Chapter 21: Secrets Of The Stern
Immortal Radiance emanated from the ancient-style buildings at the stern, spreading together with the mist.
However, a courtyard wall over ten zhang high blocked the view, allowing only glimpses of the densely packed rooftops of those ancient-style buildings, with scarlet gold lapis lazuli tiles and flowing divine wood beams. There were pavilions, palace halls, ancient pagodas…
Between the majestic courtyard wall resembling a city wall and the nine-story ship tower was a hundred-meter-wide empty deck area.
Xie Jin no longer had his previous arrogance and bluster, sitting on the first stone step of the bronze gate, holding a steel pipe, occasionally looking toward the ship tower passage in fear and trepidation.
He had become like a startled bird, seeing shadows as enemies.
Behind him, the stone steps numbered dozens.
At the top of the stone steps was the bronze gate leading into the courtyard wall, about three zhang high, exceedingly grand and imposing. The left door panel featured a relief sculpture of myriad lights of homes, while the right depicted a starry sky landscape like a yellow springs river, from some unknown part of the universe.
“Doctor Qi, how’s the situation now?”
Seeing Qi Shanshan emerge from the passage, Xie Jin grasped at her like a lifeline, his spirits slightly lifted as he hurriedly stepped forward to ask anxiously.
Qi Shanshan brought good news: “Don’t worry, Li Weiyi and those from 705 laboratory have both suffered heavy losses, so no one can spare the energy to deal with you for now.”
“That’s great!”
Xie Jin’s mind became active, saying: “Let’s plan this out. You poison the food, and I’ll launch a sneak attack. We’ll take out that bloodthirsty brute Li Weiyi and the people from 705 laboratory together.”
“Good, that’s exactly what I had in mind.”
Qi Shanshan took out a bag of food and handed it over: “You haven’t eaten all day, right? I see you’re starving and weak. It’s a bit cold now, but eat some first.”
Xie Jin was indeed starving, his chest nearly touching his back. While wolfing it down, he mumbled unclearly: “Li Weiyi must have swallowed a sarira, that’s why he’s so powerful. But no matter how powerful, he’s still made of flesh and blood. With poison—potent poison—we can absolutely kill him… by then… ah… you… the food you gave me…”
Xie Jin’s abdomen twisted in pain, as if his stomach were filled with razor blades. His body couldn’t stand straight, and he stared at Qi Shanshan in disbelief.
Qi Shanshan stepped back three paces, hands in her pockets, her gaze indifferent: “You said it yourself—poison the food, potent poison, made with black flood dragon corpse blood.”
“Bitch! We’re losing so badly… it must be because of you. You’re in cahoots with that pretty boy… pfft…”
Xie Jin lunged toward Qi Shanshan, but after only three steps, he collapsed to the ground.
He convulsed while foaming blood from his mouth.
Visibly, his skin began to blacken and ulcerate.
Qi Shanshan walked over, lightly kicked Xie Jin, and confirmed he was dead before murmuring contemptuously: “You were only half right. Before, I wasn’t with him—I was really helping you all. But now…”
Qi Shanshan’s alliance with Xie Tianshu and the others had been the only path to survival she could see at the time.
But she looked down on their character and abilities.
Especially after learning of Liu Ying’s fate, she was even more grateful for the appearance of Li Weiyi as the perfect cooperation partner. He had strength, looks, loyalty, cunning decisiveness, sympathy for the weak but no mercy for enemies.
She didn’t want to merely be Li Weiyi’s cooperation partner.
She wanted to remove the word “cooperation.”
But she also knew she had missed the best chance to take him down. If she had foreseen today back then, she would have snatched that bowl of fish soup from Cai Yutong no matter what.
No longer dwelling in regret, Qi Shanshan dragged Xie Jin’s corpse toward the ship’s rail.
As long as she cleared the traces here without Li Weiyi noticing, she would completely sever her past. In the future, there would be plenty of ways to take him down.
No matter how excellent he was, he was still just a hot-blooded young man.
“Xie Jin probably never dreamed that on this ship, the most terrifying person isn’t me—it’s you.”
Just as she laboriously dragged Xie Jin’s corpse to the ship’s rail, Li Weiyi’s voice sounded in her ear. Even as calm as Qi Shanshan was, she was still quite startled.
But in the brief moment as she stood up and straightened her disheveled hair, she already had a response ready. She asked calmly: “How long have you been here?”
“Since Xie Jin fell.”
