Chapter 15: The Truth! (1)

A look of reminiscence surfaced in Xiao Lin's eyes.

Though the scene from that night had appeared in his dreams countless times, when he truly thought about it, a full twenty years had already passed.

"It was the very night we were about to reach Tianque Pass — when we stopped to rest at a relay station on the border of Shuozhou — that disaster struck."

"What happened?" Zhao Lan's very soul was stirred. To have the rare fortune of learning the truth behind a case that had shaken the entire world was something else entirely.

"Poison."

"Poison? Someone poisoned you all!"

"Every single one of the hundred-plus men of the Left-Center Guard was poisoned. Not one was spared."

"How is that possible!"

Zhao Lan cried out in shock.

Those were the Left-Center Unit of the Feathered-Forest Guard — the elite of the imperial palace, where even the lowest-ranked cultivator was at the Unity Realm. Who could have tracked their movements and administered poison without a sound?

"I suspected the Gao clan, but I heard he died later as well. That, however, is not the most important part — what came next was..."

Xiao Lin's pupils contracted slightly, as though a painful memory had surfaced.

"My grandfather was a wandering cultivator in his youth. He once received guidance from the East Sea recluse immortal [Qingxuzi] by chance, and learned the strange art of Tortoise Breath. So I feigned death using Tortoise Breath, all five senses completely shut off."

Zhao Lan gasped again in a low voice: "Qingxuzi — one of the Five Greatest Masters Under Heaven!"

He had always been fond of strange tales and gossip from the jianghu, and knew that people in those circles loved to rank and rate cultivators. The "Five Greatest Masters Under Heaven" was a venerable title that had been passed down for a thousand years, carrying genuine weight in the jianghu.

While it might not literally mean the true top five in the world, those named were certainly among the most supreme figures alive.

Qingxuzi had held that title for over a hundred years. He dwelled on the isolated island of "Azure Sea Immortal Mountain" in the far reaches of the East Sea, aloof and eccentric in temperament, standing apart from the world.

And then there was Pei Su's father — Northern Pacification Marquis Pei Jun — who had in recent years also been listed among the "Five Greatest Masters Under Heaven," having displaced the wandering recluse known as the "Solitary One" who had vanished somewhere across the world.

"Indeed. Had I not mastered Tortoise Breath, how could I have fooled the eyes lurking in the shadows with a false death? I don't know how much time passed, but when I slowly came to, I found myself deep in a gorge, surrounded by the corpses of my comrades and countless soldiers.

"My gaze fell upon the black lacquered case not far away — ten feet long, five feet wide — the ebony case holding Dragon-Sparrow, the divine blade we had been risking our lives to escort."

Zhao Lan's heart immediately leapt into his throat.

"Dragon-Sparrow had been stolen?!"

"I feared as much. So I walked forward and opened the case."

At this point, Xiao Lin closed his eyes, his entire body trembling uncontrollably.

"And then? Was Dragon-Sparrow still there?"

Xiao Lin did not answer. Instead, he asked a different question.

"Lan'er — why do you think His Majesty went into seclusion at Kongtong Mountain?"

"Ah? I don't know."

The affairs of His Majesty were far too remote from Zhao Lan's world. He would never dare to speculate.

"I opened the ebony case. The light of Dragon-Sparrow stabbed at my eyes with pain. And then — I saw it. The scene that has jolted me awake from nightmares countless times. The sight I will never forget for as long as I live..."

"What was it?" Zhao Lan's heart had risen to his very throat.

"Impaled on the tip of Dragon-Sparrow — was the head of the reigning Emperor!"

......

"His Majesty's... head?!"

Pei Su stared fixedly at the black-robed elder before him, and after a long moment, steadied his composure.

"Yes, Young Lord. The Son of Heaven has been dead for twenty years. The seclusion at Kongtong is nothing more than a world-shaking deception orchestrated jointly by the Master and the Empress."

Pei Su said nothing.

This deception was, to put it mildly, utterly earth-shattering.

The Great Jin Emperor, Li Qian, had once emerged victorious from a brutal struggle among nine princes for the throne. In the decades that followed, he had drilled his armies, devised grand strategies, reclaimed hundreds of lost territories — a man of sweeping ambition and genuine talent for governance. He was a true, once-in-an-age sovereign.

