Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Lu Qingxuan’s smile was like a painted skin pasted over his handsome face.

“Master is old. Confused.” He sighed, as though lamenting an elder who had strayed down the wrong path. “He doesn’t understand. For the sect to endure, certain sacrifices are necessary. This is glory, not death.”

“Glory?” I tightened my grip on the iron box in my hands, my knuckles turning bluish-white from the force. “Being used as bait, having a hook pierce through your throat-that’s what you call glory?”

“Bait?” Lu Qingxuan laughed and shook his head. “Junior Sister, your vision is far too narrow. We are not bait. We are seeds. Chosen by the Heavenly Dao, merging into a higher existence in exchange for a thousand years of abundant spiritual energy for the Azure Cloud Sect. The first-generation Patriarch did the same, and that is why the Azure Cloud Sect exists as it does today. Yet when the time came, Master grew afraid and wanted to go back on it. How foolish.”

His words were soft, yet they burrowed into my ears like venomous snakes.

At last, I understood. It wasn’t that he didn’t know. He had twisted the truth and turned it into his faith.

He was mad.

“So for your so-called ‘glory,’ you could just stand there and watch Master die?” I demanded.

“That was his fate, and his honor.” Lu Qingxuan’s patience seemed to have reached its limit. He held out a hand to me. “Now, hand over what the Patriarch left behind. It contains the secret art for communicating with the Heavenly Dao. It should not be held by a rebellious traitor like you.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then I will have no choice but to clean house with my own hands.”

Before his words had even faded, he moved.

His figure flashed, and in an instant, he was in front of me, one finger striking toward the wrist of the hand clutching the iron box.

I had been on guard from the start. Hugging the box to my chest, I threw myself backward and rolled, narrowly avoiding the vicious strike.

The wind from his finger grazed my cheek, leaving a bloody line behind.

I had no time to care about the pain. I scrambled up from the ground, turned, and rushed toward the hidden passage.

This place was a dead end. My only chance of survival was to escape!

“Naive.”

Lu Qingxuan’s voice seemed to ring right beside my ear.

A tremendous suction force came from behind me, and my body flew backward against my will.

He had not even chased after me. He merely stood where he was, his hand spread open.

I watched helplessly as I fell toward his palm, despair crashing over me.

It was over.

Just then, the Nurturing Spirit Jade in my robes-the jade Master had shoved into my hand-suddenly turned scorching hot.

A warm current flowed along my arm and surged into the Darksteel Box in my hands.

On the surface of the box, the patterns that had once been dim and lifeless lit up in an instant, erupting with blinding white light.

“What?!”

Lu Qingxuan’s expression changed. He clearly had not expected this.

He tried to pull back, but it was already too late.

A vast repelling force burst from the box like an invisible wall, slamming brutally into him.

Boom!

Lu Qingxuan was blasted backward by the force and crashed into Master’s bookshelf, knocking it over. Bamboo slips scattered across the floor.

As for me, I was also shoved by that power, my body hurtling uncontrollably toward the wall behind me.

I thought I would smash into it hard enough to split my head open.

But the wall rippled like the surface of water and swallowed me whole.

The final thing I saw was Lu Qingxuan rising from the wreckage. He stared at the place where I had disappeared, his eyes burning with rage and naked killing intent.

Passing through the wall felt strange, like moving through a thick, viscous liquid.

It lasted only an instant.

The next moment, I tumbled out and landed on a cold stone floor.

This place was…

I looked around. It was an abandoned stone chamber for alchemy. Dust-covered medicine gourds and broken pill furnaces were piled in the corners.

I recognized it. This was the pill room Master had used in his early years. Later, it had been abandoned because the underground fire became unstable, and no one had come here for many years.

Master… He had even planned my way out.

I struggled to sit up and looked at the Darksteel Box in my hands.

It had returned to its original state, cold and heavy.

But that notebook had slipped from my grasp in the impact just now and been left behind in the quiet chamber.

Lu Qingxuan would see it.

He would know that I knew everything.

He would never let me go.

Dong-! Dong-! Dong-!

A long, urgent peal of bells resounded throughout the entire Azure Cloud Sect.

This was the highest-level alarm. It was only rung when the sect faced an invasion from an outside enemy, or when an unforgivable traitor had emerged within the sect.

I was that traitor.

Countless fluctuations of spiritual energy came from outside, and the shouts of disciples rushing back and forth were clearly audible.

“Seal the mountain gates! No one is allowed in or out!”

“Search! Search every inch! Even if you have to dig three feet into the ground, find that traitor Shen Yuan!”

It was Lu Qingxuan’s voice.

He had already taken control of the situation.

The entire Azure Cloud Sect had become an inescapable net laid to capture me.