Where Immortals Once Walked

In other words, Hong Chenglue had only two choices. Either he compromised with He Chunhua, or he made good on his bold threat.

It was a passive, cornered position to be in.

Yet the more clearly He Lingchuan saw this, the heavier his unease grew.

Hong Chenglue knew perfectly well that his threat could not be proven on the spot. So why insist on a face-to-face meeting with He Chunhua at all?

What else had he prepared here?

He Lingchuan lowered his head and quietly voiced his worries.

He had barely spoken two sentences before He Chunhua cut him off with a nod. “Enough. I understand.”

From this angle, He Lingchuan could see the muscles in his father’s neck drawn tight. Clearly, He Chunhua was far from as calm as he looked.

A long moment later, the stone man finally spoke again, “Let me see A’Jin first.”

That request, at least, was not excessive. He Chunhua tilted his chin toward the carriage. A guard standing beside it pulled the door open.

Inside, an old servant woman had propped a cushion behind A’Jin, so she could lean against the wall of the carriage.

Only then did some light return to her eyes. “Dear.”

“How are you?” The stone man could not help taking two heavy steps in her direction. “Did they mistreat you?”

“I’m fine. It’s you they’re making things hard for.” A’Jin sighed. “It seems that I’ve dragged you down again.”

The stone man said firmly, “Nothing that ever drags me down has ever been you.”

In broad daylight, in front of nearly a thousand pairs of eyes, the two of them still had the nerve to put on a show of conjugal affection?

He Chunhua gave a pointed cough. “Lady Miao, don’t forget our agreement.”

A’Jin’s surname was Miao. The past two days, He Chunhua had visited her several times, asking her to help persuade Hong Chenglue.

She had agreed readily enough. She had thrown no tantrums and shown no resistance.

Now, she acted as though he did not exist. Her gaze never left her husband on the distant peak. “Dear, don’t worry about me any longer. From this day forward, the sky is wide enough for you to fly freely.”

As she said that, she smiled at Hong Chenglue. At that moment, black blood slid from the corner of her lips.

Hong Chenglue and He Chunhua both blanched in horror, blurting in near unison, “What are you doing?!”

Utter dread nearly ripped Hong Chenglue’s soul straight out of his body. “Impossible! I took her poison away!”

He Chunhua lunged into the carriage, entirely forgetting his dignity. He pried her jaw open with one hand. A’Jin’s teeth were clenched tight, her whole body shaking, blood seeping from all seven orifices.

He Lingchuan vaulted up beside him. “Ling Guang! Save her!”

The medicine ape sprang into the carriage and sniffed near A’Jin’s mouth. It pulled a gourd from who knew where and poured liquid down her throat. “It’s a potent poison known as Cold Dove Powder. It’s an assassin’s poison.”

The fluid in the gourd was pale yellow. It had a faint foul smell, but it was perfectly clear.

A’Jin’s throat muscles spasmed so hard that she could barely swallow. Ling Guang pressed twice on her neck and chest in quick succession, and at last the liquid gurgled down into her stomach.

She coughed and choked, but Ling Guang ignored it and kept forcing more down.

About a dozen breaths later, it flipped her onto her side and pressed hard into her abdomen. “Now vomit it out, quick!”

A’Jin retched violently, everything coming up in a messy rush.

Ling Guang followed with more medicine to rinse her stomach and prepared to induce vomiting again.

In a moment like this, no divine pills or elixirs could match basic methods.

But this time, after two mouthfuls, her body gave no response. No matter how the ape kneaded or shook her, nothing happened.

“No good.” Ling Guang was panting. “The poison’s acting too fast.”

While it forced medicine down her throat, it could see her lips and mouth corroding before its eyes. One could well imagine what that poison was doing to her softer organs inside.

Calling it “death at the first sight of blood” was not an exaggeration at all.

Across Yuan and Beijia, Cold Dove Powder had a reputation as the poison of choice for keeping mouths shut.

“Try again!” He Chunhua’s face was set, his tone knife-sharp. “Think of something else!”

