Chương 70: Chapter 69 — A Not So Friendly Conversation

"Elder Wong sorted it," said Shen Yue, her voice lightened with plain relief now that someone she truly trusted had arrived.

"The driver was a mannequin, but she dealt with it before I even got the door open!"

"The construct had already keyed the ATP system to run the line straight through to Dalian without stopping," said Elder Wong, as though describing the hijacking of a train was an irrelevant matter. She turned a small core over between two fingers and as she spoke.

"I've reset it to stop automatically once we arrive, so no need to worry yourselves on that front." She said it so casually that Lin Che didn't even bother to question how she knew how to operate a train. He was, instead, occupied with keeping a fake smile on his face and nodding at Elder Wong's every word.

"The Shen Clan has had eyes on this route for some weeks now," she went on, settling herself into the aisle.

"There's been a remarkable increase in traffic towards Dalian from certain unorthodox circles. Cultivators with rather poor manners, as today's events demonstrate." Her gaze drifted towards the scattered ash and fragments of glass, before lingering at the neat pile of cores stacked on the seat beside Lin Che.

"Which is why I find myself wondering," she said, "why exactly my dear Yue-er's husband is so intent on taking her there." Lin Che made himself keep his voice level, despite the heavy feeling in his chest that had nothing to do with the pill lodged there. His hand found a core without quite deciding to, which he turned over between two fingers.

"Family matters," he said.

"There's someone in Dalian who might have information about the Lin Clan. About my side of the family specifically — why we've fallen so far. It… it seemed worth the trip," he sighed. Elder Wong smiled at him, and it was a genuine one.

"That's very interesting," she said, "because as far as the Shen Clan's records show, the Lin Clan hasn't had a living branch member with any working knowledge of its own history in over two generations. You, specifically, had no cultivator contacts whatsoever until — what, a matter of days ago? You weren't even a cultivator yourself until quite recently." She tilted her head in faux confusion.

"So I find myself wondering how a man with little lineage, no teacher, and no clan resources managed to acquire not only a working cultivation, but apparently enough of it to level an entire carriage of tier-three constructs mostly by himself. And how that same man came to know terms like 'the Lin Clan' at all, when nobody living was in a position to tell him."

Lin Che opened his mouth to answer, and found that he had, in fact, no answer that would seem believable to a woman clearly intelligent enough to have already worked out that he planned on lying. He tried anyway.

"I happened upon some ancient docume—""That's not true," cut in Elder Wong. Then, without looking away from him, she said, "Yue-er, come stand behind me." Shen Yue hesitated for half a second, but she moved anyway, stepping back towards the elder she was obedient to.

"It's how I got my techniques!" he argued back, his voice desperate. He was still fiddling with the core in his hand.

"Two books in Old Wen's possession are gone from existence entirely. There's no evidence to suggest they've been stolen or misplaced or destroyed. You see, Lin Che, Old Wen kept those books on a scale designed to alert her if the weight fluctuated enough for both books to go missing. That's probably why she seemed surprised last loop." Lin Che's heart dropped.

"Elder Wong—" he started.

"There have been reports," Elder Wong continued, addressing Shen Yue now rather than him, "of a new class of unorthodox cultivator with some manner of authority over these constructs. Puppet masters, for lack of a better term. I'd hoped it wasn't relevant to your situation, but given everything I'm seeing here—" she gestured towards the cores, more specifically to the one in Lin Che's hand, "—I think it would be safest if you let me handle this." This story has been stolen from Royal Road.

If you read it on Amazon, please report it Shen Yue nodded.

"I'm not controlling them!" Lin Che shouted more sharply than he meant to.

"I fought those things. I nearly died to them. If I controlled mannequins, I wouldn't have needed to—" The core in his hand pulsed. Lin Che's Qi travelled through the small sphere and copied the signature of the residual Qi within. It bloomed outwards into a translucent, human-sized, and faceless shape, like the ghost of a mannequin rendered in pure energy and zero physicality. Lin Che felt his own Qi lurch in response, betraying his own control. Elder Wong's smile widened.

