Chapter 73

"Come out!" Yu Jia shot to his feet, scanning the room with a frown. He could clearly sense a third presence, yet his gaze found nothing.

"Who—" Before the words left his mouth, a sharp whistle split the air, and a long whip coiled around him in an instant!

The bride, still veiled, sensed something amiss and moved to lift her covering, but Lin Yu was faster. With a single palm strike to the side of the bride's neck, the woman crumpled without even a cry.

In the same motion, Lin Yu yanked the bone whip back with her other hand. The whip elongated and spiraled around Yu Jia, wrapping him from head to toe until he resembled a silkworm in a cocoon. With the pull, he was dragged to the ground, helpless.

Yu Jia hit the floor hard, the impact dulling his senses for a moment. His temple scraped against the ground, breaking the skin. Lin Yu, whip in hand, stepped deliberately toward him.

Through the gaps in the bone whip, Yu Jia managed to prop himself up on one elbow, straining to see his attacker. He caught a glimpse of a black skirt trimmed with crow feathers, then raised his gaze. The moment he recognized her, disbelief flashed across his face.

"You—mmph!"

Lin Yu bent down and clamped her hand around his throat, choking off the rest of his words. Her grip was iron, leaving him unable to make a sound. The bone whip slithered over his body like a serpent, tightening with every passing second.

Yu Jia didn't understand why Lin Yu would go for the kill, but he had lost the initiative, taken by surprise before he could react. He'd never seen a whip made of such bone, yet he knew that if Lin Yu truly wanted him dead, no struggle would save him.

Lin Yu herself didn't realize the extent of her fury. Her emotions had spiraled beyond control. She looked at Yu Jia's contorted face and felt an inexplicable revulsion—and heinous things deserved death.

Just as Yu Jia thought he might be strangled to death, he craned his neck with the last of his strength, trying to see the bride in her crimson wedding dress. He mumbled something unintelligible, but Lin Yu had no patience to listen. She only tightened her grip, nearly snapping his neck outright.

"Xiao Yu?" A sudden voice cut through.

Lin Yu froze for a moment, her grip loosening. Air rushed back into Yu Jia's lungs, and he gasped greedily, coughing and trembling violently from the sudden intake.

Lin Yu pulled herself back from the depths of her hatred, momentarily unsure whether the voice was real or a phantom. Even the tightening whip paused for a beat. Yu Jia seized the chance to struggle free from the loosened coils, scrambling to his feet.

But the instant he steadied himself, Lin Yu fired a curse seal at him, and he spat out a mouthful of blood.

She ignored him then, staring blankly at the bride who had woken up. The bride had already lifted her veil on her own, revealing a face Lin Yu had seen in her dreams a thousand times.

Lin Zhao's long hair fell past her cheeks, her pretty almond eyes fixed directly on Lin Yu.

It took Lin Yu a long moment to find her voice. "Sis... sister?"

Lin Zhao smiled at her. "Xiao Yu, it's me, your sister. I've come back."

Lin Yu's expression shifted. The woman before her was all smiles, but two exchanged words were enough to expose the flaw—Lin Zhao would never call her "Xiao Yu."

The first time this fake "Lin Zhao" had spoken, Lin Yu had been bewitched by the familiar voice, overlooking the wrong endearment. Now, with her emotions back under control, one sentence was all it took to reveal the impostor.

Yu Jia, slumped nearby and swallowing blood, overheard their exchange and forced himself upright. He murmured, "Sister?"

"How could A-Zhao be your sister..." he rasped, blood in his mouth. "If she's your sister, then you're..."

"Lin Jiyue?!"

Yu Jia didn't know the relationship between Lin Yu and Lin Zhao, but he knew Lin Zhao had only one sister, named Lin Jiyue.

He'd never imagined they could be the same person. He had entered the Cultivation Academy a decade ago; he knew exactly what that name meant. Before the shock could even settle, an invisible bind seized his throat once more.

"How do you know that?" Lin Yu was unnervingly calm. With a twist of her floating fingers, Yu Jia lurched forward!

"Who told you?" Her voice was low, on the edge of another eruption.

Before Yu Jia could answer, Lin Yu recalled the Fate Book the Snow God had mentioned. Lin Zhao would never utter Lin Jiyue's name to anyone, not even Yu Jia. That left only one possibility—

Yu Jia had learned about Lin Zhao's sister from someone else. In this world, only Lin Zhao and Hu Sheng knew her true identity.

And two people were still searching for her: Immortal Lord He and the Moon God.

Of the two, Immortal Lord He had already checked her Fate Book and confirmed her death, severing the line. But Lin Yu had overlooked a detail: her Fate Book recorded not only herself but also her parents and sister.

Her parents were dead; Lin Jiyue was dead. Yet Lin Zhao still lived.

If Immortal Lord He could check her Fate Book, so could the Moon God. Either of them, by tracing the other names linked to her, could easily find Lin Zhao's Fate Book, and from there locate Yu Jia. As Imperial Preceptor, he was even easier to reach. Someone had used him as a proxy to find Lin Zhao's sister.

