"As long as his men know how to behave, that's enough. Checking those townships depends entirely on them." Cen Boqing nodded toward the Lotus Palace. "Once Master Fan finishes his business, just watch how that Tian fellow comes groveling to flatter us."
"I only hope Fan Sheng doesn't slip up this time."
Cen Boqing gave a hearty laugh. "What is there to fear? Time and advantage are both on our side. Every day this drags on puts He Xiao at more of a disadvantage."
Zhongsun Mou thought it over, feeling reassured. Based on the current situation, that man named He had nowhere to sink his teeth into them.
Status was the best shield.
Even as the special envoy of the Crown Prince of the Chiyan Kingdom, without hard evidence he couldn't touch a single hair on their heads.
"True enough." His gaze swept over the profound crystals on the table, tinged with a hint of regret. "I should actually thank him for handing me such a generous gift. It's just a pity about that mirror shield."
That magic artifact was an exceptional defensive treasure, perfectly suited for someone squishy like him. If Fan Sheng killed He Xiao, the mirror shield would become Fan Sheng's trophy, leaving Zhongsun Mou with nothing.
***
He Lingchuan was hardly an all-around prodigy; his boat-rowing skills were dismal. Fortunately, the man paired with him was a low-ranking soldier under Commander Lu named Jia Yu. Before enlisting to earn his rations, Jia Yu had been a local fisherman from Tangmi Township, fully capable of poling a craft through raging rapids. Navigating something like a Lotus Palace was child's play to him.
Jia Yu taught him the tricks as he rowed. After trying a few times, He Lingchuan got the hang of it, and their speed picked up considerably.
The current here was gentle; the contest was merely a test of the participants' ability to navigate.
And of course, the most important factor was luck.
Yet He Lingchuan held a cheating tool in his hands and was determined to win through capability rather than luck.
He could pinpoint the treasure's location based on how warm the divine bone necklace grew.
Assuming, of course, that the treasure recognized by the divine bone was indeed that "Overlord Lotus."
Only as they drew near the Lotus Palace did He Lingchuan understand what it truly meant for lotus leaves to stretch boundless and green to the horizon. This place was an outright forest of lotus leaves.
The massive leaves formed towering green wall after towering green wall. After the skiff slipped inside, it didn't take long to lose all sense of direction.
Forget the people in the boats—even the spectators looking down from atop Chaohu Pagoda could likely see little of what was happening inside the maze.
"How did you search for the Overlord Lotus in past years?" He Lingchuan asked Jia Yu. "Can't you ask the aquatic clans for help?"
"That won't work," Jia Yu said. "For the sake of fairness, all aquatic creatures must withdraw and leave after clearing the duckweed. Only then does the Overlord Lotus sprout. Besides, the competition for plucking the lotus tally is open only to humans."
"Can't those aquatic creatures just stay behind without leaving?" Fish and turtles concealed themselves underwater, after all; they shouldn't be easy to spot.
"The local Water Spirit is a two-hundred-year-old lotus demon. It watches the race closely," Jia Yu said, working his pole with steady effort. "In the past, sixty or seventy people tried to cheat, refusing to believe it. Every single one was caught and severely punished by the Water Spirit. No one dares to be so brazen anymore."
He Lingchuan shrugged. "That's good, then."
This lotus demon possessed formidable magical power to grow such a dense Lotus Palace over the water in just a matter of days.
The waterways inside the labyrinth were less than twenty feet across at their widest, barely allowing the skiff to push straight ahead with no room to turn around. At their narrowest, they were a mere five feet wide, requiring the hull to squeeze through.
Once inside the maze, the surroundings fell dead silent.
Only the paddling and voices from other skiffs echoed faintly, though it was impossible to tell which corner they came from.
"Head east," He Lingchuan said suddenly. "Right, go forward thirty paces."
Jia Yu looked puzzled. "You know what the Overlord Lotus looks like?"
