Lin Xiao cut the rope binding A’Han free. Just as he turned to go and help Qin Yao deal with the undead, he looked over and saw a young man in the hall being relentlessly chased and battered by a cluster of stray walking corpses. The man was leaping and bounding about like a monkey, crying out in frantic alarm from time to time, looking utterly wretched.

Remarkably, for all his desperation, the man’s agility had kept him from being caught and torn apart — at least for the time being. It was Zeng Nanqin.

He dodged and weaved, apparently already exhausted, then suddenly caught sight of Lin Xiao. He bolted toward him with all the urgency of a man running for his life, drawing a trail of walking corpses behind him.

The primal instinct for survival stripped Zeng Nanqin of all dignity. He ran with everything he had until he reached Lin Xiao, then dropped to his knees with a thud. Grabbing Lin Xiao’s robe, he pleaded desperately, “Young Lord, save this lowly one’s life.”

Without even waiting for Lin Xiao’s response, he sensed the arms of the walking corpse right behind him nearly upon his shoulders. His face drained white, and he immediately rolled and tumbled to scramble behind Lin Xiao.

Qin Yao watched from across the hall, deeply incensed. This man had, purely for his own selfish ends, dared to set his sights even on the Jade Corpse — getting chased by the undead like this was nothing but his just deserts. If he still had a shred of shame, he ought to have gone and met his end to one side. And yet he had the nerve to drag others into danger with him!

Even as she silently consigned every one of Zeng Nanqin’s ancestors to her inner reckoning, she swiftly guided the Fire Dragon in front of Lin Xiao to shield him.

Lin Xiao had already sliced off the arms of several walking corpses. When Qin Yao’s Soul-Devouring Bell fire swept through and burned the trailing ones immobile, Lin Xiao found an opening and turned to seize Zeng Nanqin without a word, then used the very rope that had been used to bind A’Han to truss Zeng Nanqin up thoroughly.

Zeng Nanqin had been quietly congratulating himself on having narrowly escaped with his life. He had not anticipated this, and his face showed complete bewilderment. He opened his mouth to question Lin Xiao, but could only produce a muffled humming — his mute acupoint had been sealed as well.

Lin Xiao hoisted Zeng Nanqin up and tossed him down beside the furiously glowering Chun Qiao. Zeng Nanqin seemed to hold Chun Qiao in extreme dread, and immediately gave a great start of terror, struggling against his bonds with all his might, flatly refusing to stay there.

Lin Xiao paid this no mind whatsoever. He brushed off the dust from his hands, straightened up, and seeing Qin Yao looking over at him with complete bewilderment, had no choice but to explain, “Keeping him serves some purpose.”

Qin Yao’s mind turned it over quickly and, recalling Zeng Nanqin’s secret liaison with Cui Shi, began to have a vague sense of what Lin Xiao meant. She was just about to speak when she suddenly caught a glimpse of a figure darting about behind the dragon throne — someone was peering cautiously out, and the moment their eyes met Qin Yao’s gaze, pulled back again, hiding completely behind the throne. It was Tang Qingnian.

Strangely enough, the walking corpses in the hall had been giving vigorous chase to Zeng Nanqin with great relish, yet not one of them had gone near Tang Qingnian to disturb him. She did not know whether it was because Chun Qiao had issued no such command, or because they held some deference for the dragon throne above.

Thinking of how the Jade Corpse had been seated upon the dragon throne a moment ago while the two rows of walking corpses below performed a gesture of worship toward her, Qin Yao felt a flicker of something she could not quite define. She kept feeling that what the Jade Corpse had been doing did not quite match up with the accounts that had been passed down about her.

But right now her concern was for her master, and she had no time to dwell on it further — let alone spare any energy to worry about Tang Qingnian’s fate. She turned and headed toward the eastern side hall.

A’Han was also about to go into the hall to find his master. The two of them had barely reached the door when a tremendous crash rang out. The entire row of doors to the eastern side hall collapsed, and their master shot out through them like an arrow.

Tumbling out along with him were Chang Rong, Wei Bo, and the others — all of them hitting the ground hard and lying there unable to move.

Qin Yao and A’Han were stricken and rushed to Qing Xuzi’s side, crying out, “Master!”

Supported by his two disciples into a sitting position, Qing Xuzi had no time for any exchange of words. He waved them off, saying, “I am not dying. Do not delay — set up the formation quickly.”

With that, he reached into his robe and drew out the Boundless Mirror. He swept out his horsetail whisk and, enduring the severe pain in his chest, shouted, “Rise—!”

