He Lingchuan spoke slowly. "At the time, this very signet ring was worn on a man's hand."
His words were slow, but his feet never stopped.
The ninth pass.
This time, it was Fang Canran whose attention was hooked. "Whose?"
"The man's surname was Shao," He Lingchuan smiled. "Has Manager Fang ever heard the name 'Shao Jian'?"
Fang Canran was struck dumb.
He Lingchuan happened to be striding past the edge of the mirror. Seizing the moment of his distraction, he smashed an elbow into the reflective surface.
With a sharp crash, the perfectly clear mirror shattered into seven or eight shards.
The formation's eye was broken!
In a flash, He Lingchuan caught sight of Fang Canran standing in the rear hall and hurled the blade Fusheng with a flick of his wrist.
*N-No, impossible! The Heart-Piercing Mirror was actually broken?*
*How was it broken?* The man stared at him as though seeing a ghost, freezing for a brief instant before turning to flee.
Fusheng struck home, only to be bounced back by the Come-and-Go Armor.
He Lingchuan lunged forward as well, grabbing Fusheng from the air and unleashing a flurry of slashes at Fang Canran.
The golden shield before him took blow after blow until it finally shattered.
By then, Fang Canran had barely managed to flee into the rear garden. The storm of blade-light converged into a single gleam that rested firmly against his neck.
"Move if you want to die." The light in He Lingchuan's eyes burned fiercer than the blade's edge.
In just two fleeting moments, the balance of power had completely inverted.
Gangqi pulsed from the blade, drawing a bead of blood on Fang Canran's throat. He dared not move a muscle, his mind reeling with utter bafflement. "H-How did you undo the Earth Immortal Rope? How did you find the formation's eye?"
And why had the Soul-Shocking Thunder failed to affect He Lingchuan at all?
He truly could not understand the young man before him. Why had every single one of his meticulously prepared measures failed?
"Of all the things you could use to lay a formation, why did you have to pick mirrors?" He Lingchuan could not be bothered to explain. Did he look like a schoolmaster who loved lecturing people?
*Bwahahaha! He isn't even afraid of making a laughingstock of himself—yours truly is the granddaddy of all mirrors!* The soul-snatching mirror laughed uproariously in his robes, though only its master could hear it.
"Hands behind your back." He Lingchuan had already put away the Earth Immortal Rope and substituted a coil of spider-silk cord. Slipping it over Fang Canran's neck, he bound both hands behind his back with practiced ease.
A classic, beloved rope-binding session.
"You have to tie someone like this for it to hold. Got it?" How many captives and monsters had He Lingchuan caught on the Panlong Wasteland? If nothing else, he had mastered at least fifteen different tying techniques.
As for the Soul-Shocking Thunder, heheh, its entire force had been swallowed by the soul-snatching mirror. When it came to shocking or snatching souls, it was mere child's play before the mirror.
*You had to smash the Heart-Piercing Mirror precisely on the ninth pass for it to work! If you'd hit the wrong one, the whole cycle would've scrambled and reset, and who knows which pass the formation's flaw would've jumped to next!* The mirror crowed with pride. *Such petty tricks are far too green, far too green! How could they ever slip past Grandpa Mirror's discerning eye?*
Tightly trussed up by He Lingchuan, Fang Canran's eyes darted around.
He still possessed a divine ability known as the cicada sloughing its shell, which allowed him to leave all his bonds behind on his outer garments and slip away clean.
Yet before he could spot the right opportunity, a sharp pain stabbed into the back of his neck. He Lingchuan had driven two silver needles into major acupoints on his back, instantly cutting off the flow of his true force.
It was not that He Lingchuan possessed foresight and realized he could use such a technique; he was simply fed up with the man's endless tricks and chose to cut off his true force to keep him from stirring up any more trouble.
"You!" Fang Canran's vision darkened, plunging him into despair.
Why was he thwarted at every single turn? Every single step!
The kid looked like an utter scatterbrain who only knew how to improvise on the fly!
"Let me go! Whatever you want, I can give you!" Having come to this pass, Fang Canran scrambled to sway his enemy as fast as possible. "I can give you riches you couldn't spend in several lifetimes, and I can secure you an official post where you can rest easy! If you harm me, it won't do you a shred of good!"
"Ah, but it feels great. Isn't feeling great reason enough?" He Lingchuan smiled pleasantly. "Giving someone a taste of their own medicine is the most satisfying thing there is. Now it's my turn to ask: where did this spiral ring on your hand come from? What is your relationship with Shao Jian?"
He had deliberately dropped that name while the other man was anxious, keeping a close eye on Fang Canran's face. Sure enough, hearing "Shao Jian," the man's pupils shrank slightly once again.
Although Fang Canran regained his composure in a split second, an involuntary reflex like that could not lie. He Lingchuan had struck right at his deepest, most buried secret.
This was the second time he had heard Shao Jian's name from He Lingchuan's lips, and his reaction remained just as intense.
"What?" Fang Canran hissed. "I don't know him!"
"Manager Fang, now you're being dull. A man ought to be reasonable." He Lingchuan patted him on the back, gesturing toward the torture implements laid out on the table. "You and I bear no grudges, yet you struck at me first, eager to gouge out my eyes and rip out my tongue. If I turned those exact methods on you, that would be only fair, wouldn't it?"
Fang Canran swallowed hard. "My apologies. My forebears had their share of enemies in the past. You kept staring at my ring, so I thought an old foe had come knocking on my door."
A wise man did not fight against impossible odds; his tone softened immediately.
