"Mumu." Under the moonlight, Bai Shuo said nothing more. She called only for Fan Yue.
The boy brought his silver chain down, and the barrier in front of Hua Hong shattered.
Bai Shuo pulled a medicine bottle from her qiankun pouch and tossed it to Hua Hong. "Here. The antidote for spirit-banning herb."
Hua Hong stared at her. "You can cure this stuff? Didn't you say you couldn't refine spirit-banning herb?"
"Not knowing how to make poison doesn't mean I can't make antidotes. You know nothing about what I can do." Bai Shuo lifted her eyes and gave a small snort. "Enough dawdling. Drink it and come with me to save them."
Hua Hong downed the whole bottle in one swallow, and her mind felt clear at once. "Where are they?"
"In the stone hall under the Yiren Palace. I suspect the Yiren King means to use dark arts to raise his spiritual power again. He's already at the peak of High Lord, and he still does things that outrage heaven and earth. No wonder you won't acknowledge him!"
Bai Shuo pulled Hua Hong along as she talked. "I also saw the creature we met in the city that night, in the blood pool of the stone hall. The Yiren King must be mad. He isn't only going to slaughter the young of both the immortal and demon clans, he's consorting with evil creatures too."
Hua Hong's steps faltered. "What did you say? The thing in the blood pool is that creature?"
"Yes." Bai Shuo, who had been dragging her along, was jerked up short and stumbled. She looked back, bewildered. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." Hua Hong lowered her eyes. "Let's go."
Far off, candlelight flickered. Bai Shuo's heart clenched. It had to be the Yiren King on his way to start the evil formation, and she tugged Hua Hong forward.
"This way." Hua Hong jerked her chin toward the light. "There's a small path that leads straight to the back of the main hall."
"Good. Lead the way." Nobody knew the Yiren Palace better than Hua Hong, so Bai Shuo turned around and followed at once.
The palace was a maze. Bai Shuo followed Hua Hong through a few quick turns and found herself behind the main hall. The lantern light hadn't arrived yet. She let out a breath and started toward the entrance that hid the stone hall.
"The entrance is right here. Follow me."
Bai Shuo shoved the entrance open and was about to jump down when a surge of spiritual power was pressed into the space between her brows. Her whole body locked up, and she couldn't move.
Beside her, Fan Yue went rigid too. The boy's eyes turned cold, and he looked at something behind Bai Shuo.
A chill ran down Bai Shuo's back. She said through gritted teeth, "Hua Hong?!"
Hua Hong strolled around to stand in front of the two of them. The blade of wild grass was back in her mouth, and no one had seen when she'd put it there.
"Hey, don't shout. It's me."
"You're the Yiren King's accomplice! Was everything you said just now a lie?!" Bai Shuo snarled in a low voice.
"Don't lump me in with that beast." Hua Hong rolled her eyes. Without hesitation she grabbed Bai Shuo and Fan Yue by their collars, hauled the two of them up, leapt into the air, and disappeared into the dark.
High above the ground, Bai Shuo watched the Yiren Palace grow smaller and smaller. Her eyes flew wide, and she wanted to bite the blacksmith to death.
"Oh, we know your eyes are round. No need to open them so wide." She really was the top lackey of Haoyue Hall. Her knack for belittling people was just like her master's.
"If you're not the Yiren King's accomplice, why won't you save them?" Bai Shuo demanded, seething.
Hua Hong curled her lip. "If those people die, the immortal clan loses a whole generation for a hundred years. That's all gain and no loss for my Haoyue Hall. Why should I save them?"
"You broke your word!"
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Girl, didn't your master ever teach you how wicked the world is? How can you trust what a demon says?"
"You bastard!" Bai Shuo's eyes had gone red with fury.
"Yes, yes, I'm a bastard. But who told you to trust me?"
Hua Hong laughed wildly. After a few leaps she landed at the spot nearest the city wall. She looked up at the gate not far off, then propped the two of them in a corner like a pair of sticks. She had even found a piece of wood for Fan Yue to lean against. He was the boss, after all, and had to be looked after. Then she took her time choosing a big rock, sat down with the air of someone at ease, and stretched.
"All right, this is the closest place to the gate. The Wutong Martial Banquet ends in two hours. Jin Yao must already have realized something is wrong in Yiren City. Once the barrier opens, I'll take you both out. Whatever the Yiren King and the evil creature are up to, Jin Yao can deal with it. What's it to me?"
"You!"
Hua Hong was as stubborn as a stone in a latrine and wouldn't be moved. A great demon who had lived more than a hundred years couldn't be fooled by Bai Shuo's small tricks. Perhaps even the tragic events of a century ago, the ones Hua Hong described so bitterly, had long since crumbled to dust in her heart, and dredging them up now only fooled herself.
