When Su Qiuzhi woke up, she only felt her entire body aching, as if she had been beaten.
Oh, well, it seemed she actually had been beaten.
Her hands were bound behind her back by some magical artifact, the skin on her wrists burning slightly from her struggles; her legs were also fixed in place, leaving her tied up like a festive dumpling, unable to move at all.
What made her even more uneasy was the darkness before her—something was blindfolding her eyes.
Immediately after, memories began to flood back.
The moonlight, the courtyard walls, the mangled meat, the dead fish eyes protruding from their sockets, and that man who had suddenly turned his head in the darkness.
Su Qiuzhi's body tightened involuntarily.
"You're awake?" a calm voice sounded not far away.
Su Qiuzhi gritted her teeth and remained silent, her mind racing at high speed.
Her current situation was clear as day—she had stumbled upon the secret of this so-called "Imperial Academy medical apprentice," and the other party obviously didn't intend to let her leave just like that.
But what puzzled her was that if that man surnamed Gu really wanted to silence her, she should have been a corpse by now, rather than waking up tied to a chair in one piece.
"If you wanted to kill me, you could have done it just now."
Su Qiuzhi tried to make her tone sound calm. "What kind of information are you trying to squeeze out of me by tying me up and blindfolding me?"
That voice seemed to carry a hint of surprise, and then Su Qiuzhi heard footsteps approaching her.
"I have no malice. I blindfolded you because, until I confirm your identity, I cannot let you see my current appearance."
"Confirm my identity?" Su Qiuzhi let out a cold laugh. "What right does someone of unknown origin, who hops over walls carrying corpses in the middle of the night, have to confirm my identity?"
She spoke with conviction and momentum.
But only Su Qiuzhi herself knew that her back was already soaked with cold sweat.
The wretched state of that corpse still lingered in her mind—those weren't wounds that could be left by a normal fight; the person had been blasted into mangled meat. The culprit before her was far more vicious than she had imagined!
All she could do now was try to maintain an outward appearance of composure and wait for an opportunity.
Gu Chengming did not get angry because of her attitude.
In fact, his attention wasn't entirely on Su Qiuzhi at the moment.
During the time she was unconscious, he had already used the Red Dust Technique to construct an illusion and peek at fragments of Su Qiuzhi's memories.
Those fragments were incomplete; the Red Dust Technique's ability to peer into memories was limited to begin with, especially while the other party's divine sense was still intact. What he could capture were merely surface-level emotions and images, but these were already enough.
He saw Su Qiuzhi's experiences in the Hehuan Sect, the young girl striving to survive under Su Xiaoshao's shadow, and her complex feelings toward the Hehuan Sect that she couldn't even sort out herself.
It was a mix of resentment and love, much like how most people who grow up under a strict traditional upbringing talk about their original families.
But this only gave Gu Chengming a bigger headache.
If Su Qiuzhi were an enemy, things would be easier—either silence her or capture and interrogate her; the Night Guard Division had plenty of ways to handle that.
But she happened to be an innocent ordinary disciple who just had bad luck and saw something she shouldn't have.
He couldn't kill her, he couldn't release her, and as for tricking her...
Gu Chengming glanced at the Hehuan Sect female disciple before him, who was tied up tightly and acting stubborn despite her inner fear, and decided to try reasoning with her.
He sat down on the chair opposite her, his tone as peaceful as possible. "Have you ever thought about why the Yin Yang Fish of the Hehuan Sect suddenly fell out of balance?"
Su Qiuzhi didn't respond, but she tilted her head slightly, indicating she was listening.
"The sect has been closed for over a month. The Sect Master and elders have tried their best to suppress it, but with little effect. As a core disciple, you must have felt the abnormal changes throughout Hongchen Mountain, right?"
"...So what?" Su Qiuzhi's tone was still guarded, but it held a bit less hostility than before. "Are you trying to say you're here to help? Helping by killing and dumping corpses in the middle of the night?"
"That person was from the Longevity Sect."
These words made Su Qiuzhi freeze, her mind suddenly falling into chaos.
