The Azure Mountain

Chapter 78: Ten Si Cao

Atop the collapsed ruins, only a few roof beams remained, tilted and crisscrossed.

Beneath the broken walls and shattered tiles, bricks and rubble kept heaving upward — as though something unkillable was buried underneath, struggling to break free.

Through the ringing in his ears, Chen Ji crept low toward the wreckage, drawing the short blade from his sleeve. He had made three bamboo-tube explosives in total — one for Jin Zhu, and the remaining two for the Si Cao. He was out of explosives now. The blade would have to do.

The next instant, a tremendous crash — bricks and stones flew in all directions.

From the pile of rubble, Shopkeeper Yuan heaved himself upright, a thick wooden beam balanced on his shoulders.

His hair hung loose and wild — the golden-beam cap had been blasted off to gods know where.

Shopkeeper Yuan's entire body bristled with embedded iron shards. His face was a mask of blood and pulp, blood and dust caked together. His grand crimson satin robe hung off him in tatters like a midnight specter.

He raised a hand to rub his eyes — the explosion had driven grit and debris into them, and they refused to open. Then he realized his right hand seemed to have been blown clean off. He couldn't raise it at all.

'Firearms!'

'This is what the Ning Dynasty's firearms can do!'Like Jin Zhu, Shopkeeper Yuan had seen firearms before — but neither man had ever seen firearms this powerful!

The Ning Dynasty had only been using firearms on the battlefield for a little over a century.

In the beginning, crude bamboo tubes served as the barrel, packed with gunpowder and projectiles. The powder was so weak it couldn't even blow the bamboo tube apart — a tube could be fired multiple times before being discarded.

Only in the past few decades had the Ning Dynasty switched to iron barrels capable of handling stronger propellants. Even then, the gunpowder remained imperfect — no purification process, wrong proportions — fit only for pitched battle to check a Jing Dynasty cavalry charge.

When Shopkeeper Yuan had first seen the bamboo tube, he knew he couldn't dodge it in time, but he hadn't truly believed the thing could kill him. At worst, some torn skin and bruised flesh — nothing that would touch bone.

But the gunpowder in Chen Ji's bamboo tube was incomparably more powerful than anything he'd imagined!

It had actually leveled the house!

Shopkeeper Yuan forced his eyes open. His left eye was flooded with blood, the eyeball a terrifying crimson. Only his right eye could still see.

He swept his gaze around but found no one in front of him: "The Secret Spy Division sends its masters to ambush me, and you still need to skulk around hiding?"

From start to finish, Shopkeeper Yuan hadn't caught even a glimpse of Chen Ji.

Having been struck by explosives, he simply assumed the Secret Spy Division's elite had come armed with firearms. It never occurred to him that Chen Ji could be responsible!

But no one answered from the courtyard. There was only a short blade, slicing through the air toward him.

Shopkeeper Yuan twisted aside, easily dodging the thrust aimed at his neck. But Chen Ji didn't stop — he followed up with three quick thrusts to the upper back at the heart, the lower back at the spleen, and the left thigh, then pulled back.

But then Chen Ji realized: except for the thigh stab, every other strike had failed to penetrate!

No — they hadn't merely missed.

Shopkeeper Yuan's body was tempered through the hardening arts of the Golden Bell Cultivation Path — copper skin and iron bones. An ordinary blade simply couldn't pierce him. No wonder he could stand after the explosions!

But he couldn't be invulnerable everywhere — otherwise he wouldn't have dodged the strike at his throat.

Blood pouring from his thigh, Shopkeeper Yuan turned around, one eye shut, and fixed a murderous glare on Chen Ji: "You?! You secretly kept some of the firearms from Prince Jing's Estate and the Liu family?!"

Chen Ji said nothing. He was silently calculating how to kill this bear of a man — whatever cultivation path Shopkeeper Yuan practiced, it seemed to make him borderline unkillable.

In a flash, Shopkeeper Yuan charged like a war chariot. Chen Ji immediately retreated, circling through the courtyard.

