Truth be told, Lin Xiao had not slept well the previous night either. His body lay in bed, but his mind was entirely filled with fragments from his time with Qin Yao at the Liuli Residence — the soft warmth of her body, and the sweet taste of her lips like honeyed spring water. A heat had taken root from his heart outward, making it impossible to lie still. In the end, he had very nearly gone out to the courtyard to work it off with his sword, and did not manage even a brief sleep until the sky began to lighten.
Though he had gone most of the night without sleep, he felt strangely clear-headed and refreshed when he rose that morning. Arriving at Qingyun Temple, he did not know how long he would have to wait. Remembering that Qin Yao had grown up here from childhood, he felt a particular closeness to the place and could not help but look around. He saw that outside the temple the grounds were thick with pine and cypress trees, dense and deep green, carrying an air of ancient tranquility. Both inside and outside the temple walls, a complete hush prevailed — no clamor of carriages or horses.
As a place for spiritual cultivation, Qingyun Temple was, naturally, as ideal as one could wish. But thinking of how young Qin Yao must have been when she came here, he felt that for a child, the place would have been lonely. He found himself wondering whether her parents had been by her side when she first entered the temple, and how much hardship she had endured learning to practice and study the Daoist arts. As these thoughts passed through him, his heart filled with a deep and tender pity for her.
When Qin Yao came out, the sight of her fresh and lovely appearance felt to him like a spring breeze sweeping across his heart, setting it trembling without ceasing.
He walked forward, his gaze resting on Qin Yao’s face for a moment before turning with a smile to greet A’Han. “A’Han, Senior Brother.”
A’Han and Lin Xiao had long since grown familiar with one another. He had always felt that Lin Xiao treated him with courtesy and respect, without any hint of the arrogance of a young lord, and he had quite a good impression of him.
Seeing Lin Xiao’s warmth now, A’Han gave a simple, good-natured smile and said, “Young Lord, how is it you have come so early? You only returned from Mount Wuniu yesterday — are you going with us today to search for the Jade Corpse?”
“The Jade Corpse?” Lin Xiao said, with mild surprise.
Qin Yao saw this and, setting aside any awkwardness, asked first, “When you arrived just now, did you happen to run into my master and Abbot Yuan Jue?”
Lin Xiao’s expression paused for just a moment. Then he said, “I was delayed at the Duke of Lu’s estate this morning and only just arrived outside the temple. I did not encounter the Daoist Master.” He left the matter of Xia Di unmentioned for the time being.
“Then you must have just missed one another.” A quiet sense of relief flickered in Qin Yao’s heart. If her master were to see Lin Xiao, he would most likely kick up a fuss again. Better that they had missed each other, so as to avoid any unnecessary complications.
She patiently explained to Lin Xiao, “The Jade Corpse is what was being suppressed by that formation we saw in the Cangheng River yesterday.”
She told Lin Xiao everything Yuan Jue had told her and her fellow disciples about the Jade Corpse’s origins, from beginning to end.
Lin Xiao listened quietly until she had finished, then thought for a moment, and was just about to speak when Chang Rong and the others seemed to appear from nowhere, saying with a smile, “Young Lord, Miss Qu, the carriage is ready. The sun is quite strong here — shall we move to the carriage to continue the conversation?”
Qin Yao looked past him and saw that not far down the road, the carriage harnessed to the exceptional horses from before was waiting — though the driver had been replaced by an ordinary-looking middle-aged man. Wei Bo was no longer at the reins.
Lin Xiao looked at her and said in a consultative tone, “You mentioned just now that you need to go to the Eastern and Western Markets to search for the Jade Corpse. But having heard everything you’ve told me, I feel there are some things that don’t quite add up. We need to go back over it from the beginning, and it will likely take more than a moment to talk it through. Why don’t we get in the carriage and discuss it there?”
Qin Yao considered for a moment, then smiled and nodded. “Very well.” She and A’Han boarded the carriage together and sat side by side on the long seat beneath the right window.
A short while later, Lin Xiao handed the reins of his mount to Chang Rong and climbed in as well. Seeing that A’Han was already seated beside Qin Yao with no room left for him, he had no choice but to take the seat at the center of the upper end of the carriage.