The light of the Boundless Mirror enveloped all three master and disciples from head to foot. Qin Yao and A’Han moved at once to set up the Evil-Suppressing Formation, but Qing Xuzi waved them off. He caught his breath and said, “Not enough.”

“Not enough?” Qin Yao and A’Han paused mid-movement, bewildered. “What do you mean, not enough?”

Qing Xuzi rolled his eyes at them in exasperation. The wound in his chest was jarred by it, and a surge of hot sweetness rose in his throat; he forced it down through sheer will. He turned to Lin Xiao, who had crouched down to check on the condition of Chang Rong and the others, and said, “Young Lord, come help set up the formation — otherwise every one of us here is finished—”

The words were not yet out of his mouth when a tremendous wave suddenly surged in through the door from outside. It arrived with such overwhelming force that it drowned out all of Qing Xuzi’s words.

The wave arrived in the most inexplicable fashion — like a monstrous deluge — and before Qin Yao and the others could even react, the ice-cold water had swallowed them whole.

Qin Yao gripped her master’s hand with all her might, held her breath, and kicked upward with desperate strokes toward the surface. But no matter how she swam, she seemed unable to reach any end. Her heart seized — she realized then that the water had already reached the ceiling of the hall.

She knew the techniques for prolonged submersion underwater, but she could not remain submerged indefinitely. Panic began to creep in. She looked around in all directions and found everything surrounding her was dim and dark — never mind Lin Xiao and the others, even the walking corpses that had been leaping about the hall a moment ago had vanished without a trace.

She was about to turn back to ask her master what to do when a great wave struck her, and inexplicably her grip gave way. She spun around frantically, reaching desperately for her master, only to find that the master and A’Han who had been right behind her were already gone.

“Master — Young Lord—” she called out, her voice soundless in the water. Her heart was in total disarray, and suddenly it felt as though she had been transported back to the age of three — abruptly abandoned by her parents in the unfamiliar Qingyun Temple, unable to find her way home in the dark of night, hugging her knees beneath a tree and weeping with helpless, forlorn tears.

Boundless darkness, boundless solitude, and all the familiar things around her slipping away — this feeling of helpless despair had faded from Qin Yao’s life long ago. Yet here it was, eleven years later, descending upon her again without warning in the most unexpected fashion.

She could feel her will beginning to crumble at the edges. As though she were trying to hold her very soul in place, she clenched her teeth, desperately urging herself to stay calm.

She looked in every direction, searching for any sign of her master and Lin Xiao, but all she could find in every direction was a darkness so thick it could swallow everything — not a trace of any living presence. The water grew colder and colder. Her breathing grew more and more erratic. In her ears, what sounded like a woman’s voice murmured softly, “Sleep… sleep…”

Qin Yao actually felt herself growing drowsy, her eyelids weighted with a heaviness of a thousand pounds, closing without wanting to open again. Her strokes through the water were growing slower and more sluggish. She pinched her arm hard to jolt herself back, and forced herself to think.

Something was wrong. The main hall of this imperial retreat, though vast, was not without limits. How could the water have risen all the way to the ceiling, and how had every person in the hall simply vanished? And Jade Spring Mountain had only a single jade spring at its peak — one that had always been warm. Where had such a boundless quantity of ice-cold water come from in a matter of moments? It felt as if — she had been transported back to the Cangheng River.

At this thought, her clouded consciousness cleared in an instant. Without another moment’s hesitation, she bit through a fingertip and used the blood to trace an evil-repelling charm in the water, then unleashed a full-force palm strike outward. The murky river water that had been pressing around her immediately began to recede like a tide, and she found herself sitting once more inside the main hall of the imperial retreat. Around her rose the sound of one labored breath after another. She looked around and saw her master and A’Han, both with iron-gray faces, gasping for breath — clearly they had each passed through the same harrowing ordeal she had just endured.

“A’Yao.” Lin Xiao was already at her side, crouching to examine her face.

Qin Yao, seeing he was unharmed, nodded, her heart still pounding. “That must have been the Jade Corpse’s doing.”

“That wretched creature wanted us all to experience exactly the torment she once endured!” Qing Xuzi, his breathing now steadied, spat with contempt. “There is simply no guarding against it!”

Before the words had even faded, the sound of heavy objects crashing against each other came from the eastern side hall — clearly Yuan Jue and the others were locked in a fierce struggle with the Jade Corpse.

The group moved at once to enter the hall and give support, but behind them came a chorus of low growls — the undead horde had surged in. Qing Xuzi and the others were forced to stop and turn to deal with this wave of walking corpses first.

By this point, Chang Rong and his men had already leapt to their feet. Each of them took up a weapon and helped to hack down a number of walking corpses. Gradually finding their rhythm, they swung their blades in a blur of flashing light. The only thing stopping the corpses’ severed limbs from scattering across every corner of the hall was that the walking corpses were impervious to ordinary weapons.