Li Weiyi’s tone was calm as he stood at the ship tower passage, his figure tall and handsome.
The two were over twenty meters apart.
“So, you were just watching? Watching me drag the corpse clumsily and awkwardly like a penguin?” Qi Shanshan said with a coquettish resentment, seemingly oblivious to the anger in Li Weiyi’s heart or the disappointment and heartache on his face.
Li Weiyi frowned, having no interest in flirting with her.
This wasn’t something a few clever words could brush off.
He walked into this deck area shrouded in Immortal Radiance. On the ground were the corpses of four scientific expedition team members, along with various chemical devices and medicines.
In the corner was the massive corpse of the bear-like creature, its abdominal wound rotten and emitting a pungent stench.
Clearly, it had died from severe injuries on the day it fell onto the bronze ship.
It was the Yellow Dragon Sword!
The wound torn open by the Yellow Dragon Sword couldn’t heal even for a supernatural creature; instead, it accelerated the rotting.
The four scientific expedition team members’ corpses each had their own horrific states.
Some had skin burst open, leaving only flesh and blood and bone; some had half their body grown scales, the other half rotted; some had tentacles sprout from their heads, but their skulls were shattered.
Li Weiyi said: “So, the legendary four scientific expedition team members who went to investigate the stern and never returned were actually used by you for live experiments! Spreading that news, while deliberately leaving the bear-like creature’s blood near the ship tower, was to scare people and keep all scientific expedition team members from coming here.”
“That day, at the ship tower, you must have been afraid that Gao Huan and I would come to the stern and discover your secrets, so you drove us away, right?”
“Xie Tianshu dared to drink flood dragon blood because he already had confirmed experimental results from you.”
“Everyone fainted after breakfast because you provided the medicine to Kong Fan.”
Li Weiyi stared into Qi Shanshan’s eyes: “You’re terrifyingly good at disguise. You lie without any flaws—I was almost fooled by you!”
Qi Shanshan’s eyes reddened, looking infinitely aggrieved, her voice choked: “I… I had no choice. You saw what happened to Liu Ying. If I didn’t take action, I’d be the one jumping today. Only by having value could she live, could she have a say and status.”
Li Weiyi said: “Doctor Qi, how many people died because of you? Without your medicines, they might not have succeeded.”
Tears streamed from Qi Shanshan’s eyes as she said: “I’m not you. I don’t have your immense power. I can’t control my own fate—I could only choose compromise. When Xie Jin held a knife to my neck, it was either die or help him. Tell me, what should I have chosen?”
Li Weiyi no longer knew whether to believe her!
Qi Shanshan had helped and saved him more than once.
But she was too smart, too good at lying and weaving stories.
Every expression and word of hers seemed emotionally charged, but they were surely all deeply calculated. Even Xie Tianshu, Kong Fan, and the others were likely just her pawns.
Because she surely had ways to kill them just like she did Xie Jin.
“You’ve saved me, so this time, I won’t kill you. But what you’ve done—someone will hold you accountable for it.” Li Weiyi made it very clear: just not killing her this time.
Qi Shanshan’s gaze was pitiable: “Have I only saved you once?”
In this moment, Li Weiyi deeply realized that one must never owe anyone a favor.
With tears streaming down her face, Qi Shanshan continued: “Yes, I deserve to die. But I saved Yutong, saved you. Even if the whole world says I deserve to die, you two have no qualification to say that word. If you go tell them now, they’ll kill me immediately—the outcome like those two security team members thrown into the Soul Sea.”
“You won’t kill me, but I’ll die because of you.”
For others’ lives, Li Weiyi could let it go without pursuing to the end—he wasn’t some righteous judge.
But for his senior disciple brother ending up like this, Qi Shanshan bore some responsibility.
Li Weiyi said: “You’re still useful now, so I can give you a chance. Help me cure senior disciple brother, and let him decide how to deal with you.”
“But if senior disciple brother can’t get through this, and something happens to him, everyone will pay with their lives. Even Heaven won’t be spared!”
Li Weiyi thoroughly searched Qi Shanshan’s entire body, confirming no dangerous items, then asked: “Where is Senior Student Cai?”
Qi Shanshan never imagined that the sunny, kind, humble Li Weiyi from before would have such terrifying eyes when mentioning senior disciple brother earlier—cold air that seemed to seep into her bones.
In this moment, she truly felt how terrifying it was to offend Li Weiyi on matters of principle.
