On his way out, Wuji did not look back at the gathering immediately. Only when the lights behind him had dimmed to scattered embers did he let his gaze drift over his shoulder. Lantern glow trembled in the distance, while ahead, darkness pooled like ink along the road.
For several minutes, the exit path lay empty. A few cultivators passed, their eyes lingering on the old man driving a cart. Curiosity? Suspicion? Perhaps they were marking him for later.
He exhaled quietly and faced forward. Speculation was a luxury he couldn't afford. Ahead, the bamboo forest waited, its silhouette already swallowing the last of the light.
When the road fell quiet, he slowed the horse and brought the cart to a halt. Without haste, he slipped behind the curtains and opened the Heaven Burial Coffin. The lid rose soundlessly. He climbed inside, shut himself in, then emerged moments later. He snapped a command toward the husk, and it followed, entering and emerging cleansed, hopefully, of any tracing arts.
His eyes swept the cramped interior. "Anything else traceable?" Finally, his gaze landed on the manual lying near the coffin's head. Without hesitation, he took it and placed it inside.
Herbs, ceramic blood beast pots, the manual, everything foreign from the gathering was already stored away. He didn't bother inspecting the goods. Men bold enough to rob openly rarely poisoned their own loot; they would have intended to reclaim it after the deed was done.
Still, he stepped outside and searched for subtler dangers, tracking talismans stuck to the chassis, hidden scent powders. But he stopped himself. No competent tracer would make the rookie mistake of using scented powder. As for Qi resonances, he didn't even try to look for them—he couldn't.
Finding nothing obvious, Wuji returned to the driver's bench and cracked the whip. The horse resumed its steady gait, the rhythm of its hooves on the dark, empty road a countdown to the coming violence.
And in the silence of his mind, he sifted through the arsenal stored within the interment space. He dismissed the weapons first, they weren't useful when the husk's slender sword was already there. The talismans were next, too weak; the best among them would only crack a Qi Condensation stage cultivator's barrier. Arrays were out of the question—they required the kind of mental focus he couldn't spare while puppeteering the husk.
Then his thoughts drifted to the armor. He slipped back into the cart, slid the coffin's lid aside, and plunged through the viscous black liquid into the interment space.
Inside his gaze immediately settled on the sheen of the grade-two chest piece. A faint, cold smile touched his lips. Even without Qi to trigger its active defenses, the physical plating was better than his silk. Better safe than dead.
He stripped off his robes, leaving them suspended in the static air, and donned the armor. The surface was cold and rough against his skin, its weight heavy but manageable for mobility. "A full suit would have been better," he grumbled, cinching the straps, "but this will have to protect my heart for now."
He turned toward the western corner of the ten-square-meter space. The bandits' corpses lay in a grim, tangled heap, separate from the two city guards and their fellows. To the north, stacks of coffins, his meager food supplies, and his bed floated in a disorganized jumble. In the center floated Mei Xu's treasure.
"Too messy," he muttered. The space was beginning to feel cramped, and expansion didn't seem imminent.
Finally, his gaze settled on Mu Li, the young disciple suspended in the air. Upon closer inspection, the boy's chest still rose and fell with shallow, stubborn vitality.
Wuji's smile widened, turning sharp and predatory. A devious plan began to crystallize—a gambit that, if successful, would do more than avenge him. It would plunge the entire gathering into absolute ruin. The Heaven's Fall Sect was famously, pathologically domineering when it came to their reputation. If he played this right, he wouldn't just escape a robbery, he would set a forest fire to cover his tracks.
The young disciple's eyes darted with sluggish, fragmented awareness. He tried to speak, but his mind couldn't bridge the gap to his tongue. Though stronger than Wuji, he remained shackled by the space's static time. Wuji didn't linger; he had no time for the young man's confusion. He reached for a heavy black robe, pulled it over the cold plates of his armor, then let his body sink into the viscous black to leave.
A moment later, he emerged from the liquid back into the cart, sealed the coffin with a dull thud, and returned to the driver's bench. He cracked the whip, and the horse resumed its rhythmic pace.
