The scroll was their key. Back in the safety of Lan Yue's warded room, they examined the dead demon's last testament, a logistical map of Elder Feng's treason. Dates, smuggling routes for forbidden artifacts, and the locations of secret meetings were all laid out in a coded script that Xue Lian, through the Whispering Stone, helped Lan Yue decipher.
This one, Xue Lian's thought came, sharp and urgent, focusing on a specific entry. A delivery of a 'Heart of the Void' artifact. The location is an abandoned shrine in the mountains west of the city. The time… is tonight.
This was their chance. Not just to gather more intelligence, but to intercept a Void artifact and potentially capture the traitorous elder himself. But a new, dangerous variable stood in their way.
"Wei Chen," Lan Yue said aloud, looking at Jax and Ren. "I cannot simply disappear for a nighttime mission of this importance. He will notice. His suspicion will turn into a direct accusation, and he will alert the sect."
"Then we must misdirect him," Ren whispered, her shadowy form seeming to blend with the room's corners.
The plan was a calculated risk. Lan Yue approached Wei Chen, her expression a mask of grim determination. "I have a new lead from the archival texts," she said, feeding him a carefully crafted lie. "A potential demonic sect hideout, heavily guarded, in the northern quarries. It is too dangerous for a small team. Take your disciples, Elder Wei. Subdue them. I will remain here and continue my scrying to pinpoint the location of the Void summoner."
It was the perfect bait for his pride and his righteous zeal. A chance for action, for glory, and to prove his own worth. His eyes lit up with a fervent fire. "It will be done, Yue," he said, his voice full of a new respect. "I will not fail you."
As she watched him gather his forces and depart to the north, a sliver of guilt pricked at her. But she pushed it down. Deception was a necessary tool in this war of whispers.
That night, under a starless sky, Lan Yue, Jax, and Ren took up concealed positions in the crumbling ruins of an ancient shrine in the western mountains. They waited for Elder Feng to arrive for his clandestine meeting. The air was cold, silent, and heavy with anticipation.
They waited for an hour. Then two. Feng did not appear.
A deep sense of unease began to crawl up Lan Yue's spine. A twig snapped in the darkness behind them. They spun around, weapons drawn, to see a figure step out from behind a ruined pillar.
It was Wei Chen. And he was not alone. Flanking him were a dozen of the sect's most elite disciples, their faces grim, their swords already glowing with a cold, righteous light.
"I knew it, Yue," Wei Chen said, his voice not a shout, but a low, mournful declaration of judgment. The admiration from the afternoon was gone, replaced by a cold, sorrowful certainty. "The quarry was a lie. Elder Feng warned me you had truly fallen, that you were working against us. I did not want to believe it." He looked at Jax and Ren with pure hatred. "But here you are, meeting with your demonic handlers in the dead of night. You are a traitor to the righteous path."
"Wei Chen, you are the one who has been deceived!" Lan Yue cried out, realizing the terrible depth of the trap. "Feng is the traitor! He is the one summoning the Void!"
"Lies!" one of the disciples snarled. "Elder Feng is a hero! He is the one who revealed your treachery to us!"
The battle erupted without another word.
Jax was a roaring bastion of strength, his massive form a shield against the onslaught of sword qi. He slammed his fists onto the ground, causing shards of rock to erupt, deflecting incoming spells. Ren was a phantom, weaving between the disciples, her hands blurring as she cast illusions mirage copies of herself, shifting walls of darkness, and phantom demons that caused chaos and confusion, buying precious seconds. But they were outnumbered, and their opponents were not mindless rogues; they were elite, disciplined warriors, their formations solid.
Lan Yue met Wei Chen in the center of the ruins. Her celestial sword, Nightfall Crescent, hummed as it sprang from its sheath, catching the faint moonlight and casting an ethereal glow. Their blades clashed, a sound she had only ever heard in friendly spars, now a jarring, hateful shriek of steel. Wei Chen was a formidable opponent. A decade of obsessive training, fueled by his desire to be her equal, had made him incredibly powerful. And he knew her. He knew every feint, every parry, every core tenet of the Azure Cloud Sect's swordplay.
"I will not kill you, Yue," he panted, their blades locked. "I will bring you back to the sect. They will purge this darkness from your soul!"
She pushed him back, her heart aching. Her blade executed a flawless 'Swallow's Retreat,' deflecting his attack and creating a momentary distance. "There is no darkness to purge, Wei Chen! Only a truth you refuse to see!"
As three disciples broke through Ren's illusions, their swords flashing towards Jax's exposed flank, Lan Yue's form blurred. She unleashed 'Celestial Bloom,' a torrent of shimmering sword light that erupted outwards, striking the charging disciples and sending them sprawling, their robes singed, their attacks disrupted. She spun back to face Wei Chen, her gaze sharp.
She saw an opening, a classic binding formation he was initiating the 'Imprisonment of the Virtuous Heart,' designed to suppress spiritual energy. She prepared the standard counter, the 'Daoist's Unfettered Flow,' but it was a feint. At the last possible second, he shifted his grip, and the righteous, golden light of his sword was subsumed by a sickening, corrosive purple energy a heretical art she had never seen before.
"Feng taught me this," he whispered, a fanatic's gleam in his eyes. "The Art of Soul Scourge. A necessary tool to fight an unholy enemy."
The blast of dark light was too fast, too unexpected, too vile. It ripped through the air, bypassing her spiritual defenses, and struck her in the side with the force of a battering ram. The pain was immediate and absolute, a searing, white hot agony that felt like her very soul was being burned. Her celestial energy, pure and vibrant, dissolved into chaos, corrupted by the malignant spiritual poison. Her vision tunneled to black, the world tilting violently as her knees buckled.
She fell. Her sword, Nightfall Crescent, clattered uselessly to the ground beside her, its glow fading.
"The Saint is down!" a disciple shouted in triumph, his voice thick with fanaticism.
Jax let out a deafening roar of pure fury and abandoned his defensive position, charging forward to create a path, smashing through a disciple with a desperate, brutal swing. Ren, seeing her Empress's beloved fall, acted instantly. She crushed a talisman in her hand, and a blinding, searing flash of pure white light erupted from her, turning the entire mountaintop into a sunlit noon for a single, disorienting second. The world screamed with the backlash of her ancient demonic art.
When the disciples' vision cleared, they were gone. Lan Yue, and her two demonic guardians, had vanished into the night.
They found refuge in a deep, forgotten hunter's cave miles away. Lan Yue drifted in and out of a haze of pain, the world a blur of shadow and flickering firelight. The wound in her side was not bleeding, but it was festering with a dark energy that was actively poisoning her celestial qi, turning it sluggish and cold.
Jax stood guard at the mouth of the cave, a grim, furious sentinel. Ren was at Lan Yue's side, desperately trying to stabilize her condition, her own face pale with worry, her hands glowing with frantic demonic energy as she tried to fight off the pervasive Soul Scourge.
The Whispering Stone, clutched in Ren's hand, pulsed with a frantic, desperate energy. Across the realms, in the heart of the Silent Palace, Xue Lian was about to receive the worst news of her life.
Your Majesty… the plan failed. It was a trap. Wei Chen… he betrayed her. The Saint is gravely injured. Her cultivation… it's being corrupted. We are in hiding. We are being hunted.