A Pawn's Passage

Qi Xuansu decided to first accompany Long Xiaobai to her home.

It certainly could not be called a Dragon Palace. At most, it could be considered a dragon’s lair.

Shi Bingyun would not be going with them because she knew that her cultivation was insufficient. If they truly encountered some Ancient Immortal, she would only become a burden. It would be better for her to remain outside and call for reinforcements. If Qi Xuansu went in and never returned, she would immediately report the matter to the Daoist Order and ask its Immortals to deal with the situation. She would serve as a safeguard.

Before that, Qi Xuansu remembered something else.

When Qi Xuansu was promoted to Omniscient Sage, he had taken the opportunity to ask the Heavenly Preceptor about the Earthly Preceptor. The Heavenly Preceptor had given him a hint, telling him to look at the scroll given to him by True Lord Ziguang only after advancing to the Pseudo-Immortal stage.

Qi Xuansu had agreed at the time. Later, after advancing to the Pseudo-Immortal stage, he became preoccupied with all sorts of things, like his wedding, the family banquet, the visit to Yunjin Mountain, assuming his new post as Palace Master, preparing lessons, the dragon lady, and various other matters. As a result, the whole thing had completely slipped his mind.

It was only when Shi Bingyun mentioned the Ancient Celestial Court of the Chu region, setting off a chain of associations in Qi Xuansu’s mind that led to the Ancient Wuist Sect that Qi Xuansu finally remembered the matter and connected it to the Earthly Preceptor.

Thus, Qi Xuansu decided to first take a look at the scroll given to him by True Lord Ziguang.

At first, Qi Xuansu thought that True Lord Ziguang was wary about the Earthly Preceptor’s lineage and could not openly speak of certain matters, which was why True Lord Ziguang had ultimately chosen this method to convey the information to him.

Now, Qi Xuansu had a different thought. True Lord Ziguang was skilled at peering into the past and future, while the Earthly Preceptor Yao Yueyan excelled at obscuring the workings of heaven. Many truths had been concealed or altered by the Earthly Preceptor, preventing True Lord Ziguang from glimpsing the complete picture.

Thus, True Lord Ziguang could only extract and replicate a fragment of time, transforming it into a scroll for Qi Xuansu to examine for himself.

What Qi Xuansu would actually be able to see depended entirely on his cultivation level. True Lord Ziguang believed that Qi Xuansu would remain unaffected due to his Longevity Stone Heart, which represented the culmination of the Ancient Wuist Sect, essentially sharing the same origin as Yao Yueyan.

What True Lord Ziguang had done was akin to presenting the facts without offering any interpretation. She had simply forwarded the original text directly to Qi Xuansu without making any comment whatsoever. How Qi Xuansu chose to interpret it was entirely his own problem. If Qi Xuansu could not understand the original text, that was his own problem as well.

At that point, the Heavenly Preceptor had effectively told Qi Xuansu that he had to first improve his cultivation level before going back to read the original text.

Only now did Qi Xuansu finally understand True Lord Ziguang’s intention.

The scroll was a painting of a figure seen from behind.

Although Yao Yueyan had her back to Qi Xuansu, she had turned her head to look behind her, revealing the side of her face.

Unfortunately, even that side profile was covered by a bronze mask, making it impossible to see her true appearance.

Yao Yueyan was wearing the Yin-Yang Immortal Robe that was black as ink, with shadows flowing across its surface. Hanging from her waist was the Yin-Yang Torch Dragon Seal.

The oppressive Lingshan loomed in the background, its shattered mountainside frozen in place. Bolts of lightning stretched between heaven and earth, the land was scarred with crisscrossing ravines, and the sky resembled the end of the world.

Yao Yueyan was walking toward the Elder Yao’s Palace at the summit of Lingshan.

Qi Xuansu had previously tried infusing divine power into the scroll, causing the painting to come alive.

Within the painting, Yao Yueyan had raised a hand to the bronze mask and begun to remove it from her face. Yet the instant her chin was revealed, the movement abruptly stopped. No matter how much more divine power Qi Xuansu infused into the painting, there was no further movement.