"Uh, no." He only knew they hadn't reached the spot yet, because the divine bone necklace was still quite warm.
"It's an enormous, blood-red lotus bud with gold stripes on the outside."
"Blood-red..." He Lingchuan looked around and saw unbloomed lotus buds everywhere, thrusting straight toward the sky like shoots. Aside from the most common water-red, there were light pink, pale purple, pinkish-white, and faint green—a dazzling spectrum of colors.
Finding a single blood-red one among tens of thousands, or even over a hundred thousand buds, was hardly different from searching for a needle in a haystack. Unopened shoots were mostly covered by green sepals; a single careless glance meant missing it entirely.
Jia Yu craned his neck, glancing left and right, wishing he had been born with several extra pairs of eyes.
"Generally speaking, the Overlord Lotus rarely appears on the outermost perimeter or dead in the center of the Lotus Palace," he murmured. "We need to search more in the middle layers of the maze. Can you remember the waterways?"
"Barely." He Lingchuan wondered, "How do you know it rarely appears in the center?"
"Over the past few decades, it's only been found in the center seven times."
"Is that so?" He Lingchuan glanced due north. "Never mind that. Follow me."
"You have a way?"
"Of course," He Lingchuan chuckled. "I can divine our fortune. That's far better than stumbling around blindly like you."
Jia Yu beamed with joy. "Great, great! Wherever you point, I'll row!"
After traveling a bit further, the skiff found itself deep within the labyrinth.
The layout of this Lotus Palace was thoroughly wicked. Both ends of a waterway often looked completely identical, leaving one hopelessly disoriented after a few turns.
On such an overcast day, one couldn't even use the sun to navigate.
Silence enveloped them, broken only by the occasional silly frog leaping from the water.
The divine bone necklace suddenly flared with heat. He Lingchuan let out a soft exclamation of surprise.
Their skiff was moving slowly, just about to make a small loop to turn around. Why had the necklace abruptly grown intensely hot?
Had the target gotten farther away?
Once the Overlord Lotus sprouted, it should stay put. Could the necklace be pointing toward something else entirely?
No, please don't screw him over. Three profound crystals were still staked atop Chaohu Pagoda!
He Lingchuan felt a massive headache coming on.
Yet he had no other option but to tell Jia Yu to turn around once more and head due north.
The special envoy frequently ordered the boat to pivot and loop back, so Jia Yu had grown used to it. He simply obeyed without asking questions.
Fortunately, the divine bone necklace didn't pull any more strange tricks, maintaining a very distinct orientation.
The further He Lingchuan advanced, the more its heat diminished.
"Keep your eyes peeled," he warned Jia Yu. "It should be somewhere nearby."
Jia Yu scanned left and right with wide eyes, terrified of missing anything.
Less than three quarters of an hour had passed since the start of the race. The two had already reached the northeastern corner of the maze. The skiffs they crossed paths with grew fewer and fewer until nothing remained but the chirping of insects and the croaking of frogs.
Just as Jia Yu had said, no one liked the margins, believing the likelihood of finding the Overlord Lotus here was far too low.
Yet the divine bone necklace pointed precisely in this direction.
"There!" Jia Yu suddenly pointed, so excited he nearly jumped out of his skin.
In his six years of competing, he had run the race every year without ever finding the Overlord Lotus in the maze.
"Shh!" He Lingchuan pressed a finger to his lips, signaling him to keep calm. "Row over. Quick."
Among the dense, layered walls of lotus leaves stood hundreds of shoots of various sizes. One of them was blood-red, marked with two faint gold stripes along its surface. Because it had not yet bloomed, the markings were exceedingly inconspicuous.
It was a wonder Jia Yu had spotted it at all.
He Lingchuan's heart betrayed him by skipping a couple of beats. This thing was worth fifty thousand taels of silver.
The mirror chuckled in his ear. "Did you plan this all along? If someone else found it first, were you going to snatch it by force?"