"What did your forebears do?" The man named Fang was starting to offer excuses?
"They were merchants too, small-time business," Fang Canran whispered. "In business, doing favors can make you enemies just as easily."
He Lingchuan poured himself a cup of tea and brought it to his lips, but remembering the earlier ambush, he tossed it out. This fellow was just like him—talking utter nonsense with an earnest, sincere expression. Not a single word out of his mouth could be verified.
Watching his movements, Fang Canran could no longer hold back his curiosity and asked once more, "Why didn't the Earth Immortal Rope work on you?"
"It worked fine." He Lingchuan drew the bundle of cord from his robes and inspected it closely. "Fine treasure, this."
This rope was very much like the trapping net used by National Preceptor Sun Fuping, clinging tight the moment it snared someone. After Sun Fuping died, it had fallen into He Chunhua's hands.
"It's just that not long ago, I was ambushed by a celestial god and nearly lost my neck," he said slowly. "Ever since, I've been far more careful in everything I do."
He had had quite enough of the utter powerlessness he had felt before a celestial god. Did anyone really think He Lingchuan could be ambushed by just anybody?
Naturally, he would not tell Fang Canran that he had released an avatar earlier under the pretense of using the private chamber.
So the one who collapsed was an avatar, and the one Fang Canran bound with the rope was merely an avatar as well.
No matter how securely the rope bound it, once He Lingchuan's avatar vanished, what good was the binding?
When the sudden gust blew open the window and Fang Canran went to shut it, He Lingchuan's true self seized the opportunity to lie down on the floor, looping the cord loosely around his wrists.
He had already observed earlier that the rope had no effect without an incantation. Even so, for safety's sake, he had sliced off half a section with Fusheng and clenched the severed end in his palm.
To his eyes, Fang Canran's knot-tying was that of a complete amateur—lacking method and artistry alike, relying entirely on the Earth Immortal Rope's own power to bind a foe.
Tied so casually, Fang Canran could not even remember the knot pattern afterward, so how could he notice anything amiss with the cord? Had he been as skilled at knot-tying as Willow, there was no way He Lingchuan could have replicated the knot and slipped his own wrists into it within a few short breaths.
From that alone, He Lingchuan could tell Fang Canran rarely carried out ambushes with his own hands.
And details decided victory or defeat.
All in all, Fang Canran had wanted to bluff him, and he had wanted to bluff Fang Canran.
Things having reached this point, one could only say neither had succeeded.
At the words "celestial god," Fang Canran's brow twitched faintly. "What do you want? I am the chief manager of the Jinjiao clan and the proprietor of Yuexiang Villa. Just as you said before, if you kill me, you won't escape the blame either!"
In their current standoff, neither could easily eliminate the other physically.
He Lingchuan slipped the signet ring from Fang Canran's hand, holding it up against the light as he said matter-of-factly, "What does that matter? I can just report you to the celestial gods. After that, I won't have to worry about a thing."
Fang Canran's expression remained steady, but a blue vein throbbed at his temple.
Those words struck right at his fatal weakness.
"I truly have no idea how to answer you." He let out a long sigh. "How about you ask something else?"
This fellow's lips were sealed tight. He Lingchuan did not genuinely want to torture him, as the man still had his uses. After a moment's thought, he said, "Fine then. Let's discuss how you drugged, bound, and attempted to torture an envoy of the Chiyan Kingdom without cause. That is a grave crime. Has Manager Fang considered the price he must pay for it?"
"You have no evidence, nor do you have witnesses." Fang Canran looked down at the tight bonds wrapping his body. "Right now, I am the one tied up."
"However, if Young Master He is willing to settle peacefully, I will certainly present a generous gift to soothe your nerves." Knowing he was at a disadvantage in this contest and unable to afford further provocation, Fang Canran immediately tried to ease the tension. "How does fifty thousand taels of silver sound?"
He Lingchuan knew that if he began haggling, the topic would be shifted, and the matter would be swept under the rug.
"I don't think that will do." He shook the signet ring. "Earlier, when I mentioned Shao Jian, your emotions surged violently. And you have this signet ring in your possession—five spiral grooves, the mark of the founder of the Red Conch Merchant Guild."
"The founder of the Red Conch Merchant Guild was Shao Jian, who spent his entire life opposing the celestial gods," He Lingchuan said at leisure. "You dared to wear this ring openly on your hand—did you think no one would recognize it?"
Since this fellow refused to budge, He Lingchuan had to find the right breakthrough point.
Sure enough, Fang Canran dug in his heels. "I do not know this man, nor did I know this ancestral ring carried such history!"
He sighed. "Had I known, would I still have worn it on my hand?"
No sane person would wear an object that incurred the wrath of the celestial gods.
He Lingchuan chuckled. Was Fang Canran sane?
"Then you don't care to know how I recognized this ring?"
"If Young Master He is willing to enlighten me, I naturally wish to hear it." If Fang Canran had not wanted to know, why would he have gone to the trouble of orchestrating all of tonight's events?
"I truly have seen Shao Jian," He Lingchuan said, repeating his earlier claim. "In an ancient city to the west."
Fang Canran's gaze sharpened slightly. "You truly saw him? How old are you?"
Shao Jian had passed away more than a hundred and fifty years ago, yet this youth claimed to have seen him?
Could He Xiao be an ageless monster, just like the two National Preceptors?
"Seventeen," He Lingchuan replied lazily. "I never said I saw a living Shao Jian."
Fang Canran's brow furrowed. "Pardon me, but I don't understand."
Chapter 619