Jiao Cha carried himself with open arrogance, yet Mu Fusang wasn’t buying it in the slightest. Watching this unfold, the two clearly weren’t well acquainted — yet they both knew exactly who the other was.
Two strangers to one another, and both claiming Ziqing’s life belonged to them — what kind of joke was this?
Ziqing watched coldly, assessing the strength of each man while probing for information. “I bear neither grudge nor kindness toward either of you, and I’ve never met you before. So how exactly does my life belong to either of you?”
Mu Fusang was about to answer when Jiao Cha cut in with a cold laugh. “Not ours — mine. The descendant of the Lonely Island!”
The moment he said this, Ziqing’s eyes narrowed at once. She’d known all along these two men couldn’t possibly be here for her because of the ranking battle.
If it were about the ranking battle, they’d have sought out Jun Beiyue instead!
These two were here for something else entirely — directly targeting her true identity!
Jiao Cha was brazen, but Ziqing proved even more brazen still, leaning back with a disdainful tilt of her head. “Descendant of the Lonely Island? Heh, never heard of it.”
“Never heard of it? You’re no poison-immune expert by trade, yet you can cultivate poisons yourself and are naturally immune to every toxin. What’s more, you were struck by fragrance-poison and remained entirely unaffected! Only a descendant of the Lonely Island could possibly possess a constitution immune to every poison. You are a descendant of the Lonely Island.”
Jiao Cha made no effort to hide how they’d discovered her — after all, today, she was going to die regardless.
He’d noticed this woman’s existence back at Qinse Valley, and had since investigated her thoroughly, coming to know everything about her and Jun Beiyue like the back of his hand.
The moment he said this, Ziqing’s eyes narrowed at once. “It was you who lured Jun Beiyue into that ravine.”
“A bit late to realize that now, isn’t it?” Jiao Cha sneered coldly, and the instant he spoke, dozens of Jiaoren warriors materialized out of nowhere around him, every one of them tall and imposing, their bodies covered head to toe in iron scales, gleaming brilliantly under the sunlight!
This was an elite Black Jiao squadron!
Jiao Cha, of course, knew full well the capabilities of Jun Beiyue and Han Ziqing. In a one-on-one fight, he stood absolutely no chance against either of them. But by luring Jun Beiyue into the abyss and bringing troops to surround and kill Han Ziqing instead, Jun Beiyue would be too far away to save her in time, no matter how urgently the need arose.
A dangerous glint flickered in Ziqing’s narrowed eyes, her ten fingers hanging loose at her sides, ready for anything.
So that was how it was!
Jun Beiyue’s worry had indeed come true — she really had been discovered after all.
Truly, few people in this world understood poison well enough to recognize this — not even the poison masters and physicians who had once treated her before had ever noticed her poison-immune constitution. Only the old man from the Poison Den had ever seen through it.
At Qinse Valley, she’d used a poison technique, relying precisely on the fact that so few people could recognize what it truly meant — and yet somehow, it had drawn out these two enormous troubles instead!
“Yes, and so what? What business is that of yours?” Ziqing said coldly.
The moment she said this, Jiao Cha burst into laughter, and even the ever-expressionless Mu Fusang let a cold smile curve at his lips.
“Han Ziqing, I’ve been waiting for you to come back all this while. I knew you would return eventually. The secret of Qinse Sea Valley has been guarded by the Black Jiao for generation after generation. If you truly wish to know it, I can tell you… so long as… so long as…”
Jiao Cha spoke on, laughing wildly, arrogantly, again and again, before his voice suddenly turned vicious. “So long as you’re willing to trade your life for it!”
The moment he said this, Ziqing sucked in a sharp breath of cold air. She’d known these two weren’t from Nanzhao, and had merely guessed they were after her poison-immune constitution — she’d never imagined they were actually the guardians of the Lonely Island’s ruins.
The ruins of the Lonely Island, just like the ruins hidden within Nanzhao’s ancient music cave, could never be destroyed — and wherever such a thing existed, undestroyable, there would always be guardians watching over it.
