Qingshan Qi took two steps forward; his footing gave way and he pitched stumbling down the steps.
Inside the house, Cang Zhou drank his Coptis soup straight from the bowl’s rim, teeth gritted against the bitterness, grinning ear to ear in open delight.
Fall. Fall, fall, break your neck.
Zhuoyu darted forward and caught Qingshan Qi in one arm, murmuring to himself even as he did—this kid hadn’t been this weak before. How could a few steps undo him now?
Aftereffects this severe from two Teleportation Talismans?
Once Qingshan Qi was steady, Zhuoyu promptly withdrew his hands. “Did you hurt yourself?”
Qingshan Qi coughed hard several times, the sound of it seeming to wrench at his very lungs—painful just to hear. “N-nothing, thanks to Elder Brother catching me in time.”
Question and answer, easy and practiced, the familiarity between them unmistakable. Yan Su stared coldly at the plum-blossom pattern on Qingshan Qi’s cuff, fingers drifting without thought over the Wuyou Sword at his waist.
Sensing Yan Su’s stare, Qingshan Qi offered a pale smile and bowed. “Commander Yan. This humble one is Lu Qi, of the Lu family of Phoenix Pool Pass. On the road here, as my whole household journeyed to Guping City, kin and friends alike were slaughtered by a Tiger Demon. I owe it to Elder Brother Zhuoyu’s timely rescue that I kept my life at all.”
Yan Su turned the words “Elder Brother Zhuoyu” over in his mouth, expression unreadable.
Seeing that Yan Su would not even look him in the eye, Qingshan Qi dropped his gaze awkwardly, as if embarrassed at being slighted.
Yan Su knew Zhuoyu yielded to softness, never to force. He said quietly, “Where are you hurt? Let me channel energy and treat your wounds.”
Zhuoyu eyed him. “So you’re done trying to drag me back to the sect by force?”
Yan Su stepped forward, reaching to take Zhuoyu’s hand as he once had. “Your wounds come first.”
Zhuoyu huffed, brow arcing up in open defiance, and simply flung out a lash of spiritual power.
It slammed into Yan Su with a bang.
Yan Su’s Seven Golden Talismans manifested on instinct, dissolving the blow into nothing; his brow creased faintly.
“See that?” Zhuoyu grinned at him, smug. “That’s Spirit Solidification spiritual power. Not only are my wounds healed—I’ve broken through, a blessing in disguise. Compared to Commander Yan’s talent, isn’t mine even more impressive?”
Yan Su was far less optimistic. Zhuoyu’s divine sense had been unstable; Shizun had long since prepared breakthrough pills and a Spirit Gathering Array for him, intending to wait two or three years for his divine sense to solidify before advancing him to Spirit Solidification the steady way. To break through so abruptly in a matter of days—he must have swallowed pills that ravaged the body.
“You’re in Spirit Solidification now, yet the strike carried no true force behind it,” Yan Su said. “Something must be wrong with the Golden Core in your inner palace.”
Zhuoyu: “…”
Zhuoyu glared at him. “What, you want me to strike your Life Gate at full power? I was just letting you glimpse my Spirit Solidification cultivation, and you’re picking it apart—’no true force,’ honestly.”
At that, the knotted lines of Yan Su’s brow seemed to ease a little. “I was only worried about you.”
Zhuoyu had been ready to snap at him—and at those few short words, he paused, blinking. Since their return from Linchuan City, Yan Su had treated him with scolding and cold shoulders, hard as a reeking stone. This was the first considerate thing he’d said.
“Oh.” Zhuoyu did, in fact, melt for softness. He coughed drily. “I really am fine. If you don’t believe me, go ask Divine Physician Cang Zhou.”
Cang Zhou, meanwhile, was hopping about with his rabbit face screwed up; at the mention of his name he came scurrying over. “That’s right! The Little Immortal Lord has already reached the Peak Stage of Spirit Solidification. The Origin Core is nothing serious.”
Qingshan Qi, silent all this while, muffled a few more coughs behind his hand.
Yan Su’s gaze turned coolly on Cang Zhou. “Just now, in your memory…”
Cang Zhou said flatly, “I’ve treated too many patients. Mixed them up for a moment.”
Whether Yan Su believed it or not was anyone’s guess. He gave an “mm.” “Whenever you go to Lingshu Mountain, I will go with you.”
