Chapter 16

Shen Qing smiled, eyes curving. “Your Highness, what a coincidence. You’re here too.”
Li Daoxuan turned away, taking his bow from his back. “Not a coincidence,” he said flatly.
The words had barely left his mouth when Wuming’s voice echoed from all directions. “Well, you two, have you found a way out of my formation yet?”
At the sound of that all-too-familiar voice, Li Daoxuan snorted. “You don’t even dare show your head, and you call yourself a snake evil spirits? You’d make a better turtle, hiding in its shell.”
Shen Qing knew Li Daoxuan was always arrogant, and she also knew Wuming was likely still nursing serious wounds, but she truly hadn’t expected Li Daoxuan to open with an insult. Her eyes went wide and round. “Are you insane?”
Without even glancing at her, Li Daoxuan slowly rolled up his sleeve.
Never mind that Wuming hadn’t even fought them head-on yet, right now the two of them were trapped in a lethal formation. She hadn’t even had time to find a way to break it, and Li Daoxuan had already provoked the man who laid it. Was he not afraid that, in a fit of temper, Wuming would make a tiny adjustment and put them on the brink of death with a thought?
Her plan had been to stall Wuming for time, look for a way out, and then set Li Daoxuan on him. Even if he couldn’t defeat Wuming outright, he could at least hold out until Master You Daoxi arrived.
Thanks to this little stunt, Wuming’s anger had clearly been stoked instead.
Sure enough, the air fell silent for a breath. Then Wuming gave a mirthless laugh, repeating “Good, good, good” several times in a row.
“What a sharp-tongued child you are,” he said. “We’ll see if you can still act so wild once you’ve passed this little test.”
The moment the words fell, the ground around Shen Qing and Li Daoxuan heaved violently. Earthen spikes burst from the soil like post-rain bamboo, shooting upward at terrifying speed.
If they hadn’t dodged in time, they’d have been skewered on the spot.
Those spikes were like living things; wherever the two of them fled, the spikes chased them down.
They were as fast as arrows loosed from a bow. In the blink of an eye, they were at Li Daoxuan’s feet. Just as they were about to pierce through his soles, he pushed off with his toes and leapt, light as a swallow, landing on the outstretched trunk of a tree.
Shen Qing, on the other hand, had no such agility. As the spikes closed in on her from all sides, about to impale her through, she shouted up at the boy on the branch, “Your Highness, save me!”
Li Daoxuan gave no sign of moving. He sat perched on the tree, one knee bent, both hands resting on his sword, watching her with an easy air, clear amusement in his eyes, as if he were enjoying a show.
Shen Qing hadn’t expected him to have no intention of helping whatsoever. With the spikes right before her, she gritted her teeth, twisted mid-step, and flung a blasting talisman forward. Chanting under her breath, she activated the charm.
A deafening boom rang out. The earthen spikes rushing toward her exploded, shattering into chunks of earth that rained down and rolled across the ground. The backlash knocked Shen Qing as well; fresh cuts opened on her face.
She wiped the blood from her cheek and glared up at the man lounging in the tree, irritation flaring.
She didn’t have the luxury of stewing over it. The spikes she’d just blown apart were already sprouting up again, even more numerous than before.
Just then, Wuming’s cajoling voice drifted through her mind. “They say you see true feelings in times of trouble, but from the look of it, that so-called lover of yours doesn’t care much for you at all.”
Shen Qing hadn’t expected Wuming to try sowing discord right under Li Daoxuan’s nose. Hearing his words now, she actually dabbed at the corners of her eyes, dabbing out two very convincing crocodile tears. “You’re right,” she said mournfully. “Not a man alive is worth a damn.”
Wuming sounded positively delighted. “Then how about this, I’ll hold these spikes back for you. You trick him down from that tree, and I’ll use the spikes to kill him for you. Consider it me avenging you. How about it?”
Shen Qing seemed to waver, but then knit her brows. “But… but he is my…”
Wuming cut her off. “Who said a woman only gets one man in her life? Think back, didn’t the Li dynasty have a female emperor a few generations ago? She kept an entire harem of male favorites and pretty attendants. Did the world say anything then?”
