Chu Wanning smiled a little. He of course knew that “the Skeleton King” was the weakest of the nine ghost kings, but strength was relative. Even though Mo Ran wielded the holy weapon Jiangui, at his age and with his experience, facing the Skeleton King alone would still push him a bit.
Unfortunately for the person plotting against Mo Ran, the kid by his side wasn’t just some rookie from Sisheng Peak, but Chu Wanning himself.
“Help me…”
They were about to spring out the door with a surprise attack when a weak voice called out from behind them.
“Ah, he’s still alive?” Mo Ran’s eyes were wide as he turned to look at Xiaoman, curled up in the back.
“I don’t want to die… Dad… I don’t want to…”
Chu Wanning looked at the young man huddled in a rumpled heap of rags and shook his head. “In truth, this person likely died as soon as he stepped in here. He’s only still alive in this illusion because we happened to be here and killed the undead that were after him. Thus some things have turned out differently.”
“Ah…” Mo Ran sighed. “If he hadn’t defected, do you think that maybe Chu Xun wouldn’t have died two hundred years ago? That maybe Lin’an wouldn’t be a pile of ruins now?”
“Maybe.”
However, they both knew that no matter what they did now, the past was the past. The important thing now was to defeat the Skeleton King and escape this illusion. There was no reason to delay, so they charged out of their hiding place, killing everything in their path.
Escaping this illusion proved to possibly be even easier than they’d thought.
Mo Ran knew exactly what he had to do and immediately engaged the Skeleton King. However, as Chu Wanning watched them face off, he felt a wave of uneasiness. It wasn’t because Mo Ran was struggling. To the contrary, under his guidance, Mo Ran maintained a solid upper hand. Even so, more and more Chu Wanning got the feeling that…the person behind all this had planned it all far too precisely.
That was to say, that person had carefully assessed that it would be extremely difficult for Mo Ran and one other person of average skill to escape this situation alone. Yet he also hadn’t deployed anything more deadly so as not to arouse suspicions of foul play. His goal had been to make it look like Mo Ran had died in a training accident.
Who exactly was this person who plotted so meticulously against Mo Ran’s life? Was it really that fake Gouchen from Jincheng Lake?
Chu Wanning observed the ferocious battle between Mo Ran and the ghost king. The longer it went on, the more Mo Ran came out on top, and as the sky slowly lightened, the ghost king’s strength gradually waned. Victory was all but at hand.
Just then, in the horde of undead and demons sealed behind Mo Ran’s spell, Chu Wanning saw the face of a living person.
“Who’s there?!”
Standing amidst the walking corpses, this person’s face was half shadowed beneath the hood of his cloak. From this distance, all Chu Wanning could see was a sharp chin, sweetly colored lips, and a gently curved nose.
A single look and Chu Wanning could tell that the man didn’t belong in the illusion of two hundred years past. He hadn’t assumed any kind of fighting stance and just stood there, shrouded under his hood, looking in the direction of Chu Wanning and Mo Ran. When he saw that Chu Wanning had noticed him, he smiled faintly, then lifted a hand and swept it across his neck in a “kill” gesture.
Chu Wanning cursed under his breath and lunged in an attempt to capture him.
However, the figure only smiled with the crimson lips and ivory teeth under his hood, and mouthed what looked like, “Goodbye.”
Then he turned and disappeared.
“Stay right there!”
It was useless. The sky brightened, layers of fish-scale clouds painted across it.
The fight between Mo Ran and the ghost king ended with a final blow. The moment that Jiangui sheared the ghost king’s head clean off, sending foul blood flying everywhere, their bodies abruptly flew up. That sunrise of old Lin’an from two hundred years ago and the ruined wreckage of that city, all of it sped away in a blur.
Thump!
When Chu Wanning hit the ground again, he found himself back in the trial cave.
Mo Ran was also there, dropped on the ground next to him and covered in blood from the fight, though mostly not his own. He was laid out on the ground, evidently still too tired to get up, only gazing at Chu Wanning with those pitch-black eyes. A few moments passed, then he lifted a hand and gently poked Chu Wanning’s forehead. “We made it.”
Chu Wanning made a soft sound of assent, but his expression was dark. “I saw someone in there just now.”
“What?”
“It was probably the one who manifested the illusion.”
Mo Ran rolled up into a sitting position, his eyes going wide. “You saw him? You saw him! Did you see who it was? What did he look like?”
Chu Wanning shook his head, brows furrowed. “He was wearing a hood, so I couldn’t see clearly. Based on the figure, he’s probably male, fairly young, and thin, with a pointed chin…”
He didn’t voice the rest of his thoughts. He felt like that half a face had looked vaguely familiar, as if he had seen that person somewhere before, long ago. He also couldn’t shake the feeling that he might be mistaken. It had only been half a face after all, and there were plenty of similar-looking people out there. He couldn’t really be sure.
He was deep in thought when he felt Mo Ran pat him on the shoulder.
“Shidi.”
“What is it?”
“Look over there.” Mo Ran’s voice was low, and a chill ran through it.
Chu Wanning looked in the direction he was pointing.
It was Eighteen. At the entrance to the trial cave, Eighteen hung from the ceiling, both eyes bulging outward, the embroidered satin shoes on her feet swaying in midair.
She was dead, and there was no wind. Judging by the angle of her body’s sway, the murderer had just left.
However, the thing that turned their faces pale was the murder weapon cinched around her neck. It was a willow vine with sharp, blade-like leaves. The vine coursed with a fiery red light that crackled, erupting with sparks that fell together with the drops of blood.
Jiangui.
The thing that had strangled Eighteen and that now hung her from the ceiling of the cave was none other than the holy weapon Jiangui.