Chapter 33 – Collapse

“Wu Fei Yu, you dare!”

The great serpent opened its maw and bit a man clean in half, the blood spraying directly onto Wu Bing’s face as he shouted his curse.

Wu Bing’s voice trembled. The great serpent’s tail coiled, twisting him and several others together, their internal organs compressed violently — nearly squeezed out whole.

“Second Great-Uncle, thank you for taking such good care of me all this time,” the woman smiled. “I will send the Gaotian Tribe down to join you very soon.”

Wu Bing’s eyes shook with terror. He could only strain his neck to look toward Wu Xingshan. “Founding Master, save me—”

His vision went pitch black.

The great serpent gave a gulp and swallowed him whole.

On the other side, Wu Cheng scrambled and crawled up onto the Crystal Coffin, straining to push the lid aside. The lid was impossibly heavy, and his face turned red before he managed to open even a crack.

Then came a click, and the crack was gone. Wu Cheng looked up to find Zhan Changfeng pressing one hand down on the coffin lid.

“What are you doing? Hurry and take out the Emperor’s Flower — there’s no time!” Wu Cheng shouted.

“Why should I trust someone who turned the Yi Family’s ancestors into gu puppets?” Zhan Changfeng said, unmoved, staring steadily at Wu Xingshan perched atop Wu Cheng’s head.

Wu Xingshan had no desire to fight her. Setting aside Wu Cheng’s serious injuries, even that ring she carried — the one capable of stripping away pure yin soul energy — gave him no certainty of victory.

“What if I told you it can control the gu?” Wu Xingshan pressed, neither retreating nor yielding. When your life is at stake, you believe what you must.

Zhan Changfeng considered for a moment, then called out to the woman, “Sister, if I hand him over to you, will you let us leave?”

“Heh,” the woman laughed softly from atop the great golden serpent’s head. “Then you would be my friend.”

Wu Xingshan’s gaze sharpened as he looked at the person before him. Zhan Changfeng said coldly, “Don’t speak to me in half-truths to try and threaten me. Death — I have never feared it.”

“Ha ha ha,” Wu Xingshan suddenly burst into laughter, then cut it off just as abruptly — short, sharp, and strangely piercing. His voice turned dark and gloomy. “I hope you can remain this calm in a moment.”

“Time is up,” he murmured. “The gu has matured.”

The ground began to tremble. Everyone cursed — what new trick was this? Surely it wasn’t about to collapse.

“Hmm?” Wu Fei Yu patted the golden serpent’s head, and the serpent quieted, ceasing its feeding.

Her expression shifted to something indescribable and peculiar. “Oh, so there’s a little treasure hidden here too.”

At that moment the Great Hall’s doors swung wide open, giving them a clear line of sight straight down the Passage directly across from the entrance.

A crack had opened in the floor of the Passage, as though something were breaking through the earth.

That trembling seemed to have triggered some mechanism — before the Passage even collapsed, the Great Hall began to come down first!

“Terrible, run!”

“Flee through the Passage before it collapses!”

In the chaos, Zhan Changfeng and Wu Xingshan exchanged a glance, and nearly simultaneously moved to lift the coffin lid — one to destroy it, the other to claim it.

“No — this is thousands of years of my life’s work!” Wu Xingshan bared his teeth with a fury that transformed him instantly from a dignified great general into a ravenous demon.

Thousands of years?

What an interesting choice of words.

Zhan Changfeng moved first, pulling out the Emperor’s Flower and driving the yin energy in her hand into it to destroy it, while her other hand braced against the coffin. She spun and leapt away, dodging Wu Xingshan’s attack.

“Your Highness, don’t linger — run!” Jiang Wei shouted.

Zhan Changfeng had no intention of fighting to the death with him. The moment she seized the Emperor’s Flower, she decisively retreated — yet what astonished her was that, under the erosion of her yin energy, the Emperor’s Flower remained completely unharmed.

Even with her ability, she could not destroy it!

Zhan Changfeng could only tuck it away for now and deal with it once she was out of this place.

Wu Xingshan roared in fury from within the collapsing Great Hall, but constrained by the wounded Wu Cheng, he could not give chase, and could only watch helplessly as Zhan Changfeng entered the Passage.

In the Passage, boulders were tumbling down in a steady stream. The black stone floor cracked down the middle, the splits widening toward both sides, and below was nothing but pitch-black emptiness — yet a great surge of resentful energy could be felt rising up from the depths.

Though Zhan Changfeng was alarmed and suspicious about whatever lay within, it was clearly more important to save her life right now. She had no time to investigate, and sprinted out of the cave.

“Where’s Songshi Zi? Songshi Zi, lead the way!” One or two surviving Gaotian Tribe members outside craned their necks and shouted.

