Back then, he and Zhongsun Mou had been no more than acquaintances, and they could hardly be considered old friends. However, Cen Boqing knew full well that Zhongsun Mou was cautious. With the situation in Baishajue already turning messy, Zhongsun Mou still came in person. Is he not afraid that the Crown Prince’s special envoy would seize on some weakness and make it an issue?

“I heard about what happened this afternoon at Chao Lake Tower,” said Zhongsun Mou. The Water-Mirror Spell did not last long enough for a serious discussion; if he wanted to talk properly, he had to come himself. “Your subordinates were taken by He Xiao’s trickery. Your secret won’t stay secret much longer.”

“Our secret,” Cen Boqing corrected smoothly. “Didn’t you say you took all the materials and intelligence from Mai Xuewen’s house? Then how did that He fellow learn Mai Xuewen’s time and place of trade in Baishajue?”

It had caught him completely off guard.

He had not even taken this Crown Prince’s special envoy seriously at first. He never would have thought that he would suffer this kind of loss.

True, He Xiao still could not do anything to them, but the sensation of being watched, of being tracked, sat like a thorn under the skin.

Who liked being dragged into the light? Who did not prefer to stay behind the curtain?

“He arrived first, and I came right after. There was only a few breaths’ difference,” Zhongsun Mou said with a faint curl of his lip. “All I can say is that your luck is terrible.”

Cen Boqing let out a breath. “For Brother Zhongsun to have come at this time of night, what insight have you brought?”

As far as Cen Boqing was concerned, this was all because the man was arrogant and incompetent, creating trouble that then splashed onto him. And now he still had the nerve to come watch the spectacle?

“He Xiao causes far too much trouble,” Zhongsun Mou said bluntly. “My support has arrived as well. I came to see whether Brother Cen needs help.”

So he’s here to push me into making a move. Cen Boqing’s eyes narrowed. “The person I invited has been preparing for days. He can act tonight.”

“How confident are you?”

“I won’t claim a hundred, but I can confidently put it at eighty percent.”

That was already extremely high. Zhongsun Mou relaxed slightly. “Excellent. Do you need us to stand guard and protect the ritual?”

“He won’t allow others to watch him work.” Cen Boqing still maintained a measure of courtesy toward this touring commissioner and answered tactfully, “But Brother Zhongsun should be ready. If anything goes wrong, you’ll need to patch the gaps.”

“Then how about this...”

* * *

On the way back, Jiao Yu warned He Lingchuan again, more seriously than before, “You’re already a thorn in their side. Be extremely careful.”

“I know.” He Lingchuan had a clear sense of the situation. “If they kill me, the case can’t be investigated any further.”

If the problem itself could not be solved, then solve the person creating the problem.

Right now, he was that person.

Kill him, and the people behind the scenes could go back to their warm spring days.

At the moment, he was at a disadvantage. He was out in the open, and his enemy was still hidden. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

And that hidden enemy had likely already bared poisonous fangs at him.

As for Zhongsun Mou, who was the one openly in view, He Lingchuan, even as a special envoy of Chiyan, could not simply kill him.

No killing, no injuring, no humiliating the touring commissioner, that was the bottom line Chiyan’s ruler had drawn for Fushan Yue.

“And there’s a third party. We can’t tell whether they’re friend or foe, and they’re also hiding in the dark,” He Lingchuan added, his mind coldly lucid.

“Hm?” Jiao Yu froze, then immediately understood. “Oh, the person who sent us Records on Worshipping the Gods! You think that was Mr. Mai?”

“He wants someone to chase things all the way here, whether it’s me or Zhongsun Mou, either one is fine as long as we can properly solve the case,” He Lingchuan said thoughtfully. “But Zhongsun Mou has turned toward the mastermind. He even announced publicly that the courier case has been solved. That third party probably isn’t happy.”

“Would they attack us too?”

“Maybe not, but there’s no harm in guarding against it.” Who knows what they’re really after?

At this point, he had, at minimum, two enemies: one who wanted him dead yesterday, and one with ulterior motives, who knew what kind of game they were playing.

And he had only been in Baishajue a few days.

It’s quite lively here, eh?

About an hour later, He Lingchuan returned to the inn where he was staying.

His gaze dropped at once.

A single strand of wool that he had deliberately left stuck in the crack of his door was gone.

That had been General Ling’s beard hair. It was long.

It being gone meant that someone had slipped into his room.

He had set those little traps and precautions to guard against Mr. Mai and the people behind him. Of course, now he had one more person to guard against: Zhongsun Mou.

He Lingchuan entered and did a quick inspection of the room. None of the small mechanisms he had set had been triggered.

Which meant the intruder had not conducted a thorough search, corner by corner.

In fact, the area they moved through inside his room had been limited.

So what had they come for?

Just then, Jiao Yu rushed in from outside as well, face grave.

“I got answers.”

It had slipped away mid-way to dig into the newest intelligence they had acquired.

He Lingchuan steadied himself. “Oh? Who does that large residence belong to, then?”

“It belongs to Cen Boqing, the eldest son-in-law of Beijia’s Minister of Finance.”

He Lingchuan discovered, instantly, that the psychological preparation he had done was not nearly enough.

“Wait, which Minister of Finance are we talking about?”

“Lingxu City’s!” Jiao Yu said. “One of the Nine Ministers of Beijia. He controls Beijia’s money and grain, meaning he holds enormous power.” Its paws curled. Three sharp claw marks gouged into the tabletop. “Cen Boqing himself is a colonel. He’s fought and won battles and has real military merit. I’ve heard he’s due for promotion soon. Half the court is currying favor with his household.”

He Lingchuan scratched his head. “No wonder the captive didn’t dare speak his name.”

