Chương 60: A Price He Can't Pay (2/3) [Bonus 6/6]

The room seemed to grow still, as though the very air had thickened into something tangible—heavier than the incense smoke that coiled between them, denser than the rain-soaked darkness pressing against the paper-paned windows. Even the restless shadows cast by the spirit-lamps seemed to pause, their amber glow steadying across the polished mahogany surface.

"If their Sect Master truly obtains it," Su Yin said, her hand tightening at the edge of the table until the pale knuckles stood out against the dark wood like ivory talismans, "then he may break beyond the limits of the Shattered-Halo Realm and step into the Soul-Eclipse Realm."

Her eyes hardened, the obsidian depths catching and holding the lamplight until they seemed to burn with a cold, inner fire.

"At that time, the balance of power in Skycloud City will no longer remain as it is."

Shi Yan understood her meaning at once. The implications spread through his mind like blood in water—swift, inevitable, staining everything they touched.

"If he advances," he said, his voice carrying the same flat certainty he'd once used to brief squad leaders on enemy movements, "the City Lord will no longer be able to suppress Cloud-Mirror Sect."

"Just so," Su Yin replied, and a trace of approval passed through her eyes—a flicker of acknowledgment that lasted barely a heartbeat before vanishing behind that porcelain mask of composure.

"Once that happens, the factions within Skycloud City will inevitably fall into chaos. Cloud-Mirror Sect will no longer be willing to remain beneath another's authority."

She returned to the table with measured steps, her azure robes whispering against the floor like secrets exchanged in darkness. The closer she drew, the more the amber lamplight caught the elegant planes of her face, throwing her cheekbones into sharp relief and pooling shadows beneath her jaw. She leaned forward slightly, palms pressing flat against the mahogany surface, and the last traces of polite warmth faded from her expression like morning frost burning away under a merciless sun.

"And when that day comes, the Vermilion Pavilion will be among the first to suffer."

Her voice turned colder, each word edged with the brittle clarity of winter ice.

"The orthodox sects have never liked the Silk & Ash Chamber's neutrality. If turmoil breaks out, they will seize our wealth and resources first. By then, I will not be able to preserve myself, much less this branch."

Only then did the true meaning of her words become clear, settling over Shi Yan's shoulders like the weight of wet armor—familiar, suffocating, impossible to shrug away.

This was not merely a matter of an ancient secret realm.

It was a storm that would soon sweep across Skycloud City, and everyone caught in its path would drown.

Shi Yan fell silent for a moment, his pale eyes fixed on Su Yin's face as he weighed her words with the same careful precision he'd once applied to mission parameters and casualty projections. His calloused fingers remained motionless on his knee, but beneath the sodden layers of wax-canvas and beast-hide, every muscle held the coiled readiness of a man who'd learned long ago that stillness could be its own kind of weapon.

If what she said was true, then Cloud-Mirror Sect's scheme was no small matter. Yet despite this, Su Yin still sat here calmly, revealing such secrets to him—a man with no roots in the city, no connections to leverage, no past that could be verified. The jade slip between them caught the lamplight, its polished surface gleaming like a drop of congealed moonlight against the dark wood.

If she was willing to speak this far, then she clearly had no intention of merely watching from the sidelines.

"If the matter is truly so grave," Shi Yan said at last, his tone carrying the measured neutrality of someone probing for weaknesses in an enemy's defense, "then why does the Vermilion Pavilion not act on its own? Your Pavilion has no lack of wealth, nor does it lack men. If Cloud-Mirror Sect has not yet entered the shattered realm, then why not strike first and cut them off before their Sect Master steps through the miasma?"

Su Yin slowly shook her head, and the loose strand of ink-black hair across her cheek shifted with the motion, catching against the corner of her mouth before she brushed it aside with one slender finger.

A faint bitterness appeared in her eyes—not the dramatic anguish of a maiden in some cultivation drama, but the cold, resigned understanding of someone who'd already calculated every angle and found them all leading to the same dead end.

"And cast aside the Chamber's neutrality?" she said, her voice soft but edged with something harder than steel.