Zhao was still waiting for her. She could die, but Zhao could not!
Bai Shuo jerked her head up. "Hey, Big Iron Hua. One more dead immortal can't do you any harm, can it?"
Hua Hong, humming with the grass in her mouth, narrowed her eyes and looked at Bai Shuo.
In the shadows, the boy leaning against the wood turned to look at her too, dazed.
In the stone hall beneath the Yiren Palace, the young immortals and demons lay unconscious.
Beichen and Chongzhao sat bound in silence. Only Mu Jiu was scrambling up and down a pillar. He had spent his last scrap of strength and still couldn't shake the chains of evil qi even slightly, and at last he gave up. He glanced at the two men beside him, calm as still water, and couldn't help calling out to Chongzhao.
"Hey, Piaomiao. You don't actually think that girl is coming back, do you?"
Chongzhao's eyelids twitched, but he didn't look up.
"The Yiren King dared to seize us because he never meant to leave anyone alive. Spiritual power is banned in Yiren City. Even old Jin Yao couldn't break the Yiren King's evil formation if he came. What could she possibly do? I bet she ran off long ago with that pretty-boy disciple of hers. She only said that to comfort you, to give you something to hold on to so you'd die at ease!"
Bai Shuo had sounded absolutely certain when she left, but Mu Jiu didn't believe she could get them out. Against overwhelming power, her little tricks were worth nothing. Still, he had nothing better to do, and he loved nothing more than needling these immortals.
"She said she'd come back." Chongzhao, silent until now, lifted his head and spoke in a low voice.
"Come back, my foot. You're the only one who believes that girl's nonsense."
Mu Jiu had barely finished when footsteps rang out in the empty stone hall. He froze, then shouted in delighted disbelief, "No way, she actually came back?!"
Chongzhao's head snapped up toward the passage. Whether it was hope or worry in his eyes, no one could tell.
In the moonlight, a shadow fell across the floor, and Beichen's voice came from beside them.
"It's not Bai Shuo."
The stone hall went abruptly quiet.
Not far from the city wall, the night was dim and a cold wind kept blowing. Far away, lanterns swayed high up, as chilling as ghost fire.
Hua Hong frowned, thinking she had misheard.
"What did you say?"
"I said, you take him and go. I'm going back."
The boy stared at Bai Shuo in shock.
Hua Hong got up from her rock and felt Bai Shuo's forehead. "Have you gone stupid? Or mad? Do you know what happens to you if you go back?"
"I know how to write the word 'die.'" Bai Shuo's voice was flat. She looked straight at Hua Hong. "Either you let me go right now, or I bite off my tongue in front of you. Blacksmith, take your pick."
In the moonlight, the boy's hand clenched.
"Master," he murmured, but Bai Shuo, frantic with worry, didn't hear him.
"Even if you knock me out now and drag me out of the city by force, the moment I wake up I'll find my own way to die. I'd have at least a hundred years left, and you can't very well stand guard over me for a hundred years."
There was no expression at all on Bai Shuo's face. Hua Hong was nearly angry enough to laugh. She hadn't known Bai Shuo for just a day. They had lived as neighbors in South Sea City for months, and she had this ragtag half-immortal figured out completely. Bai Shuo was greedy for money, fond of food, and afraid of death, with every petty failing a mortal had. Hua Hong would never have imagined that one day Bai Shuo would threaten her with her own life, and only to go and get herself killed.
The pig had said Bai Shuo must not die. As for why, the pig hadn't said and she hadn't asked. The pig was lazy and had a loose tongue, but if it had given an instruction, there had to be a reason. To this day Hua Hong didn't know why the Hall Master had lost his memory and divine power and stayed at a half-immortal's side, but until Fan Yue's true body returned, she didn't dare gamble.
Hua Hong scowled and said nothing.
Beside the two women, the boy who had been silent all this time looked at Bai Shuo's stubborn face and suddenly spoke.
"Master, give it up. She's repaying a debt. Your life is worth less than the person she wants to save."
His words stunned everyone. Bai Shuo froze, and Hua Hong narrowed her eyes and turned to look at Fan Yue without a word.
"Save someone? You're saying she'd abandon over a hundred lives to save one person? Who?" Bai Shuo couldn't believe it. The blacksmith held human life as cheap as grass, and yet in this lonely city she despised so bitterly, there was still someone she wanted to save.
The boy looked at Hua Hong. "The Spirit-Sealing Formation was laid by Muguang. It is a divine formation, and anyone below the rank of god who enters its eye will die. You entered the eye, so the formation must have sensed your intent to destroy it. How did you survive?"
Bai Shuo was startled. Yes, how had she forgotten such a crucial point?