It was the first time Qin Yao had seen him ride in a carriage. Though the carriage was spacious and A’Han was sitting right beside her, Lin Xiao was tall and long-limbed, and when he sat down, the hem of his brocade robe draped over the edge of her skirt, his knees nearly touching her lower legs. Qin Yao’s mind flashed at once to what had happened at the Liuli Residence, and her ears burned crimson. She quietly drew her legs back a little to avoid contact with him.
Lin Xiao noticed this, and his own face grew somewhat warm. He quickly cleared his throat and said, “About what you told me just now — I have been thinking it over, and I believe that the most urgent matter is not to go roaming through the Eastern and Western Markets searching aimlessly for the Jade Corpse. We should instead go directly to the Court of Judicial Review.”
Qin Yao reflected for a brief moment and immediately understood. “You mean we should start directly with the young man who was found dead in the lake?”
“Yes.” Lin Xiao considered. “Based on what you saw that day, the young man had a wound on his neck, and the blood in his body appeared to have been entirely drained. The cause of death is most likely connected to the corpse beneath the lake. If the Jade Corpse has already settled on a candidate for the Golden Corpse, could this young man have been the first pledge of allegiance it received?”
Qin Yao tilted her head in thought, her eyes gleaming with appreciation. “You are quite right. As it stands, it has been seven or eight days since we first encountered that creature at Jade Spring Mountain, yet during all that time, there have been no reports of anyone dying an unjust death in Chang’an. One possible explanation is that the Jade Corpse is exceedingly selective about the candidate for the Golden Corpse and is simply not willing to accept just anyone’s pledge. Or it could be that…no one has yet steeled their resolve to become a Golden Corpse.”
When she finished, she wished she had paper and brush at hand so she could set down, one by one, all the strange occurrences surrounding the corpse on Mount Wuniu, and discuss everything thoroughly with Lin Xiao.
After quietly gathering her thoughts for a moment, she looked up at Lin Xiao and said, “Shall we start from the beginning. The first thing to consider: half a month ago, a corpse first appeared on Mount Wuniu. My master and senior brother went to drive it out and spent several days clearing the mountain clean. My master later discovered that most of these corpses had transformed from the dead inside the mountain’s tomb chambers, with quite low spiritual power but extremely large numbers. Looking back now, it is very likely that the Jade Corpse had broken free of its formation around that time, which disturbed the mountain’s underground currents and caused a mass awakening of the corpses.”
Lin Xiao listened as she laid it out in a clear and well-organized manner, and his expression showed encouragement. “Well said. Go on.”
Qin Yao, catching a slight note of condescension in his tone — as if he were humoring a child — shot him a reproachful glare. After quite a while she continued. “Then came the strange occurrences at the Pei family residence — the household of Lord Pei from the Ministry of Revenue. First, Lady Pei began having nightmares at night, and it gradually spread to everyone else in the manor. Almost everyone in the household had nearly the same vision in their dreams — a creature resembling a corpse, wandering through the residence without leaving. According to what was later revealed by the Mirror of No Shore, the creature came and went on a fixed schedule, rain or shine, yet it never actually harmed anyone inside the Pei family residence. That is the very thing I cannot make sense of — what exactly is this creature afraid of? If it visits the Pei family every night, why doesn’t it just go ahead and cause a massacre? Is its spiritual power insufficient? Or does it have something holding it back?”
“Could it be that it still has something it wants from those inside the residence?” Lin Xiao furrowed his brow in thought. “Is it possible the malevolent entity at the Pei family residence is itself the Jade Corpse?”
“I don’t think so.” Qin Yao thought for a moment and slowly shook her head. “For one thing, the Jade Corpse is a once-in-a-century malevolent force. If the Mirror of No Shore had already glimpsed its true form, the reaction would certainly not have been so calm — it would have produced a violent and extreme manifestation. And for another, if it had entered the dreams of everyone in the Pei household, the malevolent energy would be far too intense for ordinary people to withstand — their vitality would inevitably be damaged. Given the constitution of Lady Pei and the others, they would need at least a year to half a year to recover, not emerge completely unharmed as they have. So even if the entity at the Pei residence is a corpse, it is most likely a corpse of fairly ordinary spiritual power — not the Jade Corpse. Of course, it is certainly connected to the Jade Corpse in some way. I just can’t figure out why no trace of anything unusual can be detected on those few people at the Pei family, even with the Mirror of No Shore.”
