Earthquake

He Zhuoming immediately shook her head like a rattle—writing her real name for a monster that could be a True Deity or a Corrupted Deity was far too dangerous, and she wasn't about to do something that stupid.

The young man propped his cheek on one hand and frowned in displeasure. "You don't like this, you don't like that. What do you want, then? You're being awfully ungrateful."

He Zhuoming covered her ears and turned her back to him.

Who knew which of his words were bait and which were traps? He was even deliberately using Lin Qingyun's face to shake her resolve. He Zhuoming decided the simplest solution was out of sight, out of mind.

Once she turned away, the young man fell silent, and an eerie stillness settled around them.

He Zhuoming immediately regretted showing him her unprotected back—hadn't adults always taught her that when you meet a vicious dog, you must never turn and run, because the moment it saw your back, it would lunge and bite?

She'd never had a run-in with a vicious dog, but the situation felt much the same. Her exposed back left her feeling utterly vulnerable.

After hesitating again and again, she steeled herself and turned back around to face him. Her palms were sweating as she gripped the edge of the comic book, and she stole a cautious, careful glance at him while quietly moving her right hand to the hilt of her wooden sword, curling her fingers around it.

The young man wasn't talking, but he wasn't idle either—he was fiddling with the other things he'd pulled from He Zhuoming's backpack. He'd already grown bored of those incomprehensible papers, and now he'd reached for her phone.

He Zhuoming's eyelids twitched nervously at the sight, but she suppressed the urge to lunge forward and snatch it back.

She consoled herself: it's a smartphone! And it's turned off! No matter how clever this ancient monster was, there was no way he could figure out how to use a smartphone—

Besides, this was a perfect opportunity. While he was absorbed in studying the phone, she could try to escape again.

He Zhuoming swallowed hard, carefully shuffling backward along the ground until she reached the edge of the flower bed. She never took her eyes off the young man, and he never once looked up from the phone.

Clearly, he was far more interested in the phone than in textbooks or exam papers.

Perfectly natural.

She finally slipped off the flower bed, wiped the cold sweat from her forehead, and was just about to bolt when her collar was suddenly yanked from behind, lifting her clean off her feet. She screamed in fright, and her right hand—still clutching the sword hilt—struck back instinctively.

She had practiced her swordplay every single day without fail, honing those few single-handed techniques to near perfection. Now, in this critical moment, she unleashed strength that surpassed even her usual practice. Her backhanded strike sliced clean across his arm and drove into his chest.

The sword was made of wood, yet when it came to thrusting, it was sharp enough that it hardly seemed like wood at all—He Zhuoming didn't know this was because Tang Shuyu had cast a spell on the blade.

The young man's sleeve split open in a long gash, and the flesh beneath tore along with it in a narrow, shallow wound.

The wooden sword lodged in his chest, but it didn't penetrate deeply. He Zhuoming had no experience killing anyone; she'd struck the wrong angle, missing his heart entirely, and the blade got stuck against his ribs. Her shriek cut off abruptly the instant the sword connected, her eyes going wide, her expression a mix of lingering terror and utter bewilderment—even more stunned than when she'd kicked him earlier.

The young man didn't even raise an eyebrow. His movements didn't pause in the slightest. Using the arm with the torn flesh, he smoothly grabbed He Zhuoming and set her back on the flower bed, placing her in front of him.

He even had the presence of mind to make sure she was steady.

He loosened his grip on her collar only slightly, and when He Zhuoming wobbled on her weak legs, nearly tumbling off the edge of the flower bed, his half-open hand immediately tightened around her collar again and hoisted her forward.

This time she was steady, but her heart was even more panicked. She tried to pull the wooden sword free, but it was stuck fast. She tugged twice with all her might, and the sword didn't budge.

The young man pointed at a spot just above and to the left of where the blade had entered, tracing a line across his red robe with his pale, elegant fingers. He grinned as he taught her, "You're so clumsy. You need to strike along this line, then the weapon won't hit the ribs and get stuck."

He Zhuoming had only ever used the wooden sword to chop at plants and flowers. This was her first time stabbing a person, and even though she knew the young man was probably no good, she was terrified out of her wits. She stammered an apology: "I—I didn't mean to... I'm sorry..."

Even as she apologized, she was still trying to yank her wooden sword free. The young man grabbed the blade and pushed it out for her—the sword came loose.

The sword was out, but the young man kept holding the blade, refusing to let go.

He Zhuoming, caught between fear and caution, tentatively tugged the sword toward herself, hoping he'd release it. But the young man's grip on the blade didn't budge. The wound on his arm split further from the strain, yet no blood flowed out.

The cut only went through the outermost layer of skin, which looked human. Beneath it, there was neither blood nor flesh—only layer upon layer of wood grain.

With his other free hand, he held up the phone, screen facing He Zhuoming, and said with a smile, "So we're friends after all. Why didn't you say so earlier?"

