Chapter 63

The Masked Man still stood there quietly, saying nothing. He didn’t need to say anything more. With Xue Tong’s abilities, she would uncover his identity soon enough even if she hadn’t figured it out yet. He was simply waiting—for the next wave of heavenly punishment. He wasn’t afraid of exposure, but today’s heavenly thunder absolutely had to be endured by someone else in his stead.

“The talisman on his umbrella is an array that links him to the dam in Clear Canal County,” Xun Ruosu said. “When the thunder strikes him, it’s the same as striking the dam. If his soul scatters and his body disintegrates, the dam will collapse right along with him.”

Xun Ruosu had studied arrays and talismans since childhood, so she spotted his scheme at a glance.

“Can it be undone?” Xue Tong asked.

“No,” Xun Ruosu replied firmly. “Once the array takes shape, even burning that umbrella in his hand won’t make a difference. This array is incredibly complex—it must have taken at least three to five years to prepare. The only chance to break it was during the setup phase. We’re powerless now.”

In other words, protecting the dam meant protecting this man before them, like it or not.

“Ladies, after you,” the Masked Man said. He stepped slightly aside with a courteous gesture, urging the two women to follow right away. The sixth bolt of heavenly thunder was moments from descending. In the woods, it risked harming bystanders, proved hard to control, and could ignite a forest fire, drawing unnecessary eyes.

He had already selected the site for the ordeal in advance. Once everyone was gathered, they could set off together.

Who could have guessed that this fiend—who had butchered people by the dozens today—possessed such a hypocritical bodhisattva heart?

The spot he had chosen lay just a few minutes’ walk away: an open clearing beyond the treeline. The ground had been freshly leveled for a future road, tamped down solid. It stretched forty meters across, endless in both directions. As designated road land, it saw little traffic even on sunny days—let alone amid this raging downpour. It was indeed perfect.

The Masked Man stood with his back to Xue Tong. She could have struck him down and exorcised him on the spot, but his connection to the dam held her back. She couldn’t touch him.

Displaying an oddly polite demeanor, he took position first, then bowed to Xue Tong. “Please proceed.”

“…”

Xue Tong strode forward and kicked him square in the shin to vent her fury.

Her kick lacked real force but struck an acupoint precisely. It inflicted no lasting harm, only sharp pain for a short while. Though the dam was linked to the Masked Man, it had no pain receptors and felt nothing of the blow.

The Masked Man prided himself on his divination skills, yet he hadn’t foreseen this particular outlet for her rage. In the instant he stood stunned, Xun Ruosu whipped out a coil of red rope and bound him tight.

The red rope appeared flimsy, yet it restrained him effortlessly—and utterly irreleasably.

With him secured, Xun Ruosu clapped her hands. “Caught him. Now we can focus on dealing with the heavenly thunder.”

The Masked Man: “…”

He showed little panic. The situation was unexpected, true, but he had divined his own fortune before departure. The divination signs promised peril without disaster. Even captured like this, a solution surely existed. The priority remained evading the heavenly thunder’s retribution—not just surviving, but pressing on with his unfinished business.

Xue Tong reached out and tried to yank off his mask. It was embedded directly into his flesh, however. Tearing it free brought blood and skin with it, only for it to snap back into place the moment her fingers slackened.

Evidently, he had tampered with the mask as well. Xue Tong had never encountered anyone so terrified of revealing their face—not even willing to sacrifice their own skin to stay hidden.

Unable to pry it loose, she gave up struggling. Tilting her head, she gazed at the roiling clouds overhead. The sixth heavenly thunder gathered strength, golden light flickering through like a dragon flashing its scales. In mere minutes, that dragon would swell vast enough to rend the heavens, delivering a single light strike to its target—a strike sufficient to fracture the dam.

No time to delay. Xue Tong pressed a finger to her collarbone. “I’m releasing this golden seal. Leave me now, and even in death, your three souls and seven po will remain. Stay bound to me, and when this thunder falls, Xun Ruosu will cease to exist in the cycle of reincarnation.”

“Do I even have a choice?” Xun Ruosu made no move to intervene. She stood in the rain, holding the umbrella over Xue Tong.

The umbrella was rather small, designed for light drizzles and solitary use. When the bearer favored another, most of its shelter draped over that person’s head, leaving half her own body soaked.

Xun Ruosu looked rather disheveled, but her eyes remained steady. “Xue Tong, don’t let me go.”

The Buddhist seal at Xue Tong’s fingertip—already beginning to glow gold—contracted sharply. It seared into her bones and blood, its hue shifting to that of a bloody scab. At the same instant, Xun Ruosu felt a matching sting at the same spot on her own body. Her skin had borne no mark before, but now an identical Buddhist seal had appeared.

The Masked Man—bound and discarded nearby—burst into laughter at the sight. “Just as I thought! Xun Jian, you’re a true prodigy!”

From his words, he apparently knew Xun Jian, the Xun Family’s relic of antiquity.