At that point, her thoughts flew suddenly to Pei Min, and she was so alarmed she could barely keep still. She turned to Lin Xiao urgently. “Once we leave the Court of Judicial Review, I need to go to the Pei family immediately. Lord Pei’s daughter happens to be my classmate, and I am afraid there may be someone under the Jade Corpse’s control in their household who could harm her.”
Lin Xiao blinked, then immediately said, “In any case, today I have the day off. Whatever you need to do afterward, wherever you need to go — I am entirely at your disposal.”
Qin Yao’s face went red all over again.
A’Han said in puzzlement, “Young Lord, you treat A’Yao really well.”
Before he could say anything more, Qin Yao jumped in hastily to redirect him. “As for the corpse in the spring at Jade Spring Mountain — although I couldn’t get a clear look in the water, the creature had long arms and long legs, with a tall and powerfully built frame. No matter how you look at it, it resembled a male corpse. It seems unlikely to be the Jade Corpse.”
Lin Xiao thought it over. “These corpses seem to act with some purpose, moving toward something with direction. They would not simply attack Jade Spring Mountain without cause. Most likely they were either after some specific object on the mountain, or after a specific person there.”
The two of them simultaneously ran through everyone who had been on the mountain that day in their minds, examining each for anything suspicious. A vague suspicion settled on one particular person, but they both felt it could hardly serve as evidence that this person had any connection with the Jade Corpse. They exchanged a glance, and by mutual unspoken understanding, set it aside for now, returning instead to the last place a corpse had appeared — South Marsh Garden.
“According to what you said, once a person becomes a Golden Corpse, they gain extraordinary powers that cannot be stopped. The Jade Corpse alone — even when several eminent Buddhist masters joined forces against it — could only be pressed down beneath the Cangheng River, while its body remains imperishable for eternity. By extension, the Golden Corpse would be no less formidable. And precisely because of this, even though becoming a Golden Corpse demands a terrible price, there have always been those who rush toward it one after another—”
He paused and gave a contemptuous smile, then turned to look at Qin Yao. “A’Yao, in my view, anyone who wants to become a Golden Corpse is most likely someone consumed by lust for power, who schemes to use the Jade Corpse’s dark abilities to fulfill their own ambitions. To say nothing of others — take the emperor of the Qin dynasty who sent men to the eastern seas in search of an immortality elixir. If he had known of the Jade Corpse’s existence, would he not have poured the resources of an entire nation into making himself a Golden Corpse, so as to live forever as emperor across all ages?”
Qin Yao thought of the strange events of that Qin dynasty, and had to concede that Lin Xiao made a compelling point. But turning the idea over in her mind, she added, “That is certainly one possibility. But don’t forget — in this world, alongside greed and ambition, there is another emotion called hatred. If someone carries an overwhelming hatred, tormented by it day and night, yet unable to kill their enemy as they wish — in the depths of rage and despair, they might very well be driven to extreme measures.”
For the first time, Lin Xiao did not accept Qin Yao’s point outright. He shook his head. “If someone harbors hatred, it suggests they still have some sense of moral feeling. How could they bring themselves to murder their own dearest and most beloved for the sake of revenge? That first condition alone would be insurmountable for them. Unless—”
He suddenly thought of a possibility and nodded, correcting himself. “I was thinking about it wrong. This world is full of people who share blood ties yet have no true affection — what is called ‘dear’ and what is called ‘loving’ are two very different things, and they need not be in contradiction.”
“Mm.” Qin Yao thought of the young man who had died an unjust death in the lake, and her expression grew heavy. “Whatever the case, the Jade Corpse both inspires fear and stirs the most hidden desires in human hearts. If it is not eliminated soon, it will inevitably bring bloodshed and disaster. The victim at South Marsh Garden is most likely only one among many.”