Gu Chengming briefly recounted what had happened tonight in the forbidden area of the Yin Yang Twin Fish Array.
He said someone had used a command talisman to sneak into the forbidden area, attempting to use a black bead emitting deathly energy to touch the phantom of the Yin Yang Fish. He said the aura on that bead was exactly the same as the unique, decaying deathly energy of the Longevity Sect. He said the Yin Yang Fish's imbalance might not be a natural disaster, but rather someone fueling the flames in the shadows.
Su Qiuzhi listened quietly without saying a word.
After Gu Chengming finished, he fell silent for a moment, waiting for her reaction.
"That sounds nice, but who knows if you're just from another branch of the Longevity Sect?"
"Furthermore, what you should explain most is why you were also there late at night."
"Besides, if you really want me to trust you, even if you don't undo these restraints, you should at least let me see something, right?"
Gu Chengming didn't answer.
He could sense Su Qiuzhi's true emotions—the Yin Yang Creation Strategy was playing its unique role at this moment.
As a technique of the Hehuan Sect, it had an extremely keen perception of the desires and emotions deep within a person's heart, especially within the Hehuan Sect territory where red dust aura was dense; this perception was magnified to the extreme.
Su Qiuzhi said she didn't believe him, but the emotions deep in her heart were far more complex than her words.
Gu Chengming sighed and reached out to undo the magical artifact over Su Qiuzhi's eyes.
The strip of cloth binding the blindfold was removed, and Su Qiuzhi squinted her eyes, adapting for a moment in the dim candlelight. Then, she saw the person before her.
The moment that face entered her sight, Su Qiuzhi's brain felt as if someone had pressed a pause button.
It wasn't "Gu An."
The ordinary, unremarkable apprentice face from the day—the kind that couldn't be found once dropped into a crowd—had completely vanished. It was replaced by a face that made Su Qiuzhi unable to look away.
His eyes were deep, his features well-defined, striking a perfect balance between sharp and gentle.
The candlelight reflected in his eyes, creating a certain rhythmic grace—it wasn't the kind of deliberately crafted elegance often seen on male cultivators of the Hehuan Sect, but a natural feeling that radiated from his very bones.
She couldn't say exactly what was so good about it, but she just couldn't look away.
Su Qiuzhi opened her mouth, but the questions and accusations she had prepared turned into a clump of cotton in her throat, and she couldn't say anything.
"You!" Her voice became smaller unconsciously. "You don't... actually look like that, do you?"
She sounded quite foolish, but Su Qiuzhi's brain really wasn't working at the moment.
Her heart was thumping in her chest like a drum—thump, thump, thump.
Each beat was louder than the last. She had an absurd feeling, as if those ropes hadn't been binding her limbs, but her heartbeat—now that the blindfold was off, even her heartbeat had lost control.
Gu Chengming hadn't noticed the abnormality yet.
He was still organizing his words, thinking of how to use the most concise way to convince this Hehuan Sect disciple.
"Miss Su, everything I said just now is the truth. The Hehuan Sect has already been infiltrated by the Longevity Sect, and the Yin Yang Fish's imbalance is no accident. I need your cooperation, at least for—"
"I believe you," Su Qiuzhi interrupted him.
Gu Chengming was momentarily stunned. "What?"
"I said, I believe you."
Su Qiuzhi looked away, not daring to look at his face again.
...She just believed him like that?
No, just a moment ago she was saying "why should I trust you" and "are you from the Longevity Sect," so how did she suddenly believe him?
Gu Chengming instinctively used the Yin Yang Creation Strategy to verify her emotions... and then he sensed a very strange emotion.
Well, he probably understood what was happening.
Gu Chengming raised his hand to touch his face. His fingertips didn't touch the extremely mediocre face of "Gu An," but rather his original skeletal contours.
When he had fought that Longevity Sect disciple in the Yin Yang Twin Fish Array, the punch he threw with all the power of Hundred Bones Resonating had caused his spiritual power to surge like ten thousand rivers returning to the sea...