Hong Chenglue had been on the verge of yielding. His plan had nearly succeeded. If A’Jin died at this exact juncture, his trump card against Hong Chenglue would vanish, and he would be left only with a blood feud.

At that instant, fury surged through him. How did my men fail to search this crippled woman thoroughly? Did they relax their guard just because she couldn’t walk?

Ling Guang tried several more methods, but A’Jin remained limp and unmoving.

He Lingchuan laid a hand on her wrist and felt for her pulse. She was already gone. “Father, she’s dead.”

As A’Jin collapsed under the poison, the stone man went berserk and charged.

It was only a mode of transmission, not some heavily fortified war puppet, so under the blows of the surrounding soldiers, it shattered into a rain of rubble in short order.

He Chunhua forced his churning thoughts down. His voice was cold as steel as he ordered, “Catch Hong Chenglue. Now!”

There was no turning back. With a hatred like this forged between them, Hong Chenglue could not be allowed to leave alive.

Zeng Feixiong let out a shrill whistle. Soldiers burst from their hiding spots and surged toward the small peak.

He Chunhua’s eyes flicked, and he shouted toward the ridge, “She’s not dead! Your wife’s been saved!”

With over thirty meters between them and so many people crowding around the carriage, there was no way Hong Chenglue could see clearly whether A’Jin still drew breath.

As long as he was not certain, there was room to maneuver.

From his vantage through the stone man’s eyes, Hong Chenglue had seen the black blood on his wife’s lips. His mind had gone white with terror, and he almost hurled himself toward them without thinking.

Dong Rui caught him by the shoulder. “Have you gone mad?! You’d be walking right into their net!”

Hong Chenglue flung his arm off, but a giant claw came sweeping in from the side, clamping hard around his forearm. He actually failed to break free at once. “Let go! She’s been poisoned!”

The ghost ape had assumed its full form and was helping its master restrain Hong Chenglue. However, his strength was immense, and the ghost ape was still nursing its injuries. It had to throw in everything it had just to keep hold of him.

Dong Rui roared into his ear, “Calm down! She took that poison willingly because she doesn’t want you to die!”

That single word—die—hit like a thunderclap.

Hong Chenglue stiffened, as if something had clicked into place. He stopped struggling.

Down below, the stone man had already been smashed to pieces. Yuan soldiers were pouring toward the peak in a wave, and nearby archers already had arrows nocked to their strings.

“There’s no more time. We’re leaving!” Dong Rui whistled sharply. Behind him, the strange bird emerged from concealment. Its hulking body could easily carry two men on a short flight.

Hong Chenglue stared fixedly at the carriage in the distance, eyes bloodshot and breath ragged.

Dong Rui swung onto the bird’s back, urging it impatiently. “Go! Go, go, go!”

If they did not leave now, they would find themselves unable to leave ever again.

Hong Chenglue ground his teeth until they might as well have been steel, then jerked his head away and vaulted onto the bird’s back. The ghost ape shrank back down into its smaller form and leaped into Dong Rui’s arms.

The bird beat its wings hard, launching into the air just ahead of the volley of arrows.

Only after they were airborne did Hong Chenglue hear He Chunhua’s shout drift up from below. The muscles beside his mouth twitched uncontrollably.

“He’s lying,” Dong Rui said quickly, afraid rage and grief would drive Hong Chenglue into doing something stupid. “Don’t believe a word from him!”

When Hong Chenglue spoke, his voice sounded like it came from the bottom of an ice cellar. “That was Cold Dove Powder. There’s no antidote.”

He had once distributed that exact poison to Beijia’s spies. He recognized it at a glance.

Its other name was Ten-Breath Soul-Snatching Powder.

By now, A’Jin is probably already...

Dong Rui shuddered and hunched his shoulders, as if trying to duck away from the wave of fury boiling behind his back.

Hong Chenglue suddenly took the longbow from his shoulder, nocked an arrow, and drew.

He did not aim at He Chunhua.

He aimed at the ground, at the sandy ground those Yuan soldiers were charging across.

