Just as Mi Xiansheng stepped forward to engage Shen Rujian in a final battle, she felt something was wrong.

She glanced down. Something was crawling on her shoe.

A single crawling creature was not enough to alarm her — even in winter, insects were never truly scarce in Jiangnan. What surprised her was that the creature seemed to be carrying something. What surprised her even more was that there were many such insects around her.

They were not spiders, but like spiders, their tails seemed to trail fine threads.

The torchlight on the ship was too dim to make out threads so slender, except by scrutinizing them directly. Had a thread not reflected a faint glimmer of light as one insect crawled onto Mi Xiansheng’s foot, she would never have noticed at all.

And by the time she had noticed — it was already a little late.

“What are these things! What are these things?!”

Mi Xiansheng gave an instinctive cry, low in her throat.

Shen Rujian’s voice was calm. “I told you moments ago — you learned your insect art from a book, while I learned mine with personal guidance from the shizhu.”

She raised both hands, and Mi Xiansheng saw that Shen Rujian had — at some point — put on a very strange pair of gloves.

Perhaps she had worn them all along. Perhaps she had put them on while Mi Xiansheng was staring at her feet. It no longer mattered.

What mattered was that when Shen Rujian raised her hands, one could faintly make out what seemed like countless thin threads in her grip.

Shen Rujian yanked her hands sharply back. The threads drew taut — and they wound themselves around Mi Xiansheng, binding her.

Given the tensile strength of these threads, if Shen Rujian had wished it, she could have cut Mi Xiansheng into pieces.

“It’s over, Shijie.”

Shen Rujian said, “You suffered great injustices in the past, and you have committed great wrongs since. Come with me to Yunyin Mountain. Remain confined to the mountain, and never leave again — and I can protect your life.”

She had never once asked Li Chi for anything. But for a fellow disciple, she was willing to make that plea.

Even knowing that this shijie of hers had probably done many terrible things over the years.

But Shen Rujian had never been a perfect person herself, and would not use so harsh a standard to judge others.

She didn’t think about whether this choice was right or wrong. Given the choice, she would always bring a fellow disciple home rather than kill her — unless killing was the only option left.

“Over?”

Mi Xiansheng suddenly began to laugh. The laughter had a keening, shredded quality, as if it were tearing through cloth — it set the ears on edge.

“Nothing ends so easily.”

The threads had her body bound, but her forearms from the elbow down could still move.

As she raised both hands, the powder in her palms spilled over herself. She had originally meant to fling it at Shen Rujian — this was one of her most relied-upon techniques.

But now she turned it on herself.

With the powder settling over her, she rubbed two fingers of her right hand together. Those two fingers wore iron fingerstalls.

She struck a spark. The powder caught — and she set herself on fire.

In the firelight, Mi Xiansheng let out a raw, piercing scream: “I know what those are. To think the Mountain’s Master would even give you this sect’s supreme treasure.”

What Shen Rujian had used were the legendary Phoenix Tail Threads — one of the most prized heirlooms of Yunyin Mountain.

The threads were extraordinarily strong, nearly impossible to snap. Used well, they were sharper than any sword edge. But fire was their great weakness — so fine were they, and soaked as they needed to be in a special oil for preservation, that they would catch flame instantly.

Willing to let herself burn, Mi Xiansheng had used the fire to sear through the Phoenix Tail Threads.

Her garments were already alight. In the firelight, her face was grotesque.

“No one can end me!”

She spun and leaped, plunging from the large ship into the river below. A column of fire hit the water, and the light vanished.

Ye Xiaoqian had bent over the railing to look, but Shen Rujian pulled him back.

Several projectiles shot upward from below the ship, trailing a slash of broken air.

“She isn’t fleeing?!”

After dodging the projectiles, Ye Xiaoqian couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his voice.

The woman had already jumped overboard. And from Shen Rujian’s expression, Ye Xiaoqian had caught a trace of reluctant mercy.

That was why she’d been allowed to jump. If Shen Rujian had truly wanted to stop her — to let the fire take her alive — that was within her power.

Shen Rujian had clearly intended to let her go once. And still the woman wouldn’t leave.

“She won’t go,” Shen Rujian said slowly, letting out a breath.

“She has entered the demonic state.”

With a bang, the stern took an impact — and Mi Xiansheng, drenched, lunged back aboard, crouched and gasping, pressing her body low. In this state she looked like a water ghost hauled up from the depths.

An ordinary person who saw such a figure would surely have taken her for just that.

Ye Xiaoqian sighed quietly. She really had gone too deep.

Mi Xiansheng was badly burned; beneath the ruined fabric her skin was blackened in patches, for the fabric had melted against her. Much of her hair had burned away; her face was smeared dark. Grotesque was the word.

“Shijie…”

Shen Rujian called to her, but Mi Xiansheng gave a ragged shriek and charged forward, body low.

In her sprint, both hands flung outward.

Two gleams of light appeared — and they did not fly in a straight line. Spinning rapidly, their arcs curved distinctly as they traveled.

Shen Rujian stood her ground, because the two spinning things crossed behind her — they had not struck her.

But in the next breath, Mi Xiansheng yanked both hands back sharply.

