The white sand beach already looked wrong. It was too perfectly level, and the sensation of walking on it was abnormal.

Very wet sand yields when you step on it, and even slightly damp sand — while somewhat firmer — would never remain entirely unchanged when walked on.

Dantai Yajing crouched down and pressed the sand with his hand, and his brow furrowed. “Does this feel like rammed earth from a city wall?”

Li Chi heard this and crouched down to feel it himself. It was solid indeed — genuinely similar to the rammed-earth construction technique used for city walls.

But who would go to such laborious lengths to reshape a beach into rammed earth on an island like this?

A properly made rammed-earth city wall used a mortar of lime and earth, bound together with yellow clay grout, producing walls as hard as rock.

The sand here was very fine. Judging by the color, yellow clay grout had not been used. Li Chi bent low and sniffed, murmuring to himself, “Glutinous rice water?”

For a beach this large — where had all that glutinous rice water come from?

Li Chi gave the ground a stomp. At that level of density, even a boulder launched from a siege catapult would struggle to crack it.

From this alone one could infer that someone had lived on this island for a very long time — perhaps more than one person.

A project of this scale would take ten years or more for a single person to complete.

Li Chi rose and looked again toward the dimly visible palace half-hidden on the hill slope, where the mystery of this place seemed to concentrate and deepen.

If someone had built a ring of city walls using this technique, Li Chi could have understood it. But why reshape the beach this way? What was the purpose?

Yet someone this clever, this capable, would surely not go to such lengths for no reason.

“Stay alert. Spread out — groups of five.”

Li Chi called out. The Prince Ning combat soldiers responded at once, splitting into groups of five to watch each other’s backs as they spread forward to scout.

Yu Jiuling jumped down onto the beach and stamped hard several times. “This place — even a boulder couldn’t make a dent. Who’s bored enough to do this?”

He said it and walked forward — and after no more than two steps, the ground suddenly gave way beneath his foot and he plummeted straight down.

Li Chi reacted instantly, seizing Yu Jiuling by the back as he fell, and with one arm hauled him back up.

At the bottom of the collapsed pit were sharpened bamboo stakes. The depth was such that anyone falling in would be impaled.

“Watch your step!”

Li Chi shouted again.

The soldiers took their spears and probed the ground ahead of them as they advanced, and sure enough, they knocked loose quite a few more concealed traps.

Had Li Chi not saved Yu Jiuling, they would have lost men the moment they set foot on shore — perhaps more than just Yu Jiuling alone.

Yu Jiuling’s face had gone white with shock. For quite some time he couldn’t steady himself.

“Such an enormous undertaking — and all to conceal a few pits.”

Dantai Yajing said to Li Chi, “Whoever lives on this island is no demon, no spirit, no King of Hell, and no monstrous python. It’s someone very ruthless and calculating.”

Li Chi did not believe in demons or spirits, and did not fear pythons or beasts. With Prince Ning’s army’s weapons and equipment, dealing with wild creatures was more than adequate.

But a person — a person was far harder to deal with than any demon or beast.

“I’ll take point.”

Li Chi called out, signaling Yu Jiuling to fall in behind him, and stepped forward at the head of the formation.

In the tall grass some distance away, two figures lay flat, peering through the gaps and exchanging a glance.

One of them said in a low voice, “How did they react so quickly?”

The other said, “Genuinely impressive. The one who fell was pulled right back up. By the way — do you recognize those banners?”

The first one looked carefully and shook their head.

“Doesn’t matter. They may have made it through the sand, but they won’t get past the stone path through the bamboo grove.”

The two figures crawled backward through the grass and quickly disappeared.

Li Chi took point, probing the way ahead. In front of him was a path paved with broken stone — clearly maintained, for otherwise it would long since have been swallowed by weeds.

Li Chi used a long spear to tap his way forward along the stone path, and it seemed to reveal no traps.

Watching them proceed this way, the two people who had moved to a new hiding spot allowed smiles to cross their faces.

The traps on this stone path were not the kind that could be found by tapping and prodding.

“As any reasonable person would think — where there is a path, you take the path, not the wild grass.”

Li Chi scanned his surroundings. The grass grew to knee height, the kind of place where a crouching wild boar or a prowling leopard could be hidden and you’d never know.

He spotted a boulder by the side of the path, weighing perhaps a hundred jin or so. He went over, hoisted it with both hands, and flung it forward.

The boulder landed with a crash and scattered fragments of stone as it rolled, then came to rest — and Li Chi strode forward and gave it a kick. The boulder shot outward in a flat trajectory.

A thunderous crack ahead — something flipped open. The boulder fell through.

Then came a burst of splintering and breaking sounds. Li Chi went to the edge and looked: a larger pit, the boulder having crashed down and shattered a number of the long spears set within it — and kicked up a cloud of quicklime in the process.

“Those look like standard Great Chu military weapons.”

Dantai Yajing peered into the pit. The upward-pointing spears, judging by their tips, were standard-issue weapons mass-produced in the Great Chu’s military workshops.

“Interesting.”

Li Chi didn’t simply go around the pit. He spotted a tree near the path — about as thick as a thigh. He drew his saber, jumped up, and with one stroke split the trunk, and as the heavy canopy began to fall, planted his blade in the earth and used both hands to seize the canopy and hurl it to one side.

This alone was enough to stun Dantai Yajing and the others watching from behind — and sent the two figures hiding in the undergrowth scrambling backward in fright, eyes bulging as if their eyeballs might shoot from their sockets.