Zhuoyu hadn’t decided either. “I hear Ling Wensong brought the Fox Demon’s corpse from Lingshu Mountain to the Demon Suppression Bureau. I want to take a look at it.”
Yan Su: “Good.”
Zhuoyu turned back to Qingshan Qi. “Since you’re unwell, rest here at Divine Physician Cang Zhou’s manor. I’ll bring you candy when I come back.”
Qingshan Qi smiled, meek. “All right. Go quick and come back quick, Elder Brother.”
Zhuoyu beckoned airily and swept off with style.
Qingshan Qi was still fixed on that flamboyant figure bathed in sunlight, mid-thought, when a snow-white figure abruptly cut across his line of sight.
He looked up: the man of legend whose name shook the Three Realms, Yan Linyuan, stood angled in the sun, robes trailing, frost-scoured face brimming with chill as his cold gaze locked onto Qingshan Qi’s.
They had never met before—and yet Yan Su’s whole body radiated enmity he didn’t bother to hide.
Qingshan Qi faltered a heartbeat, then curved his lips into a soft, sinister smile. Pretending frailty, he raised a sleeve to his mouth and coughed into it a few times—revealing the peach-blossom-and-snow-plum pattern within the cuff.
“This one respectfully sees Commander Yan off.”
Yan Su: “…”
Expressionless, Yan Su flicked his sleeve and departed.
Watching the two go, Qingshan Qi’s smile cut off at once. He lowered his sleeve coldly, claws nearly slipping out past his fingertips beyond his control—yet all he did was stroke the embroidery’s pattern, slow and deliberate.
Cang Zhou shrank off to the side, thinking, Demons and Demon Suppression Commanders really are natural enemies. One look at each other and they’d nearly come to blows.
Qingshan Qi’s divine sense, stretched outward and coiled around Zhuoyu’s cuff, was abruptly snapped by a more domineering force of spiritual power the moment its owner passed out of Cang Manor.
Qingshan Qi’s face darkened. The instant Zhuoyu’s presence slipped from his perception, his pupils transformed beyond his control into deep-violet fox eyes, and an agitation unlike anything he had known flooded his whole body.
He nearly surged out of Cang Manor on the strength of that emotion alone—the damned Demon Suppression Bureau be damned—seizing Zhuoyu back, never letting him leave his sight again.
…As if that Origin Core were pulling at him like a leash.
Qingshan Qi closed his eyes and forcibly smothered the impulse, then snapped his fingers with a crisp crack.
Cang Zhou came hurrying over at once. “Young Master.”
Qingshan Qi asked coolly, “Aren’t you famed as a Divine Physician? Why is the divine sense on my Origin Core not erased?”
Cang Zhou felt wronged unto heaven’s own thunderbolt, and swore furiously at the sky, “I absolutely, absolutely wiped it clean! If the Young Master wants me dead, then kill me—but don’t slander me besides!”
Something occurred to Qingshan Qi, and his expression turned uglier still. Just as Cang Zhou shut his eyes and braced for the kill, he heard: “When Lin Zhuoyu returns, do one thing for me.”
Cang Zhou: “?”
The last time Qingshan Qi had said those words, he’d reached in and ripped out his own Inner Core on the spot. And now he was saying it again?
Cang Zhou swallowed his fury. “Y-yes.”
Qingshan Qi’s cold gaze fixed on the distance as he murmured, venomous, each syllable bitten off.
“Yan. Lin. Yuan.”
“Lu. Qi.”
At the Demon Suppression Bureau in Guping City, Yuan Jiucang came hurrying in—and before he could catch his breath, Commander Yan assigned him a name.
Yuan Jiucang: “Who’s that?”
“Lu family, of Phoenix Pool Pass,” Yan Su said flatly. “Verify whether his identity holds. Spare no detail—I want every thread and trace.”
“Yes, sir.”
Yuan Jiucang departed with his orders.
Yan Su turned to look.
The Demon Suppression Bureau was grim and cold; the Kirin statue stood at its very center.
Zhuoyu was circling the statue, clucking in wonder. “When I was small, I only remember thinking the Bureau’s Kirin statue loomed like a mountain. Now that I look again, it’s quite different.”
Ling Wensong started, recalling his first sight of Lin Zhuoyu—a babe in arms, hauled in Lin Chengbi’s embrace, bawling “wahh” at the statue without end.
“That it is,” Ling Wensong said feelingly. “He’s grown up, after all.”