But before he'd gone two steps, Shopkeeper Yuan kicked up a chunk of brick from the rubble and sent it hurtling at him.

BANG!

The brick fragment screamed past Chen Ji's ear, the howling wind whipping his hair, and shattered against a nearby wall.

The kick was horrifying. Had Shopkeeper Yuan not lost one eye and his aim with it, Chen Ji would have been killed on the spot!

Enraged at the miss, Shopkeeper Yuan kicked up brick after brick — each one shrieking through the air like a cannonball, growing more accurate and more savage!

BANG!

A brick slammed into Chen Ji's back. The single impact sent him tumbling across the ground.

Chen Ji felt as though his heart and lungs had been knocked out of place, but he didn't dare pause for even an instant. He scrambled to his feet and kept running — only for two more bricks to strike him in quick succession: one between the shoulder blades, one on his right leg.

Chen Ji collapsed again. The short blade flew from his hand, skittering five or six meters away. He tried to force himself upright, but his legs wouldn't hold.

Shopkeeper Yuan strode over and loomed above him. His broken right arm hung limp as he reached down with his left hand, ready to snap Chen Ji's neck.

But it was at precisely this moment!

In the soundless stillness, Chen Ji — prone on the ground — suddenly rolled onto his back, facing Shopkeeper Yuan!

Shopkeeper Yuan stared into Chen Ji's eyes. Something was wrong. Those eyes held no despair. Only calm.

'No — no!'

'These are not the eyes of a dying man!'

In a single breath, the sword seed that Chen Ji had been nurturing for days surged like a swimming dragon through his meridians to his fingertip!

'Nourish the sword with starlight — break all things, all laws!'

It happened too fast, at too close a range. Shopkeeper Yuan had nowhere to dodge.

An invisible arc of sword qi streaked across the carotid artery in Shopkeeper Yuan's neck. Instantly, an arterial jet of blood erupted, gushing without end!

That sword seed — the one Old Yao had once mocked as being no more impressive than She Dengke passing gas — had possessed that level of power after merely an hour of cultivation.

But this time, Chen Ji had been cultivating it for days while training his blade with Feng Huai — patiently feeding the invisible sword qi until it became his final trump card.

Chen Ji pried Shopkeeper Yuan's fingers apart one by one, wrenching the meaty hand loose, then dropped to the ground, hacking with violent coughs.

Shopkeeper Yuan clutched his throat in disbelief, staggering backward step by step. Blood streamed between his fingers, rapidly draining every ounce of strength from his body.

"When did you become a practitioner? This is the Sword Seed Path — how could you possibly know the Martial Temple's sword-nourishing method?! Did your mother teach you? But how could she have mastered it..."

"The Sword Seed Path..."

"It's actually the Sword Seed Path!"

Shopkeeper Yuan crashed to the ground.

Chen Ji sat slumped on the earth. He lifted his palm. From the sky, stray snowflakes began to drift down, melting the instant they touched his skin.

For a moment, he was dazed. Had he really killed Shopkeeper Yuan?

This night, he had first rescued the Prince Heir and Baili, then dragged his battered body here to assassinate Shopkeeper Yuan. Dawn hadn't even broken, yet it felt as though he had endured an entire season — from autumn into winter.

Before he could collect himself, the clatter of hooves echoed from the street... the Secret Spy Division was coming!

Chen Ji struggled to his feet, desperate to flee the scene, but the moment he stood, he crashed back down. That last brick Shopkeeper Yuan had kicked had landed squarely on his leg, reopening the wound.

Just when the danger was most acute —

Footsteps approached from nearby, and a terse voice spoke: "So this is where you've been. I've been searching for you all night!"

Chen Ji started. The voice was extremely familiar.

......

......

At the far end of Tongji Street, dozens of cavalry charged forward. Jin Zhu rode at the head, his expression gaunt.

