Chapter 7
Back in their tent, Ling Xu sat before Huan Zheng with a pale face, the map in her hand trembling.
"We leave tomorrow night," she said, her voice leaving no room for argument.
Huan Zheng, who had been lying lazily, suddenly sat up, his brows raised because he had never seen Ling Xu this frightened.
"What happened?" he asked, his lazy tone shifting into cautious alertness.
Ling Xu told him everything—the Pavilion of Books, the old records, the girls with jade bracelets, and what she had seen behind the curtain of the main tent.
"He does not want to court me, Huan Zheng. He does not want to learn herbal knowledge from me. He wants… to seize the Star of Singularity from those who have achieved enlightenment," Ling Xu said, her eyes staring blankly at the tent wall, "and then brainwash them. Turn them into obedient sex slaves. Dozens. Perhaps nearly a hundred already."
Hhhh!!
The night sky above Xuelan Camp felt like velvet stretched over a coffin—black, cold, and without a single star daring to flicker.
Ling Xu crawled between the shadows of the large tents, her cold palms pressing against the ground damp with dew, while behind her Huan Zheng walked with feigned laziness, yawning wide as if he had just woken up, though his heart beat like a war drum.
"Are you sure this is the gap you meant?" Huan Zheng whispered, his lazy tone still present even as his eyes scanned the surroundings cautiously.
Ling Xu did not answer—she merely pointed toward the northwest, where the energy barrier that usually pulsed blue now appeared dim, like a wound beginning to dry, and there, between two decaying wooden posts, was a gap wide enough for a slender girl to pass through.
"The guards change in forty counts," Ling Xu finally said, her voice as thin as a strand of hair.
"We must—"
But her words were cut off when, in the distance, a figure with golden tendrils emerged from behind the main tent, followed by dozens of lanterns glowing like red eyes in the darkness.
"Miss Ling Xu," that voice called—the voice of Prince Whou Ming, still soft, still warm, but now feeling like a blade slowly drawn across the spine.
"Did I not say the night is too cold for a stroll?"
Whou Ming stepped forward with a smile that did not reach his eyes—a smile of a boy who once, at the age of five, hid behind silk curtains while covering his ears, yet still heard.
He heard his mother's screams, Si Yuehua, changing from anger into cries, from cries into sobs, and from sobs into a silence more terrifying than death itself.
He still remembered how the assassins—supposedly hired by his father, Whou Tianming, to capture his mother on accusations of treason—instead killed his father first, then violated his mother in turns upon the cold stone floor soaked in blood, while he, Whou Ming, could only bite his lower lip until it bled as an old servant dragged him into a secret passage behind the kitchen.
"Do not look, Young Master," the servant whispered, but Whou Ming had already seen—seen his mother's dying eyes, seen four male silhouettes moving up and down like beasts, and what etched deepest into his childhood memory.
Their laughter.
Laughter loud and carefree, as if what they were doing was an amusing spectacle.
"You think I do not know?" Whou Ming said now, his voice still gentle but his hand already raised, and at his fingertips, Qi pulsed in deep purple like poison flowing through his blood.
Dozens of his subordinates began forming a circle around Ling Xu and Huan Zheng, not a circle of capture—but something more terrifying.
A tight circle without gaps, like a wall of flesh and iron designed to ensure no one left alive.
"You think I would let my prey escape just like my father once let my mother?"
There were no more words after that.
Only the whistling of spirit blades flying from dozens of directions, the sound of robes tearing through the wind, and the roar of Qi clashing in the night air like waves crashing against rocks.
Ling Xu leaped backward, avoiding Whou Ming's first strike—a slash of purple energy that split the ground where she had stood into a small smoking chasm.
"Huan Zheng!" she cried while deflecting a follow-up attack with a wooden dagger that suddenly hardened like stone.
"Handle the others! I'll deal with this mad prince!"
Huan Zheng, who had been standing with his hands in his pockets, shrugged lazily and walked—not ran, walked—toward the crowd of Whou Ming's subordinates who were beginning to surround him from all sides.
From among that crowd, two figures stepped forward most prominently.
First, So Weihao, a forty-year-old man with glossy magenta hair cascading beautifully over his shoulders, wearing pale pink silk robes embroidered with peony patterns, his feminine face smiling faintly as he flicked a folding blade from his sleeve.
"At last I can meet one of humanity face to face," So Weihao said, his voice soft and slightly high-pitched.
"You seem impressive. But looking at you now… you look like a tired dog just vomited out by the sea."
Beside him, Xing Haoran—a frail old man of sixty-eight—remained silent, leaning on his yellow staff carved with small dragons, his faded bluish hair fluttering slightly in the night wind, his wrinkled eyes observing Huan Zheng without expression, like a grandfather watching a troublesome grandchild unworthy of attention.
Huan Zheng did not respond to So Weihao.
He did not even glance.
Instead, he sat—truly sat on the rough, cold ground, leaning against a small rock, then yawned widely while scratching his stomach that did not itch.
"You—!"
So Weihao snorted in irritation, then dashed forward with his glowing orange-red folding blade, followed by dozens of Whou Ming's subordinates wielding their respective weapons—swords, spears, chains, even iron spoons—all pulsing with Fourth and Fifth Level Lower Star Qi.
They rushed at Huan Zheng like a swarm of wasps chasing honey, but strangely, every time they approached within a three-meter radius of that lazy man, their bodies were flung away.
Not by a shield, not by magic, but by something unseen—a slowly rotating Qi field surrounding Huan Zheng, like a massive invisible whirlpool felt through the bones.
So Weihao, at the Sixth Level Common Star—far above Huan Zheng who now only stood at the Lower Star Foundation—attempted to strike from above, but the moment his blade touched that radius, his arm twisted on its own, his joints cracking like they were being gripped by an invisible hand.
"What—what is this?!" he shouted, his beautiful face turning pale, while Xing Haoran in the distance merely shook his head slowly, his yellow staff trembling faintly as he began to sense something unusual.
Huan Zheng, though only possessing the remnants of a Lower Star, still carried the experience of a Wheel of Cultivation—the experience of controlling heaven-level Qi, the experience of reading an enemy's movement before the enemy even thought, and most terrifying of all, the experience of concealing his true strength.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the battlefield, Ling Xu and Whou Ming fought fiercely—Whou Ming at the Third Level Lower Star, two levels above Ling Xu, pressing relentlessly with purple attacks pouring like a storm, while Ling Xu could only defend, roll, block, and occasionally counter with poisoned needles that always missed because Whou Ming was too experienced in dealing with poison.
To be continued…