The celestial radiance drifted out with the mist from the ancient-style architectural complex at the ship's stern.
Yet, blocked by a courtyard wall over ten zhang high, only the closely set rooftops of those ancient buildings could be seen—red-gold glazed tiles for roofing, luminous divine wood for beams. There were pavilions, halls, ancient pagodas...
Between the towering wall, grand as a city rampart, and the nine-story deckhouse lay a stretch of open deck a hundred meters wide.
Gone was Xie Jin's earlier arrogance and swagger. He sat on the first step of the stone staircase leading to the cast-bronze gate, a steel pipe clutched in hand, anxiously peering toward the deckhouse passageway from time to time.
He had truly become a startled bird at the twang of a bow, jumping at shadows.
Behind him stretched dozens of stone steps.
At the top of the stairs stood the cast-bronze gate leading into the courtyard wall. Standing roughly three zhang high, it was magnificent and imposing. The left leaf bore a relief carving of countless domestic hearths and lamplit homes, while the right leaf depicted a starry cosmos resembling the Yellow Springs river, its location in the universe unknown.
"Dr. Qi, what's the situation now?"
Seeing Qi Shanshan emerge from the passageway, Xie Jin grasped at her like a lifeline. His spirits rallied slightly, and he hurried forward to ask in a nervous whisper.
Qi Shanshan brought good news: "Don't worry. Li Weiyi and the people from Lab 705 fought to a mutual standstill. For now, no one has the energy to deal with you."
"Great!"
Xie Jin's mind raced. "Let's plan this out. You poison the food, and I'll launch a sneak attack. We'll wipe out that bloodthirsty butcher Li Weiyi and the people from Lab 705 together."
"Alright, that's just what I was thinking."
Qi Shanshan produced a bag of food and held it out. "You haven't eaten all day, have you? You look about ready to collapse from hunger. It's a bit cold, but eat something to keep going."
Xie Jin was indeed ravenous, his stomach sticking to his ribs. As he wolfed it down, he mumbled indistinctly, "Li Weiyi definitely swallowed the relic, which is why he became so strong. But no matter how powerful he is, he's still flesh and blood. Poison—deadly poison—can definitely kill him... Once that's done... Ah... You... The food you gave me..."
A violent convulsion seized Xie Jin's guts, as though his stomach were filled with razor blades. Unable to stand upright, he glared at Qi Shanshan in disbelief.
Qi Shanshan stepped back three paces, her hands thrust into her pockets, her gaze indifferent. "Just as you suggested. Poison in the food—deadly poison, concocted from the blood of the Black Flood Dragon's corpse."
"Bitch! The reason we lost so miserably... it had to be because of you! You were in league with that pretty boy all along... Pfui—"
Xie Jin lunged toward Qi Shanshan, but after just three strides, he collapsed to the deck.
He twitched violently, bloody foam sputtering from his mouth.
Visibly to the naked eye, his skin began to blacken and fester.
Qi Shanshan walked over and gave Xie Jin a gentle kick. Confirming he was thoroughly dead, she muttered with a sneer, "You're only half right. I wasn't in league with him before; I was truly helping you all. But now..."
Allying with Xie Tianshu and his men had been the only path to survival she could see at the time.
Yet she held Xie Tianshu and the others' character and competence in utter contempt.
Especially after learning of what happened to Liu Ying, she felt even more fortunate that Li Weiyi—a perfect partner—had appeared. He had strength, good looks, loyalty, affection, sharpness, and resolve; he could sympathize with the weak, yet never showed mercy to his enemies.
She didn't want to be merely Li Weiyi's partner.
She wanted to drop the "partner" part entirely.
Still, she knew she had missed the best opportunity to win him over. If only she had foreseen how things would turn out today, she would have snatched that bowl of fish soup away from Cai Yutong no matter what.
Shaking off her regret, Qi Shanshan began dragging Xie Jin's corpse toward the ship's bulwark.
As long as she cleaned up all traces here so Li Weiyi wouldn't notice anything amiss, she would completely sever ties with her past. In the future, she would have plenty of ways to win him over.
No matter how outstanding he was, he was still just a hot-blooded young boy.
"Xie Jin probably never dreamed that the most terrifying person on this ship wasn't me, but you."
Just as she managed to haul Xie Jin's corpse to the bulwark with great effort, Li Weiyi's voice rang in her ears. Calm as Qi Shanshan usually was, she was frightened out of her wits.
Yet in the brief moment it took her to stand up and smooth the stray hairs from her face, she had already devised a way to respond. "How long have you been here?" she asked calmly.
"Since Xie Jin collapsed."