He had long expected that if they dug deep enough, this case might snag someone in Lingxu City.

He just had not expected the backing to be this heavy.

How many officials from vassal monster states had ever dared cross the invisible trench made by those two words: Lingxu City?

Jiao Yu asked, “What now?”

“Just the testimony of two small fry from Uncle Wu’s men won’t be enough to topple someone of Cen Boqing’s weight,” He Lingchuan said slowly. “But now we know who the target is and where to aim our force. That’s already a major step forward.”

He glanced at the sky outside before adding, “Tomorrow, we’ll bring the prisoners and go pay a visit to this son-in-law colonel.”

At that moment, the courtyard gate sounded. Commander Lu’s personal guards had arrived to deliver a meal, and the passphrase exchange was flawless.

Before returning to the inn, He Lingchuan had instructed Commander Lu that from now on, meals were to be delivered only by rotating personal guards, and the personnel must change each time. Even the tavern supplying the food had to change.

The enemies lurking in the dark had only a few options if they wanted him dead: assassination, poisoning, or cursing.

Assassination was difficult, as Zhongsun Mou likely knew that He Lingchuan was hard to kill. And in a place like Baishajue, with too many eyes and too many witnesses, an attempt could easily go wrong.

The more concealed approaches were the latter two.

Right now, He Lingchuan did not have origin energy protecting him. His resistance to poisons and curses was weaker. And Zhongsun Mou knew he was a foreigner, so those two methods would be far more likely to succeed.

So starting today, He Lingchuan would have to be on guard everywhere.

Even with food delivered by Commander Lu’s own men and with the passphrase confirmed, He Lingchuan still took out a drop of testing solution to check for poison. Only after confirming it was safe did he eat.

That solution was something his good little monkey, Ling Guang, had made for him because “a wary heart is never wrong,” and it was, truly, the essential medicine for home and travel.

If Ling Guang were here, he would not have to worry so much about being poisoned.

After the meal, he sat to circulate his energy and regulate his breath for over two hours. Then he went to the public bathhouse that stayed open around the clock. There were plenty of people there.

Before lying down for the night, he did as he always did. He took out the Soul-Stealing Mirror and swept it over every corner of the room. He did not even spare the ceiling beams.

The mirror could pierce many divine techniques and curses. It was his best helper for inspecting everything that ought to be inspected.

He Lingchuan’s hand passed the mirror under the bed. It was meant to be a casual sweep, but the mirror shrieked. “Hey, hey, hey, back up!”

He bent down and swept the mirror more carefully beneath the bed.

“Here!” The mirror emitted a beam of light, pointing at the underside of the bed board.

Only then did He Lingchuan notice a small tuft of gray filament, like a cobweb.

In a damp, shadowy corner like that, cobwebs were the most ordinary thing in the world.

No matter how bright and polished an inn looked on the surface, the unseen corners always hid grime.

But tangled in that web was a gray, round cocoon that was smaller than an ordinary silkworm chrysalis, nearly unnoticeable.

If the mirror had not revealed it down to the finest detail, He Lingchuan might have missed it even if he had seen it with his own eyes.

He Lingchuan drew his dagger, scraped the whole clump out, and set it alight.

And at the exact moment the flames swallowed that tiny cocoon...

More than a kilometer away, inside another inn, someone suddenly clutched their chest and screamed in agony.

The person tore open their robe.

A huge patch of black char had appeared on their chest, as if seared by open flame. It even gave off the faint scent of roasted meat.

“Damn it. It was discovered!”

They hurriedly swallowed a potion, then poured medicinal solution over the burn again and again.

Only after an hour did the wound begin to close, shrinking down to a scar the size of a copper coin.

To fully recover would take time.

“Heh, don’t get smug, you’re about to be in serious trouble,” the person hissed. They took out a barefoot wooden idol and set it on the table, then lit two offering candles.

It was an idol—the statue of a god—about two handspans tall. The wood was old. Though the gilding had not fully flaked away, the idol itself did not have the solemn dignity most idols carried.

Instead, it was a grotesque thing with a hundred faces and a hundred gazes. Its clothing was anything but proper, a ragged mess patched a hundred times over.

Faces grew everywhere, whether it be across its chest, its hands, its feet, its neck, or even around the holes in its tattered garments. Some faces had only one eye. Some had three or four. Some eyes bulged like bronze bells, while others were split wide, weeping blood.

Some faces were sobbing, some were laughing, some were seething, and some were mourning. All were twisted into unnatural expressions.

A few faces were nothing but blank planes with no eyes, no nose, and no mouth. If you had to name it, you could call them “expressionless.”

Most divine idols inspired awe or comfort, but this one inspired only dread.

Stare at it for a moment too long, and cold would creep into your bones, as though countless vengeful ghosts had been stuffed into the wooden carving and sealed inside.

The man dripped a few drops of solution into their eyes, then placed a small wooden ball into the offering bowl. After that, they knelt straight-backed on the floor, lit half a stick of incense, and began chanting under their breath.

After the eye solution, he could clearly see that inside the wooden ball floated a semi-transparent image. It was a child’s soul, bearing the image of a child only three or four years old. Its body looked damp all over, as if it had drowned.

Once it emerged, the soul looked left and right, dazed and confused, not understanding what was happening. But instinct drew it toward the incense and offerings, and it sniffed greedily.

That smoke was its food, something that could strengthen its weak, fragile soul body.

The wooden ball had been carved from seabed wood, allowing a remnant soul to lodge there temporarily.

The curse master took out two full incense sticks, lit them, then pressed the burning ends against his forehead, chanting continuously.

Outside, the night was utterly still. Inside, the air quickly grew heavy.

It felt as though something unseen but terrifyingly immense was drawing near, and even the insects outside fell silent.