If the lad failed to secure it, his loss would be a staggering one hundred thousand taels!
With his modest fortune, how could he possibly endure such a catastrophic blow?
"No," He Lingchuan murmured. "Even if I lose, Zhongsun Mou won't be walking away with my money."
His smile was so calm yet so sinister that the mirror actually shivered, feeling as if it had been thrown back to the days when He Lingchuan had plotted against it.
The skiff darted forward. Before it even came to a halt, Jia Yu dove into the water with a knife clenched between his teeth.
The essence of snatching the lotus tally came down to a single word:
Speed!
As Jia Yu went for the Overlord Lotus, He Lingchuan held his breath in anticipation.
With two soft rustles, the lotus leaves abruptly shook left and right, startling them both.
A black-headed duck burst out from the lotus wall, quacking angrily at them before skittering frantically across the water's surface and fleeing.
"Damn bird!" Jia Yu cursed under his breath. At any other time, he would have roasted the creature.
Right at that moment, faint ripples broke the water's surface ten feet behind He Lingchuan.
A short reed stalk poked silently above the water—a sight so ubiquitous in these surroundings that it drew no notice. Aimed straight at He Lingchuan, it abruptly shot out a blowdart!
Only then did a silhouette burst from the water, lunging straight for He Lingchuan.
While the reed stalk was improvised, the dart was deadly. Midway through its flight, its speed doubled, splitting from one dart into three in a triangular formation aimed at He Lingchuan's back of the head, the center of his back, and his tailbone.
The dart tips were forged from refined steel, glowing with a faint white radiance that bore armor-piercing power. Reinforced with origin power, penetrating defensive true qi would be effortless.
A direct hit meant death or severe maiming.
The figure leaping from the water moved with astonishing swiftness. Though launching after the projectile, he had already closed to within three feet behind the darts, swinging an axe in a crescent arc.
This blow had been building for over three quarters of an hour, gathering strength until his spirit and qi were at their peak. The moment he struck, it was truly like thunder descending upon the world. Whether He Lingchuan chose to dodge or parry, he would not escape this full-powered strike.
The tempestuous astral wind clinging to the axe blade was so fierce that it tore the air with the screech of ripping silk. The savage blast of air slammed toward He Lingchuan; facing it was no different from taking a tornado straight to the face.
Not only was it impossible to keep one's eyes open, but one's very stance was pinned down by the pressure.
Given this person's standing, he would never strike carelessly—and once he did, he intended to settle everything with a single blow.
The instant the darts were loosed, He Lingchuan moved as if he had eyes in the back of his head, dropping into a low tiger crouch and throwing his body forward.
He had waited so long, and his opponent had finally made his move.
The skiff couldn't bear the sudden shift in weight. Its bow dipped low into the water, causing the stern to tilt sharply upward, placing it squarely in the path of the three blowdarts.
With three sharp thuds, the darts punched clean through the wood and lodged into the lotus wall ahead.
The force behind them was readily apparent.
The man behind had nearly caught up to the darts, meaning the upturned stern also blocked his path, delivering a direct blow to his face!
With a splintering crack, the stern shattered into several pieces, wood chips flying everywhere.
The momentum of the axe swing remained unbroken. Seven feet ahead, the fierce, surging gale cleaved through a section of the lotus wall, sending the tall stalks tumbling into the water with a rustle.
Fortunately, Jia Yu had only just surfaced and had not yet climbed up the lotus wall; otherwise, he would have been severed in two.
Terrified, he ducked his head, just as He Lingchuan's shout rang in his ears: "The lotus, quick!"
With the lotus wall chopped down, the stem of the Overlord Lotus was halfway severed, swaying violently in the wake of the axe's wind. It looked ready to snap at any second.
Having served as a soldier for years, obedience had become second nature to Jia Yu. Hearing the command, he threw his arms around the Overlord Lotus. In his mind, the ambush was after this very lotus; so long as he secured it first, victory would be decided.
Chapter 506