Li Weiyi's tone was even. He stood by the deckhouse passageway, tall and upright.
Between them lay a distance of over twenty meters.
"So, you just stood there watching? Watching me drag a body around clumsily and painfully like a penguin?" Qi Shanshan reproached him with a playful pout, acting as though she were oblivious to the anger burning within him or the disappointment and pain written across his face.
Li Weiyi frowned, having no intention of bantering or flirting with her.
This was not something a few playful words could brush aside.
He walked into this deck area shrouded in celestial radiance. On the ground lay the corpses of four other expedition members, along with various chemical apparatuses and drugs.
In the corner lay the massive carcass of the bear-like creature. The wound on its abdomen had putrefied, giving off a pungent stench.
Evidently, it had died of its severe injuries on the day they crashed onto the Bronze Ship.
It was the Yellow Dragon Sword!
Even though it was an extraordinary creature, a wound torn open by the Yellow Dragon Sword could not heal; on the contrary, the rot only accelerated.
The corpses of the four expedition members each presented their own gruesome spectacle.
One had ruptured skin, reduced to mangled flesh and bones; another had grown scales over half its body while the other half festered; yet another had sprouted antennae from its head, though its skull had fractured.
Li Weiyi said, "So the rumor that four expedition members went to explore the stern and never returned—in truth, you used them for live human experimentation! Spreading that rumor and intentionally smearing the bear-like creature's blood near the deckhouse was all meant to terrify everyone so no expedition members would dare come here.
"That day by the deckhouse, you must have shouted at Gao Huan and me to back off because you were afraid we would come to the stern and uncover your secret, right?
"And Xie Tianshu dared to drink flood dragon blood only because he had already obtained definitive experimental results from you.
"The reason everyone fainted after eating breakfast was also because you provided the drugs to Kong Fan."
Li Weiyi stared intently into Qi Shanshan's eyes. "You are truly terrifying. You masked yourself so well. When you lie, there isn't a single flaw to be found. I was nearly fooled by you completely!"
Qi Shanshan's eyes reddened with immense grievance, her voice trembling in a sob: "I... I had no choice! You saw what happened to Liu Ying! If I didn't proactively do something, the one jumping over the side today would have been me! Only when a person has value can she survive, can she have a voice and status!"
Li Weiyi said, "Dr. Qi, how many people died because of you? If you hadn't provided them with drugs, they might never have succeeded."
Tears streamed down Qi Shanshan's cheeks. "I'm not like you! I don't possess such immense power, and I can't control my own fate! I could only choose to compromise! When Xie Jin held a blade to my throat, I either had to die or help him! Tell me, what choice did I have?"
Li Weiyi no longer knew whether he should believe her.
Qi Shanshan had helped him and saved him more than once.
Yet she was too clever, too skilled at lying, and far too adept at spinning stories.
Every expression she made, every word she uttered—though spoken with apparent emotional agitation—was bound to be carefully calculated. In fact, Xie Tianshu, Kong Fan, and the others might very well have been nothing more than her pawns.
Because she surely possessed the means to kill them, just as she had killed Xie Jin.
"You saved my life, so I won't kill you this time. But someone will definitely settle accounts with you for what you've done." Li Weiyi made it abundantly clear—he was only sparing her this once.
Qi Shanshan looked at him with sorrowful eyes. "Did I only save you once?"
At this moment, Li Weiyi deeply realized that one must never incur debts of gratitude.
With tear-filled eyes, Qi Shanshan continued, "Yes, I deserve to die. But I saved Yutong, and I saved you. Even if the entire world says I deserve death, neither of you has the right to pronounce that sentence on me. If you go tell them now, they will kill me immediately, and my fate will be just like those two security members thrown into the Soul Sea.
"You wouldn't be killing me yourself, but I would die because of you."
As for the lives and deaths of others, Li Weiyi might not press the matter to the very end—after all, he was no righteous judge.
Yet Qi Shanshan bore at least some responsibility for how his senior brother had ended up.
Li Weiyi said, "You are still useful, so I can give you a chance. Help me nurse Senior Brother back to health, and then he will decide what to do with you.
"But if Senior Brother doesn't make it through this, if anything happens to him, everyone involved will pay with their life. Not even the Heavens will be shown any mercy!"
Li Weiyi searched Qi Shanshan thoroughly to make sure she was carrying no dangerous items, then asked, "Where is Senior Cai?"
Qi Shanshan never could have imagined that Li Weiyi, who had always seemed so bright, kind, and modest before her, would have such terrifying eyes when mentioning his senior brother just now, radiating a chill that seemed to seep straight into her bones.
