak’s Lian Chaoxi had a good reputation with Sect Leader Wen Shunian, so they should have been informed. Not informing them… was it to prevent Sword Peak from clearing its name, forcing the mastermind into a corner?
Then why wasn’t Magic Peak informed? Magic Peak was always innocent, its only feature being its large number of disciples. Did they see He Zhibai before he disappeared? Or… were these disciples also not clean?
In an instant, countless thoughts flashed through his mind, but thinking about what he had instructed Qian Mo, Lou Shuangzui quickly calmed down.
He blinked, suppressing all his doubts, and waited patiently for the class to end.
The night seemed calm on the surface, with the clear sound of cicadas. Lou Shuangzui sat cross-legged, cultivating with a mind full of thoughts. Perhaps because his mind was too heavy, he vaguely felt like he touched a thread, hazy, profound, and confused until suddenly waking up—Sword Peak’s formation had been tampered with.
He casually threw on his outer robe, following the direction of the spiritual power mark, and found his way to a tree cave halfway up the mountain.
Inside, there were voices, so the boy skillfully suppressed his breathing, adjusting the fluctuation of his spiritual power to match the surrounding forest, then slowly and quietly approached step by step.
It was He Zhibai’s voice, usually carefree, but now weak and unusually serious. He said, “Uncle Wen, stop. Chen Yue Sect has treated you well, and Sword Peak has never wronged you.”
“…Treated me well?” A strange male voice laughed maniacally, sharp and piercing, “Just giving me a meal counts as treating me well? When the Secret Realm of the Abyss opened, when I needed the Mirror-Breaking Fruit the most, Master gave the only opportunity to Shixiong. Once an outer disciple, always an outer disciple. People’s hearts are always biased!”
“But you hadn’t even broken through to the Golden Core back then. Even if you entered the Secret Realm of the Abyss, you wouldn’t have survived,” He Zhibai clearly knew which incident this was. He took a deep breath, “Uncle, you’re about to fall into demonic cultivation.”
Wen Weili laughed maniacally again, muttering those two words incoherently. He said, “Demonic cultivation… demonic cultivation… hahaha, when Master sent me to that barren Qingchi Secret Realm, I should have fallen into demonic cultivation.”
“Do you know why I brought you here? Because my saintly Shixiong’s good disciple isn’t so pure. Liu Qing and the others didn’t return. Does he think I don’t know what he’s trying to do? He’s definitely going to take those people to see our meddlesome Sect Leader…”
“I originally just wanted to find an opportunity to kill those people, leaving no evidence. You shouldn’t have followed me, He Shizhi. Pretending to know nothing wouldn’t have been better? You just meddled too much, and your luck wasn’t great.”
Author’s Note: