Chapter 75

This person‌—Chen Shu had never seen him before.

During Yan Ji’s previous visits to seek He Yu, he always came alone. Even that day, during the sect competition at the Sword Discussion Tournament’s Sword Discussion Platform, that one time Chen Shu happened to catch a glimpse of him, he was obscured by the crowd. She couldn’t make out the faces of those Linbo Prefecture disciples then, and naturally, she had no memory of them.

However, Yan Ji, as the leader bringing these Linbo Prefecture disciples to participate in the Sword Discussion Tournament, no matter how laid-back or negligent he might be, how could he possibly fail to remember the appearance of every disciple? From the very first shovel Chen Shu struck into the earth, his expression had tightened. He remained silent, waiting until she brushed aside the soil and he had seen the face clearly, only then daring to truly confirm it.

Before the flood came, the majority—no, it could be said all—of the Linbo Prefecture disciples had originally followed Yan Ji out of the city overnight.

All except for one.

One person who had been detained by Shen Jie at the magistracy.

And this one person might well be the thread that connected everything together.

Tracing the great river backwards, following the tributaries upstream: from Diancang Pass to Mengcheng, and then to Zhanglin Village; that small inn—wasn’t that precisely where Chen Shu, Yun Shen, and He Yu met? The inn was raided; the three of them searched frantically through the wilderness that very night and chanced upon each other. Perhaps, because of this very convergence, they had overlooked that Mounted Bandit who had fled from the mountains.

After days and nights of grueling travel, not only had that Mounted Bandit failed to escape, he had gone with the flow—hurrying downriver, catching up with Chen Shu and her companions, entering the city alongside them. Brazenly, he even dared to tail the trio. He was spotted by Yun Shen and He Yu, thus ending up behind bars again.

Early on, when Chen Shu first apprehended that Mounted Bandit, Yun Shen had suggested to her—behind this bandit must lie a much larger power.

Otherwise, why would a small-time thief, lacking any backing, who had just witnessed Chen Shu’s power—sufficient to awe ten thousand commoners—dare, immediately afterwards, to commit to tailing them all the way to Diancang Pass, just to investigate her background?

But he was only a small pawn. Because he was insignificant, even being captured didn’t truly matter. After all, Shen Jie had interrogated him for days without prying anything useful from him.

Until this person’s appearance.

One suggestion from Yun Shen. One visit by Yan Ji to the Diancang Pass magistracy. One cry for mercy from that lowly Mounted Bandit—and suddenly, everything was linked together by this individual.

It was like a grand proclamation, meticulously crafted by a proud author, left lying upon a desk for days. A passerby—perhaps a servant—glanced left and right, failing to grasp its importance, mistaking it for scrap paper. In that moment of misconception, in the blink of an eye, the paper was crumpled into a ball and thrown into the wastebasket.

When the author returned to his desk, all he saw was the bare surface.

That Mounted Bandit likely never knew just which sect or faction backed him. He only knew who had ordered the raid and where the goods were to be delivered. And none of this, without the key piece—this wedge—embedded within Linbo Prefecture itself, could possibly function.

All the banditry plaguing Yunan perhaps needed to pass through this one person’s hands. Delving to its root: how to break horses, how to breed them, transport them, ride them—these were specialized skills. How could a band of illiterate Mountain Bandits master such things? There always had to be this wedge, like the Pillar that Calms the Seas, connecting the scattered pieces to the player moving them on the board.

From the Mounted Bandit to this wedge, when Shen Jie followed the vine to the gourd and tried to trace further down… that move which they feared might “startle the snake” truly proved redundant.

If Linbo Prefecture, a thousand leagues away, could be compared to a snake, then the one actually beating the grass was not Shen Jie. The real person shaking the branches had awakened the “snake” the moment that Mounted Bandit was captured upon entering the city.

One letter, dispatched before Shen Jie could even sense anything or apprehend the wedge, had already been sent to Linbo Prefecture. Reflecting upon it now, its intent was glaringly obvious!

The letter passed through the lord of Linbo Prefecture and reached Yan Ji only several days later. Though he possessed remarkable foresight, he was still a step too late. That invisible, manipulating hand had sent the letter to Linbo Prefecture with one sole purpose: to protect the wedge—the one who had accompanied Yan Ji to the magistracy the day before and had been recognized by the Mounted Bandit on the spot!

This was the mastermind’s opening gambit.

But what Shen Jie truly did rouse with her inquiries was something far larger, far more terrifying.

Knowing that the wedge had been captured by Shen Jie and would soon confess, this player, thwarted in his first move, utterly abandoned restraint. Like a petulant, malicious child who, frustrated by a misstep, sweeps his hand across the board, he flung the entire game—and all its multitudes—headlong into the rising floodwaters!

The flames consuming that mountain grove were part of it. The desperate, unvoiced pleas buried under the water, stifled within tiny bubbles swept away by the waves at the flooded bottom of Diancang Pass’s jail—they were part of it.

The courtyard wasn’t entirely silent. Occasionally, sounds drifted in: footsteps of yamen runners patrolling outside the gate; the distant hurry of people beyond several walls—some rushing to claim the last mouthful of warm porridge at the charity porridge distribution points, others still scouring streets and alleys for missing friends and kin. Intermittent conversations reached the place, softened and blurred by the twilight, the words indistinguishable by the time they drifted into this corner.