Just moments ago, he had been at Red Clothe Lane several li away, preparing to lead his men in retreat, when the familiar sound of an explosion reached his ears once more.

Jin Zhu could scarcely believe it — the Jing Dynasty rat who possessed those firearms hadn't even fled. Instead, the man had roamed to another part of Luo City and committed yet another major incident.

The direction of the blast was peculiar, though — it seemed to come from the merchants' quarter. Jin Zhu mulled it over but couldn't imagine what a Jing Dynasty spy would be doing there.

Nonetheless — the disgrace of being bombed demanded settling.

Jin Zhu spurred his horse to the front and charged down Tongji Street, spotting the columns of dust and smoke from a distance: "Everyone — seal off every approach to Tongji Street! Starting tonight, no one gets out. Turn over every inch of this place. Not even a worm escapes!"

But the words had barely left his mouth when a crow plummeted from the darkness.

The crow dove and swooped like a gust of black wind, moving so fast no one could make out its shape.

It didn't engage the riders directly — it simply pecked at the warhorses' eyes again and again, sending mount after mount rearing in terror, hooves flailing, bucking their Secret Spy Division riders to the ground.

Jin Zhu launched himself from his horse, one foot pushing off the saddle, lunging at the airborne crow.

The horse's legs buckled under the recoil of his leap. His heavy frame streaked past the crow in mid-air... and missed!

Jin Zhu's eyes widened. The crow was faster than he was: "What is this thing? How can a crow be this powerful... A practitioner?!"

"Use crossbows! Shoot it down!"

Agents yanked hand crossbows from behind their backs and loosed bolts into the night sky, but the crow twisted and banked through the barrage, cawing mockingly as it dodged every shot with contemptuous ease.

Jin Zhu was certain this had to be some kind of cultivation path. But as he ransacked his memory for every known path, he came up blank. It was as though this particular method had never appeared in recorded history.

How was that possible?

The Directorate of Ceremonial managed all imperial internal intelligence. Every known practitioner in the realm was catalogued — even folk legends were documented.

What kind of cultivation path could be hidden so completely that the Directorate's archives didn't contain a single word about it?

"Dismount!" Jin Zhu barked, and sprinted on foot toward the dust-shrouded Yuan Estate.

The crow panicked. It dove again and again at the agents, but more reinforcements kept arriving, and the crossbow bolts wove an increasingly dense net across the sky.

If it dropped even a fraction lower, it risked being riddled with bolts!

The crow was forced up and away into the night sky.

Within a dozen breaths, Jin Zhu had reached the blast site. He vaulted over the high gate and landed inside the courtyard — but all that remained was one collapsed building and one stripped-bare corpse.

He looked up. The crow had vanished.

"After them! The killer can't have gotten far!"

......

......

Several hundred meters away, Chen Ji was slung over someone's shoulder, with another person following close behind.

Bouncing along, he looked back at the man behind them and croaked: "Brother Biao? I thought you'd already left!"

Wu Hongbiao gave a broad grin: "I was going to. But the Si Cao figured that if you weren't leaving, you were probably planning something on your own, so he stayed with me. We heard the commotion at Red Clothe Lane earlier and crept over, but didn't dare get close. Later, when you fled across the rooftops, we shadowed you from a distance. We didn't recognize you at first — thought you were some rogue outlaw."

The next moment, the man carrying Chen Ji — the carriage driver Si Cao — spoke curtly: "Don't waste breath chatting. If your breathing gets irregular, they'll track us."

With that, he carried Chen Ji through a maze of turns — a full half-hour's worth of twisting alleyways — before arriving at a dark lane where an ox cart was tethered.

The Si Cao tossed Chen Ji onto the cart bed, climbed up front, and cracked the whip, driving the oxen south.

Chen Ji sat up: "Where are we going?"

The carriage driver Si Cao said calmly: "South first — to Yangzhou, to lay low. Once the Secret Spy Division lifts their blockade, we'll head north across the border, back to the Jing Dynasty. There's no place left for us in the Ning Dynasty. We need to return to your uncle."