"Daoist Shi, Skycloud City is not so simple. Every pair of eyes in the Jade Terraces is watching the others."

She straightened slightly, her spine a line of rigid control, and the shadows shifted across her porcelain features as the spirit-lamps flickered.

"If I move the Chamber's people, then the traces left behind will be far too obvious. Their cultivation methods, their qi, even the techniques they use—none of it can be hidden from those who know what to look for."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. Her hands folded lightly before her, fingers interlacing with the deliberate grace of a ritual gesture, and the sleeve of her azure robe slipped back slightly to reveal the delicate bones of her wrist.

"The City Lord's people are watching me. The Wei Clan is watching me. If I move against an orthodox sect without a reason that can be shown to the public, then others will seize upon it at once."

Her voice turned colder still, each syllable dropping into the silence between them like stones cast into a frozen pond.

"At that time, I would not need Cloud-Mirror Sect to destroy me. The central power of the Chamber..."

At this, she paused for a moment, biting her lower lip—just the briefest pressure of white teeth against pale flesh—and lowered her eyes slightly, her lashes casting delicate shadows against her cheeks.

"They will revoke my authority. I will no longer be a deaconess, and perhaps... this branch will receive a new deacon."

For a moment, the room was quiet. Outside, the rain continued its relentless drumming against the windows, and somewhere in the distance, a night-soil collector's cart creaked through the ankle-deep mud of the Outer Wards. The scent of sandalwood and cassia hung thick in the cool air, mixing with the mineral smell of wet stone and the faint, earthy odor rising from Shi Yan's sodden clothing.

Only then did the shape of the matter become clear, its ugly contours revealed like a corpse uncovered by receding floodwaters.

If Su Yin did nothing, and Cloud-Mirror Sect obtained what it sought, her end would come sooner or later—crushed beneath the weight of an ascended Soul-Eclipse cultivator's ambitions, or swallowed up when the orthodox sects carved the Chamber's holdings like butchers dividing a slaughtered pig.

But if she acted openly with the Vermilion Pavilion's own strength, she would merely hand her enemies a blade with which to kill her—and not just any blade, but one perfectly suited to the task, forged from her own violation of the Chamber's sacred neutrality.

And not only that—based on her words earlier, there were many rivalries within the Chamber itself, and such an action would cause her authority to be challenged from within as well as without.

So she could not move with her own hand.

She needed another hand.

But... why me?

Damn, the responsibility is so heavy.

Shi Yan frowned, his brows narrowing as he massaged his temple with one calloused hand, the gesture automatic—a habit carried over from another life, when battlefield headaches had been solved with ibuprofen and coffee rather than spirit pills and meditation. Beneath his fingers, he could feel the faint throb of tension building behind his eyes, mixing with the bone-deep chill that had seeped in from his rain-soaked layers.

"So you need someone who cannot be tied to the Chamber," he said at last, with slight annoyance threading through his carefully controlled tone like rust through old steel.

As if she had expected this—as if she'd been waiting for precisely these words—a faint smile curved Su Yin's lips, cold and dangerous as a blade drawn in moonlight.

"I need someone who leaves behind no trace," she said softly, leaning forward again until the lamplight caught the sharp angles of her face and turned her shadow into something predatory against the wall behind her.

"Someone with no roots in this city, no name that can be traced, and no karma that others can follow."

Her gaze rested steadily on him, dark and fathomless as the spaces between stars.

"Someone who can kill in the dark without stirring the surface."

Shi Yan did not immediately answer, and his expression did not change—his face remained as still and unreadable as weathered stone, revealing nothing of the calculations running through his mind like mission parameters being fed through tactical analysis software.

"You are overlooking one thing, Deaconess Su," he said flatly, as though the weight of her words had not stirred him in the slightest—as though she'd merely commented on the weather outside rather than proposing he become her personal assassin in a brewing cultivation war.

"Physician Li is already dead. The Yin-Yang Blood Array was broken before the Crimson Pearl could fully take form. What I brought back is all that remains of this matter."

He lightly tapped a finger against the table, the dull thump of callused flesh against polished wood punctuating his words.