“What kind of monster is that…”

The two muttered to each other, both unwilling to believe what they had just seen.

Li Chi pulled his saber free, then with another stroke cut the trunk off at the root, and sheathed his blade.

He took the trunk — over a zhang long — and used it to probe the ground ahead as he walked, striking the earth to his left and right as he moved.

The two figures in the grass swallowed simultaneously, their expressions carrying the exact same meaning: *that thing is not human.*

No ordinary human being could do what they had just seen.

Li Chi forged ahead with the trunk, leading his formation all the way to the edge of the bamboo grove.

The bamboo grove before them was impenetrable to the eye, of unknown depth. Yet it was clear that much of it had been cut back — many old stumps remained.

Li Chi stood at the grove’s edge and studied it carefully for a moment, then couldn’t help letting out a quiet snort.

He stepped forward at the lead. “Follow exactly where I walk. Do not go toward the open spaces.”

This kind of bamboo grove arranged as a maze relied on a form of misdirection.

Moving through such dense growth, one would naturally gravitate toward wherever the gaps were widest — but those gaps had been deliberately left open to lead one astray, either endlessly circling within the grove or being led into yet another trap.

Watching Li Chi lead the entire group through that vast bamboo grove without a single misstep, the two watchers were left utterly speechless.

It was as if, when this grove was originally laid out as a maze, this man had been standing right there beside them, watching the whole process — because he did not make a single wrong step.

“Trouble.”

One of them said quietly. “We need to get back fast and ask the chief — whether the resonance stone should be struck.”

The other gave a sound of agreement. The two turned and retreated at speed, quickly vanishing from sight.

Li Chi led his group through the bamboo grove, tying strips of red cloth to mark the route as they passed through.

Outside the grove, the half-slope position was not far away. Looking up, that great imposing hall seemed as though it would take only a short walk to reach.

“Crossbows at the ready!”

Li Chi called out.

Every Prince Ning soldier un-shouldered their repeating crossbow, crouched slightly, and continued pressing forward in groups of five.

Outside the grove was the hillside sloping upward — no path, and none of that knee-high wild grass from before. Instead, the ground was covered in white-colored rocks, large and small.

Li Chi looked more carefully: they seemed somewhat similar to the sand on the shore.

Looking ahead up the slope, that palace was indeed noticeably dilapidated, and the longer one looked, the more unsettling the sight.

After climbing another stretch, Li Chi stopped — and couldn’t help murmuring, “It’s fake?”

Xiahou Zuo and Dantai Yajing were also looking at it, and both inwardly cursed.

It was no palace. What stood there was a sheer cliff face, smooth and regular as if cut by blade and chiseled by axe.

Someone had painted the image of a ruined great hall onto this cliff face. From a distance, there was no way to detect the deception.

Especially when viewed from the base of the hill, with the lower half of the cliff face hidden behind the tree line, only the painted rooftop of the hall was visible.

On the rooftop, sure enough, a great python was coiled — its body thicker than even the trunk of the towering trees alongside the cliff face.

“All smoke and tricks.”

Li Chi turned back to his personal guard. “Bring me a ramp saber.”

A guard immediately procured one from those behind. Li Chi took point and opened the path forward.

A little further up was more dense tall grass. Li Chi, wary that pythons might be lurking within it, swung the saber in wide horizontal strokes as he advanced, cutting a path straight through.

Dantai Yajing called out, “Give me one too.”

He took a ramp saber and pushed forward alongside Li Chi. Dantai Yajing, Dantai Yajing, and Liu Ge followed suit, each taking a saber and fanning out — with Xiahou Zuo remaining behind to hold the rear formation.

Li Chi, Dantai Yajing, Dantai Yajing, Liu Ge… five men, five ramp sabers, cutting a path forward. The tall grass suffered tremendously — carved open into a wide, clear passage.

Up on the cliff face above.

A group of people huddled behind the trees, every face carrying a weight of gravity.

These people all shared one striking trait: their hair was almost entirely white. Some not fully white — salt-and-pepper, at least.

“Chief.”

One of them spoke in a heavy tone. “We should strike the resonance stone.”

The one standing at the center, watching Li Chi and his group, had a very complex look in their eyes.

“Do you think,” the one called Chief said, “that this might be the will of Heaven?”

Someone else said, “If we strike the resonance stone and still can’t stop them, *that’s* when it becomes the will of Heaven. Chief, we cannot afford to be soft-hearted — think about the times we showed mercy before. Think about what happened to us.”

The Chief was silent for a long time, then nodded. “Strike it.”

The moment the words fell, one person immediately turned and ran — about ten zhang behind them stood a strange boulder shaped somewhat like a stele, nearly two zhang tall.

He picked up the stone hammer beside it and began striking the boulder, blow after measured blow.

The sound was strange — dull and heavy, yet with an undercurrent of metallic resonance.

Li Chi and his group immediately heard it. Everyone stopped instinctively.

Li Chi sensed something wrong with the sound and swept his gaze around, then gave the order: “Circular formation!”

The seven hundred-plus Prince Ning soldiers snapped immediately into a defensive ring.

When the sound began, before long, from the direction of the lake, one after another, pythons surfaced from the water — slithering swiftly toward the source of the sound.

And on what had appeared to be a double-bodied, double-headed stone pillar, one of the pythons — it turned out to be real — had coiled itself there, and now slid down and plunged into the water.

*That* was what Li Chi’s group had seen at the lakeshore.