The spy had already been “dealt with” by disembowelment, yet the Phoenix Plume was still missing. Clearly, not all the traitors had been eliminated. Staying any longer risked exposure, so using this as a reason, Peng Yi requested a withdrawal from his handler.
The Dragon Bone hadn’t been found yet, but all the other items had been obtained, making the Dragon Bone less urgent: it needed to be used with the Phoenix Plume, and without the plume, the bone was like a single hand that couldn’t clap.
Peng Yi completed his transition, but subsequent events didn’t go as smoothly as he had imagined.
First, by the time he returned to Chi You’s faction, Kuang Zu had already switched sides.
Opening the box required two procedures: the blood of the Kuang family and the blood of the person who sealed the box, which was himself. Thinking carefully, he realized that stealing his blood, Peng Yi’s blood, wasn’t difficult—at least during his execution, his blood had flowed everywhere.
After the box was opened, the items inside were scattered, and he had no way of knowing where they went.
Second, although he was a meritorious official whose rank was extraordinary, far higher than people like Kuang Zu, and could gather some valuable intelligence, he was still a frontline chess piece. Reaching the middle ranks was already his limit; he couldn’t possibly know the core plans.
This meant his undercover career would inevitably be long and drawn out.
Peng Yi settled in patiently. Soon, he noticed that Chi You’s faction was simultaneously conducting two major secret projects, one in Western Hunan and one in Guangxi. There was no overlap in personnel between the two locations, meaning if you participated in one, you couldn’t be involved in the other.
Peng Yi was sent to Guangxi, where he was a mid-level leader. It was there he learned that the Dragon Bone ashes had been scattered, with fragments entering the mountain rocks. This mountain consequently became known as the Dragon-Subduing Mountain.
The mountain range that geographically opposed Dragon-Subduing Mountain was chosen to secretly store the Phoenix Plume.
Peng Yi silently observed the structure of the Phoenix Eye, understanding that if bronze was finally poured to seal the top, making the Phoenix Eye a solid block, then it would be virtually impossible to enter from above ground. A good undercover agent should know how to plant mines in seemingly impenetrable projects.
He suggested that, for safety, misleading formations should be set up inside the Phoenix Eye underground palace. This way, if enemies accidentally entered, they would carelessly believe that a single feather was all there was. In their complacency, they wouldn’t search further, thus sacrificing the small to protect the greater whole.
This suggestion was adopted. However, even a single Phoenix Plume would emit a prismatic halo. To conceal it, the Jiu Ling Sheng family needed to arrange three layers of coffins, using human remains to suppress it. Peng Yi was responsible for supervising this task, making it convenient for him to manipulate things—the coffin bottom was supposed to be on top of the bronze cover, but under his arrangement, the bottom was several inches deeper, and the bronze pour around the coffin bottom wasn’t sealed but welded shut.
Thus, he planted his first mine: this Phoenix Eye had a loophole.
Unfortunately, the arrangements in Western Hunan remained a mystery to him. He could never find anyone to inquire about it.
After the Phoenix Eye project, he received notice of an immediate transfer to another secret new project site.
Kunlun Mountain.
This reassignment was too sudden, and the distance too great. Before leaving, Peng Yi only managed to meet his handler once to inform him about the Phoenix Plume’s hiding place.
Knowing its location didn’t mean they should excavate it immediately. First, it would alert their enemies; second, since the whereabouts of other items remained unknown, digging it out would just mean finding another place to store it. It was better to leave it hidden in the Phoenix Eye, retrieving it when needed.
At that time, Kunlun was territory of the Yellow Emperor’s faction. Going to Kunlun to participate in the project was an extremely secretive matter. Even the participants themselves didn’t know the exact destination before arrival. So Peng Yi’s plan was to first note down the route along the way, then find a way to contact the outside after arrival.
However, this plan couldn’t be implemented.
The reason was they weren’t traveling on the surface at all, but mostly through mountain caves and underground rivers, winding and twisting. When paths ended, Mountain Ghosts were responsible for splitting mountains to create passages. Then, they reached a massive underground cavern that drifted below ground for an unknown number of days before reaching the final destination.
This underground cavern was the Drifting Cave, and the final destination was the underground abyss of the Nine Winding Intestines.
At this point in the story, a night truck passed by, probably carrying heavy oil or gas. With a rumbling sound, it made the road surface vibrate subtly. Shen Gun paused his narration, took a breather, and drank some more water.
Jiang Lian took the opportunity to inquire about his injury: “Your… stomach, you just made a small puncture, and it became this rotten?”
Shen Gun nodded.
“When did it start to rot?”
“Since opening the box.”