"There it is," she said, almost excitedly, like someone whose theory had been confirmed right.

"You didn't even mean to do that, did you? Your own Qi gave you away the moment you got upset — that's the mark of a bond, dear. A puppet master's Qi resonates with his puppets whether he wants it to or not."

"That's not—" Lin Che started, and, in his frustration, his hand closed hard around the core, crushing it on instinct. He felt a wave wash over him once again, before the pill in his chest detonated in a burst of instantaneous pain, which disappeared just as quickly as it came. He died too quickly to suffer.

The core was crushed in his hand.

"Oh, you must have just looped," said Elder Wong with a slight surprise.

"Your Qi's gone again, isn't it?" Lin Che swallowed, hard.

"Don't search for it again. I don't want you triggering another tribulation," she smiled at him.

"Just stay seated and listen to me." Lin Che nodded before he realised he was doing so. He was not controlling his body — the puppet master herself had already taken control of him, and was simply playing things up to not alert Shen Yue.

"Your bloodline ability is rather easy to play against once you know of its existence and understand its rules. You should really thank your great grandfather for selling out such precious information to us. What was his name again? Lin Zhaoxiong, I believe it was." Elder Wong walked closer towards Lin Che, but signalled with her hands that Shen Yue should stay back and watch.

"Judging by how weak you are, I imagine you think this entire marriage agreement was solely for your innate Qi — to help cure our Yue-er of her Chaotic Yin physique. But, we must ask ourselves this question: why would a clan ever wish to get rid of its own bloodline ability?" Shen Yue flashed a face of surprise. She had spent the past few years thinking she had an illness, but, according to Elder Wong, it was actually some sort of boon to the Shen Clan.

Her face turned sour once she realised her threatened demotion due to an 'unknown sickness' was actually because of an ability carried through the Shen bloodline.

"If the final remaining Lin has a child, who do you think will possess this bloodline ability? Your marriage was arranged for a much higher purpose than you thought, and we are ever so grateful that this arrangement came to be. Unfortunately, however, we cannot let our wonderful Yue-er marry and have a child with such an evil, unorthodox puppet master — she's too sweet to be taken advantage of like that.

If, however, we get rid of the father before the child is ever conceived, the bad karmic link from being the son or daughter of a mass murderer will be severed." Elder Wong raised a hand, and Lin Che felt a wet sensation in his pants.

"Now that the seed has been collected, it is with great honour that I, Elder Ouyang W—ong of the Shen Clan, execute this vile demon who brings shame upon the Lin Clan name." Lin Che's arms moved against his command, one hand grabbing a core beside him, before crushing it. He felt that wave wash over him again, before the pill in his chest detonated once again. Just as he died, he saw Elder Wong's eyes gleam with delight.

Lin Che once again returned just a few seconds in the past. Elder Wong's hand was already raised, his pants were already sticky, and there was a crushed core in his hand. His arm involuntarily reached for the next core. Lin Che channelled his Qi to resist, hoping he could prevent himself from breaking another core. Thunder clapped from above, but the strike did not come in time. Another core was already in the palm of his hand, and his thenar muscles stiffened up.

He felt another wave wash over him, and the pill in his chest detonated once again.

Lin Che repeated the same steps once again, hoping that this time his Qi would return to him faster than before. He noticed that the delay between reactivating his Qi and having access to it was very subtly decreasing, as, this time around, he now felt a small drop of Qi before the pill tore through his heart.

Now, there were two tribulations occurring above him. The respawn point had shifted to just before discharge, and, with each attempt to use Qi, another tribulation would form above him. So, this time, he didn't try. He had no Qi to guard with, and the first strike tore through his body and soul. This time, however, Lin Che managed to crush the core himself to set his spawn point to be after the strike. The pill detonated as he writhed in pain from the tribulation, and Lin Che came back choking on blood.

It filled his mouth before his vision had even focused. Elder Wong's expression sharpened with genuine joy as Lin Che coughed a mouthful of blood onto the carpet. He was dying. Properly dying, in a way the loop would not simply undo.