He loosed three arrows in rapid succession. Each shaft buried itself more than a third of a meter into the soil. The soft ground helped, but the depth also spoke volumes about the strength in his arms.

The wide, level stretch of sand erupted.

The explosion was deafening. Sand and stone blasted in all directions.

The dust cloud that rose was over sixteen meters high.

The twenty-odd Yuan soldiers in the very front vanished into it in an instant. For a while, no one could tell if they lived or died.

The ground had been primed.

Those still further back skidded to a halt, suddenly too wary to take another step.

And with their target fleeing into the sky, what was the point of infantry pressing forward anyway?

The explosives Xun Province had pulled from the abandoned mine came into play once more.

With archers on the ground below, the strange bird did not dare linger. Using the swirling smoke as cover, it climbed higher and higher until it vanished into the low, dark clouds.

He Chunhua watched its receding silhouette, gaze pinned on it. He knew that at this moment, Hong Chenglue was staring back at him just as fiercely.

The hatred burning in that unseen gaze made his own skin crawl.

Only when the bird finally disappeared into the clouds did he speak, voice cold as ice, “Back to camp!”

The others hurried to clean up the field and tend to the wounded.

On the ride back, the cold anger radiating from He Chunhua was so palpable that everyone made sure to stay a respectful distance away.

* * *

The moment they reached camp, He Lingchuan seized the excuse of helping with the wounded to slip away.

His father was seething. Why go courting disaster?

That blast on the field had killed three Yuan soldiers, severely injured seven more, and left twenty-one lightly wounded. Ling Guang had gone off to help treat them. Now, a soldier came to ask He Lingchuan what they should do with the dead woman’s body.

They had brought the carriage back as well. A’Jin’s corpse lay inside, along with the two old servants, who were currently shaking like leaves.

He Lingchuan sighed. “Leave it with me.”

He had the carriage kept under guard by personal soldiers and was just about to return to his tent when Zhao Pan appeared up ahead.

“How did things go at Baiming Gorge?” One look at He Lingchuan’s face, followed by a look at the sour mood hanging over the returning troops, and his heart sank. “Negotiations failed?”

He might not have approved of He Chunhua’s methods, but he still hoped that Hong Chenglue would leave Xia Province.

“No good. A’Jin took poison in front of him and died on the spot.”

Zhao Pan’s eyes widened. “What?!”

He did not press for details. He whirled around and strode off toward He Chunhua’s tent.

About an hour later, news filtered through the camp. Several soldiers had been dragged out and given forty strokes of the rod. The old servants who had served A’Jin had been executed on the spot.

Those soldiers had been assigned to keep watch on A’Jin. They had failed to discover that she still carried a lethal poison, and that was a dereliction of duty.

As for the old servants, that was pure, unfiltered rage on He Chunhua’s part.

Word also spread that loud voices had been heard from the main command tent.

Only a handful of people would dare raise their voices in there. It had to be He Chunhua and Zhao Pan.

At such a time, He Lingchuan would sooner jump into a latrine pit than walk anywhere near the enraged Governor-General He. That would be asking to be skinned.

He successfully kept his head down until the first quarter-hour of the hour of the pig (9:00 P.M.), before He Chunhua finally remembered him and sent someone to summon him.

When He Lingchuan entered the command tent, he saw that the desk and chairs had all been overturned, clearly, by the governor-general’s own hand.

No one had dared set them upright again, which alone said plenty about the current mood of Xia Province’s governor-general.

He had no choice but to grit his teeth, walk in as if nothing were wrong, and call out, “Father.”

He Chunhua had been standing with his hands clasped behind his back. At the sound, he turned. “You saw A’Jin a few days ago. You didn’t notice she meant to die?”

“No. She was quite courteous to me,” He Lingchuan replied, keeping his tone steady. Of course, he would never admit otherwise. “She didn’t look like someone planning to take her own life.”

“Blind as a bat, then!” He Chunhua flicked his sleeve sharply. “No eyes in your head at all.”

Inwardly, He Lingchuan muttered, And you were any better? You met with her three or four times at least and didn’t notice a thing either, did you?

A’Jin had fooled them all.