The Xun Family boasted vast libraries, and Xue Tong drew from broad experience, yet neither had known the Buddhist seal could evolve like this. Xue Tong delivered another kick to the Masked Man’s tendon. “Once this thunder passes, I’ve got plenty of questions for you.”

She softened her voice then. “I’ve been hit by heavenly thunder before. It doesn’t feel good—hurts down to the bones at worst. So it might hurt a lot in a bit.”

Xun Ruosu’s earlier words bore the blame for this mess. Xue Tong’s threat to release her had been a surge of anger, long since spent. Besides, Xun Ruosu seemed mild on the surface, but her resolve ran iron-deep. If Xue Tong truly let her go now, Xun Ruosu might swear an oath to the heavens: that Xue Tong had abandoned her first, dooming them to never meet again across lifetimes.

Xue Tong couldn’t bear the thought—and now, she hated it even more.

After all this time together, it was the first occasion Xue Tong had spoken so gently, so tenderly. Goosebumps erupted across Xun Ruosu’s skin. She dragged the Masked Man a short distance away, deemed it insufficient, and shuffled a few more steps—for a total of two or three meters—before hollering at Xue Tong, “Speak up! Little me can’t hear you from here!”

“…”

Xue Tong shot her a withering glare from afar before stooping to retrieve the black umbrella from the ground.

Back in the woods, when they’d first come face-to-face, Xue Tong had noticed a paper doll pasted at the umbrella’s center—drawn in blood on white paper, serving as a sort of effigy. The heavenly thunder would strike the umbrella, but the principal target had to remain nearby, no farther than three meters.

The thunder that had hit the little tiled house had been drawn by the Exalted Dragon Array, allowing it to converge into a single bolt. Natural heavenly thunder spread vast and wide, however, rendering such effigies useless; what was meant to be struck would be struck all the same. Now, with Xue Tong holding the umbrella, she had become the primary target. Stray bolts might nick the Masked Man, but Xun Ruosu would handle those. Even if she couldn’t, the fragments posed little threat to the dam.

At last, the sixth bolt of heavenly thunder slammed into the umbrella’s canopy. Xue Tong gathered the jagged lightning within a five-meter radius. Only a few stray tendrils escaped. At the same moment, Xun Ruosu finally tasted what it meant to be struck by thunder.

It was like the static from rubbing wool sweaters in winter—multiplied into tens of millions of sparks, crackling evenly and relentlessly from skin to flesh. Yet this agony dwarfed static by tenfold. Xun Ruosu felt her very brain cooking from the inside.

The sensation struck swift and faded just as fast. Ordinarily, pain like that would shatter all thought, but Xun Ruosu inexplicably felt a strange familiarity. Her three souls and seven po stood intact, yet she recognized the thunder meant for exorcising fierce ghosts.

Memories flooded her then, vast as a tidal wave.

She returned first to Contemplation Cliff, to that lofty stone. This time differed from before. In the past, absent Xue Tong’s birth, she had gazed down at the sufferings of the world below. After Xue Tong came into being, only emptiness filled her view.

But now Xun Ruosu looked upward, faint thunder rumbling around her. She ascended, as if aware her fate had arrived, deliberately inviting the lightning to strike.

Beneath that thunder, her heart divided in two: one part affection, the other order. She realized then that only the portion tied to “affection” brimmed with leaking souls and po.

This thunder dwarfed even that for fierce ghosts. Though confined to memory rather than crashing upon her true body in the present, Xun Ruosu still shuddered with skin-flaying, muscle-rending horror… The pain was etched into her very soul, too raw to disturb.

The scene shifted to a vast, austere office. A purple sandalwood desk dominated the center—antique and exorbitantly valuable. A cat sprawled atop it; closer inspection revealed the cat to be Wuchang.

Jiang Changting sat behind the desk, a cinnabar brush in hand. Gold powder and other substances swirled within the cinnabar. Sheets of paper materialized one after another before him—mostly narrow and mundane, with the occasional masterpiece among them. He drummed the desk with one hand while scribbling with the other.

Thankfully, the First Hall counted judges and black-and-white Wuchang among its ranks to share the workload. Only a scant few slips fell to Jiang Changting for judgment… Otherwise, at his pace, the entire system would have long collapsed.

Xun Ruosu sat across from him, occasionally plucking a fate slip to examine. Those that passed through her hands took on a golden sheen. Jiang Changting glanced up at her. “I’m begging you, don’t touch my things. Giving someone ten lifetimes of merits is generous enough—do you have so much wealth you’re here to squander it on me?”

“I need to ask a favor,” Xun Ruosu said.

Jiang Changting set down his cinnabar brush and cupped his hands. “I wouldn’t dare presume. You’re my teacher; I owe you a debt deeper than mountains and rivers. Don’t speak so formally, or the Heavenly Dao will come knocking with its rod to thrash me, the unfilial wretch.”

“…” Xun Ruosu had always found Xue Tong’s words rather grating, and her own manners none too polite by contrast. Yet here was Jiang Changting, with his upright and refined face, matching her barb for barb.