That woman had clearly been targeting the Gaotian Tribe specifically — everyone who had died was from Wu Bing’s faction. Jiang Wei, Songshi Zi, and Qiao Shan Ke were all completely unharmed.

Zhan Changfeng had barely emerged when she heard Songshi Zi roar, “It’s over — the staircase has collapsed!”

The crisscrossing aerial steps were dropping section by section, falling into the water below, sending hollow echoes reverberating through the great-wind-ravaged abyss.

Zhan Changfeng had just stepped onto one of the steps when she pulled back — the path leading to the exit was indeed severed.

“Severed?” Wu Fei Yu glided out of the cave with graceful, swaying steps, the golden serpent coiled around her wrist like a bracelet.

“Wu Xingshan didn’t die?”

“He escaped.”

Having lived for thousands of years, it wasn’t strange that he had some means of escape.

Yet Wu Fei Yu looked even more regretful than Zhan Changfeng about it — making their exchange feel abrupt and inexplicable, causing those nearby to instinctively edge a few steps away.

The sounds of collapse grew louder and louder. The cracks had already reached the cave entrance, and the ground beneath their feet could crumble apart and plunge into the invisible depths at any moment.

At that moment Songshi Zi drew close and called out to her as Your Highness, “Do you have any way out of this?”

When Zhan Changfeng had unlocked that door, Songshi Zi had come to understand that his own gossip-acquired knowledge was barely a fraction of what she possessed. He no longer dared regard her as a child.

The Gaotian Tribe members, who had been keeping a close eye on Songshi Zi, heard these words and their eyes lit up.

“Xiao Zhao” — with half arrogance and half venom — said, “This was built by your ancestor. You must have a way to escape. Speak up now, or I’ll make certain you die before the rest of us!”

As his words fell, the fine meridian lines on Zhan Changfeng’s face abruptly appeared in black, rising and falling as though something were moving beneath the surface.

“They planted a gu in you!” Jiang Wei was shocked and alarmed. No wonder the Gaotian Tribe had been perfectly polite to His Highness and never used force — they had planted a gu long ago!

Some eyes turned to Jiang Wei, and found him unaffected. “Xiao Zhao” sneered — when you control the leader, would you still fear a revolt from the followers?

Besides, gu were incredibly precious. He had already used all three of his.

This place was about to collapse, and Wu Fei Yu had no desire to die just yet, so she considered lending Zhan Changfeng a hand. But before she could act to remove the gu, she saw all the color drain from Zhan Changfeng’s face, and a cold yin energy silently expanded outward — even the ground beneath her feet was coated in a layer of white frost.

Her face was pale and cold as ice. Her blood-red eyes were strange and eerie. She should have looked like a demon — yet she carried herself with perfect composure and an air of noble splendor.

“A gu?” She raised her hand. The sleeve slid back to her wrist, revealing nothing but bare white bone.

A fingertip dragged across her cheek — a long cut, with no blood flowing out.

She reached into the cut and flicked. A grain-sized worm was picked out, stiff and rigid — already dead.

With her looking like this, and using such uncanny methods, not only were “Xiao Zhao” and his people shaken — even Wu Fei Yu quietly stepped back one pace.

“What — what exactly are you?!”

“Xiao Zhao’s” field of vision was flung high into the air, then plunged into darkness.

Zhan Changfeng raised her long sword and moved through them one by one, killing every last member of the Gaotian Tribe. Her gaze then fell on Songshi Zi and Qiao Shan Ke. Both men’s spines went cold, and they dropped to their knees with a thud. “I pledge to follow Your Highness as my only guide, never to betray you for as long as I live!”

“Forget what you saw.”

“Yes, yes, yes — I didn’t see anything!”

Zhan Changfeng made no move to threaten Wu Fei Yu — likely because they were more or less equals, neither of them being normal by any measure.

While she dealt with the intimidation, Zhan Changfeng kept a second line of thought running, never abandoning her search for a way out.

This Underground Palace was alive. She had felt air currents moving while in the burial passage of the Underground Palace, and by the time she had passed through the great gate, she was certain the wind was seeping outward from this seemingly abyssal cavern.

Songshi Zi, who was capable in his own right, listened as she explained and then reasoned aloud, “It is said that among the Mystical Gate Escaping Techniques, there is the concept of the ‘Life Gate.’ Wherever wind comes from, there must be an exit.”

“Indeed. But the wind currents are extraordinarily chaotic — there is simply no way to distinguish an accurate direction.” The walls all around must have had formations set into them; a wind current would collide with a wall and branch off into currents flowing in all manner of directions.

“Wait,” Zhan Changfeng caught hold of a flicker of intuition and extended her senses to their absolute limit.

The cavern was collapsing now, and fragments of stone were sliding off the walls. Some of the wind directions had vanished as a result, and others had become disordered.

But certainly — there was one wind direction that would remain temporarily unaffected.

(End of Chapter)