The counter-ambush, conceived from Luo Feng's analysis, was a masterstroke of tactical deception. The Verdant Sword Sect feigned a panicked response to the Zhao's harassing attacks, seemingly taking the bait and diverting a significant force towards the trap valley. But the main strength of the sect, led by Elder Guo himself, lay in wait along the Zhao's predicted escape route.
The result was a slaughter. The Zhao strike force, expecting to prey on a disorganized and overextended enemy, found themselves surrounded and outmatched. Their commander was captured alive, and his subsequent interrogation under truth-sealing talismans confirmed Luo Feng's theory and revealed even more: the location of a primary Zhao supply depot, hidden in a network of caves near a place called the Whispering Falls.
The victory was total. The morale of the Verdant Sword Sect soared to unprecedented heights. Luo Feng was hailed as a hero, his name chanted in the training yards. The cautious elders who had opposed Elder Guo now deferred to his hardened judgment. The sect was no longer just defending; it was on the offensive, its confidence forged in the fire of success.
For the menial disciples, the triumph translated into a slight, almost imperceptible, easing of pressure. The frantic, desperate energy that had fueled their labor softened into something more sustainable: a weary but proud determination. The quality of the emotional fuel available to Mo Ye shifted accordingly. The sharp, nourishing toxins of fear and despair were now diluted by this new, coppery taste of victory and collective pride. It was still useful, but less potent.
He needed to correct this. Complacency was a poison to his Path, and a united, confident enemy was harder to manipulate.
His opportunity came from the interrogation reports, which trickled down through the sect's gossip mill. The captured Zhao commander had revealed a critical vulnerability: the depot at the Whispering Falls was not just for food and weapons. It was the primary source of the "Serpent's Venom" powder—the same corrosive substance used to poison the Luminous Roots and the spirit grains.
The sect's Alchemy Pavilion was tasked with analyzing a captured sample to devise an antidote and a detection method. The task fell to a talented but notoriously arrogant inner sect alchemist, Disciple Jin. He was a man consumed by his own genius, dismissive of his peers, and utterly convinced of his own infallibility.
Mo Ye observed him from a distance during one of his rare deliveries to the pavilion. He saw the way Disciple Jin brushed aside the suggestions of his assistants, the contempt in his eyes for the "mere herb-peddlers" who supplied his materials. Here was a pillar of the sect's war effort, and his foundation was pride.
Pride, as Mo Ye knew, was the easiest weakness to exploit. It made one blind.
He began his work with the patience of a glacier. During his duties in the gardens, he identified a specific, relatively common weed known as "Greycap." It was considered a nuisance, spiritually inert. But when crushed and dried in a very specific way, its spores produced a faint, almost undetectable residue that reacted violently with certain stabilizing agents used in high-level alchemical analysis.
Over the next few days, Mo Ye performed a series of small, untraceable actions. He ensured a batch of Greycap, harvested by a careless disciple, was not fully incinerated as per the new contamination protocols. He subtly adjusted the ventilation in a drying shed, causing a specific basket of medicinal herbs destined for the Alchemy Pavilion to be exposed to the right amount of ambient moisture. He did nothing directly to Disciple Jin or his work. He merely altered the environment, creating the conditions for a mistake.
The trap was set.
Disciple Jin, in his haste to be the one to crack the secret of the Serpent's Venom, worked in isolation. He used the contaminated herbs as a control sample in a complex purification array. The reaction was not explosive, but insidious. The Greycap residue created a false positive in his detection talisman, indicating a successful neutralization of the venom's core toxin. Confident in his result, he proudly presented his "antidote" to the war council.
Elder Guo, eager for any advantage, immediately ordered a batch of the antidote to be produced and sent with the next supply caravan to the front lines.
The result was catastrophic. The "antidote" was useless. Worse, when applied to soldiers already exposed to the venom, it caused a violent allergic reaction, incapacitating an entire squad and leaving them vulnerable to a Zhao counter-attack. The Verdant Sword forces at the front were thrown into disarray, and a key forward position was lost.
The news hit the sect like a physical blow. The soaring morale plummeted, shattering into a million pieces of confusion, anger, and a bitter sense of betrayal. How could this have happened? Was there a traitor in the Alchemy Pavilion?
Disciple Jin was publicly disgraced. His laboratory was seized, his status stripped away. The ensuing witch-hunt within the Alchemy Pavilion created a fresh wave of paranoia even deeper than before. Alchemists accused one another of sabotage. Trust, the bedrock of the sect's war effort, began to erode.
And through it all, Lin Tianyao tended his Spirit Moss.
The emotional backlash was a tidal wave of pure, undiluted power. The sudden collapse of hope, the resurgence of bitter distrust, the fury of the soldiers who felt betrayed by their own—it was a feast that made the Soul Flame roar in triumph. The Tri-Flame Vortex spun faster, the core of absolute black seeming to drink the very light from the air around him.
He had not fired an arrow nor swung a sword. He had not whispered a single word of sabotage. He had simply understood the properties of a weed and the nature of a proud man, and he had brought them together.
The Verdant Sword Sect had been drinking from a well of confidence. Lin Tianyao had quietly poisoned it. Now, they were choking on the dregs of doubt and failure, and their suffering was the water that nourished his dark, blooming power.
The war continued, but the sect's forward momentum had been broken. They were back on their heels, reacting, bleeding. It was exactly where he needed them to be. A wounded animal was more dangerous, more predictable, and more useful than a confident one. And a sect drowning in suspicion was a sect that would not look too closely at a silent, unassuming menial disciple who simply kept to his work.