The phone, which should have been powered off, was now lit up, playing a five-second video: in it, He Zhuoming had her arms looped around Lin Qingyun's neck, forcing him to lean over, their two faces pressed intimately together in the frame.

He Zhuoming's scalp crawled. Her mind went blank. Her modern common sense shattered into pieces in that instant. She flicked her gaze from the phone screen to the young man's face, wanting to ask whether he, too, had transmigrated from the modern era.

Could an ancient person really figure out how to turn on a phone and navigate through a sea of apps to find the photo gallery?

The young man, wearing Lin Qingyun's face, looked at He Zhuoming, then down at the screen. His eyes curved, his smile radiant—a smile that was the spitting image of Lin Qingyun's smile in the video.

In a light, matter-of-fact tone, he said, "But see, you can smile! Why do you always cry at me? Smile for me too, won't you?"

As he spoke, he stepped closer to He Zhuoming. She looked at that smile, identical to the one in the video, and only felt terror. Her eyes flew wide in fright, and on instinct she raised the wooden sword, pointing the tip straight at him.

The young man glanced down at the sword pressed against his chest, noticing that the spot she'd aimed at was precisely the one he'd shown her earlier—the place where a strike would kill instantly.

Coincidence? Or was she simply gifted?

The young man gently wrapped his fingers around the blade, his voice faint and plaintive. "Aren't we good friends? You won't tell me your name, and now you're pointing a sword at me? That breaks my heart, friend."

His expression remained smiling as he spoke, his brows slanting into a sorrowful arch—a rueful sort of smile. It was too similar—the expression, the tone of voice.

But the more he resembled Lin Qingyun, the more horrified He Zhuoming became. Gritting her courage, she knocked the phone out of his hand with the wooden sword and shouted, "I'm not your friend! Stop pretending to be my friend!"

"Even if you wear his face, you're nothing like him! He's a good person, not a monster like you who tricks people into gambling and loan sharking!"

Lin Qingyun had saved her, a complete stranger, in that mountain village. He'd taken care of her without expecting anything in return, taught her swordplay, and even dug graves in a favorable feng shui spot for the dead villagers so they could have a better rebirth...

The more she thought about it, the more she felt Lin Qingyun and this monster before her were worlds apart. As she glared at the young man, anger welled up alongside her fear.

Her eyes were already wide with fear, but when she got angry, they somehow grew even rounder. Tears still clung to her lashes, but her whole aura had shifted. Even the glistening teardrops seemed to have turned to magma—touch them and they'd burn straight through your palm.

The young man blinked, his smile fading slightly. He tilted his head to glance at his now-empty palm.

He looked puzzled. "You're angry? Why?"

He Zhuoming gritted her teeth, swallowed back her sobs, and shouted, "I won't let you do bad things using my friend's face!"

The young man kept his baffled expression. "Aren't we good friends? But friend, you're so mean to me. You won't even smile at me—how strange. Why?"

He Zhuoming was so furious she stabbed him in the shoulder. "You're not my friend!"

Actually, this strike had been aimed at the monster's heart, but He Zhuoming still couldn't bring herself to go for the kill. She had an indescribable fear of taking a life, so at the last moment, she shifted her aim and hit his shoulder instead.

But the young man seemed to feel no pain. Even with the sword stuck in his shoulder, he kept walking toward He Zhuoming.

As he advanced, He Zhuoming stumbled backward in panic, still trying to yank her sword free—but to her horror, the blade had lodged itself in bone again.

She couldn't pull the sword out; instead, she ended up dragging the young man closer.

She jumped back several paces as if fleeing a plague, the tears on her lashes trembling, glittering in the fragmented light. Fear was once again winning out.

He Zhuoming couldn't understand it. How could a person have so many bones? How could they keep catching her sword so easily? That's not how it worked in the martial arts dramas!

The young man stared at her flustered face. From the moment they'd met, she'd been crying, snarling at him, or avoiding him like this.

What was wrong with this girl!

She hadn't been like this in the memory stone. Shouldn't she have come up to him, smiled at him, pressed her cheek against his—the way she did with the other puppets—and then told him her name?

A faint thread of melancholy crept up in the young man's heart. He said, "Fine, I admit, the Tang Shuyu who left his mark on the memory stone with you isn't me. But what difference does it make? We're both 'Tang Shuyu.' I don't mind sharing a friend with him, and he wouldn't mind either."

"Whatever that Tang Shuyu gave you, I'll give you double. Just treat me like him, won't you? We look the same—at least I'm way better than that blind fool in the Divine Palace. I can see, you know..."

He was still talking when suddenly the ground began to shake violently beneath them. Both he and He Zhuoming were thrown off balance onto the flower bed.