Shen Qing let his words sink in, hesitating for less than half a breath before she suddenly steeled herself, brows tightening. “Fine! I agree!”
The instant she spoke, the spikes in the ground stopped moving and, with a soft swish, withdrew back into the earth.
Shen Qing let out a long breath and pasted on a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Your Highness, I’ve broken the formation,” she called up sweetly. “Would you be so kind as to come down?”
Li Daoxuan’s reply was ice-cold. “You seem capable enough,” he said. “Why bother asking me for help?”
“Precaution,” Shen Qing said, eyes narrowed. “What if the talismans suddenly stop working?”
“Miss Shen is too modest,” Li Daoxuan said. “I’ve yet to see one of your schemes fail once you’ve made up your mind.”
She pretended not to hear the barb beneath his words. “Your Highness flatters me,” she said happily.
The little madman finally snorted and deigned to come down.
Shen Qing stayed where she was, smiling as she watched him move.
Sure enough, the moment Li Daoxuan’s feet touched the ground, the spikes that had just vanished shot up again, roaring skyward, all aimed straight for his vitals.
Li Daoxuan’s skill was no joke. After a few moments of forced, somewhat messy dodging, he casually tossed his sword to Shen Qing. “If you want to get out,” he said, “hold onto that for me.”
This time it was Shen Qing’s turn to lounge and watch. With no qualms at all, she hugged Li Daoxuan’s sword to her chest and cheerfully enjoyed the spectacle.
With both hands free, Li Daoxuan pulled out a talisman from his robe and an arrow from his quiver. He threaded the talisman onto the arrowhead, then gripped the shaft between his teeth. Drawing another arrow from the quiver, he nocked it, drew his bow, and fired. The arrow sank into the ground with a thunk. He immediately shot the second arrow, the one he’d been holding in his mouth.
The buried arrow flared with golden light. A fine line of gold leapt between the two shafts and spread, wider and wider, until the earth shook with a dull boom and the light burst outward, forming a vast, web-shaped pattern across the ground. The spikes surging toward Li Daoxuan froze in place.
When everything was still, Li Daoxuan strode back toward her and held out his hand, gaze dark.
For a heartbeat, Shen Qing thought he meant to hit her. Then she realized he was just asking for his sword back. Laughing awkwardly, she hurried to place it in his hand.
In her mind, Wuming suddenly went silent. Tilting her head, Shen Qing sold him out without a shred of hesitation.
“Your Highness, it was that Wuming who egged me on to trick you down here just now, it wasn’t my idea. He said he was going to use this array to kill you.”
As she spoke, she lifted her gaze and swept it lazily over their surroundings. “Looking at it now, that stinking snake isn’t just arrogant, he’s delusional, he really thought a shabby little formation like this could do anything to us.”
A glint flashed through Li Daoxuan’s eyes and he snorted. “It is a shabby formation. It’s not even up to what this prince casually played with when I was ten.”
Wuming roared with fury, “You two really are deceitful and insolent! And you! You actually tricked me! I’ll drain your blood in one go and strip the flesh from your bones!”
Shen Qing hunched her shoulders a little. “Oh, I’m so scared.”
But after a long wait, Wuming still didn’t show himself to face them head-on. Instead, he laughed in his rage. “We’ll talk again once you two manage to crawl out of there alive.”
With that, his voice vanished completely.
Shen Qing exchanged a glance with Li Daoxuan. After their earlier tests, they both understood one thing clearly: Wuming didn’t dare enter the array. He was afraid of something inside it.
What was he afraid of? The moment his voice echoed by her ear, Shen Qing realized that Li Daoxuan’s earlier provocation hadn’t been some hot-headed impulse, he’d done it deliberately.
He’d been intentionally goading Wuming, testing whether the snake really didn’t dare step into his own formation.
From the moment Shen Qing stepped into the great array in Mount Li’s forest, Wuming had never once revealed himself. He had used voice-transmission the entire time.
At first, Shen Qing had thought he was wary of Li Daoxuan.