Back then, Hua Hong hadn't even been able to withstand the backlash of the Yiren King's Sword, so she couldn't have entered a divine formation unharmed. Someone must have saved her. The divine formation was immensely powerful, and whoever had saved her under the Spirit-Sealing Formation's backlash must have paid a terrible price. The Yiren King had stayed at the peak of High Lord for a hundred years and had never been wounded. So who had saved Hua Hong?
Bai Shuo's eyes shot up, and the answer burst out of her. "Hua Yong saved you!"
The mocking look left Hua Hong's face.
"Hua Yong... Hua Yong..." Bai Shuo muttered, and then it came to her all at once. "The evil creature we met that night is the Yiren crown prince?!"
Hua Yong's aura was exactly the same as the creature's.
Seeing Hua Hong say nothing, Bai Shuo knew she hadn't guessed wrong.
So that was it!
Everything that had nagged at Bai Shuo as not adding up now made sense. A hundred years ago, Hua Yong's spirit bones had been far stronger than Hua Hong's. Why was he now nothing but a fool with brute strength? His existence had indirectly caused the Yiren Queen's death, and Hua Hong hated him to the marrow. Yet yesterday in the Yiren Palace, although she had struck at Hua Yong without mercy, she hadn't killed him. And just now, Hua Hong had agreed to go save the prisoners, then abruptly changed her mind the moment she heard that the creature was sleeping in the blood pool.
Perhaps the Yiren King hadn't restarted the evil formation for himself at all, but for his son.
"You won't save them because of Hua Yong. The evil formation in the stone hall is something the Yiren King set up for him, isn't it?" Bai Shuo looked at Hua Hong and put her guess into words.
A sigh sounded. Hua Hong shot Fan Yue a helpless glance. "I really must thank you, ancestor."
The boy showed no reaction at all to her exasperation. All he wanted was to take Bai Shuo away quietly, but his master couldn't let go of Chongzhao, so he had no choice but to expose Hua Hong's real intention.
"He saved me three times. I owe him a life." Hua Hong spat the chewed-up shreds of wild grass onto the ground and stretched.
"Three times? Only the Yiren King's Sword and the Spirit-Sealing Formation backlashed on you. How is it three?"
"The divine power of the Spirit-Sealing Formation injured me. I survived, but my spirit bones were completely shattered, and Hua Yong gave me his."
Hua Hong said it lightly, and Bai Shuo's pupils contracted in shock. The Yiren could not cultivate spiritual power. Their only way to grow stronger was to cultivate their spirit bones.
"Don't look at me like that. If I'd been conscious, I'd have died before taking his broken spirit bones. When I woke up, I was already outside Yiren City with nothing. No family, no status, nothing but the spirit bones Hua Yong had left inside me. Without spirit bones, he couldn't have lived long. If I hadn't come back to the city this time by pure accident, I'd have thought Hua Yong was long dead. The Yiren King must have used some dark art to turn him into that ghastly thing, and that's how he kept him alive."
"If Hua Yong survived, why does the Yiren King still need the young of both clans as sacrifices? Even if he rebuilds Hua Yong's spirit bones, so many people will have died. Would the immortals and demons let the Yiren go?"
Hua Hong glanced at Bai Shuo. "Girl, you're clever enough, so why so naive? Once nobody in Yiren City can pull out the Yiren King's Sword any more, do you think the Yiren have any hope left?"
"But there's still the Spirit-Sealing Formation. As long as the divine formation stands, no one can break into Yiren City, and the Yiren can defend themselves."
"That's just dragging out a miserable existence. What's the point of that?"
Hua Hong's gaze was calm as she looked at her. Bai Shuo froze, remembering what the Yiren King had said in the main hall: the Yiren had been abandoned by the three realms and trapped in this lonely city for a thousand years.
"Hua Lin has grown old, and I abandoned the Yiren. Hua Yong is their only hope. How could Hua Lin let his only son live half man, half ghost? Hua Yong's injuries can't be healed even if Hua Lin trades his own life for it. Only the inner cores of hundreds of immortal and demon youths, together with the Wutong heart-flame as sacrifice, can truly rebuild his spirit bones."
"Not only his spirit bones." Fan Yue spoke suddenly from beside them. He looked at Hua Hong, his gaze cool. "The Yiren King wants to make a god."
"What?" Bai Shuo's pupils contracted. "Mumu, you... what did you say the Yiren King wants?"
"Killing the young of both clans means the Yiren will be declaring war on the three realms. Even if Hua Yong's spirit bones are rebuilt, a new Yiren King couldn't shelter the whole Yiren people. Only a god could. Making Hua Yong a god is the Yiren King's real plan."
Bai Shuo whipped around to face Hua Hong and met her calm eyes, and her heart went cold. Only now did she understand what Fan Yue had really meant by saying it was "no use."