If not for doing a couple of things right before, she would surely be a dead person by now.
Qi Shanshan led Li Weiyi to the second layer of the nine-story ship tower: “No one dares come up here—it’s very safe. I hid her here, so this turmoil won’t reach her.”
The passage on the second layer of the ship tower was still filled with stone figurines.
Passing through these stone figurines, they finally saw Cai Yutong lying on the ground.
“She was just knocked out by me—nothing serious… eh, why hasn’t she woken up after so long?” Qi Shanshan sensed something wrong.
“Senior Student… Senior Student Cai…”
Li Weiyi squatted down to check on Cai Yutong.
“So scalding hot!”
The moment his hand touched Cai Yutong’s forehead, Li Weiyi was startled.
Her body temperature was terrifyingly scalding hot—not at all like a human’s.
“Let me see.”
After checking the temperature on Cai Yutong’s face, Qi Shanshan immediately began removing her clothes, but thinking of something, she looked toward Li Weiyi beside her.
Li Weiyi turned away.
But he mobilized the scalding hot qi flow from the sole of his right foot, gathering it at his ears.
After lifting the clothes, Qi Shanshan saw a large number of gold veins appearing under the skin at Cai Yutong’s chest, growing out from the heart area and extending throughout the body, flowing with strands of golden glow like flame threads.
“Didn’t you say that one-tenth concentration of Golden Crow Blood could be borne by the human body? Why has such a mutation suddenly occurred?” Qi Shanshan stared at the unconscious Cai Yutong and said, as if talking to herself, her tone full of confusion.
“Senior Student drank Golden Crow Blood?” When Li Weiyi turned back, Cai Yutong’s clothes were already covered again.
Qi Shanshan nodded: “She believed that diluting Golden Crow Blood would allow the human body to bear it, so she experimented on herself. But her temperature now exceeds sixty degrees and is still rising rapidly.”
Thinking of something, Qi Shanshan immediately took out the cross pendant and placed it around Cai Yutong’s neck.
This cross pendant immortal object was the first one Cai Yutong had obtained.
Qi Shanshan had taken it from her after knocking her out.
She thought the cross pendant might suppress the destructive power of Golden Crow Blood, since Cai Yutong hadn’t shown such changes while wearing it.
Just like how jiao-like mutations required wearing the dragon pattern ring.
After removing the cross pendant, the power of Golden Crow Blood was released, endangering Cai Yutong’s life.
Fortunately, the Golden Crow Blood was diluted, so it released slowly. Otherwise, by the time she and Li Weiyi arrived, Cai Yutong might have already burned into a pile of ashes.
…
After putting on the cross pendant, Cai Yutong’s body temperature rose even faster instead.
Moments later, she was completely enveloped in golden firelight.
Li Weiyi and Qi Shanshan didn’t dare approach, retreating far away.
“So eerie! These golden flames aren’t low in temperature, yet her body remains completely unharmed.”
The golden flames were very dazzling, but Li Weiyi could see that Cai Yutong’s body outline inside the flames was intact and undamaged—this was too unbelievable.
After all, she was just a mortal of flesh and blood.
“Whoosh!”
The golden flames suddenly erupted in a boom, and amid the scattering sparks, a pair of several-meter-long brilliant wing shadows appeared, as miraculous as a pupa breaking its cocoon into a butterfly.
The two retreated even farther, holding their breath.
The flames burned for about a quarter of an hour before showing signs of receding.
The glow was no longer so intense, and Cai Yutong’s body lying on the ground gradually appeared, its surface layer of mortal shell cracking and falling away, revealing inner skin white and dazzling.
“You… maybe you should go down first?” Qi Shanshan said cautiously.
Li Weiyi naturally saw something was off. Though Cai Yutong hadn’t turned to ashes, her clothes had been reduced to ashes.
Thinking Qi Shanshan wouldn’t harm Cai Yutong, Li Weiyi went down the stairs back to the first layer deck area. The image of Cai Yutong feeding him fish soup surfaced in his mind, warming his heart while also filling him with hidden worry.
Not long after.
Low voices of the two women came from the second layer ship tower, with Qi Shanshan explaining something.
Li Weiyi’s heart relaxed, and the corners of his mouth unconsciously lifted.
But he didn’t go up the ship tower, quietly waiting below.
With his mood relaxed, his gaze suddenly caught the three-zhang-high bronze gate atop the dozens of stone steps in the distance, piquing his curiosity, so he walked over.