Now that Qi Xuansu had become a Pseudo-Immortal, he tried infusing divine power into it once again.

This time, Yao Yueyan’s motion of removing the mask continued. First her chin was revealed, followed by her lips, the bridge of her nose, her eyes, and finally, her forehead.

Qi Xuansu finally saw the true face of Yao Yueyan, the Fourth Earthly Preceptor.

For some inexplicable reason, Qi Xuansu felt a strange sense of familiarity, as though he had seen her somewhere before.

But before Qi Xuansu could think about it more deeply, Yao Yueyan in the painting turned around completely and stared directly at him.

At that moment, she was no longer merely a silhouette from history. Instead, she seemed like a living person.

Yao Yueyan’s gaze seemed to pierce through the long river of time, projecting itself from the past into the present and falling upon Qi Xuansu.

Qi Xuansu felt an overwhelming terror.

It was as though an invisible hand had tightly seized his heart. Even though his heart was a literal rock, he still felt a fear he had not experienced in a very long time.

Back when Qi Xuansu and Qi Haoran encountered The Inn’s assassins at the Kunlun Pass, Qi Xuansu was still capable of feeling fear. But ever since Madam Qi implanted the Longevity Stone Heart into him, fear had become increasingly rare. Time and again, Qi Xuansu was able to remain composed in the face of danger. Even when he did feel afraid, it was only on a relatively superficial level. The very notion of fear had become like a nightmare from some distant dream, vanishing without a trace the moment he awoke and opened his eyes.

Now, Qi Xuansu experienced proper fear once again.

It was not the fear of facing a powerful enemy, nor the fear of death, nor even the fear of the unknown. It was fear in its purest form, one of the most primal and most powerful emotions of all.

In other words, Qi Xuansu was not afraid of Yao Yueyan’s cultivation, schemes, cunning, or ruthlessness. He was simply afraid of Yao Yueyan herself, even though she was now nothing more than an image in a painting and could not actually do anything to him.

It was an instinctive fear, as though it were an innate response formed through the countless cycles of evolution, like a mouse’s fear of a cat. It was something engraved into the very bones. He felt as if he were an ordinary person encountering God Luwu, terrified out of his wits.

From Long Xiaobai’s perspective, Qi Xuansu had suddenly opened a scroll. At first, he stared blankly for a while, with puzzlement and dawning realization. Then, whatever he saw next caused an expression of extreme terror to appear on his face.

This greatly surprised Long Xiaobai.

Over the past few days, while Qi Xuansu had been preparing his lessons, Long Xiaobai had gone around the Wanxiang Daoist Palace and talked to different people, gaining a general understanding of Qi Xuansu’s past experiences. After all, these were hardly secrets. If anything, they were considered glorious achievements and had been widely publicized. It had been very easy for Long Xiaobai to learn about them.

In Long Xiaobai’s view, Qi Xuansu was not someone who had risen through the ranks by relying on connections. He had genuine military achievements to his name. Whether it was the Fenglin battlefield, the political struggles of Nanyang, or his later experiences in the New Continent, all of it showed that Qi Xuansu was an extraordinarily bold man. There was nothing he would not throw himself into. Without those accomplishments, there was no way he could have risen through the ranks so quickly.

He was not even afraid of an Immortal. Yet now, Qi Xuansu looked utterly terrified. This made Long Xiaobai wonder just what was on that painting.

At that moment, Long Xiaobai was grappling with intense curiosity and fear of the unknown, leaving her deeply torn.

In the end, her intense curiosity still won out.

After all, Long Xiaobai was also outrageously daring. What normal being would see an unknown cave dwelling and simply walk straight inside? Who would eat an unidentified elixir just because they were hungry? Who would dare sneak into the Wanxiang Daoist Palace and hide right under the Daoist Order’s nose when her kind was being actively hunted? Who would dare secretly learn the art of immortality right under the Grand Master’s watchful eye?

Long Xiaobai had done every single one of those things. Even an old dragon that had lived for a thousand years might not have such courage.