Seeing this, Qing Xuzi had a sudden inspiration. He quickly drew some charm paper from his robe, strode over to Chang Rong — the nearest man to him — and affixed a charm to Chang Rong’s blade. He swept out his horsetail whisk and intoned, “Star of the Great Taiyi above, ever-adaptive, ever-responsive. Drive out the wicked, bind the demons. Guard our lives and protect our forms.”

A faint white shimmer glided across Chang Rong’s blade, as though the sword had been given an outer shell. Chang Rong blinked, startled, and turned his head to look questioningly at Qing Xuzi. Qing Xuzi said with gravity, “Try it.”

Chang Rong came back to himself, gave a nod, and turned to thrust at the walking corpse that had nearly grasped him — and the arm of the corpse, which had previously been as hard as iron, crumbled and fell away at the touch.

Chang Rong stood there stunned, staring at the sword in his hand in disbelief.

Qin Yao and the others were overjoyed and silently praised her master’s ingenuity. They immediately replicated what had been done, affixing charms to the blades of Wei Bo and the others one by one.

With that, Chang Rong and his companions’ weapons were no longer powerless against the walking corpses. Their fighting spirit surged, and they called across to Lin Xiao and the others, “Young Lord, Daoist Master — go deal with the strange creature in the side hall. Leave these ones to us.”

The undead were considerable in number, but there were seven of Chang Rong’s men, all possessing first-rate martial skill — enough to hold the line for some time.

Most critically of all: if they did not go in and relieve Yuan Jue’s forces very soon, those inside would not be able to hold on much longer.

Qing Xuzi said to Lin Xiao, “I will need your help setting up the formation in a moment.”

He thought of how, earlier when they had discovered A’Han’s disappearance at Nanyuan Lake, Qin Yao had been weeping in this man’s arms — the two of them so close and so unabashedly familiar. Knowing Qin Yao as well as he did, and knowing that this child, though seemingly easygoing, rarely let down her guard with anyone, the fact that she would allow Lin Xiao to draw so near to her made it clear how deeply she cared for him. Without a doubt the two of them had already been holding and embracing each other behind his back on multiple occasions—

He exhaled a heavy sigh, unable to bring himself to think further. He simply dropped all pretense of the polite title “Young Lord” and the courteous prefix of “please,” and spoke to Lin Xiao with a straight face: “In a moment, let Qin Yao use the Soul-Devouring Bell to shield us. I and A’Han will each take a position on one side. You stand at the front of the formation and test whether the Chixiao Sword has any effect on that wretched creature. You have seen for yourself — even the Boundless Mirror, one of the five treasures of the Daoist school, could not suppress her. Most other ritual implements likely cannot harm her at all. When all is said and done, this creature used a jade statue as her vessel by chance — which is what makes her impervious to water and fire alike. Even if our founding patriarch himself were to come, he would likely be powerless against her. Just now, this poor monk racked my brains and concluded that since jade fears shattering, and your Chixiao Sword is among the sharpest and most penetrating things in the world, it may just give her enough pause to hold her at bay.”

Lin Xiao glanced at Qin Yao, then nodded. “I shall follow the Daoist Master’s arrangements entirely.”

Qing Xuzi then laid out the plan in full detail.

With everything arranged, the four of them formed up in their assigned positions and moved back into the eastern side hall.

The moment they entered the door, a bone-deep chill pressed in around them. Qin Yao could not suppress a sharp intake of breath. She looked up — and saw that the many disciples under Yuan Jue had already arrived in the hall. Each of them was seated cross-legged on the floor, bronze cymbals in hand, heads bowed in quiet sutra-chanting, encircling a jade statue that stood at the center.

That jade statue bore a face so lifelike it seemed to breathe — arched brows, elegant features, a beauty that made one forget all worldly concerns at a glance. And yet, because its expression was rigid and fixed, there was something deeply cold about it — only a pair of eyes that held the faintest trace of light, unsettling in a way that defied description.

By now someone had lit the lamps in the hall, and Qin Yao could see clearly that the Jade Corpse was not dressed in women’s skirts. She wore a long imperial robe of bright yellow, upon her head a ceremonial crown, its front hung with twelve pendants strung with white jade beads, and the robe itself embroidered with the twelve emblems of imperial authority and five-clawed dragons in gold.

Commanding and imposing, of immaculate bearing.

Qin Yao stared with wide eyes, struck with astonishment. Over the years she had encountered countless ghosts and demons, but a malevolent entity wearing imperial dragon robes — this was truly a first.