The spinning objects were pulled back — and there were threads on them as well, reminiscent of the Phoenix Tail Threads.

Shen Rujian lifted herself on her toes. Her body rose lightly into the air, and the two threads passed beneath her feet on their return.

The threads crossed and scraped together, making a faint, fine sound.

Shen Rujian was still airborne when Mi Xiansheng transferred the left-hand weapon to her right, and with her freed left hand snatched something from her body — and in the next instant a shower of silver needles drove upward at Shen Rujian.

But in that same moment, Shen Rujian shot sideways through the air.

Was this something a human body could do?

It was, because in the instant she had risen, she had flung out a grappling cord that wrapped around the mast.

With a powerful pull, she launched herself across the ship.

The needles missed. Shen Rujian shook her wrist, and the cord around the mast released itself.

As she descended, she spun and cracked the cord like a whip — down onto the crown of Mi Xiansheng’s head.

In this moment, Ye Xiaoqian finally glimpsed the true depth of his shifu’s power.

Back at the Bureau, every Qianzhang had said: Physician Shen of Shen’s Medicine Hall was beyond measure.

Every one of them had said it.

Because Ye Xiansheng had once admitted that if he were to fight her, he probably would not win.

The terror of Shen Rujian lay not merely in how formidable her martial arts were. More terrifying were the countless other skills she possessed — her pharmacology, her insect arts, every technique she had mastered. If one truly had to name an enemy, the Bureau could likely send six Qianzhang-level experts against Shen Rujian and still fail to take her.

The whip-crack of the cord landed on Mi Xiansheng’s skull — already scorched dark by fire — and split it open in a long bloody line.

As blood dripped down, that face, already hideous and blackened, looked even more ghastly.

Shen Rujian landed on the deck and looked at Mi Xiansheng. “Stop.”

“Never!”

From somewhere on her body, Mi Xiansheng found two more small vials. She gripped one in each hand, then crushed them simultaneously.

The liquid inside ran over both her hands.

In the next moment, Mi Xiansheng let out a howl of anguish — her hands were smoking, the liquid’s potency so virulent it was devouring her.

She launched off her feet and threw herself at Shen Rujian in a frenzied assault.

Both hands clawed — faster with each strike, more savage with each motion — each drenched in the most lethal poison she possessed. The fingers of each hand ended in long, sharp nails, and several of those fingers wore iron-tipped fingerstalls even sharper.

Poison so powerful — one graze, one break of skin, and Shen Rujian should have serious trouble. She might even be poisoned to death.

Because the toxin was so extreme, Shen Rujian could not, in these conditions, determine what poison it was. What she could read in Mi Xiansheng’s movements was a life-for-a-life exchange.

Even if Shen Rujian didn’t kill her, Mi Xiansheng would soon die by her own poison.

In this very moment, Ye Xiaoqian moved.

He stepped in from the side, and both sleeves, inflated with surging air, became two weighted hammers.

With a crack, the unsuspecting Mi Xiansheng was struck by a flying sleeve, and her body was sent skidding sideways.

When she hit the deck she coughed up a mouthful of blood — whether beaten out of her by Ye Xiaoqian, or the effect of poison running through her veins, was hard to say.

In the ship’s dim light, that blood had a dark, near-black tinge.

Mi Xiansheng struggled to rise, propping herself against the mast, gasping. Perhaps the poison had gone too deep — somehow she could no longer feel the pain of her hands.

“You… say.”

Mi Xiansheng gasped between breaths. “Is this world fair? Why should you receive so many inheritances from the sect?!”

Shen Rujian replied, her voice heavy: “If you could return to Yunyin Mountain, Shijie, every one of those inheritances would also be yours.”

“Return?! Ha ha ha ha — I left long ago and can never go back.”

Mi Xiansheng let out a piercing, broken scream, then brought up another dark mouthful.

“I’ve had my fill.”

She rasped between breaths: “Those filthy men brought ruin on me, and I’ve killed more than enough men in return… if there’s anything I regret, it’s that Lu Chonglou didn’t die.”

Shen Rujian couldn’t help but ask: “What grievance did he ever give you?”

“None. But he looks too much like that physician. Too much. So he has to die.”

Neither Shen Rujian nor Ye Xiaoqian knew who that physician was. They didn’t know what this fellow disciple had endured.

But Shen Rujian understood. She too had once been a Tianxia Xingzou for Yunyin Mountain. She was simply stronger, more resolute, wiser — and so she had been spared the misfortunes that Mi Xiansheng had suffered. But that did not mean she had never encountered any.

The truth was that a girl walking the jianghu alone, the tales of such a life being left as legends of admiration — those were invented stories. The human world was crueler and more dangerous than the world of any other creature.

Mi Xiansheng raised one hand with great effort. She looked down at it — a hand that had all but had its skin eaten away — and her expression went distant for a moment. Then a bleak smile.

“I had imagined this ending long ago.”

She bit off one of her fingers and swallowed it down.

A moment later, Mi Xiansheng collapsed onto the deck.

“The last… last question. The sect — are they well?”

“Well. All well.”

At that answer, Mi Xiansheng seemed to smile.

She leaned there, her voice coming very softly: “Don’t tell the others about what happened to me.”