Shangguan Yuting

Li Huowang had traded with the Supreme Extremity Confluence before. When he saw the anomaly before him, he understood immediately that something was wrong. Everything Shangguan Yuting had said earlier—about being an item for trade, about secrets—it was all an excuse. All lies.

Everything before him changed in an instant. A yin wind, assembled from countless writhing characters, drilled out of the crack in the clay statue. It spread into a funnel, drifting upward toward the sky.

The moment Li Huowang saw that thing, he understood. That was the Supreme Extremity Confluence. He could see something private within it, something intimate.

The Supreme Extremity Confluence was trying to flee, but the Supervisory Heavenly Office official was hardly unprepared. At some point, the sky above had turned into a mirror. Whatever was on the ground now had an inverted counterpart in the heavens.

As the Supreme Extremity Confluence drifted upward, it crashed directly into the patch of black shadow on the ground. The shadow of the clay statue began to expand and contract, swelling and shrinking by turns.

"This isn't an exchange," Zhuge Yuan said, his voice tight. "This is a seizure."

The moment he finished speaking, the black shadow on the ground exploded outward, transforming into a dense, writhing mass of countless eyes.

The surrounding environment began to shift, twisting and condensing by turns. Li Huowang felt a familiar vertigo, as if he were about to be dragged back to the hospital.

Sensing the danger, he immediately stepped back, unwilling to be caught in the crossfire. He had witnessed the Supervisory Heavenly Office's methods before. He had no desire to experience them again.

As for helping the Supreme Extremity Confluence—Li Huowang had no such intention. From the look of things, this didn't affect his plan. He had no reason to interfere.

By the time Li Huowang retreated, the small earth-god shrine had completely collapsed. Visions cycled in and out—appearing, vanishing, overlapping—leaving Li Huowang, watching from the sidelines, dizzy and disoriented.

He finally understood. The Supervisory Heavenly Office official had never intended to trade fairly with the Supreme Extremity Confluence. From the very beginning, he had planned to take it by force.

"Not only can you exchange secrets, you can just snatch them like this?" Li Huowang asked Zhuge Yuan, who stood beside him, also watching.

Zhuge Yuan gazed into the distance, a flicker of hesitation on his face. He sighed, then began to answer.

"An ordinary person certainly could not. They could not even touch the Supreme Extremity Confluence once. But that official did it with nothing more than an illusion. His origins must be extraordinary."

"He uses strange illusion arts, dragging people into hallucinations without them noticing, and can even project illusions around a person. Brother Zhuge, based on what you've seen, what school does this official belong to?"

"Mm... To possess such strange power, it is likely no ordinary illusion art. I suspect it is the Unspeakable."

"The Unspeakable again?"

Zhuge Yuan looked at the chaos in the distance and shook his head gently. "No. This sect's name cannot be spoken by mortal mouths, nor can it be recorded by brush and ink. That is why they are called the Unspeakable."

"The Unspeakable?" Li Huowang turned the word over in his mind.

"I am not all-knowing. I only learned a little of this from a waterlogged bamboo slip I once fished from the sea during a voyage abroad."

"Legend says the Unspeakable was born from the void, dwells in the void, and dies in the void. Ordinary people who wish to see him can only catch a distant, inadvertent glimpse at the moment between life and death, or while weeping at a grave until their vision blurs."

"If it is already so difficult for an ordinary person to even glimpse him once, then becoming his disciple and receiving his divine powers is all the more impossible. That official must have had some extraordinary encounter in his past."

Li Huowang stared at the kaleidoscopic madness in the distance, then asked hesitantly, "So is this Unspeakable a Siming? Which Way does he govern? Why is his power so strange?"

Zhuge Yuan thought for a moment, then shook his head again. "I only saw him mentioned once, in Baiyuean script, on that bamboo slip softened by seawater. I do not know much more."

"So it seems," Li Huowang said slowly, "this official did not earn his position without merit. That's good, at least. If this Supervisory Heavenly Office official ambushes Dice, his chances of winning should be high."

As they spoke, the commotion in the distance gradually subsided. A massive patch of black shadow, covered in blinking eyes, spread from the collapsed shrine toward him.

There were hundreds of these eyes. Li Huowang remembered them. There was one exactly like this in the center of his own reflection's forehead.

The sight made Li Huowang's scalp crawl. But what happened next was even more disturbing.

Shangguan Yuting—the woman who had stepped into the shadow earlier—emerged from the darkness again, as if climbing a staircase.

Her body was still that graceful, lithe figure, but her head had changed completely. Where her delicate face had been, it was now covered in large and small spiraling eyes, all blinking incessantly.

Looking at her now gave Li Huowang the same nauseating feeling as staring into a kaleidoscope.

Shangguan Yuting tilted her swollen, eye-covered head toward Li Huowang, and her soft voice came from within that dense mass of pupils. "Senior Ear, I'm finished. Shall we go back?"

"What do you need so many secrets for?" Li Huowang averted his gaze and drew his Spine-Bone Sword. "Is there really that much you need to know?"

A silvery, bell-like laugh rang out from her face. "You'll have to ask the Supervisory Heavenly Office official about that. I just carry out orders. I don't know anything else."

The business was done. Li Huowang had no reason to stay in Great Qi any longer. He stepped through the rift he had cut and returned to Great Liang.

The environment shifted around him. Seeing the wheat harvesters in the golden fields before him, Li Huowang had the strange sensation of worlds passing in an instant.

"Can you let the Supervisory Heavenly Office official know that I've completed the task he assigned?" Li Huowang said, his back still turned to Shangguan Yuting.

Everything was in place now. The only thing left was the east wind. It was time to deal with Dice.

"Don't worry. Head for the capital first. I'll find a way to inform the official. Once he's finished here, he'll come back immediately."

"Once Dice is dealt with," Li Huowang's expression hardened as he quickened his pace toward the village ahead, "maybe I can find another way to trade for a secret at the Supreme Extremity Confluence. And use it to save Bai Lingmiao!"

When he reached the village, Li Huowang found a wealthy household and bought a sturdy horse.

He hadn't brought much money on this trip, but fortunately, he still had a jade pendant that had been with him since Qingfeng Temple.

He didn't know how much that pendant—once his Senior Brother Xuan Yang's—was worth. But the moment he offered it in exchange for the horse, the head of the household nodded eagerly, not daring to hesitate for a second.

Li Huowang's injuries were still severe. Charred black skin mixed with everted granulation. But with Li Sui supporting him from within, his body didn't collapse.

And so, dragging his battered frame, he rode nonstop toward the capital.