Damn, Jiang Lian inhaled sharply. This meant that when Shen Gun received Luo Ren’s group, the wound was continuously festering. Earlier, he had told Meng Qianzi that Shen Gun lacked cunning and was easily deceived, but it seemed he had misjudged. When this honest man chose to pretend, no one else could compare.
Thinking further, with his body rotting, Shen Gun must have been in considerable agony at that time.
“Does the wound… hurt?”
“It’s better now, not very painful. If I were writhing in agony, you would have discovered it earlier… Where was I?”
Jiang Lian thought for a moment: “You were saying, ‘reached the final destination.'”
Shen Gun’s numerous thoughts, interrupted by the passing night truck, reconnected thread by thread, strand by strand.
“At that time, that mountain peak didn’t have the Nine Winding Intestines, no Ice Blood Vessels, not even the bottomless pit you saw—the bottomless pit was opened later, equivalent to them gradually working upward from the mountain base, performing a major operation of dismantling and reconstructing the mountain. Moreover, that peak was special; at the top, there were still people from the Yellow Emperor’s faction guarding it.”
Jiang Lian didn’t understand.
Shen Gun gave him a somewhat disdainful look, then offered a more straightforward comparison: “Think of it this way, it’s like digging an underground project beneath your enemy’s building.”
Jiang Lian immediately understood.
Damn, this was intense: the middle and upper parts of the mountain served as an office for the Yellow Emperor’s faction, while Chi You’s faction was developing a project at the bottom, secretly expanding upward—this ancient tunnel warfare was impressively sophisticated.
However…
He was puzzled: “What place was this mountain peak? The Yellow Emperor’s faction even specifically assigned guards?”
Shen Gun sighed with emotion: “What do you think that place was? That was the Kunlun Celestial Ladder, the box-burning site. Many boxes had been transported into the mountain’s interior and burned there. Dragon Bone box-burning couldn’t be performed just anywhere; it had to be done there. After Peng Yi recovered the box and gathered all the items, he would also have to return there to burn them.”
Jiang Lian was confused: “I can understand it being a box-burning site—that stone platform isn’t small, and burning things there is feasible. But what exactly does ‘Kunlun Celestial Ladder’ refer to?”
Shen Gun pointed at his head: “I don’t know. The message I received didn’t tell me what the Celestial Ladder was.”
Fair enough. Jiang Lian didn’t interrupt further: “Please continue.”
Shen Gun thought for quite a while before resuming: “But the reason there were guards stationed there wasn’t just because it was a box-burning site, but also because…”
He lowered his voice, as if preventing others from overhearing: “The remaining Dragon Bone was hidden there.”
From a certain perspective, hiding the Dragon Bone there made sense: the box-burning site was like a stove, and the Dragon Bone like firewood. Having firewood close to the stove was convenient.
The Kunlun project began beneath this mountain peak, killing two birds with one stone: first, it provided an opportunity to search for the Dragon Bone; second, the most dangerous place is often the safest place—the Yellow Emperor’s faction would never imagine that they had established their most secret lair there. By then, the Yellow Emperor’s main forces had withdrawn to the Yellow River basin. This place was at most a remote outpost with few guards, easily dealt with. Eventually, above would be their outpost, while below would be filled with Chi You’s people.
If the Yellow Emperor’s faction sent someone to check, they would be eliminated one by one to prevent secrets from leaking. However, it was unlikely that more people would be sent: the God Race was transitioning into ordinary humans living ordinary lives. This outpost would inevitably gradually vanish, becoming a sealed secret.
Peng Yi learned all this only after arriving. The mountain interior was like a giant cage where no one could contact the outside world. His only option was to find the Dragon Bone first.
Fortunately, as a leader responsible for supervision and planning, he had many opportunities to explore. However, before finding the Dragon Bone, he discovered someone else.
Kuang Zu.
Kuang Zu’s survival until now wasn’t because he worked desperately or curried favor. The leadership kept him alive because, as a craftsman, he genuinely possessed a unique skill that might be needed someday. Nevertheless, he was only assigned the most menial tasks.
Peng Yi deliberately placed Kuang Zu under his command, taking care of him in various ways. This person, of course, couldn’t be trusted, but he could be utilized—having someone run errands and cooperate was better than being stretched thin. If necessary, he could be used as a scapegoat or stepping stone.
Unaware of the ulterior motives, Kuang Zu thought he had met a benefactor and was overwhelmingly grateful.
Soon, the project approached the middle section of the mountain. The extermination and interrogation of the guards also began. Peng Yi took the lead, making contact with the manager among the guards, and transferred the Dragon Bone in advance. However, he could only hide it inside the mountain. With the project ongoing and people coming and going, no hiding place was truly safe; he had to move it around frequently.
…
Jiang Lian guessed: “Later, he used the pretext of positioning animal bones to hide the Dragon Bone within the ice sculpture?”
