“Are you sure?” Qin Shuying asked.
“Shadow Hall has planted hidden agents in Boundless City for 100 years. From city gate guards to tower maids, every key node has an informant. Chu Yi’s Flying Artifact might fool others in the Southern Wilderness, but it cannot fool me.”
Chao’er grasped the Jade Slip in her palm, faint Black Qi seeping between her fingers and grinding the Jade Slip into powder.
“Chu Yi entered the tower 2 shichen later, and still has not come out.”
Qin Shuying’s expression darkened slightly. 2 shichen plus a false daylight—from when Shen Mo was taken to now, nearly 5 or 6 shichen had passed.
“What is in the tower?”
“Chu Yi’s permanent stronghold in Boundless City is nominally called the Hundred Herbs Pavilion. It is her public identity—a fifth-grade alchemist certified by the Scattered Cultivator Alliance.”
Chao’er’s voice remained steady, but within that steadiness was an extremely suppressed meaning, like a surging undercurrent beneath ice.
“The tower is thirty-two stories high, with another five levels underground. All Divine Sense detection in the city fails within 10 zhang of entering the tower. The hidden agents can only confirm that someone went in, not the exact location.”
“What about the Boundless City Rules?” Su Wan’er spoke.
Her voice made Qin Shuying and Chao’er look sideways at the same time—because there was a layer in her tone that had never been there before.
It was not aggressive, nor was it meek retreat, but a kind of unhurried weight.
After breaking through to Nascent Soul Grand Completion, even the way Su Wan’er spoke had changed.
She had not become more forceful; she had become steadier.
Chao’er withdrew her gaze.
“The first rule of the Boundless City Rules—no matter what grudges they carry, those who enter the city are forbidden from martial combat. Violators are executed on the spot by the City Guard Department, which is jointly governed by three parties. The reason this rule has lasted 300 years is that none of the three powers can tolerate others running wild on their own turf. Whoever violates it, the other two will join forces to suppress them.”
“Chu Yi chose this place very shrewdly,” Qin Shuying said.
“But the Boundless City Rules only govern martial combat, not anything else.”
She tossed it into the air. The Jade Slip exploded in midair without a sound, spreading across the gray-white sky a giant web outlined by dark purple points of light.
A map of Boundless City.
It was not the publicly available map of city gates and streets that everyone could see—every mark on this map was something hidden in the dark: hidden agents, Secret Passages, intelligence nodes, personnel rotation hours, and the boundary lines of areas controlled by different powers.
The entire South City District was marked as the Scattered Cultivator Alliance’s territory. Three cinnabar-colored marks flickered within it—Chu Yi’s hidden strongholds.
Above each stronghold floated several lines of small text—number on duty, Cultivation Level rank, shift change interval.
One line was even annotated with the exact “style of the token at the waist of the maid who delivers food during the hour of Hai.”
Qin Shuying glanced at Chao’er.
“This is the Hundred Herbs Pavilion,” Chao’er said. “The blank space is not missing intelligence; it is because all hidden agents within 500 zhang around the tower have been cleared out.”
“Then what do we do?” Su Wan’er asked.
Chao’er put away the map. The dark points of light flowed into her sleeve like 100 rivers returning to the sea.
“Just go in recklessly,” she said. “Rules are made by people.”
The four shot out of the stone forest. Sword Light silently tore open the curtain of false daylight, and they flew through the air toward north-northwest.
When Xie Shilan stood up from the flying eaves at the top of the tower, the countless lights of Boundless City spread out beneath her feet like a Go Board.
She liked staying in high places.
It was not because of the Pleasure of looking down on all living beings—that emotion was too childish, and it had been worn smooth by the years in the very year she stepped through the threshold of Deity Transformation.
She liked high places simply because the wind was strong.
In places with strong wind, the Gaze and Divine Sense of others did not easily linger.
She tilted her head back and drank the last mouthful of liquor from the gourd. When the strong liquor entered her throat, it brought a faint burning pain.
That was the only physical sensation she could still clearly feel in 100 years.