Yet the courtyard was also quite profoundly still. Chen Shu paused in her strenuous digging. Any noise that might have drawn the runners’ attention subsided. The surface of the water ceased rippling. Yan Ji and Chen Shu looked mutely at the pit, seeming to finally confront the horror of this unsightly, ruined corpse lying before them. For a moment, neither made a sound.

Chen Shu looked down again at the clothing, the blurred character denoting a prisoner barely visible.

A flood might drown you, or drag you under the waves, battering you painfully to death in the churning chaos—but it shouldn’t twist and tangle the clothes in quite this way. Inspecting it now, marks remained upon the fabric that seemed deliberately ripped.

In a flash of insight, the image of the self-immolation blaze within the wooden hut resurfaced in Chen Shu’s mind. She drew in a sharp breath and violently flipped the corpse over onto its front.

Indeed. The tear she hadn’t been able to see clearly earlier, buried under the mud, now spread from the hem of the garment all the way to the corpse’s back. With just a slight shake, the prisoner’s garb began to peel away like a long insect shedding its skin. Clumps of damp, mud-clogged fabric slid off, piece by piece, piling beside the pit.

In an instant, the corpse’s water-bloated back was exposed—

On the back, just beneath the shoulder blade, there was something lightly discernible, untouched by the water and hidden beneath the soil. In the shadows of the courtyard walls, it seemed to seep out like blood. The two of them looked down, their gazes locked in shock!

——

“I have seen your sect’s mark before,” Yun Shen said.

He lowered his eyelids and slowly took a sip of the freshly boiled mountain spring water, his brow easing. His movements were careful and deliberate, as if what he spoke of wasn’t a significant matter.

No one spoke up; Yun Shen didn’t rush to continue, and for a moment, silence fell over the room.

Before sunset, a candle’s light flickered in the attic, casting reflections on the smooth floor tiles, making it appear exceptionally bright, starkly contrasting with the eeriness of the secret passage at Mijiang Slope. Thus, the appearances of the three people in this room became clear in the bright candlelight.

Sitting on the left side, Yun Shen donned his usual unremarkable gray robes, a faint smile on his face. The person facing him was none other than the mysterious figure he had met in the secret room of the inn, who now revealed a distinct appearance under the bright light—thin and with a face like dry wood—

This person was, surprisingly, a woman! However, she was so frightfully thin, skin tightly clinging to bones, and with pale skin and red eyes, she hardly resembled any proper person. Under such conditions in this hall, she looked as she did in the dim secret room.

She sat right across from him. Unlike Yun Shen’s relaxed demeanor, she wore a serious expression, her eyes lowered, yet tightly focused on the feet of the seated master, her demeanor respectful.

Between them, at the highest position in the attic, sat an ordinary-looking man. In contrast to Yun Shen’s elegance and the woman’s gauntness, he appeared overly plain, with a tanned complexion and simple clothes. The veins on his arms were visible as he gripped the chair, looking like an unremarkable farmer.

After a long time, Yun Shen took another sip of the boiling hot water before the man seemed to snap back to reality, laughing heartily, “You, a Scholar who has never visited Fangcheng, from where did you see the mark of our Evil Man Valley? Don’t be afraid of tripping over your tongue!”

“Because I am a Scholar with a good memory, I recognized the emblem right away when I visited your ‘Ghost Inn’,” Yun Shen replied without offense, smiling. “At first glance, it may not have seemed entirely identical to the mark of your sect, but if turned over and held up to the light, it would be exactly the same…”

As he spoke, Yun Shen finally lifted his head, shifting his gaze from the half-full tea bowl to the woman across from him. He paused for a moment and continued, “…just like the pattern in this young lady’s palm; it is indeed your sect’s mark—did I say anything wrong?”

The woman involuntarily raised her head to look at Yun Shen. They had only met that once in the secret room, and since entering this attic, they hadn’t spoken face to face. Yet, filled with suspicion from that encounter, Yun Shen seemed to have discerned some clues. Of course, whether this matter was significant or trivial depended on what the person above thought.

However, Yun Shen’s gaze returned to rest steadily on her. She first glared at him with resentment, as if she would devour him alive the moment he left this attic. Then she seemed to realize something and looked up, a flicker of panic crossing her face as she glanced at the master, who bore cold sweat on his bony countenance.

The seated man did not look at her but, upon hearing her words, simply retracted his exaggerated smile, maintaining focus on Yun Shen while surveying him once more. He leaned slightly, his body resting against the chair’s arm, casually playing with his hands as if intrigued. With a smirk, he asked, “Then may I, Xiao, ask this: in what place and under what circumstances did you see this mark?”

Yun Shen set down the tea bowl, seemingly awaiting this question.

“At Diancang Pass.”

The man’s expression changed once more, and this time he revealed a hint of surprise.

“Nonsense!” he exclaimed, “There were no people from my Evil Man Valley at Diancang Pass!”

“Indeed, there were none,” Yun Shen replied, watching as the man’s face grew increasingly grim. “Or rather, even if there were, a mere white-clad scholar would not know. That mark was certainly not seen on someone at Diancang Pass, but instead on a corpse belonging to Linbo Prefecture amidst the flood—”

“Linbo Prefecture? I am—” the man began to respond but was quickly silenced by Yun Shen’s slow yet unnervingly authoritative words.

“—Don’t you find it strange? The flood at Diancang Pass happened just a few days ago, and even your underlings have yet to receive any news. Yet I, a scholar with the strength to bind a chicken, was able to visit Mijiang Slope in just a few days?”

After a moment, the man scoffed, “Are you saying you can fly or teleport?”