The darkness around the road was thickening, but the moonlight was intense tonight—cold and silver, enough to carve a path through the woods.
Several hundred meters behind, three silhouettes cut through the night air, gliding low on their flying swords. They were in no hurry. Their speed was deliberate, the pace of predators who knew the prey was already cornered. In the center, Konzi watched the glowing bees hovering above his palm, their wings vibrating in a frantic, unerring drone toward Wuji's position.
About twelve minutes later, the gathering's western gate loomed out of the dark. Two men stood guard, their postures too rigid for ordinary sentries. As the cart approached, they stepped into the center of the road, blocking the exit. One offered a shallow, respectful bow toward the gray curtains.
Wuji's eyes narrowed, his gaze locking onto the lifespan numbers hovering above the man's head. "A Foundation Pillar Establishment cultivator playing gate-guard? This is more premeditated than I feared." He glanced back at the husk. "I have to prepare for major losses."
He returned the bow with a servant's practiced humility. The man gestured wordlessly for them to pass. Wuji whipped the horse. The cart creaked forward, crossing the threshold and leaving the gathering behind.
Before him, the familiar plains stretched into vast, shadow-drenched endlessness. "It's night. In the dark, I might be able to disappear," he mused. But that hope relied on the incompetence of the men behind him, a gamble he wasn't willing to make. His gut told him the same truth his eyes did: this battle was inevitable.
"Sometimes acting strong deters the cautious," Wuji thought to himself, "but it only serves as a lure for the reckless."
With a sharp crack of the whip, he sent the horse into a frantic gallop, the cart's wheels screaming against the earth.
Back at the gate, the two guards straightened as the dust settled. Kito, the Foundation Pillar Establishment cultivator, turned to the mortal guard with a look of cold promise. "Call your other guy. Remember—no one exited this gate tonight. And a word of advice: do not breathe a syllable to the Gathering Leader, or your wives will discover how creative I can be with a sword."
The guard nodded frantically, his fingers already trembling against a jade talisman. Kito didn't wait for a response; he watched the cart dissolve into the swallowing darkness of the plains.
Minutes later, Liu Li, Konzi, and the middle-aged man, Yun, drifted to the gate like specters. They touched down beside Kito, exchanged a brief, sharp nod, and crossed the gate on foot. Only when they reached the dead zone—the point beyond the Gathering Leader's surveillance arrays—did they unsheathe their flying swords. They mounted them and surged forward, guided by the frantic hum of the bees in Konzi's palm.
The pursuit was short. They soon hovered above the abandoned horse cart, exchanging glances of guarded confusion.
"They ditched the carriage," Konzi noted, his voice a mix of relief and mockery. "It seems we overestimated their courage. This might be easier than we thought." He looked down at his palm. The bees were no longer circling lazily; they vibrated with predatory intent, their tiny heads locked westward. "There."
His gaze pierced the gloom and locked onto a lone figure fleeing on a sword, carrying a massive coffin as if it were a feather.
Inside the coffin, Wuji's heart thundered against his ribs. He had banked on the coffin's ability to erase his traces, hoping to become a ghost in the night. But reality was crashing down: the four figures were closing in. To a mid-stage Foundation Pillar Establishment cultivator, a physical trail was just as good as a spiritual one. They were closing the gap with terrifying speed, and minutes later came soaring above the husk.
With a sharp flick of her wrist, Liu Li conjured five spears of compressed flame and hurled them at the husk's retreating back. They struck with the force of falling stars. The impact jolted the coffin, the resonance vibrating through the wood and snapping Wuji into cold, panicked alertness.
"Already? Damn it!" His mind scrambled. If he stayed inside, the husk would be a puppet with cut strings—a sitting duck against Foundation Pillar Establishment cultivators. He sent a mental command, forcing the husk to spiral downward. It hit the ground with a heavy thud and stood rigid beside the coffin, awaiting further orders.
Wuji eased the lid back just a fraction, his eye pressed to the sliver of moonlight. The four figures touched down several meters away, their silhouettes jagged against the pale plains.