Only in this moment did she truly understand how frightening it was to cross Li Weiyi on matters of principle.
Had she not done two or three things right beforehand, she would undoubtedly be a corpse by now.
Qi Shanshan led Li Weiyi toward the second floor of the nine-story deckhouse. "No one dares come up here; it's very safe. By hiding her here, the turmoil couldn't reach her."
The passageway on the second floor was still lined with stone figurines.
Passing through these stone figures, they finally saw Cai Yutong lying on the floor.
"I only drugged her unconscious; it wasn't anything serious... Huh, why hasn't she woken up after so long?" Qi Shanshan realized something was wrong.
"Senior... Senior Cai..."
Li Weiyi knelt down to check on Cai Yutong.
"So hot!"
The moment his hand touched Cai Yutong's forehead, he recoiled in shock.
Her body was scalding hot, completely unlike any normal human body temperature.
"Let me see."
After checking the temperature of Cai Yutong's face, Qi Shanshan immediately moved to unbutton her clothes, but pausing as a thought struck her, she glanced at Li Weiyi beside her.
Li Weiyi turned around.
However, he channeled the scalding airflow from the center of his right sole and focused it into his ears.
Upon lifting the clothing, Qi Shanshan saw numerous golden vein-traces beneath the skin over Cai Yutong's chest. They seemed to sprout from her heart and spread throughout her entire body, shimmering with threads of flame-like golden light.
"Didn't you say that a human body could withstand a one-tenth concentration of Golden Crow blood? Why has such a disaster suddenly occurred?" Qi Shanshan stared at the unconscious Cai Yutong, muttering as if to herself, her voice filled with perplexity.
"Senior drank Golden Crow blood?" When Li Weiyi turned back around, Cai Yutong's clothes had already been pulled back over her.
Qi Shanshan nodded. "She believed that if the Golden Crow blood were diluted, a human body could endure it, so she experimented on herself. But her body temperature has already exceeded sixty degrees Celsius, and it's still rising rapidly."
Thinking of something, Qi Shanshan immediately took out the cross pendant and fastened it around Cai Yutong's neck.
This imperishable item had originally been acquired by Cai Yutong first.
Qi Shanshan had taken it from her after drugging her unconscious.
She thought the cross pendant might be able to suppress the destructive power of the Golden Crow blood, because while Cai Yutong had worn it, no such transformation had occurred.
Just as enduring the flood dragon mutation required wearing the dragon-patterned thumb ring.
Once the cross pendant had been removed, the power of the Golden Crow blood was unleashed, endangering Cai Yutong's life.
Fortunately, the blood had been diluted and its power released slowly. Otherwise, by the time she and Li Weiyi arrived, Cai Yutong might have already burned to ash.
...
Yet after the cross pendant was put on, Cai Yutong's body temperature climbed even faster instead.
Moments later, she was completely enveloped in golden flames.
Li Weiyi and Qi Shanshan dared not approach and backed far away.
"How bizarre! The temperature of these golden flames is remarkably high, yet her body is completely unharmed."
The golden flames were blindingly bright, but Li Weiyi could see the outline of Cai Yutong's body inside them—intact and undamaged. It was utterly incredible.
After all, she was merely a mortal of flesh and blood.
Whoosh!
The golden flames suddenly flared in a roaring combustion. Amid the dancing sparks, a magnificent silhouette of wings several meters long manifested, as wondrous as a chrysalis breaking its cocoon to become a butterfly.
The two retreated even farther, holding their breath.
The flames burned for about fifteen minutes before beginning to recede.
As the light dimmed, Cai Yutong's form lying on the ground gradually became visible. An outer layer of mortal husk cracked and flaked away, revealing skin underneath of dazzling whiteness.
"Um... maybe you should go downstairs first?" Qi Shanshan said tentatively.
Li Weiyi naturally saw what was the matter. Though Cai Yutong had not been reduced to ashes, the fabric of her clothes certainly had.
Thinking that Qi Shanshan would not harm Cai Yutong, Li Weiyi walked down the stairway and returned to the main deck area. Images of Cai Yutong feeding him fish soup surfaced in his mind; warmth filled his chest, mingled with a lingering worry.
Before long.
Low whispers between the two women drifted down from the second floor of the deckhouse, Qi Shanshan explaining something.
Li Weiyi felt a weight lift from his heart, an involuntary smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
He did not head back up, choosing to wait quietly below.
With his mind at ease, his gaze suddenly caught sight of the three-zhang-tall cast-bronze gate atop the dozens of stone steps in the distance. Struck with curiosity, he walked over.
Chapter 21