The force of that punch from Hundred Bones Resonating was too violent, and the intense fluctuation of spiritual power had directly dispelled the disguise technique Li Suizhuang had maintained on his face.
And in his haste to handle the corpse, clean up traces, and deal with Su Qiuzhi, he hadn't noticed this at all.
【Hundred Bones Resonating seemed a bit guilty.】
'Gu Chengming, you're still too dependent on the Super Hundred Bones Resonating.'
Gu Chengming sighed. Now that things had reached this point, regret was useless. Restoring the disguise required Li Suizhuang's personal touch, so the most urgent matter was handling the situation with Su Qiuzhi.
"You were serious about believing me?"
Su Qiuzhi still kept her face turned away, refusing to look at him, but she nodded.
"Then I need you to do a few things."
Gu Chengming said solemnly, "First, do not reveal anything you saw tonight to anyone. Second, keep an eye out for suspicious people or events within the Hehuan Sect. Third—"
"I can agree to cooperate."
Su Qiuzhi suddenly turned her head and interrupted him. Her eyes were slightly red, though it was unclear if it was from being unconscious for too long or something else.
"But I have one condition."
Gu Chengming frowned slightly. "What condition?"
Su Qiuzhi took a deep breath. Her expression looked as if she were making the most significant decision of her life. In fact, she also felt she was going crazy. Just a few moments ago, she had been terrified to the point of suffocation from witnessing a murder scene. And now, simply because she had seen this man's true face, she had already begun calculating how to turn this crisis into a profitable transaction.
But the issue was that Su Qiuzhi practiced Hehuan Sect techniques.
Entering the mortal world through red dust and attaining the dao through emotion—from the first day they stepped onto the path of cultivation, Hehuan Sect disciples were taught not to resist their inner desires and emotions, but to face them, embrace them, and master them.
If a Hehuan Sect disciple didn't even dare to admit her heart was moved, she could forget about taking a single step further on the Great Dao of Red Dust for the rest of her life.
So, Su Qiuzhi faced her inner voice with utter honesty.
—She wanted this man.
"After this is over!" Su Qiuzhi said word by word. "Dual cultivate with me!"
The moment she said those words, Su Qiuzhi stubbornly refused to lower her head; she even straightened her back against the chair and tilted her chin up, trying her best to maintain the poise a core disciple of the Hehuan Sect should have.
The room fell silent for about three breaths.
Gu Chengming looked at her, his expression shifting from initial bewilderment to a kind of "as expected" helplessness.
【Yin Yang Creation Strategy gives the highest instruction.】
A line of bolded, enlarged red text suddenly floated in the dialogue box before him.
【DUAL! CULTIVATION! IS! ALLOWED!】
'Dammit! Zhou Rites uses gold text, and you use red text now? Where did you all learn this trick?'
【Zhou Rites Heavenly Rectifying Art turned its head away, feeling a bit guilty.】
While he was interacting with his techniques in his mind, Su Qiuzhi seemed to misunderstand something. Thinking Gu Chengming was about to refuse, she added more conditions. "And I'll add one hundred thousand spirit stones!"
Su Qiuzhi's voice was urgent and fast, as if she were afraid she wouldn't be able to say it if she hesitated. "After it's over, dual cultivation, plus one hundred thousand spirit stones!"
【Hundred Bones Resonating, on the other hand, calmed down: One hundred thousand spirit stones... how many top-grade bone-tempering pills could that buy?】
【It said happily: Dual cultivation should just be practicing together, right? This person is really a fool; Emperor Gu, hurry up and agree to her.】
'Emperor Bai, stop acting like a fool.'
Gu Chengming complained internally and began to weigh the pros and cons.
From a rational perspective, Su Qiuzhi's cooperative value was indeed not small.
She was a core disciple of the Hehuan Sect and knew the internal personnel relationships, terrain layout, and patrol patterns like the back of her hand.
Furthermore, her Third Realm cultivation was also decent. In certain situations requiring coordination with Hehuan Sect techniques, having her assist would be much more efficient than him working alone.