The ancient music cave was guarded by Nanzhao’s royal house. As for Qinse Sea Valley, Ziqing had always assumed the two Qinse elders were the ones protecting it — she’d never imagined it was actually someone else entirely.
No wonder — no matter how much the two Qinse elders seemed to value her, no matter how she’d tried every trick to probe and please them, she’d never managed to get a single answer out of them. The two Qinse elders truly had no idea about the secret of the Sea Valley at all.
Thinking of this, Ziqing suddenly turned to look at Mu Fusang. Mu Fusang — Mu as the surname, Fusang as the given name. Could it be…
“The Bai clan’s sacred Fusang tree isn’t something you’re free to scheme over,” Mu Fusang said coldly.
Just as she’d suspected — he was the guardian of the Bai clan’s sacred Fusang tree!
“Mu Fusang, you just stand aside and watch. Her life belongs to the Black Jiao!”
The moment Jiao Cha finished speaking, the Black Jiao warriors immediately surrounded Mu Fusang, while the others closed in around Ziqing from every side — the formation unmistakable.
A flash of cunning crossed Ziqing’s eyes as she said coldly, “I only have one life. Since you both want it, why don’t the two of you sort it out amongst yourselves first, and then come take it?”
Against a single Black Jiao warrior, she could absolutely win — the Black Jiao’s iron scales were fearsome to look at, but that was really all they had going for them. Against this many elite Black Jiao troops at once, though, she genuinely couldn’t be certain of victory.
Add Mu Fusang joining forces on top of that, and Ziqing knew full well — today, she was almost certainly going to die.
Her only option was to use Mu Fusang to tie down the Black Jiao!
But to her surprise, Jiao Cha flatly refused. “No need to sort anything out. Give her life to me, and Liuxian Island is yours.”
Ziqing had originally expected Mu Fusang to decisively refuse — but to her surprise, Mu Fusang actually hesitated.
The two guardians who’d sworn their lives to protect the Bai clan’s sacred Fusang tree and Qinse Sea Valley were, it turned out, also scheming after Liuxian Island itself. Without question, once Liuxian Island fell into their hands, no one would ever be able to get near it again — and the two ruins hidden on the island would remain forever undiscovered.
The island itself, in fact, might well vanish from the world’s sight entirely, just as the Lonely Island once had!
Ziqing finally understood. The ranking battle appeared on the surface to be a rivalry between the Bai, Yu, and Gu clans, but underneath it all, it was really a struggle between these two men — the clans themselves were nothing more than a convenient front.
Seeing Mu Fusang hesitate, Ziqing silently took a step back. She couldn’t win by fighting them head-on, but she had no intention of simply letting them go either. What was she to do?
She had to flee — and she had to flee straight toward wherever Jun Beiyue was.
Mu Fusang was still hesitating when Ziqing suddenly pushed off with the tips of her toes and leapt into the air. In an instant, Mu Fusang gave chase, Jiao Cha closed in, and all the Black Jiao warriors rose into the air at once, still forming a tight circle around her.
“Jiao Cha, it’s settled then! Her life is yours, Liuxian Island is mine!” Mu Fusang said coldly, spreading both arms wide like wings, and vine after vine shot upward through the air, snapping and coiling menacingly beyond the ring of Black Jiao — unmistakably lending Jiao Cha a hand.
Jiao Cha broke into a delighted grin and, without stepping forward himself, called out coldly, “Kill her!”
The moment the order was given, the ring of sharp iron-scaled Black Jiao warriors joined hands and began spinning rapidly around Ziqing, like some massive, gleaming wheel of blades, spinning faster and faster, drawing closer and closer to her with every turn!
The Black Jiao sealed off every path of escape above, while Mu Fusang held position below, pinning her from above and below at once, the ring surrounding her leaving Ziqing absolutely no way out.
“Damn it!” Ziqing cursed under her breath. Several fierce wind blades she loosed were entirely deflected by the Black Jiao’s scales. She swung her zither, Wuzheng, from her back, cradling it in one hand while striking down across the first string with the other — a ferocious zither-strike — but its power proved limited, still unable to pierce the Black Jiao’s armored scales!
What was she to do?