Having admired the Kirin statue to his heart’s content, Zhuoyu was led by Ling Wensong to the side hall where the corpse was kept.
Guan Shan’s corpse had reverted to its original fox form, lying wretchedly on the floor. A white cloth lifted, revealing a blood-soaked abdomen—at its center, a bloody hole, as though something had punched through it bare-handed.
Zhuoyu had no fear of the corpse’s gruesome state and was reaching to poke at the gore-drenched wound when a large hand extended from one side and closed around his wrist.
Yan Su stood behind him, tall frame nearly enclosing him whole, and said quietly, eyes lowered, “What are you looking for?”
“To see whether the Golden Core in its inner palace is still there,” Zhuoyu said.
Yan Su gave an “mm,” and the low rasp of his voice brushed past Zhuoyu’s ear, making him shuffle forward without quite knowing why.
Zhuoyu was about to speak when he saw Yan Su’s hand plunge straight into the bloody hole in the Great Demon’s corpse, coating itself in glistening gore.
Zhuoyu stared at him, astonished.
Yan Su was famously fastidious—those hands would not tolerate so much as a speck of dust, let alone being shoved into a corpse on a search.
“Senior Brother…”
Yan Su withdrew his hand, eyes downcast. “The inner palace is empty. The Origin Core is gone.”
Zhuoyu said “oh,” drew a handkerchief from Qingru, and offered it.
Yan Su extended his hand instead. “Wipe it for me.”
Zhuoyu obediently wiped.
Ling Wensong, case file in hand off to one side: “………”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Actually, Commander Yan really needn’t be quite so heroic about it. The Great Demon’s corpse has already been examined—whatever you wish to know, the case file has it all recorded.”
Yan Su: “…”
Zhuoyu stuffed the handkerchief back into his hand, startled. “Let me see, then.”
Ling Wensong passed the file over.
The file detailed the state of Guan Shan’s corpse in full. Most of the wounds had been dealt by Zhuoyu himself; only the Golden Core of the inner palace had been dug out—by whom, no one knew.
Zhuoyu looked thoughtful. So after Lu Qi had carried him off, someone else had come. Perhaps a human—but nine times in ten, a demon. Like the Heart’s Blood the Violet Fox outside Linchuan City had lost.
Zhuoyu copied the file and took it with him. Ling Wensong had been about to consult Yan Su on the matter of Lingshu Mountain, only to watch Yan Su—glued to Zhuoyu like a shadow—stride out after him.
Ling Wensong: “…”
Zhuoyu hadn’t meant to impose on Cang Zhou’s manor any longer, but with Lu Qi in such poor shape, he thought to stay a couple more days before entering Lingshu Mountain. He walked out reading the file, only belatedly noticing someone trailing behind.
Zhuoyu glanced back, brow arching. “Why are you following me?”
Yan Su, eyes lowered, wiped the blood from between his fingers. He didn’t answer.
Zhuoyu coughed drily. “Still not clean, huh—Qingru.”
The Boundless Water emerged, coiling around Yan Su’s hands, cleansing them for him.
Yan Su watched from lowered lashes as Zhuoyu clumsily wrangled Qingru, then said abruptly: “Clothes.”
Zhuoyu: “Hm?”
“Blood on my sleeve. I came in haste; I brought no change of clothes.”
Zhuoyu seized his sleeve and scrutinized it back and forth for ages before discovering a single pinpoint blood drop at the cuff—invisible unless one looked hard. But he knew his Senior Brother’s fastidious affliction. “Then go buy something off the rack at a clothier and make do.”
“You didn’t bring any on you?”
“I didn’t.”
Seeing Zhuoyu dismiss Qingru and turn to go, Yan Su’s hand dropped and caught his wrist—loosely, this time, so that the moment Zhuoyu moved, his wrist slid down until Yan Su held him by the fingers.
“What is it?”
Yan Su looked at him steadily. At last he said it: “You gave my robe to someone else.”
Zhuoyu thought it over before realizing—so Yan Su had been glaring at Qingshan Qi this whole time over a robe?
Zhuoyu laughed in sheer exasperation at this debt-collector act, fixing Yan Su with a flat look. “Eldest Senior Brother. Commander Yan. I am begging you to engage your brain for one moment—you threw me out of Warm Spring Peak yourself. You think I’d press a warm face to your cold backside and keep your robes after that? Dream on.”
Yan Su: “…”