Among the five emperors of the Jin Dynasty, his achievements were second only to the founding emperor, Emperor Gaozu of Jin.

And yet — he had died quietly, without a sound, twenty years ago.

"So on the surface it was an escort mission to bring the divine blade Dragon-Sparrow north — but in truth, it was a secret operation to transport the Emperor's head to Tianque Pass?"

"Precisely. The court was in turmoil over the Emperor's seclusion, and the clan had become a target from all sides, making covert action difficult. So they chose to act openly — using Dragon-Sparrow as the cover, with the Imperial Forest Army as escort. No one would have suspected a thing.

"Among them, the Imperial Guard Commander Gao Xun was a hidden agent of the clan, accompanying the convoy all the way north and secretly administering the poison just before Tianque Pass.

"But — for reasons unknown — his deputy commander, Xiao Zhongyong, somehow feigned death and escaped. And not only that — he took the divine blade Dragon-Sparrow with him!"

Pei Su exhaled slowly, absorbing this world-shaking information. Even a single fragment of it leaking to the outside world would be enough to throw the realm into chaos.

Though the questions that had brought him on this journey were now answered, new questions had multiplied in their place.

For instance — how had the Emperor died?

Why had the clan needed to transport His Majesty's head to Tianque Pass?

What exactly had the Empress and his grandfather been plotting?

In a daze, Pei Su felt as though he were slowly reaching into the murky, treacherous currents of the court from twenty years ago.

......

Zhao Lan clamped both hands tightly over his mouth, his pupils dilating and contracting in rapid succession.

His throat worked, but he could not produce a single word for a long time. His face had gone pale with horror.

The Emperor of Great Jin — in the minds of all people, he was the most exalted being between heaven and earth, the sovereign who ruled over the divine land of China!

Even though he had been in seclusion for twenty years, ignoring court affairs, the common people had only speculated that His Majesty was perhaps attempting to break through to the Heaven-Man pinnacle and attain the rank of an earthbound immortal.

Who would ever have imagined that His Majesty was already dead?!

Put another way — who in all of heaven and earth could kill an emperor?!

It was said that from the very day of his enthronement, the Emperor had been sheltered by the Emperor Star above, with the divine light of Tianqu falling upon him. Even without ever cultivating, he could achieve the Dharma Manifestation pinnacle under the radiance of imperial light.

And with the fortune of an entire dynasty protecting him, he was naturally unmatched among those of the same realm.

In an age where the path to immortality had been severed for thousands of years, the emperor of a dynasty was, openly speaking, the number one figure under heaven!

For otherwise — how could a dynasty lasting only a few hundred years suppress those ancient and terrifying thousand-year noble clans? How could it hold down those jianghu sects with their deep and unfathomable foundations?

"How... is this possible?"

Zhao Lan finally managed a complete sentence, but his voice trembled violently, and a nameless dread spread from his chest to his very limbs.

He was a subject of Great Jin, raised from childhood on the doctrine of loyalty to the throne. In his heart, the Emperor was the true sky — as long as he existed, this land would not fall into chaos.

And now, that sky... had collapsed.

Not only that, but the court had only a Crown Prince and no newly enthroned emperor — which meant that Great Jin, as it stood now...

Had no sovereign!

Xiao Lin had finally spoken the secret he had kept buried for twenty years. There was no relief in it — only a weight that grew heavier still.

"My shock and panic back then were tenfold what you feel now! Shattered in spirit and wounded in heart, I only thought that I could not bear to let the Emperor suffer the indignity of being skewered on a blade — so I stepped forward and pulled Dragon-Sparrow free..."

Xiao Lin kept his eyes closed, his voice trembling faintly.

"I looked around in every direction — nothing but corpses. Blood stained a thousand miles. The Qian River ran red for three months. I had no mind to think, no strength to plan. I took the blade and walked, terrified that if I lingered even one breath longer, I would be discovered!"

"Who?!" Zhao Lan's eyes went wide.

"Who was it that murdered His Majesty?!"

Xiao Lin shook his head.

"For these twenty years, I have thought of nothing else, every moment of every day. Every faction at court has churned through my mind like a storm. By now, I believe there can only be one answer."

"The ancient clan — the Pei Clan!"