Chen Ji was stunned. He turned to look at the buildings and cobblestone streets receding behind him. Was he truly going to leave the Ning Dynasty after all?

He asked quietly: "Is there no other way?"

"None. You wounded Jin Zhu tonight and killed Liang Heyong. From now on, neither the Military Intelligence Division nor the Secret Spy Division will have room for you."

"Liang Heyong?"

"The man you just killed — Shopkeeper Yuan." Official Gui's voice was cold: "He was once your uncle's man too, but he betrayed your uncle as a pledge of loyalty to win Lu Guanwu's favor. A traitor who breaks faith deserves death, and anyone may kill him. If you hadn't done it tonight, I would have found a way to finish him before leaving."

Chen Ji leaned against the side of the cart, silent for a long time: "Why are you so loyal to my uncle?"

Official Gui tightened the reins: "That's none of your concern."

Chen Ji recalled his fight with Shopkeeper Yuan and asked, puzzled: "What cultivation path was he practicing? Why was his body like copper and iron — impervious to blades?"

"Before he was sent to the Ning Dynasty, your uncle planted him at Bitter Awakening Temple in Shengjing. He practiced the Golden Bell Cultivation Path. There's no shortcut to that path — you must ring the temple bell every single day for years on end without missing a single day. After ten years, the body naturally achieves copper skin and iron bones. But he only managed ten years, so he still had plenty of weak points. There was once an old monk at Bitter Awakening Temple who rang the bell for sixty years — his copper skin and iron bones were completely without flaw."

Chen Ji leaned wearily against the cart: "I've learned something new today. So ringing a bell can be a form of cultivation."

He recalled that the little monk at the Prince Heir's side seemed to work the same way — simply chanting the Earth Store Bodhisattva's Original Vow Sutra over and over was itself a form of cultivation.

If that was the case, then Buddhist and Daoist institutions must command an enormous number of cultivation paths. No wonder the Buddhist prayer beads currency had muscled its way into the banking business...

In all his time in the Ning Dynasty, Chen Ji hadn't seen a single money-changer's shop on the street. The Buddhist prayer beads currency clearly dominated the market.

Chen Ji asked another question: "How many Si Cao does our Military Intelligence Division actually have?"

The carriage driver Si Cao paused, then — apparently deciding Chen Ji was one of their own — stopped hiding: "It used to be three. Now it's ten, designated by the Heavenly Stems: Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui."

"Which one are you?"

"Gui. Shopkeeper Yuan was 'Xin.'"

The Ning Dynasty's Twelve Zodiacs, matched against the Jing Dynasty's ten Heavenly Stems.

Chen Ji asked: "Why did you say there's no place left for us in the Ning Dynasty?"

Official Gui answered evenly: "Originally, every rank of the Military Intelligence Division was filled with people your uncle had promoted. But now that Lu Guanwu has risen to Military Strategy Commissioner, overseeing all of the Jing Dynasty's military intelligence, he's brought his own people in and plans to gradually purge your uncle's old guard. The Department Head himself was one of your uncle's people, but I haven't been able to contact him for half a month. He's almost certainly been eliminated. Once a new Department Head takes office, there will be another round of purges."

Chen Ji said suddenly: "Wait — if all of my uncle's old guard have already been removed, then who in the Military Intelligence Division — besides you, Shopkeeper Yuan, and Brother Biao — still knows my identity as a Jing Dynasty spy?"

Official Gui thought carefully before answering: "The Department Head also knew."

Chen Ji took a deep breath: "But the Department Head has probably been eliminated by Lu Guanwu too. Doesn't that mean — apart from you and Brother Biao — no one in the entire Military Intelligence Division knows who I really am?"

Official Gui considered this at length: "That's correct."

Chen Ji sat up, grabbed the reins from Official Gui's hands, and brought the ox cart to a halt. His voice was resolute and certain: "You two go to Yangzhou. I'm going back to Taiping Medical Clinic."