"As things stand, their scheme has already failed. Without the Crimson Pearl, they cannot pass through the Yin miasma. Since the path has been cut off, why must I still act?"

Su Yin slowly shook her head, and this time there was something almost pitying in the gesture—as though she were watching a clever child who'd solved half of a puzzle but missed the most crucial piece.

There was bitterness in her eyes, sharp as the taste of medicinal herbs left too long on the tongue.

"You severed one hand, Daoist Shi," she said quietly, her voice carrying the weight of hard-won understanding, "but you did not break the will behind it."

Her gaze sharpened, boring into him with an intensity that would have made a lesser man flinch.

"Cloud-Mirror Sect has stood for centuries. Its disciples number in the tens of thousands, and the resources at its command are beyond what one stray physician could ever compare to. Physician Li was only a convenient piece. They used him because it allowed them to keep their own hands clean."

She leaned slightly forward, her tone turning grave once more, and the shadows deepened in the hollows beneath her cheekbones.

"Do you truly think that a Sect Master standing at the threshold of higher realms would give up so easily? For cultivators of that level, the pursuit of the Dao can drive them to greater madness than any demonic path."

Shi Yan's eyes narrowed slightly, the pale irises catching the lamplight beneath the shadow of his bamboo hat. Water still dripped occasionally from the woven brim, each drop striking the sodden carpet beneath his boots with a soft, irregular rhythm that punctuated the silence between Su Yin's words.

He understood at once.

If one attempt failed, they would simply begin again. And again. And again, until either they succeeded or the very foundations of their sect crumbled into dust.

So my choice to kill them was neither wholly right nor wrong.

Shi Yan clicked his tongue inwardly, the sound never reaching his lips. The moment he accepted the commission, it meant he had already provoked the hornet's nest. Whether he killed Physician Li or not, they would surely hunt him down if they learned his identity. The only difference was the time it would take for them to organize against him—the window between discovery and retaliation.

Meaning he was lucky, or his judgment had been correct to kill them.

Either way, he was already in the game.

Su Yin continued, her voice cold as the rain-soaked wind that rattled the window frames.

"They still possess the method for the Blood Array. If one village is gone, they will choose another. If one source of blood is lost, they will find more. With the strength of Cloud-Mirror Sect, refining a second Crimson Pearl is only a matter of time. Perhaps one month. Perhaps less."

Yeah, I know.

Shi Yan heard this, and the more he heard, the more annoyed he became—not the hot, explosive anger of youth, but the cold, grinding frustration of a professional forced to deal with mission parameters that kept expanding beyond their original scope.

On the other hand, Su Yin's fingers tightened slightly on the edge of the table, her pale knuckles standing out sharply against the dark mahogany as though she were gripping a lifeline rather than a piece of furniture.

"Worse, the death of their Elder in Black-Ash Marsh will tell them that someone has already seen through part of their design. Once they realize this, they will act even faster."

The logic was sound, clean as a surgical cut. So long as the thing within the shattered realm remained where it was, Cloud-Mirror Sect would never let the matter rest. One failed attempt meant nothing—less than nothing. It was merely a temporary setback, a piece lost in a game that would continue until either they achieved victory or ceased to exist.

They would keep trying until they succeeded.

Tsk...

Su Yin added, her voice low but carrying a cold firmness that reminded Shi Yan uncomfortably of commanding officers delivering orders that everyone knew would result in casualties—necessary, calculated, and utterly without mercy.

"If we wait for them to refine another Crimson Pearl, then this matter will slip from our grasp. The only way is to move before they do."

She looked directly at him, her dark eyes holding his pale gaze with the intensity of a cultivator locking onto their target, and in that moment, the full weight of her intention settled over the room like a physical presence.

"You must enter the Shattered Realm ahead of them. If the Celestial Marrow within is taken away—or destroyed—then Cloud-Mirror Sect's Sect Master will have no path forward. Their long-laid design will collapse on the spot."

Her expression hardened, the last traces of softness burning away until what remained was pure, crystallized will—the kind of determination that had built empires and toppled dynasties, that had driven cultivators to challenge the heavens themselves.

"And once that happens, the City Lord's people will naturally suppress them again."