Mo Ye's fabricated report on "resonant harmonic frequencies" bought a precious, brittle month of respite. Elder Song's replies, delivered by his cold-eyed attendant, were succinct, demanding "tangible progress metrics" and "replicable results." The noose was tightening not with a yank, but with the slow, inexorable pull of bureaucratic expectation.
The strain began to manifest physically. The constant, low-grade conflict between the Soul Flame and the orchid's radiant hope etched itself onto Mo Ye's body. He grew thinner, the sharp planes of his face becoming more pronounced. The dark circles under his eyes were no longer mere shadows of fatigue but bruises against his pale skin. He moved with a careful, measured economy, as if each motion cost him a fraction of his dwindling spirit.
In the greenhouse, the dynamic had shifted imperceptibly. Xiao Qing's trust was no longer the bright, unexamined thing it had been. A new wariness colored her interactions, a silent question in her eyes when his back was turned. She no longer offered insights freely; he had to coax them from her with carefully constructed questions, a process that felt more like interrogation than collaboration. The well of her openness was drying up, poisoned by his own failed manipulations and the chilling glimpse of his true nature she had sensed.
He was failing on both fronts. He was no closer to extracting her "secret," and the cover he had so painstakingly built was fraying at the edges. The instrument was becoming blunt from overuse.
The breaking point came from an unexpected direction. Li Na, who had maintained her icy distance, approached him one evening as he stood staring blankly at the West Quadrant's failing Spirit Moss. The silence between them was heavy with unspoken accusations.
"Song is making his move," she said without preamble, her voice low and urgent. "He's not waiting for your results anymore. He's convened a meeting with the few remaining alchemists loyal to him. They're discussing 'alternative methods of information retrieval' for the greenhouse project. They're talking about mind-probing talismans and truth-serums derived from Dreamspinner Lilies."
A cold dread, sharper than any spiritual backlash, washed over Mo Ye. Mind-probing. Such methods were crude, violent, and carried a high risk of shattering the target's consciousness. They would turn Xiao Qing's mind to rubble and destroy any secret she held. Elder Song's patience had evaporated. He was done with finesse; he was ready to use a hammer.
This was the catastrophic failure. If Song's alchemists moved in, they would not only destroy his only viable path to fulfilling his mandate, but their invasive methods might also stumble upon the traces of his energy, the Soul Flame's unique signature that lingered around the greenhouse from his various experiments and the forced resonance. His own secret would be exposed.
He had run out of time. Out of lies. Out of room to maneuver.
"When?" he asked, his voice a rasp.
"Tomorrow. After the morning council."
He had one night. One night to avert a disaster of his own making.
He looked at Li Na, truly looked at her, for the first time in weeks. The anger in her eyes was still there, but beneath it was a grim, pragmatic understanding. They were both survivors in this rotting sect, and Song's ham-fisted approach threatened them all.
"I need a distraction," Mo Ye said, the gears in his mind spinning furiously, seeking any possible leverage. "Something that will demand Song's full attention. Something that threatens his power base directly."
Li Na's eyes narrowed, calculating. "The central spirit stone vault. It's the heart of his operation. The records, the reserves... it's all there. He guards it personally."
"Can it be breached?"
"Not by force. But... there are rumors. The ventilation shafts from the old forge. They were sealed when Song took over, but the seals are just administrative talismans. They can be broken from the outside without triggering the main wards."
A desperate, dangerous plan began to form. He wouldn't steal from the vault. He wouldn't need to. He just needed to make it look like someone had tried. He needed to create a security scare so significant that Song would pull all his resources, including his alchemists, to investigate the breach and secure his treasure. It would throw the entire Logistics Hall into chaos and buy Mo Ye the time he desperately needed.
It was a risk of monumental proportions. If he was caught, it meant immediate execution. But the alternative—allowing Song's alchemists into the greenhouse—was certain doom.
"Can your people create the... evidence... of an attempted breach?" he asked.
A slow, grim smile touched Li Na's lips. It was the first time she had looked at him without outright hostility in weeks. "We can make it look like a professional job. Enough to make Song soil his robes." She paused. "But this is it, Mo Ye. This burns every bridge. There's no going back after this."