*

Crimson threads drifted out from every inch of the stark white room, wrapping tightly and irresistibly around the Blind Puppet, nearly binding him into a blurred red silhouette.

It looked almost exactly like the Pear Garden Earth Immortal's idol in the main hall.

The crimson figure paused in place for a moment, then suddenly took a step—the red threads surged forward, piling up around his body in a dense shell that hindered his progress.

This was a secret array specifically laid down by the Xia Kingdom's royal family, designed as a contingency in case the possession failed and the Guye Immortal degenerated into a Corrupted Deity. But who would have thought that the possession, while failing, hadn't entirely failed—the sacrifice they'd so carefully chosen had become a True Deity instead.

So the array still served its purpose: to restrain this young True Deity of questionable origin, keeping him from living too freely.

This was also the reason the Blind Puppet had been created—he was made to stay here, to take the place of the original body and bear the array's confinement.

As for helping with chores and presiding over the Divine Palace, those were things the Blind Puppet had taken up later, out of sheer boredom, to pass the time.

Most True Deities were extremely particular about their subordinates overstepping boundaries, but Tang Shuyu didn't care. He would even dump some of his True Deity duties onto his subordinate gods. Even when the Blind Puppet performed his divine duties and answered the prayers of his followers, Tang Shuyu remained tacitly approving.

Over time, the people of the Pear Garden had come to worship the Blind Puppet as part of the Earth Immortal.

And now, the Blind Puppet—who should have been sitting quietly at the center of the array in Tang Shuyu's place—dragged his body covered in dense red threads, step by step, toward the exit of the room.

The threads grew tauter and tauter, gradually slicing through his skin and embedding themselves into his flesh and bone.

Sharp pain spread across every part of his body. In his daze, he felt he'd already been cut into a tangle of red threads—one more step and he'd dissolve into a mess scattered everywhere.

He unconsciously curled his fingers, feeling the withered crabapple blossom in his palm. The dense red threads, thick as air, were shut out by his closed hand, and the blossom remained utterly uncut.

As long as he could still touch the crabapple blossom, he was still alive—the Blind Puppet let out a faint sigh of relief.

Normally, when he walked this far out, the Blind Puppet would stop. After all, he didn't really want to die.

But this time was different. His desire to leave this place was stronger than ever, and he didn't care what consequences might follow once he stepped outside.

After all, he was only a puppet. This kind of thing should be handled by the original body himself. The original was grown up by now; it was high time he learned to do his own work.

The crabapple trees that perpetually canopied the stairs suddenly parted to both sides.

The scorching summer afternoon sunlight fell onto the steps, and onto the red threads spilling out from the doorway.

Countless red threads converged, flowing softly down the stairs, wrapping around the Blind Puppet in dense layers.

He could barely catch a single ray of sunlight—the barrier of red threads blocked it all. With every step forward, it felt like he was being sliced by a thousand blades.

If he could bleed, the blood flowing from the back of his hand into his palm alone would have dyed the crabapple blossom the same scarlet as the flowers near the steps.

But the Blind Puppet felt a surge of elation, because he suddenly realized that leaving the room wasn't actually all that difficult, and it wouldn't really kill him.

And so, all the crabapple trees in the Divine Palace suddenly came to life.

Serving as the Blind Puppet's ears, his hands, his feet, they stretched out in every direction, listening to all the chaotic sounds, searching for Xiao He amidst the pandemonium. Meanwhile, the secret array was yanked until it swayed precariously, sending tremors through the entire Divine Palace, like a violent earthquake.

The Pear Garden—already thrown into chaos by the mysterious deaths of dozens of people at the gambling arena—was stirred into a bubbling, burning mess by the sudden earthquake.

The Blind Puppet moved through the panicked crowd. Anyone unlucky enough to brush against the red threads trailing behind him was instantly sliced into a puddle of wet red threads that spilled across the ground.

The wild-growing crabapple trees crossed their boundaries, burrowing into the temporary shrines other True Deities had erected. The vestiges of divine thought left by those deities were no match for the Blind Puppet—they were crushed at first contact.

And so the lotuses, willows, peonies, and other flowers beloved by those True Deities all withered and rotted, and from their rotten branches new crabapple shoots sprouted.

He Zhuoming slammed into the young man's chest amid the violent tremors. Panicking, she fumbled around for her wooden sword but found nothing—only what felt like an exam paper from some subject lying on the ground.

The young man looped his arm around her waist and hoisted her up. He Zhuoming cried, "Earthquake... it's an earthquake?!"

The young man jumped down from the flower bed, muttering to himself with a grim expression, "What is that blind fool doing?"

He Zhuoming clawed desperately at his arm, but he paid her no mind, carrying her along as he walked. The earthquake continued, yet the young man moved with perfect steadiness.

All the gamblers had vanished, leaving only empty gambling tables rattling and rolling across the floor as the trembling shook them, dice bouncing every which way.