Most importantly, Su Qiuzhi had already seen his true face and the corpse of the Longevity Sect disciple.
If he couldn't bring her over to his side, she would be a massive unstable factor.
Setting aside whether she would leak information, her missing for too long alone would be enough to trigger an alarm within the Hehuan Sect.
Once someone began investigating Su Qiuzhi's whereabouts, his identity as "Gu An" would eventually be exposed.
Therefore, cooperation was necessary; as for that condition...
Gu Chengming opened his eyes again and looked at Su Qiuzhi.
The latter was staring at him tensely, a "if you don't agree I'll increase it to two hundred thousand" look on her face.
Su Qiuzhi indeed had that thought. Although she didn't have two hundred thousand spirit stones on hand, she could borrow them!
She had previously despised Hehuan Sect disciples who took out loans for dual cultivation, but now she truly understood—doesn't a person live their whole life just for a moment like this?
If Gu Chengming knew her current thoughts, he would probably just say, "speechless, I can't talk to you; this is typical Hehuan Sect thinking."
Gu Chengming thought to himself that it was a tragedy he was about to unlock a CG with someone without even triggering a dialogue box.
Just as he thought this, a dialogue box suddenly appeared before him.
【Wisdom Eye activated】
【Option 1: Agree】
【Option 2: Do not agree】
'Shit, you've been offline for so long just to wait for this moment, haven't you?'
Gu Chengming felt a bit exhausted. Thinking he should agree for now as there might be other solutions later, he said:
"Fine."
【Wisdom Eye reminds you, Su Qiuzhi's favorability +20】
'You didn't have this function before!'
Su Qiuzhi, however, completely didn't expect him to agree.
She opened her mouth, and the long string of price-increase arguments she had prepared were all stuck in her throat, leaving her completely flustered.
"Then... then it's a deal." Her voice was so small it was almost like she was talking to herself. "You... you aren't allowed to go back on it."
Gu Chengming nodded, crisp and decisive.
Then he reached out and untied the ropes on Su Qiuzhi's wrists.
The moment the knot loosened, a circle of faint red marks was revealed on Su Qiuzhi's wrists. She rubbed them and looked up, meeting Gu Chengming's calm eyes.
With their eyes meeting, Su Qiuzhi's heart rate lost control again.
"...Then I'll head back first." She stood up, her footsteps a bit unsteady. "It's almost dawn; if I don't go back, I'll be discovered."
The night was about to fade, and a very, very faint sliver of white was appearing on the horizon.
A cool breeze blew in, making Su Qiuzhi's hem flap loudly.
She took a deep breath of the cold air scented with dew, and her brain, which had been heated by the atmosphere in the room, finally cleared a bit.
Then she suddenly realized one thing.
—She really seemed to be fighting her sister over a man.
Meanwhile, a female voice sounded in her head.
【You really want to spend one hundred thousand spirit stones to dual cultivate with him? Has the Hehuan Sect's inflation reached this level?】
"You don't practice the Red Dust Technique, you don't understand!" Su Qiuzhi retorted in her mind with her divine sense.
【I even helped before the Red Dust Technique was released; how could I not understand? You're just a lust-controlled brain!】
"So what?" Su Qiuzhi hummed. "Besides, I've felt it with the Red Dust Technique; he's a good person."
【The thought of the Hehuan Sect being handed over to people like you in the future makes my heart ache.】
Amidst the bickering, the sky gradually brightened.
...
When the daylight was full, Li Suizhuang returned.
The moment she pushed open the door to the guest room in Jingsi Courtyard, she visibly breathed a sigh of relief.
Gu Chengming was sitting normally at the table, with a pot of cold tea and that black bead wrapped in layers of fabric beside him. He looked like he was neither injured nor showing signs of his identity being exposed or being captured by the Hehuan Sect's leadership.
"It's good that you're fine."
Li Suizhuang walked in quickly and set up a soundproofing barrier as she moved, her white hair swaying gently.