She was fearless because of her ignorance. In other words, she was an airhead. Just look at the things she had done in the past. Not a single one seemed like something a person with a functioning brain would ever do.

Little Yin merely pretended to be foolish and clueless. But Long Xiaobai did not need to pretend at all.

Thus, seeing Qi Xuansu frozen in place, Long Xiaobai carefully took the scroll from his hands.

As Long Xiaobai did so, Yao Yueyan’s movements within the painting began to rewind through time. Yao Yueyan put the mask back on and returned to the pose where she was just about to turn around but had not yet done so, leaving only the masked side profile of her face visible.

Long Xiaobai held up the painting and examined it from every angle, finding nothing particularly remarkable about it. All she saw was a masked person and a huge black mountain. Other than that, there was nothing.

She thought to herself, How could Qi Xuansu have been so badly frightened by this? Could all those stories about his past exploits have been made up?!

Regardless of what Long Xiaobai thought, she had effectively saved Qi Xuansu by taking the painting away.

After a while, Qi Xuansu finally came back to his senses and let out a long sigh of relief. He said with sincerity, “Xiaobai, you did very well. I knew I wasn’t wrong to trust you. You really can shoulder great responsibilities. I can definitely count on you at critical moments!

Long Xiaobai was completely bewildered. “Huh?”

Fortunately, Long Xiaobai was not foolish enough to say something like, “But I didn’t do anything.”

Instead, she simply accepted Qi Xuansu’s praise. Whatever had happened, the outcome was good, and that was what mattered.

Long Xiaobai raised the scroll in her hand again and asked, “Do you still want to look at it?”

Qi Xuansu hurriedly waved his hands. “No way.”

If he looked again, he might actually end up dead.

Just now, Qi Xuansu had been completely consumed by fear, and his mind had gone utterly blank. He could not even clearly remember Yao Yueyan’s face. All he remembered was that she had looked extremely familiar, as though he had seen her somewhere before.

But where exactly had he seen her?

Qi Xuansu felt a headache coming on.

No matter how hard he tried, he simply could not remember.

Logically speaking, after Qi Xuansu’s aptitude had been improved by his Rogue Cultivator lineage, he should have remembered everything he saw. This was also why his level of learning had improved drastically. Yet he simply could not recall this particular memory. That meant it was not a problem with his memory, but rather that some spell was likely involved.

Could this be what True Lord Ziguang meant by obscuring the workings of heaven?

Judging from this, the fourth-generation Earthly Preceptor was truly formidable. She was definitely no ordinary Immortal. At the very least, she had to have been a Quasi-First-Tribulation Immortal, and she might even have been a First-Tribulation Immortal.

The Yao family’s foundations truly ran deep. No wonder they had managed to start later yet overtake the others, eventually getting on equal footing with the Zhang and Li families.

Even before the Holy Xuan restored the Daoist Order to prominence, the Zhang and Li families had already been powerful clans dominating their respective regions for many years. Meanwhile, the Yao family had not even existed as a notable force back then.

Though there was a saying that no great tree could grow beneath the shade of another, the Yao family had somehow grown into a towering tree right between two others. This alone showed just how formidable the Yao family was.

For some inexplicable reason, Qi Xuansu thought, Whoever dares to oppose the Yao family will be courting death! Come to think of it, being a member of the Yao family might actually be quite nice...

It was just that the role the Yao family had played in this entire affair was far too suspicious and antagonistic. Even Zhou Mengyao was ultimately nothing more than an enforcer for the Yao family.

No wonder Pei Shenfu was so arrogant. She was Yao Pei’s mother, and Yao Pei was the future leader of the Yao family.

Sage Donghua was unwilling to serve as a puppet transitional figure for the Yao family. But could he really succeed in his struggle against them?

In this respect, Qi Xuansu and Sage Donghua were kindred spirits pursuing the same goal.

Just then, Long Xiaobai spoke, interrupting Qi Xuansu’s thoughts. “Are we still going to Yunmeng Marsh?”

Qi Xuansu finally came back to his senses and replied, “Yes. Of course we are.”