Then she lowered her head and looked toward the window on the seventh floor of the high tower that glowed with faint light.
Shen Mo was inside.
She could sense his Breath—the faint chill unique to the Pure Yin Constitution, like first snow falling on warm skin, leaving behind an inescapable stickiness after the coolness.
This Breath was a natural lure to female cultivators.
Even someone like her, who had cultivated the path of heartlessness for 1,000 years, could not help but sniff twice more.
But she did not make a move.
With her Cultivation Level, if she truly wanted to act, even a heavily injured Chu Yi—even a Chu Yi in her prime, plus those 100 Corpse Puppets—might not survive three exchanges under her hand.
The gap between the Transformation God Realm and the Nascent Soul realm was like a chasm in heaven.
Let alone the fact that what she had comprehended was the extremely special and troublesome Dream Dao—killing invisibly, trapping enemies in eternal sleep, all within a single thought.
Saving Shen Mo and capturing or killing Chu Yi was not difficult for her.
But she did not.
It was not that she did not want to.
It was that she could not.
Xie Shilan hung the empty liquor gourd back at her waist. Her right hand unconsciously brushed the inner side of her left cheek.
The skin there was smooth as jade, without any Trace.
But only she knew that there had once been a sword scar there—an old wound pierced by Yun He’s Sword Qi, its injury smoothed over by Time, yet always aching faintly in the Depths of her Soulfire.
1,000 years ago, she had fought Yun He once.
That sword had not struck her body; she had only been grazed by the aftershock of the Sword Intent.
That day, she held Nangong Yao’s broken Body and looked up to see Yun He standing in the center of a pool of blood, terrifying spiritual pressure of Deity Transformation Peak coiling around her, her eyes as cold as ice that had not melted for eons.
So she knew better than anyone how strong Yun He was.
And she knew better than anyone how obsessive Yun He was about “her own Thing.”
Shen Mo was her Thing.
So she killed him with her own hands and then sealed him in ice.
She would neither give him to others nor give him freedom.
Shen Mo—was also her Thing.
At least in her eyes, he was.
Xie Shilan sat back down, her legs dangling outside the flying eaves and swinging.
Her Gaze moved away from Shen Mo’s window and landed on the black carriage at the other end of the plaza below the tower.
That was Chu Yi’s carriage.
Seventeen Prohibition Seals were arranged around the carriage.
Each one was exquisitely ingenious, enough to block a full-power strike from Nascent Soul Peak.
A faint wisp of ghostly blue light leaked from inside the carriage—it was the Glazed Green-Core Lamp.
But this was not the reason she did not dare act.
The reason she did not dare act was on top of the carriage.
There was nothing there.
Invisible to the naked eye.
Divine Sense could not sweep it either.
But Xie Shilan knew—knew there was a Gaze there.
A Divine Sense node from Deity Transformation Peak, cast here across thousands of miles.
That mark was so faint it was nearly nonexistent, like a wisp of sandalwood smoke scattered by the wind.
If one did not sense it carefully, one would only think it was the air itself.
But what Xie Shilan cultivated was the Dream Dao.
Dream Dao cultivators were most sensitive to Gaze.
Because in the Dream Realm, Gaze itself was a kind of power.
The Person being watched would unknowingly act, feel, and fear according to the watcher’s expectations.
So she had sensed it.
Yun He was watching.
Through the protective Magical Tool she had left on Chu Yi, that Divine Sense mark was attached to a Magical Tool of at least Sage Rank.
It did not need Spiritual Power to activate; it only needed to exist—if it existed, it meant Yun He could tear through space and descend here at any time.
Just as when she had split Nangong Yao’s soul apart with one sword 1,000 years ago, without any omen, without a single superfluous warning.
Chu Yi might know of this Magical Tool’s existence.
Or she might not.
This was not important.
What was important was that whoever touched Chu Yi would trigger that Divine Sense.
And once the Divine Sense was triggered, Yun He would know.
Xie Shilan was not afraid of fighting.
In 1,000 years, she had exchanged blows with five Deity Transformation cultivators seven times: three wins, three losses, and one draw.