After the alarm of the Yin Yang Twin Fish Array sounded, she had been left at the Meeting Pavilion by the three elders, then chased toward the forbidden area, only to be stopped by patrolling disciples. She had spent most of the night wandering before finding an excuse to slip away.
"What's the situation with the array?" Gu Chengming asked.
"The elders didn't find any traces of an intruder after reaching the forbidden area; they only sensed that the fluctuations of the Yin Yang Twin Fish Array were a bit more violent than usual." Li Suizhuang sat opposite him and straightened her collar which had been ruffled by the night wind.
"Senior Sister Yun Ni suspects that the imbalance of the Yin Yang Fish itself worsened, causing the array's alarm. Elder Kurong reserved her opinion, but since they couldn't find any evidence of an external intrusion, they could only let it go for now."
"It seems that Yin Yang Fish didn't just shield me, but even wiped away the traces left by that Longevity Sect member." Gu Chengming was thoughtful.
"Longevity Sect?" Li Suizhuang's expression suddenly grew solemn.
Gu Chengming briefly recounted his discovery in the forbidden area the previous night—the suspicious cultivator who snuck in, the black bead emitting deathly energy, and the person's attempt to touch the Yin Yang Fish phantom with it.
Finally, he pushed the bundle of fabric on the table toward Li Suizhuang. "This was taken from that person. Take a look."
Li Suizhuang cautiously uncovered the fabric, revealing the pitch-black bead inside.
"It is indeed the work of the Longevity Sect. And its quality is not low; it's a filth item that can only be refined by a Longevity Sect cultivator of at least the Fifth Realm."
"And that person?"
"Dead. Killed with one punch."
Li Suizhuang looked at him, a flash of complexity in her gaze.
She naturally knew Gu Chengming's combat power far exceeded his cultivation realm, but the casual tone in which the words "killed with one punch" came out of his mouth still left her a bit speechless.
"Where's the body?"
"Handled. It won't be found."
Li Suizhuang nodded and didn't ask for details on how it was handled. As the morning light poured in through the window frames, she spoke of another matter.
"Commander Gu, your disguise technique has failed."
Gu Chengming sighed. "I know. It was likely that when I acted in the forbidden area last night, the spiritual power fluctuations were too violent and dispelled the technique on my face."
Li Suizhuang stared at Gu Chengming's face for a long time after hearing this.
"No."
"What's wrong?"
"If it were just spiritual power fluctuations dispelling the surface ointment and the silver needles' shaping, then only the outer appearance should have failed. That is to say, your features would be distorted, but they wouldn't have completely returned to their original appearance."
She stood up, walked to Gu Chengming, and raised her hand, her slender fingers almost touching his cheekbone.
"Can I touch it?"
"Go ahead."
Li Suizhuang's fingertips lightly touched his face, and spiritual power seeped beneath the skin from her fingertips. A moment later, her fingers stopped.
"What's wrong?" Gu Chengming saw her expression change.
Li Suizhuang didn't answer immediately but verified it twice more before retracting her hand and stepping back. Her expression became quite subtle.
"Commander Gu, what I cast on you was not an ordinary disguise technique."
She chose her words carefully. "Ordinary disguises only change the skin and can fool the naked eye at most. In a place like the Hehuan Sect where experts are everywhere, any Fourth Realm cultivator's divine sense could easily see through surface-level disguises. Therefore, I used a technique I realized from the Hehuan Sect's secret scriptures called 'Red Dust Face-Cover.' This technique not only changes appearance but, more importantly, it can mask your aura characteristics and even blur karmic perception to a certain extent."
She paused and looked into Gu Chengming's eyes. "In other words, as long as this technique is active, even if a Fifth Realm grand cultivator uses their divine sense to investigate, they would only perceive an ordinary low-level rogue cultivator, not Gu Chengming of the Night Guard Division."
Gu Chengming's heart sank.
"Such a technique couldn't possibly collapse completely just because of a single spiritual power fluctuation."
