The tension between Jun Beiyue and Xuanyuan Lige flared once more, tight as a drawn bow.
Ziqing wanted to intervene, but found she couldn’t think of a single reason to. If that was how it was going to be, then let them have it out.
She said nothing more, standing silently at Jun Beiyue’s side — the surest way to let Xuanyuan Lige know where she stood.
Perhaps a duel, settling things once and for all, would be for the best.
But just as the two men were about to come to blows, Baili Weisheng spoke up. “Would you two knock it off already!”
His impatient tone clashed sharply with the charged atmosphere, but it cut straight through, interrupting Jun Beiyue and Xuanyuan Lige both.
By now the three Meng elders had also snapped out of their bystander daze and turned to look at Baili Weisheng.
In the instant the poison spider had fallen and the seal activated, the second and third Meng elders — whose skills were rather ordinary — hadn’t grasped the truth of it. But Old Fifth Meng had understood immediately!
The journal his fourth sister had left behind recorded that the Death Barrier’s seal had appeared on Jun Beiyue’s chest, and that Baili Weisheng’s actions had forcibly activated it!
A Death Barrier’s seal could never, under any circumstances, appear spontaneously on a person’s heart — someone had to have deliberately arranged it!
The first person Old Fifth Meng thought of was his fourth sister, Meng Wanyue. He stared at Jun Beiyue in disbelief; seeing his heart still pounding away, he realized there was still something unresolved within that barrier — and the key to it remained in Jun Beiyue’s heart.
Baili Weisheng shot Old Fifth Meng a wary glance, then turned to the group, thoroughly exasperated. “Are you people not tired of this? We don’t even know if we can get out of the Poison Beast World yet, and you’ve got the leisure to stand around here… fighting over a woman?”
Fighting over a woman…
Even Baili Weisheng felt a flicker of awkwardness saying those three words out loud — was there anything he normally couldn’t say?
Heaven only knew why he suddenly felt embarrassed today.
Ziqing, who had been thoroughly weary and exasperated, couldn’t help but be amused by those words — though she kept her laughter to herself.
“What do you mean, can’t get out?” Old Fifth Meng cut in quickly. Clearly, this young man knew quite a bit.
Baili Weisheng pointed at the shimmering dagger still relentlessly striking the cliff wall, shrugged, and said only four words: “The Universe Poison Pouch.”
At those words, not just Old Fifth Meng but the second and third elders as well sucked in sharp breaths of shock!
All three spoke almost in unison. “What did you say?”
Baili Weisheng hadn’t originally planned to reveal this — he’d come to seize the treasure for himself. But since he’d arrived first and still couldn’t manage to claim it, and after standing by watching that little dagger chip away at the cliff for so long, who knew how many more years it might take to finish the job?
With Xuanyuan Lige here, Jun Beiyue here, and all three Meng elders here besides, his own odds of winning this prize were vanishingly small. He might as well just say it outright — at least, he trusted, Jun Beiyue stood a real chance of claiming it.
And if Jun Beiyue got it, wouldn’t it belong to Han Ziqing anyway?
He’d already decided to turn over a new leaf. Since Han Ziqing hadn’t turned into a human gu, and he’d already laid all his secrets bare before her, he intended to throw his lot in with her from here on, joining her in the search for the lone island.
The way he saw it — if the treasure went to Ziqing, he’d benefit from it too, wouldn’t he?
“That’s right. This Poison Beast World is, in truth, a Death Barrier — its name is the Universe Poison Pouch! Force the seal open and enter, and you’re bound to destroy the stone lock, restoring it to its true form — otherwise, none of us will ever get out of here!”
At those words, everyone present went pale with shock — even the ever stone-faced Jun Beiyue’s expression turned complicated.
Only now did he really take note of the shimmering dagger. He asked Ziqing in a low voice, “This dagger… what’s the story with it?”
Ziqing was just about to answer when Old Fifth Meng suddenly cried out, “So that’s it! So that’s it! Ha ha ha, my fourth sister really pulled off something magnificent — truly magnificent!”