"Whose orders?" Lin Yu asked, her tone flat. "The Moon God or Immortal Lord He? Speak."

Yu Jia's face twisted, but he still managed a smile through gritted teeth. "Do you want to die with me, Lin Jiyue?"

He laughed suddenly. "Of course, you've got nerve. You'd dare anything. Who else knows your true identity? Does His Majesty? Does the Xianzun?"

Yu Jia raised a hand, deflecting the invisible grasp. With a sharp crack, a blinding burst of light erupted between them. Lin Yu was thrown back by the shockwave; the intricate wedding chamber's array of ritual vessels clattered and shattered across the floor.

Yu Jia took a deep breath, steadying himself, and quickly recovered some vitality. His eyes flashed with cruelty. "Since you're A-Zhao's sister, then today, you must die!"

The bone whip spun through the air, just managing to intercept Yu Jia's strike. They matched each other blow for blow, their stamina draining at a terrifying pace. Lin Zhao, terrified, had scrambled to hide outside the door, not daring to move.

But soon, Lin Yu noticed something wrong. Yu Jia had taken two hits unguarded at the start; she had struck relentlessly, making him cough up blood. He couldn't possibly have lasted this long in a standoff.

He was burning his lifetime of cultivation—his very life force—to fight her!

Yet Yu Jia grew more incredulous with each exchange. "You've only been cultivating for a few months! Where do you get such powerful spells?!"

Lin Yu found it absurd. "Don't forget, Imperial Preceptor, I'm a heretical cultivator. If I kill you, I can simply take all your cultivation for myself."

"You—!"

They traded several more moves, the stalemate persisting. Then, a flash of crimson drifted by the doorway. Lin Yu, quick as lightning, whipped out a spare hand and used the bone whip to snatch Lin Zhao, who cried out in surprise.

"Don't move, or I'll kill her," Lin Yu said, pinning Lin Zhao with one arm and glaring ice-cold.

"What are you doing? She's your sister!" Yu Jia panicked, unable to contain himself. "She's your only family! A sister is like a mother—this is patricide!"

"Is that so?" Lin Yu's tone was mocking. "But she's not my sister. Imperial Preceptor, you've been fooled. You found a substitute so fake it's an insult to my sister."

Lin Yu continued, "You came to me once before, wanting to go to Jiangnan together. That was for the resurrected people there."

"What nonsense are you spouting?!" Yu Jia trembled, waving at Lin Zhao across from him. "A... A-Zhao, come here."

Lin Yu had reverted to her usual cool demeanor. "Later, you realized the dead can't truly return—even if they do, it's an illusion that rots quickly. So you abandoned the plan of resurrection and sought out Immortal Lord He."

She tested the name "Immortal Lord He," and sure enough, Yu Jia's face froze for a moment. She'd guessed right.

The Moon God wouldn't concern himself with mortals' lives; if he wanted someone, he had better ways. But Immortal Lord He was different—his domain was only marriage and fate.

"You begged Immortal Lord He, so he made you a substitute, with the price being that you find Lin Zhao's sister and kill her." Lin Yu kept speaking in a tone of certainty, and Yu Jia's face grew paler by the second.

Lin Zhao grew anxious, tears welling in her eyes. "Xiao Yu, what are you saying? I'm Lin Zhao... Please don't be like this. Sister is scared..."

Lin Yu had no patience for her pleas. She shoved the woman forward. Yu Jia rushed to catch her, but he failed to steady Lin Zhao's swaying form.

Suddenly, the sound of a blade piercing flesh was starkly clear. The crimson tip of a knife emerged through Lin Zhao's body. Fresh, warm blood matched the color of her wedding dress, the bright red flooding Yu Jia's vision.

Lin Yu had unhesitatingly stabbed the sister she had longed for day and night. The blade's gleam in her eyes was nothing but dead calm. "Who told you to call me Xiao Yu?"

She watched Lin Zhao fall, blood seeping out, though it seemed less than one would expect. "You're not convincing. You fooled him, but not me."

She enunciated each word with clarity: "Immortal Lord He."

"Are you so afraid you can't even say my name?"

As she spoke, a beam of light shot out from Lin Zhao's body. The flesh that lost its support quickly dissolved into a pool of blood, vanishing without a trace.

Yu Jia was left speechless by the sight. When he finally reacted, reaching out to grab, his hands only met the bloody muck on the floor, nothing left. The light in his eyes went out completely. He muttered Lin Zhao's name to the empty air, over and over.

"No... this isn't right. I wanted to make amends. It was just a mistake. None of this is our fault..."

He suddenly stood, swaying uncontrollably, sobbing and howling. "No! It can't be! How could she be fake? You're lying! Lying to me! She can't die, she won't die, you're all lying!"

"You're lying to me..." His voice gradually softened from a scream back to a low whisper, like a lover's intimate murmur. "A-Zhao... Lin Zhao..."

He felt something cold against his neck and looked up numbly to see a face with a faint resemblance to Lin Zhao. He had never noticed before that Lin Yu and Lin Zhao shared even a slight likeness.

Lin Yu pressed a sword to his blood-stained neck, her tone commanding without room for argument. "Now, I ask, and you answer."