Li Suizhuang's words confirmed his suspicion. "Furthermore, it shouldn't affect the deeper aura masking and karmic blurring, but I checked just now—the traces of the Red Dust Face-Cover technique have been completely erased. Not dispelled, not destroyed, but... wiped away."
Li Suizhuang took a deep breath. "A power capable of doing such a thing must be at least above the Fifth Realm, and within the Hehuan Sect..."
The two looked at each other and simultaneously thought of the same answer.
The Yin Yang Fish.
Gu Chengming leaned back against the chair, staring up at the wood grain on the ceiling, falling into deep thought.
If the Yin Yang Fish had wiped away his disguise... why?
Last night in the forbidden area, the Yin Yang Fish had actively shielded the disturbance he caused, helped him cover up the traces of the killing, and even wiped away the residual aura of the Longevity Sect member. From these actions, the Yin Yang Fish held no enmity toward him and even carried a faint sense of "protection."
But protection was one thing; stripping away his disguise was another.
The logic between these two things seemed contradictory no matter how he thought about it, unless...
The Yin Yang Fish's imbalance was essentially an increase in yin energy and a decrease in yang energy. And the Hehuan Sect practiced the Great Dao of Red Dust, entering the dao through emotion and attaining it through desire. Out of instinct, the Yin Yang Fish would seek anything that could help it restore balance—that was Li Suizhuang's previous analysis.
So, what could most effectively stimulate the "yang energy" within Hehuan Sect disciples? Or more bluntly—what could stir up the most turbulent waves of emotion in this sect that entered the mortal world through red dust and attained the dao through emotion?
The answer was already obvious.
The Yin Yang Fish wasn't helping him. Or rather, not entirely; it was using him.
An imbalanced, yin-heavy and yang-weak primordial spiritual item was instinctively seeking a way to restore balance.
It sensed the aura of the Yin Yang Creation Strategy within him and had also somehow perceived his suppressed charm beneath the Red Dust Face-Cover—so it made a choice.
It shielded the traces of his killing and provided protection so the Hehuan Sect's high-level members wouldn't discover this intruder. But the price was—wiping away his disguise.
It wanted him to show his true face. It wanted that 30-point charm value to be completely released in this sect of emotion and desire. It wanted the Hehuan Sect disciples to generate the strongest emotional fluctuations around him.
And the red dust aura and yang energy stirred up by these emotional fluctuations would flow back into the Yin Yang Fish through the Yin Yang Twin Fish Array—becoming the nourishment for its restoration of balance.
After figuring all this out, Gu Chengming's expression became very strange.
"Chief Physician Li, can this disguise... be restored in a short time?"
Li Suizhuang shook her head, her expression also not looking good. "The casting of Red Dust Face-Cover requires specific materials and an environment. Those ointments and silver needles were refined in the capital in advance; they are extremely costly, and I only had one set prepared on me."
She paused and added, "Furthermore, if it was truly the Yin Yang Fish that wiped away the technique, then even if I recast it, the fish could wipe it away again. Within the Hehuan Sect, under the coverage of the Yin Yang Twin Fish Array, the Yin Yang Fish's ability to interfere with any technique in the array is nearly infinite."
"In other words, as long as I remain in the Hehuan Sect, there's no way to restore the disguise."
"...I'm afraid so."
【Red Dust Phantom Step calmly analyzed after listening: There are three urgent matters. First, find the Longevity Sect's internal mole network within the Hehuan Sect as quickly as possible and gather evidence before your identity is exposed. Second, control the range of contact with Hehuan Sect disciples to minimize the impact. Third, find a way to figure out the Yin Yang Fish's true intentions.】
'The external brain is working again.'
Gu Chengming looked at Red Dust Phantom Step's analysis but unconsciously looked up at the ceiling.
He felt like things were becoming more and more bizarre.
It wouldn't have reached this point if any part had gone wrong—or rather, gone right—earlier.
But the result was as it was: a character with as high as 30 charm had been placed, completely undisguised, into the Hehuan Sect, a place where techniques were out of control and lust was hard to restrain.
'What is this? Tricking people into the Hehuan Sect, right?'
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