Under the magical power of the Soul-Sealing Talisman, the Mist-Riding Lord's soul would ordinarily still have been able to struggle. But earlier, while Qian Chen had been explaining, he had deliberately sent a thread of voice-transmission to the man — he did not want to be left without an audience, which would have been terribly awkward. That thread had unexpectedly shattered the Mist-Riding Lord's confidence completely, and so sealing his soul went off without a hitch, an answer to every question.
Qian Chen stirred the talisman and asked, "These Twelve Yuan Chen you spoke of — who are they? And what have they to do with the Four Seas Hall?"
Listening to the Mist-Riding Lord's flat, wooden explanation, Qian Chen finally learned the truth: the Twelve Yuan Chen were the most vicious, the most ruthless, the most terrifying, the most cruel band of robbers the jianghu had ever known. They took the twelve earthly branches as their signs, each member wearing a mask, none of them knowing another's identity.
Only the Dragon Head knew each one's true identity. They were all villains he had gathered after uncovering their secrets — some by invitation, some by threats.
Every one of the Twelve Yuan Chen hid behind a mysterious identity. Beneath the mask might be a revered elder of the martial world, a champion whose name once shook the jianghu, an underworld figure who vanished years ago, a great jianghu bandit — or even a dead man.
They robbed and plundered. Through the Dragon Head they summoned companions; once the time to strike was agreed, on a chosen day they would all come killing at the gates together, and their methods always meant the extermination of the whole household, sparing neither chickens nor dogs. Even one of them acting alone would raise a storm of blood; when two or three joined forces, it already became a great case that shook the martial world.
And if the Dragon Head mustered all twelve of the Yuan Chen, the deed was certain to shake heaven and earth.
Since the founding of the Twelve Yuan Chen, all twelve had moved together only twice, and each time a boundless sea of blood had surged through the jianghu, waves towering to the sky.
Now, with Martial Alliance Leader Hong Sihai's sixtieth birthday at hand, the Four Seas Hall was crowded with guests, and heroes had arrived from every quarter to offer their congratulations. Yet it was at precisely this moment that the Dragon Head had summoned the Twelve Yuan Chen — and the target they had fixed upon was... Hong Sihai! Years before, when Hong Sihai led the righteous path to destroy the Demonic Cult, the Twelve Yuan Chen had not dared provoke the gathered righteous heroes. Instead they had seized the chance to ambush the families of fleeing Cult disciples, and had savagely tortured the Demonic Cult Master's family to death.
When the news reached the Cult's main altar, which was then still holding off the righteous path's invasion, the Cult Master's mind collapsed on the spot — and that was how he fell to the righteous path.
The Twelve Yuan Chen had certainly not butchered the Cult Master's family in the name of justice. They did it for the boundless wealth and peerless martial arts the Demonic Cult had amassed over a thousand years. For a thousand years the Cult's name had blazed across the world; it held countless divine weapons, secret manuals, and riches. Legend said that all these hoards, lest the Cult's power wither in later generations, had been sealed away in a secret vault —
kept as the hope of the Demonic Cult's resurgence.
After torturing the Cult Master's family to death, the Twelve Yuan Chen had indeed wrung a few clues out of them, but the most crucial riddle of the secret vault had been carried on the Cult Master's own person. Only when the two secrets were united could the treasure vault be unearthed. And that one clue, according to the Dragon Head's investigations over the years, had at last been confirmed to lie in the hands of Martial Alliance Leader Hong Sihai.
So the Twelve Yuan Chen had gathered again — this time to destroy the Four Seas Hall.
To ambush and slay Hong Sihai, already old and failing...
"I said it all along — whenever the jianghu holds a grand gathering like this, trouble always follows. The Twelve Yuan Chen moving against Hong Sihai, righteous and evil on a collision course: this time's main quest, it seems," Qian Chen said, shaking his head. "But your Twelve Yuan Chen are a strange lot! Why not strike at some ordinary time? Why insist on the very moment Hong Sihai has invited the heroes of the world to his banquet?"