Hua Hong had given up her place among the Yiren, but she had never given up the Yiren princess's responsibility to her people. After a thousand years shut away, that the Yiren could walk the three realms openly, without being spat on, scorned, or killed on a whim, was what she wanted too.
She wouldn't help the Yiren King, but she wouldn't stop him either.
"No, this is wrong. Even if Hua Yong becomes a god, he'd only be an evil god..." Bai Shuo began urgently.
"Evil god, true god. Girl, you immortals go on and on about the righteous path, the evil path, the heavenly way, the demonic way. When the Yiren were being slaughtered a thousand years ago, were they evil demons? They were just born Yiren."
Mockery shone in Hua Hong's eyes, and Bai Shuo had no answer. After a long while she lowered her head.
"Blacksmith, you have what you're holding on to, and I have what I want to protect. I'm only begging you to let me go back. Even if I can't stop the Yiren King, I can't abandon Zhao."
How dare she? She had promised him she would never leave him behind!
Was that Chongzhao really more important than her own life and her promise to him?
The boy's angry gaze fell on Bai Shuo, and her heart shook. She couldn't bring herself to meet her little disciple's eyes.
An eerie, silent hush fell beneath the city wall. Then, suddenly, a hand landed on Bai Shuo's shoulder.
She kept her head down, her voice muffled.
"Mumu, Master can't take you with her. From now on, stay close to Big Iron Hua. She won't hurt you. Master is poor, so at festivals remember to burn some paper money for Master and your Senior Uncle. Down there, Master will be thinking of you..."
What nonsense was she talking?!
Fan Yue's brow had been knit tight, but his expression suddenly sharpened, and he looked at something behind Bai Shuo.
Bai Shuo's head sank lower as she spoke. A cold wind swept past, and a rank, fishy stench drifted into her nose. She turned with a helpless sigh. "I told you to wash properly. When Master's gone, you have to..."
The moment she saw what stood behind her, Bai Shuo's eyes flew wide and her pupils shrank to points.
Under the clear night sky, a dozen or so streaks of spiritual light fell like meteors outside Yiren City. It was Jin Yao and the others. Apart from Dazeshan, the heads of the immortal clan's two mountains and six mansions were all there, and Zhen Yu and the fox clan elder Chang Huo had come as well after receiving word.
Under a thousand li of stars, only the sky above this desolate, isolated city was dark.
"Immortal Seat Jin Yao, what on earth has happened in Yiren City?" Chang Huo demanded angrily.
Mu Jiu was the fox clan's young lord and, apart from the clan chief, the only nine-tailed fox. His life alone bore on the future of the fox clan.
"An evil creature has entered the city disguised as a Yunxiao disciple."
"An evil creature? Where is the Yiren King? With the Spirit-Sealing Formation Muguang left in the city, how could he not know an evil creature had entered? Why didn't he report it?!"
"I cannot sense the Yiren King's spiritual presence," Jin Yao said gravely, and the color changed on every face.
What? Even Jin Yao couldn't sense the Yiren King? What was happening inside Yiren City?
"Immortal Seat, please open the Spirit-Sealing Formation at once!" the head of Kunlun said quickly.
The key to opening the formation was in Jin Yao's hands. Had the Yiren King not given Jin Yao the authority to open the divine formation, they would never have let their disciples step into a city where spiritual power was banned.
Jin Yao turned his palm, and a dragon scale glowing with golden divine light appeared before him. He threw it toward the sky above Yiren City.
"Go!"
A stream of spiritual power followed from his palm and landed on the scale.
"Open!"
At Jin Yao's low command, the scale poured out divine light that struck the city gate directly. A small golden dragon formation appeared on the gate. The scale flew into its center and became the phantom of a golden dragon, which soared and let out a long cry inside the formation. Slowly, the city gate opened.
Yiren City was open!
The crowd relaxed. Then the dragon formation on the gate began to reverse. A strange vortex appeared at its center, and a sword shot out of it and pinned the dragon's shadow firmly to the middle of the formation.
"No!" Jin Yao's expression changed sharply. He flew toward the gate, but he was too late. The golden dragon gave a cry of agony and exploded.
A vast wave of divine power spread across the sky above Yiren City. Jin Yao, standing closest, was thrown back several steps by its force.
Feng Xian rose into the air and appeared at Jin Yao's side in an instant, and together they held the divine power up.
Beneath the night sky, an enormous golden formation covered all of Yiren City, and a majestic dragon's roar rolled across the wilderness.
"Is this the Spirit-Sealing Formation His Majesty Muguang left behind?" the head of Yunxiao murmured, looking at the golden dragon formation before him.
"No." Jin Yao's face had gone pale. "This is the God-Slaying Formation."