Shen Gun nodded: “After the Nine Winding Intestines took initial shape, related arrangements began. That box couldn’t be left outside, so it was naturally stored here as well. Inside the box, only a few animal bones without malevolent energy remained.”
“If you recall the position of that stone platform, it’s right at the middle section of the mountain. The space below was hollowed out, but they stopped digging there for two reasons: First, that stone platform was the box-burning site, with special significance. Second, from there, one could observe the Mountain Intestines above and overlook the cave below. In today’s terms, it was an excellent spot for inspecting the project’s progress.”
Jiang Lian was amazed: Peng Yi had essentially frozen the Dragon Bone right under countless people’s noses. It was extremely bold but also a risky victory. Once the ice was covered with layers of thick frost, no one could see the bones inside. Even if someone, out of extreme boredom, scraped away the frost and accidentally exposed a piece, it could be claimed as animal bone rather than Dragon Bone.
…
Of course, what was arranged in the Nine Winding Intestines wasn’t just animal bones. In the temporarily inhabited Drifting Cave, Peng Yi successively saw water crystals, regenerative soil, the half-decayed body of a Qilin excavated from underground, and Taisui.
Only then did he have an enlightening realization about the Chi You faction’s plot. The composition of items in the box became increasingly meaningful: there was a mountain gallbladder inside, which could process water crystals, but where had the mountain gallbladder gone?
He had important intelligence to send out, but no means to deliver it. Although the Yellow Emperor faction’s guards had been eliminated, because the secrets in the Drifting Cave were becoming apparent, various surveillance and defense measures became even stricter. Occasionally, getting fresh air outside the Mountain Intestines was limited to the valley area. All Peng Yi could do was observe the mountain’s shape and terrain, draw maps, and accumulate more intelligence.
At the same time, he also heard increasingly more information.
—Reportedly, the leadership had divined that the maturation of the Qilin Crystal would occur much, much later, described as “flying without wings, facing without a face.” No one knew when that would be.
—When ripe, the Qilin Crystal would detach naturally. When the Drifting Cave was flooded, the Qilin Crystal would float in the water. It would avoid living people but be attracted to corpses. Using dead bodies as bait, one could catch it. However, ordinary human corpses couldn’t serve as bait. The Qilin Crystal could be forcibly put into an ordinary person’s mouth, but it would never actively approach them.
At that time, it would enter through the dead person’s mouth into the throat and body, making rebirth possible.
Of course, they couldn’t let the Qilin Crystal benefit the “bait.” They would need to learn from the method water ghosts used on black ghosts: tightly binding the bait’s throat, making it too narrow for the Qilin Crystal to pass through. Then, they could squeeze the Qilin Crystal out of the dead person’s throat and mouth.
—The defense here would be the strictest, especially the passage leading to the Drifting Cave. In a few days, a batch of stone locusts would arrive. Before releasing them completely into the Mountain Intestines, Peng Yi would be responsible for their care. These creatures were about the size of locusts and preferred to eat living things. When there were no living things to eat, they wouldn’t starve because they could eat stones. When dormant, they were stones; they ate stones, and when they died, they also became stones.
—In this world, there were grasses eaten by cattle and sheep, and there were also grasses that could suck blood and chew flesh. The final segment leading to the bottomless pit would be planted with such grass.
However, the more he learned, the heavier the ominous feeling in Peng Yi’s heart grew. So many secrets shouldn’t be disclosed unless they are being disclosed to the dead.
As the Mountain Intestines neared completion, higher-level managers summoned Peng Yi to inform him of something: the Mountain Intestines’ closure required an interlocking mechanism. They had set up the box as this mechanism. Since the box was to be stored within the mountain anyway, this meant that once the Mountain Intestines were locked, they could never be opened from the outside again.
The people trapped to die inside the mountain would be treated differently: those laborers without value would be killed on the spot and thrown into the cave, serving as fertilizer for the Taisui, while those with merit and status could have their “souls enter the water crystals.” Their corpses would be specially cleaned and cremated—regenerative soil could preserve corpses for a very long time, but the Qilin Crystal’s maturation would take so long that preserving with regenerative soil became meaningless.
The manager comforted him, saying it was fine, they had considered everything. At that time, they would provide him with the freshest body with the purest blood. They would also store as many samples as possible. If the optimal body was unsuitable, there would be plenty of alternatives to try.
Then he congratulated Peng Yi, saying he was a meritorious person who could enter the water crystals, and asked him to prepare for immortality.
Peng Yi appeared very pleased, but in his heart, he knew his time was running out.
He couldn’t enter the water crystals. During the purification process, his body would reveal its true form, exposing his face altered by clay molding and the elongated “S”-shaped scar on his chest and abdomen.