What she feared was fighting an unnecessary fight.
To save a man she did not know, to face an opponent she had not dared challenge for 1,000 years—that was not worth it.
At least not now.
But she was indeed interested in Shen Mo.
Not because of the Pure Yin Constitution.
It was because of Lin Jingzhe.
She somewhat regarded this neat and decisive girl as half a successor.
The Dreamlike Floating Life Art was the painstaking work of her life.
When she created this method, she had been stuck at Nascent Soul Peak for 900 years, until one day she dreamed she became a butterfly dancing among bamboo groves, and only then did she suddenly comprehend the Dao meaning of “Floating Life is like a dream, dream is cultivation.”
After that, she rarely took disciples. Lin Jingzhe was the only person in 300 years whom she felt was suited to this path.
Although she was stubborn, awkward, and said one thing while meaning another.
She clearly cared about Shen Mo to death, yet insisted on using grievance as armor.
She had clearly been entwined with him countless times in dreams, yet after waking she did not even dare look at him directly.
This awkwardness made Xie Shilan find it funny—and after laughing, she felt a pang of heartache.
Because it was exactly like herself.
Chu Yi was going to take the Underground Teleportation Array tomorrow.
That was in the Depths Underground of Boundless City.
Although the city’s rule forbidding combat also covered the Underground, the Prohibition Seal supervision there was far weaker than on the surface.
More importantly—the Underground had the natural advantage of shielding Divine Sense.
Thick rock layers, interwoven Spiritual Meridians, and ancient Prohibition Seal remnants that had slept for tens of thousands of years could all interfere with Deity Transformation-level Divine Sense probing.
If one acted in such a place, the Sage Rank Magical Tool on Chu Yi might be delayed by several breaths before it could trigger.
Several breaths—for Deity Transformation and Nascent Soul, that was enough to decide the victory or defeat of a battle.
So she had given Shen Mo the coordinates through a dream.
He might deliberately trigger some Prohibition Seal while being escorted to create chaos, or he might pass the Rumor to any power he could reach, or he might be unable to do anything at all.
Then that would mean he was not worth taking.
Xie Shilan did not like the weak.
This was what she had in common with Yun He, Qin Shuying, Chao’er, and Lin Jingzhe.
In this world, weakness was a kind of original sin.
She had already made an exception and given him a lotus seed. The rest of the path was for him to walk himself.
The night wind suddenly changed direction.
Xie Shilan tilted her head slightly and sensed a familiar Sword Intent approaching from the direction of the city gate.
That Sword Intent was cold and fierce, like a handful of snow shaken from a plum branch in deep winter.
Qin Shuying was almost here.
Xie Shilan curved the corner of her mouth.
The good show was about to begin.
She stood up from the flying eaves, patted the dust off her skirt, and turned to leave.
Then her footsteps halted.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
That Gaze—the Divine Sense that had been hovering above the carriage—moved away.
It did not disappear.
It moved.
From the top of the carriage, it moved toward the seventh floor of the high tower.
It moved toward Shen Mo.
Xie Shilan did not turn back.
She knew turning back was meaningless.
The main body of that Divine Sense might be 1,000 miles away, or perhaps closer.
She only knew that Yun He was watching Shen Mo.
It was not a casual glance, but a focused, sustained, undisguised Gaze.
Like a fierce beast staring at prey from the dark, not in a hurry to pounce, just watching.
Enjoying the final period of calm before the prey noticed.
Chu Yi’s Voice came from outside the door, separated by a layer of Prohibition Seal spiritual light.
Her tone was still gentle. “Young Master Shen, have you rested? There is one matter I need to discuss with you.”
Discuss.
Shen Mo chewed over these two words in his Heart. Chu Yi’s discussions were never discussions.
He hid that lotus seed in the inner layer of his White Underrobe, smoothed his collar, and sat upright on the edge of the couch.
“Please come in.”
The door opened.
Chu Yi had changed into a robe—a cherry-colored gauze long dress thin as cicada wings and nearly transparent, its sash loosely tied as if it might slip off at any moment.