Chapter Nineteen: The Onset of Chaos

A chilling, raging wind howled through the shadowy passage, yet Su Yuanbai did not hesitate. He leapt boldly into the deep corridor, wide enough for two to walk abreast. Qu Hanchen instinctively craned his neck to peer into the darkness, forgetting that not long ago, he too had poked his head forward and fallen prey to the hellish illusion, leaving himself utterly unguarded.

“Enjoying the view?” Xi Chunxue’s voice called to him.

“I can’t see a thing,” Qu Hanchen replied, frowning at the pitch-black passage. Apart from the biting, sinister wind pouring out, there was nothing visible at all.

“Then why not go down and have a look?” The moment he heard her say this, a sense of dread seized Qu Hanchen. Before he could turn and leave, a force shoved him from behind. Off balance, he tumbled abruptly into the yawning passage.

“Hey—?!” His alarmed cry faded as he plunged deeper into the darkness.

Xi Chunxue, holding a luminous pearl, stood at the edge of the cell. Even with the pearl’s glow, the passage below remained impenetrable, as though every trace of light was being devoured.

Go down? She frowned, pondering. Her hands were still fettered by the Soul-Binding Chain, leaving her unable to use the slightest bit of magic. She carried no talismans or artifacts—should any danger arise below, she would have no means to resist.

If she did not descend, she would be left alone to face the prison guards who could arrive at any moment, with no way to explain the corpse of the fierce beast lying across the dungeon corridor.

Staying above hardly seemed the better choice.

Xi Chunxue pressed her hand to her brow. Since the situation was thus, why not take a gamble? She exhaled a slow, heavy breath. The anxiety and contemplation faded from her face, replaced by a steely resolve that sharpened her exquisite features.

If I survive and walk free, those who plotted against me on Mount Immeasurable, who saw me cast into this prison—I will make you pay.

Like one poised at the edge of a precipice, Xi Chunxue leapt, plunging into the unknown darkness below.

The dungeon fell utterly silent.

Tap, tap.

Suddenly, crisp footsteps echoed in the cellblock. A pale, verdant glow appeared behind the open bronze door at the passage’s end.

“Though the Black Tortoise’s Breath is a wondrous technique for prolonging life, able to conceal all presence as if one were stone or dead earth, it should not have fooled him.”

“Is he merely pretending not to know?”

The cold, clear voice reverberated along the corridor, but the empty passage offered no reply.

“I wonder what is happening above. Did we truly manage to obscure the eyes of the Saint’s statue in the Temple of the Prison God?”

“To pull off such a grand deception under the gaze of an ancient saint—even if it’s just the eyes of a worldly effigy—there is a certain thrill to it.”

With a faint sigh, the cold voice faded as the verdant glow slowly died. Just before vanishing, the pale light briefly illuminated the pitch-black floor, revealing dried bloodstains crisscrossed in a complex, ancient array. There was something disturbingly lifelike about the pattern, as though it possessed a soul of its own.

When the green glow extinguished, the chill voice was gone; even the faintest trace of presence seemed to have dissolved—whether it had departed or merely lurked behind the bronze door was impossible to say.

Moments passed.

At the far end of the corridor, near a circular archway, a shadowy figure could be glimpsed emerging from the darkness.

“Deputy Warden Li.”

Outside the Gates of Azure Abyss Prison, Zhuang Xiaochen and Xu Weiyang looked up as a burly, black-bearded man strode briskly down the long passage, clad in the blue-plumed uniform of the ninth rank. They quickly bowed their heads in greeting.

“Did a Grade C jailer just enter the dungeon?”

Li Xiaoyan’s voice was as rough as his appearance, his tiger-like eyes glinting as he surveyed the armored guards flanking the entrance.

“He did,” Zhuang Xiaochen replied, glancing at Xu Weiyang, who nodded almost imperceptibly. Lowering his voice, Zhuang Xiaochen addressed Li Xiaoyan.

“You two, go at once and apprehend him! He slaughtered a Grade A jailer in the guards’ quarters, and gravely injured his Grade C companion!”

Li Xiaoyan’s command was sharp. Zhuang Xiaochen was about to obey when Xu Weiyang, seemingly by accident, brushed his red-tasseled spear against a wooden panel on the dungeon door.

The panel turned, and a bronze mirror flashed, suddenly reflecting Li Xiaoyan.

“Well, well—looks like your fox tail is showing,” Xu Weiyang remarked with a soft laugh, glancing at the mirror.

“You dare defy my orders?” Li Xiaoyan bellowed.

“You’re wearing your official robes,” Xu Weiyang replied coolly. “Yet no true official would wear them outside of formal occasions. That alone is enough. Besides, you may think this bronze mirror, inlaid in the wood without ornament or pattern, is unremarkable—but it is, in truth, a demon-revealing mirror.”

As Xu Weiyang spoke, his tone grew ever more frigid.

Li Xiaoyan glanced up and saw, reflected in the bronze, a bushy, russet fox tail flicking behind him—and a pointed, cunning snout snapping open and shut atop a fox’s head.

“Now!” Xu Weiyang shouted, and without hesitation drove his red-tasseled spear toward the chest of “Li Xiaoyan.”

Zhuang Xiaochen hesitated; only when he, too, glanced up and saw the true form revealed in the mirror did he realize the opportunity for a pincer attack had passed.

The fox demon leapt nimbly to the left, retreating as it shifted form: one moment a seductive, scantily clad woman, her eyes pleading and alluring as she gazed at Xu Weiyang; the next, a handsome, scholarly youth. The transformations were endless, but none could shake Xu Weiyang’s resolve to destroy the creature.

“You care nothing for beauties, nor for young men!” the fox demon exclaimed, struggling to withstand Xu Weiyang’s relentless spearwork. Forced back more than ten paces, its body already bore several bleeding gashes.

The spear sang sharply.

Xu Weiyang held his weapon at an angle, frowning at the fox demon, who smiled coquettishly in yet another guise. Suddenly, his spear spun, and he hurled it toward the red wall.

“A ruse to lure me away?” Xu Weiyang turned to see the bared-fanged gray wolf pinned against the wall, then smirked coldly, regarding the fox demon before him.

So the monsters would play at strategy with him.

Xu Weiyang noted that the fox clearly had chances to escape or dash into the dungeon, yet refrained from both. Its true aim was obvious.

“The Demon-Taming Academy should be razed to the ground. How could you monsters ever comprehend human reason or study the classics of the sages? You ought to be flayed and butchered, made into our garments and our food!”

His voice turned icy. Clenching his fist, he summoned the red-tasseled spear, which vibrated where it pinned the wolf, then flew back into his grasp.

“You humans never once considered living alongside us demons,” the fox demon snarled. “So-called Demon-Taming Academy? Ha! Nothing but a place to breed slaves for your own desires!”

The fox shed its disguise, revealing its monstrous form, towering three meters high, fur bristling, thick, suffocating demonic energy roiling around it. Its fox eyes had lost all their native charm, replaced by a seething resentment and fury as it stared at the severed wolf’s head cleaved by Zhuang Xiaochen’s phoenix-headed axe.