"Forgive me, oh esteemed Mistress," Liu Li began, her voice dripping with mock formality. "I truly thought you were—"
"Enough," Kito snapped, cutting her off with a snarl. "No more games. We kill the master, we take thetreasures. Do not let your theatrics cost us the prize again."
"Fine," Liu Li sighed, her tone shifting into something lethal and solemn. "But where is that old slave? I wanted to see what made him special before I broke him."
The trio didn't wait. Their hands blurred into seals, weaving their qi into weapons. Liu Li summoned three more fire spears, their tips white-hot; the others readied their own orphan spells, the air around them humming with gathered Qi.
From the coffin, Wuji watched the executioners prepare their strike. He pulled up the panel, his heart hammering against his ribs: [Stored Lifespan: 1 Year, 11 Months]
Not enough. Against four Foundation Pillar Establishment cultivators, he wouldn't last an hour in a war of attrition, they would tore the husk to limbs within minutes under this situation.
His gaze hardened into something cold and desperate. He turned his will toward the coffin, commanding it to rip a decade of life from his very soul.
Immediately, glowing sigil threads slithered from the coffin walls like hungry leeches. They plunged into his soul space and tore away ten years of his lifespan in a single, violent yank. Wuji's body convulsed. Veins bulged across his forehead like knotted cords. For a heartbeat, a terrific emptiness threatened to swallow his consciousness—but he bit his tongue until the copper taste of blood grounded him.
A hollow, echoing ache spread through his chest, a physical manifestation of the time he would never get back.
"Getting a manual shouldn't have been this dangerous," he thought, his vision blurring as he fought to stay upright. "If I had been a coward, I'd be safe. But if I had been weaker, I'd be dead already." He etched the agony of the trade into his bones. He had paid for this power in agony. Now he would make sure they paid dearly. Deep down, he hoped never to use the decade, but the reality of the situation said otherwise.
Outside, the night ignited. The spells lunged toward the husk in a searing blur of light. Wuji used that sudden radiance as a beacon, his mind frantically tethering to the husk's limbs to weave it past the incoming fire.
The projectiles slammed into the earth behind him, the explosion tearing through the silence of the plains. Dust and scorched grit hissed against the coffin, but Wuji didn't flinch. He couldn't afford a blink; a single lost second was a death sentence.
The husk charged, sprinting toward Liu Li, its slender blade shimmering with a raw coating of qi.
Liu Li's face, illuminated by the two fire spears behind her, smirked—visible even through the darkness. "Just a basic qi coating?" she mocked, three more flaming spears manifesting behind her like a jagged halo. "And here I was trembling, thinking she might have mastered Sword Force or even Sword Qi. To think you're nothing but a fraud with a bit of luck."
The others didn't wait for her to finish. Konzi and Kito began weaving their own spells, while Yun, the middle-aged analyst, took the initiative.
Yun stepped forward, his hands a blur of seals, and drove his heel into the dirt with the force of a falling hammer.
Whoosh!
Jagged pillars of earth erupted from the ground, surging upward like the fangs of a buried beast toward the husk's chest. Blinded by the shadows between flashes of fire, Wuji's reaction was a heartbeat too slow.
The stone pillars caught the husk full-on, the impact sounding like a hammer hitting a drum. It was hurled backward, tumbling through the air like a discarded ragdoll.
"Damn the darkness!" Wuji cursed, his teeth gritting as he forced the husk to its feet. It stood a few paces back, its posture stiff, its body ignoring the cracks in its "bones."
The four cultivators paused, their confusion palpable. They had expected a master's swift dodging grace, but they had just witnessed a clumsy, amateurish failure to dodge a standard stone pillar. Their caution wavered. If their "Mistress" was this inept, she was no master—just a fluke.
Wuji's hand gripped the edge of the coffin, his mind a storm of calculations. "Their orphan spells are too fast for my eyes to track. If they stop playing with these and unleash their natal spells, it's over."
He could only pray their natal spells weren't offensive—because even with near-endless qi, a puppet can only move as fast as its master can see. The one hour seemed to be running out, and the decade still sat untouched.