"When the righteous path's masters are as thick as clouds?"
"Isn't that just raising the difficulty for yourselves?"
The Mist-Riding Lord's soul spoke in a wooden voice: "Because every one of us has a public identity to keep up. Unless we use this chance, with so many strangers and rogues mingled among the guests, to slip into the Four Seas Hall and muddy the waters until its defenses can no longer cover every side, then bursting into a hall so heavily guarded on the strength of our arms alone — even if we succeeded, it would be nine deaths to one life, with casualties certain to be dreadful.
"When the righteous heroes gather, they look powerful, but in truth each of them has his own secrets, his own grudges and tangled interests. Strong as they are, they are a heap of loose sand — all the easier for us to move against them from the dark.
"And even if the righteous path catches one of us, since we do not know one another's identities, it is hard for him to implicate the rest.
"So this is the most fitting moment after all."
"If the Dragon Head were captured, wouldn't your Twelve Yuan Chen be finished completely?" Qian Chen asked, puzzled.
At this, the Mist-Riding Lord, his soul under the seal, actually showed an eerie, dreadful smile. "You have no idea how terrifying the Dragon Head is. He is not a man — he is a venomous dragon lurking in the abyss. Every one of us could die and the Dragon Head might still come to no harm. Whoever thinks the Dragon Head is the sole weak point of our Twelve Yuan Chen does not understand that he has found the deadliest spot on that venomous dragon... a lamb walking into the dragon's jaws!"
"You seem to have great faith in him!" Qian Chen said mildly, hands clasped behind his back. "And am I not more fearsome than he is?"
The Mist-Riding Lord said, "You are a very terrifying man. But the Dragon Head is no man at all. He is an evil ghost of a god-demon, attached to a human body. He is the one existence you can never defeat."
"That description..." Qian Chen let out a soft breath. "Thinking it over carefully, of all the heroes I have heard of in this life, only Taishang could deserve such words. So today, am I to face an enemy the likes of Taishang?"
Qian Chen doubled over clutching his belly, shaking with laughter...
"The Reincarnation World really does have plenty of country bumpkins!"
At last Qian Chen asked, "Just what flaw of mine did you spot, that you decided to poison me?"
The Mist-Riding Lord's soul showed a strange expression. "You showed no flaw at all... Does one need a reason to poison a man to death? I was simply in a bad mood today."
At those words, Qian Chen fell silent.
"And what is your true identity?" Qian Chen began searching the Mist-Riding Lord's corpse, carefully stowing the many poisons away in the Dragon Sparrow Ring. From beneath the tea stall's stove he took out a bronze mask shaped like a giant serpent in flight — the token of the Twelve Yuan Chen. On the other side, the Mist-Riding Lord made his confession: "Openly, I am the foremost divine physician of the jianghu, Qi Qiuzi."
"Then what about the real Qi Qiuzi?" Qian Chen asked offhandedly.
"I am the real Qi Qiuzi. To cultivate the great art handed down by my master, the Azure Spirit Five Poisons Incarnation Scripture, I joined the Twelve Yuan Chen at the Dragon Head's invitation. The jianghu knows only that my medical arts are superb; it has no idea my martial arts and poisons are every bit as fine.
"Beyond Grandmaster, we open the gate of heaven and earth and gain command of the primordial qi.
"But the primordial qi is savagely violent. An ordinary Grandmaster can only handle it with the greatest caution, lest its fury destroy his body. To truly become a peerless master, one can only wield the primordial qi through a divine weapon, reaching the supreme realm where a single strike changes the color of heaven and earth. The gap between an ordinary Grandmaster and a Grandmaster who holds a divine weapon is boundless... I refused to remain an ordinary Grandmaster, healing the sick and saving lives day after day, with nothing to do but poison my enemies in the dark whenever I ran into them. So I will forge the divine weapon my school keeps secret — the Azure Phosphor Five Poisons."
Chapter 10