The Sitian Jian’s Interrogation

Xuanpin watched Li Huowang throw his head back and laugh, and he knew immediately that he'd been played.

“Do you find this amusing?” Xuanpin’s tone was unusually sharp.

“Amusing? Of course it’s amusing. It’s not like you’re losing anything but a little face. Why be stingy about lending a hand to help my cultivation?” Li Huowang clutched his stomach and laughed again.

Seeing Xuanpin unmoved, Li Huowang stood up and wiped a hand across his face. The False Face of The Dice peeled away, and his own features reformed beneath it.

“Don’t be such a tightwad. You scheme against people every single day, and you get upset when someone tricks you once? Tell you what—let’s call it even for the Earth Dragon incident.”

Regardless of anything else, Li Huowang felt he had come out ahead this time. With just a sliver of non-Gang, he had leveraged it a hundredfold, using four ounces to move a thousand pounds. And making Xuanpin swallow his pride like this was also a nice bit of payback for the Earth Dragon.

Xuanpin seemed unwilling to entertain the banter any longer. He stated his purpose flatly. “I came to tell you that Taishan Shi has talked.”

“Oh?” Li Huowang immediately wiped the smile off his face, turning serious. “Let me see.”

“Fine.” Xuanpin walked over to stand beside Li Huowang and reached out a skeletal finger, tapping him on the shoulder. Everything around them warped and shifted at dizzying speed.

When Li Huowang came to, he found himself in a dank, dark cell. The edges of the world wobbled for a moment before settling into something that felt entirely real.

“Hm?” Xuanpin looked around with mild surprise.

“What? Trouble?” Li Huowang immediately sensed that this illusion was different from the usual kind. He reached out and touched the iron bars, feeling the cold rust on his fingers, then looked at Xuanpin with genuine surprise.

“Xuanpin, you’ve outdone yourself. You pulled me all the way from Qingqiu back to Siqi! If you had a trick this powerful, why didn’t you use it before?”

Compared to the Imperial Tutor’s flying sword, this kind of teleportation spanning hundreds of miles was what truly deserved the name “an immortal on earth.”

Xuanpin paused for a few breaths, then slowly nodded. “You know I like to hold back. I don’t trust others easily, so I never told you about this move before.”

Li Huowang had never imagined that someone could be so shameless as to casually admit something like that. “We’ll talk about that later. Work comes first. Where is Taishan Shi now?”

“This way.” Xuanpin led Li Huowang deeper into the prison.

They descended a staircase lined with black peachwood talismans, and finally, Li Huowang saw him—Taishan Shi, submerged in black water thick with floating talismans.

Gone was the cold, sinister air he had once carried. Now he looked haggard beyond belief. His eyes were sunken, his sockets dark, as if he could die at any moment. More striking than anything else was the fact that his skull had been opened. A bloody, gaping hole sat exposed to the air.

“Rare guests, both of you.” Zheng Boqiao looked up at Li Huowang and Xuanpin with some surprise.

“The Siqi Sitian Jian did the work personally. What did you get out of him?” Li Huowang asked, brief and direct.

“See for yourself.”

Zheng Boqiao pulled out a celadon porcelain spoon painted with a blessing character, dipped it into the hole in Taishan Shi’s skull, and—accompanied by a grating, scraping sound—scooped out a large spoonful of brain matter against the bone. He put it into his mouth as if eating egg custard, and his own body became the crucible for alchemical refinement.

Li Huowang frowned at the sight. “I don’t need to see it. Just tell me.”

Zheng Boqiao blinked, regurgitated what he had swallowed, chewed it briefly, and swallowed again.

“Not much of use, but we did learn one thing from this bastard’s brain. The Fa Sect has a contingency plan. If the battle in Siqi turns against them, they intend to make a major sacrifice and invoke a deity to descend to the mortal world.”

“Descend? Which one? Yuer Shen?” Li Huowang’s brow furrowed.

“No. Yuer Shen can’t come down. If it could, it would have done so already instead of letting the Fa Sect stir up trouble down here.”

“What’s coming down is probably not a Siming, but something below that level,” Zheng Boqiang added.

Below the Siming? Li Huowang remembered the things he had seen waiting outside the White Jade Capital.

“Something like the Xi Shen?” Li Huowang had fought an entity like that before, and he had to admit that kind of evil spirit was incredibly powerful.

“No. The Xi Shen doesn’t need to be invited. It’s already down here. You just have to shout its name, and it shows up. What they’re trying to summon is far more dangerous than the Xi Shen.”

“Taishan Shi was from Daqi, so this is the extent of what he knows. The finer details were probably never revealed to him in the first place.”

Li Huowang glanced at the Xuangong Mirror on the wall, which was displaying intelligence reports. If the war effort was failing, it was probably already happening. The army of Daliang had already reached the Siqi border. Given the Fa Sect’s current situation, if they didn’t send reinforcements, they would inevitably be ground down bit by bit.

Li Huowang thought for a moment, then turned to Xuanpin. “If something at that level actually descends, do you have a contingency for it?”

Xuanpin replied, “We can’t wait for them to summon it and then try to defend. Now that we know their plan, we should strike before they finish the ritual.”

“We can’t send a full military force to march in openly. That would tip them off. The best approach is to send a small group of exceptional fighters to break their ritual before it’s complete.”

“Why are you looking at me? Don’t you have anyone else?” Li Huowang said, displeased.

“The capable bear more burdens. Others will naturally follow, but only with you there can I truly rest easy. To be honest, you’re even stronger than I am now.”

“Don’t give me that crown. I don’t have the time right now. You figure it out yourself.”

Li Huowang wasn’t actually unwilling. If he could sabotage the Fa Sect’s plan, he’d be happy to. The problem was that his Cultivation of the False had only just begun. He hadn’t even started trying to offset the side effects of Cultivation of the True. If he couldn’t solve the problem of being unable to distinguish true from false, going into battle could lead to anything.

“No rush, no rush,” Zheng Boqiao interjected. “We’re sending agents inside the Fa Sect to verify the intelligence first. Just tell me when you can go. If the timing works out, great. If not, we’ll manage.”

Li Huowang shot one last glance at the catatonic Taishan Shi, then turned and walked out of the cell. “Xuanpin. Remember to bring my daughter back from Siqi.”

After Li Huowang left, the cell fell into silence. The two men watched the direction he had gone, shared a wry smile, and simultaneously shook their heads.

“A difficult man to work with.”

“No matter. His fate is not good. Once the calamity is over, we probably won’t have much contact with him again.”