Those words, that laughter, left everyone utterly bewildered, unable to make sense of any of it. The second and third elders’ faces only grew grimmer — they still didn’t know the full truth, but they already sensed it wouldn’t bode well for them.
The “fourth sister” Old Fifth Meng spoke of was none other than Meng Wanyue — Jun Beiyue’s birth mother.
Could it be that the anomalies in the Death Barrier were Meng Wanyue’s doing?
Old Fifth Meng, thoroughly excited now, made no attempt to hide anything from the astonished group. He looked at Baili Weisheng and said with a laugh, “Young man, once the Universe Poison Pouch’s natural cycle is broken and the seal is forcibly opened, that stone lock absolutely must be destroyed — otherwise, the seal’s gate will never open again. And by rights, once the cycle’s broken, that stone lock ought to be quite easy to knock down.”
Before he’d even finished speaking, the second and third elders didn’t hesitate for a second — they charged straight at the cliff wall. They’d heard of the Universe Poison Pouch before; it was an extraordinary treasure indeed.
But they were instantly hurled backward by some invisible force!
This was exactly what Old Fifth Meng had expected — he’d simply let those two impulsive fools prove his suspicion for him.
Baili Weisheng and Ziqing both understood the outcome perfectly well already, and waited in silence for Old Fifth Meng to continue.
Xuanyuan Lige eyed the cliff wall with suspicion but didn’t move.
“How could this be!”
“It’s Meng Wanyue’s doing!”
“It must be her!”
The second and third elders looked back and forth between Jun Beiyue’s still-pounding heart and the cliff and the dagger’s shimmering light, muttering to themselves in shock.
Meng Wanyue…
At the sound of those three words, something stirred strangely in Jun Beiyue’s heart — that was his birth mother’s name.
His memories of his mother were essentially nonexistent. The shimmering dagger had come to him later, a gift from a maid who had once been close to his mother — that dagger was all he had left of her.
If he hadn’t been wounded this badly, if Physician Gu hadn’t gone to Liuxian Island to ask, perhaps the Patriarch of the Gu Clan would never have spoken of it at all.
So — she hadn’t been called Wanyue. She’d been called Meng Wanyue.
It seemed the Consort Wan of years past hadn’t died in childbirth after all — there had to be some hidden truth behind it.
But why did this old man call her his fourth sister? Could this possibly be his uncle?
“You’re my mother’s…” Jun Beiyue’s voice rose in shock, his brow furrowing tight.
“Prince Yao, this old man is Meng Ziyue, the Fifth Elder of the Nanzhao Meng Clan. Meng Wanyue is my own elder sister — she left home years ago and there’s been no word of her since!”
At those words, Jun Beiyue went rigid with shock. This was the Fifth Elder of the Meng Clan, and Meng Wanyue was his own sister — which meant Meng Wanyue wasn’t merely connected to the Meng Clan, but was one of its direct bloodline!
His own veins carried the blood of the Meng Clan’s direct line!
So the second and third elders had deceived everyone all along — claiming Meng Wanyue was merely an old acquaintance, deliberately erasing this deeper connection entirely!
Jun Beiyue immediately turned a murderous glare on the second and third elders standing nearby, his gaze so sharp it could have killed. The two of them flinched back instinctively — if they hadn’t realized this was the Death Barrier, they would never have set foot in here to begin with!
For a barrier master, a Death Barrier held far, far too much temptation — and besides, they had been under orders to find it in the first place!
Under Jun Beiyue’s murderous glare, the two shamelessly retreated to stand behind Old Fifth Meng. The third elder whispered urgently, “Fifth Brother, we came here on the old master’s orders to find the Death Barrier — you’re obligated to help us. This Universe Poison Pouch must be brought back to present to the old master!”
These two old men, unable even to save themselves, were still so greedy! Yet little did they know, there was a small child right beside them, narrowing his eyes and watching them very closely indeed…