Mo Ye nodded, the motion feeling final. "There was never any going back."
As Li Na melted back into the shadows to mobilize her network, Mo Ye turned his gaze towards the Logistics Hall. The vulture was preparing to feast, so he would set its own nest on fire. The ghost was done being a subtle instrument. It was time to become an arsonist. The preservation of his crumbling position now required an act of outright treason. The cage had become a pyre, and he was ready to strike the match.
The plan was a desperate gambit, a single, high-stakes roll of the dice where failure meant not just his own death, but the unraveling of everything he had worked towards. As the moon climbed to its zenith, Mo Ye moved through the sleeping sect like the ghost he was supposed to be. He avoided the patrolling guards—fewer in number now, their loyalty bought by Song or sapped by apathy—with an ease that was second nature. His destination was not the greenhouse, nor his shed, but the abandoned forge on the sect's eastern edge.
The air in the forge was thick with the ghosts of heat and metal, a stark contrast to the living, breathing hope of the greenhouse. Following Li Na's directions, he found the sealed ventilation shaft behind a pile of corroded anvils. The administrative talismans were indeed simple things, designed to alert Song's clerks to unauthorized access, not to stop a determined intruder. With a precise application of will, he channeled a needle-thin thread of Soul Flame, not to burn, but to unravel. The talismans flared for a fraction of a second before their energy structures disintegrated into harmless motes of light.
The shaft was tight, clogged with decades of dust and soot. He wriggled through, his dark robes becoming filthier with every inch. He didn't need to reach the vault itself. He only needed to get close enough.
After what felt like an eternity of crawling, he reached a grille that overlooked the vault's antechamber. Through the rusted metal, he could see the glow of powerful warding talismans on the massive double doors of the vault itself. This was far enough.
From within his robes, he pulled out the "evidence" Li Na's people had prepared: a single, high-quality lock-picking tool of a design used by infamous mortal cat burglars, and a shred of fabric from a robe not of the Verdant Sword Sect. He infused both items with a minute, fading trace of generic, unaffiliated spiritual energy—a simple trick, but enough to suggest a cultivator of unknown origin had been here.
He didn't drop them carelessly. He used the tool to subtly scratch the mortar around the grille from the inside, creating marks of attempted entry. He then wedged the tool and the fabric fragment into the scratch, making it look like the intruder had been interrupted and fled, leaving a clue behind. It was a stage set for a play that had never happened.
His work done, he retreated back down the shaft, resealing the talismans behind him with a reverse application of the Soul Flame, leaving them looking intact but spiritually inert. He returned to his shed as the first hints of dawn tinged the sky, his body aching and his spirit weary, but his mind clear.
The discovery was made just after the morning bell. A clerk, arriving for his duties, noticed the tampered talismans and raised the alarm. The reaction was everything Mo Ye had hoped for and more. Elder Song descended upon the antechamber, his normally impassive face contorted with a mixture of fury and panic. The evidence was perfectly tailored to prey on his deepest fear: that an outside force was coming for his hoard.
The Logistics Hall erupted into controlled chaos. All of Song's attendants and guards were mobilized. Interrogations began. The meeting with the alchemists was cancelled indefinitely. The threat to the vault, however manufactured, was a fire that demanded every drop of water Song possessed.
Standing in the greenhouse later that morning, Mo Ye watched the commotion from a distance. Xiao Qing, sensing the shift in the sect's energy, looked at him with wide, uncertain eyes.
"What's happening?" she asked.
"A reminder," Mo Ye said, his voice quiet, "that there are always other predators circling. Sometimes, the only way to keep one vulture at bay is to let it smell the blood of another."
He had bought himself time. He had stopped the immediate threat. But as he looked at Xiao Qing, at the orchid, at the tangled web of his own making, he knew this was not a solution. It was a postponement. He had traded one form of scrutiny for another, and the cost of this desperate act would eventually come due. The vulture's patience had thinned, and in response, the ghost had been forced to reveal a new, more dangerous facet of its nature: not just a manipulator, but a saboteur. The walls of his cage were now lined with the explosives he had just planted, and the fuse was burning.