With that in mind, she suddenly asked, “I wonder, between Your Highness and Wuming, who is stronger?”
Li Daoxuan replied, “For now, we’re evenly matched.”
That decided it. With Li Daoxuan inside an array Wuming knew like the back of his hand, and injured from killing the joy-mirror besides, it should have been the perfect chance to strike, with time, place, and advantage all on his side. Yet Wuming refused to show himself.
There was only one possibility: he didn’t dare. Or rather, he was wary of the array he had laid and so didn’t dare rashly step in.
Li Daoxuan slung his bow back over his shoulder, but Shen Qing’s gaze snagged on a faint, easily overlooked dark stain at the hem of his robe, as if it had brushed a water’s surface at some point.
Remembering the locust grove she’d passed and the earth-spike array she’d just broken, Shen Qing’s breath hitched. A hazy thought began to take shape in her mind. She grabbed Li Daoxuan’s wrist at once. “Your Highness, which direction did you come from?”
Li Daoxuan couldn’t understand why she had suddenly gotten so worked up. “The west.”
“Was there a water source there?”
Lowering his gaze, Li Daoxuan looked at her. The girl’s cheeks were flushed from excitement, starlight bright in her eyes. Slowly, he said, “There was a small pond.”
Hearing this, Shen Qing’s excitement surged. She lifted her head and clapped. “That’s it!”
Li Daoxuan asked, “What is?”
“Has Your Highness ever heard of the Three Bonds, Five Directions Array?”
With her hint, Li Daoxuan caught on at once. He gave her a look, genuinely surprised, and, for once, said, “You’re quite clever.” This time, it wasn’t sarcasm.
Strictly speaking, the formation they were in couldn’t be called a true Three Bonds, Five Constants Array; it was a twisted, corrupted variant built atop it.
In a Three Bonds, Five Directions Array, the Five Directions, east, west, south, north, and center, corresponded to the Five Elements: wood, metal, fire, water, and earth.
The Three Bonds were: Heaven, Earth, and Man. Mount Li’s land was the base; the sky above their canopy. With those as ground and cover, the formation trapped everything beneath. At this moment, Heaven, Earth, and Man were all present within the array.
Once the Three Bonds, Five Directions Array was fully activated, no evil spirits could escape: they could only enter, never leave. Perhaps it couldn’t bind Wuming at his prime, but to trap him now, with one head gone and his injuries unhealed, it was more than enough.
Originally, this array should have been used to trap evil spirits. But Wuming had tampered with it. He’d turned the southern fire-aspect region into a yin-heavy locust grove, shattering the array’s balance of yin and yang and making it more and more unfathomable.
The formation had twisted into an evil array, able to trap humans, evil spirits, and spirits alike.
Shen Qing’s eyes curved in a smile as she made a show of bowing. “Then I must trouble Your Highness to take me south. The key to breaking this lies in the south.”
More precisely, back in that locust grove they’d passed earlier.
Wuming’s substitution of locust trees had transformed what should have been a evil spirits-trapping array into an all-purpose evil formation. Ambitious, indeed, but he’d overlooked one crucial point.
Fire overcomes metal, and it burns wood as well.
If the Five Elements were in disarray, then she would simply turn the locust grove into a forest of flame, restoring the south to its proper attribute. Only then would this become a proper Three Bonds, Five Directions Array, a righteous formation that trapped evil spirits, not people.
After their earlier clash, fog had begun to drift into the forest, clouding one’s sense of direction. The wind that had been striking their bodies had cut off entirely, yet the treetops at the edge of the woods still rustled, proof that the wind had not died, only risen higher.
Li Daoxuan drew an arrow from his quiver, raised his bow, and shot it straight into the sky. The arrow streaked through the mist like a falling star, blazing with golden light as it flew to the very top of the array. It hung there for a heartbeat, then dropped in a particular direction.
That direction was the downwind side, the southern path they needed.
Without another word, Shen Qing grabbed Li Daoxuan and hauled him forward. In her excitement, the form of address that had been on the tip of her tongue in her past life slipped out without her noticing.
“Li Daoxuan, let’s go!”