Chapter 31#
If You See SnowCh31 - I Still Have One More Trick Up My Sleeve#
“Boss Su is indeed naturally intelligent. Good, it’s better to die knowing the truth so you have no regrets on your journey.” Su Gou bowed, “Are you ready to go?”
Su Ruhui sighed, “You’re quite the thoughtful little monster, killing and cremating all in one go.”
As he spoke, he turned his head and met Su Yu’s eyes. He asked with a grin, “Xiao Yu, he just called me Boss Su, but you don’t seem surprised at all.”
Sang Chiyu lied without batting an eye: “Who’s Boss Su? I’ve never heard of him. Why did he call you Boss Su?”
This lie was flawless. After all, he was now just a child from the countryside. He should’ve been only seven or eight when Su Ruhui shook the world with his fame. It’s normal he had never heard of this name.”
“With Lord Xiao Su by your side, your journey to the underworld will not be lonely.” Su Gou nodded and said, “I have other matters to attend to. Boss Su, please set off as soon as possible.”
Just as he was about to activate the killing lines again, Su Ruhui suddenly shouted, “Actually, I still have one more trick up my sleeve.”
Su Gou shook his head and laughed, “Stop trying to struggle in vain. The ice cellar lies deep underground. No one outside knows what’s happening here. No one will come to save you.”
“This dage, I actually have another purpose behind all this wrangling. Su Ruhui chuckled, “Let me ask you, how long does this stormfire array need to bake before this ice cellar melts?”
Su Gou lowered his head. A wet patch had already formed beneath his feet. The stormfire array had been active for at least an incense stick’s worth of time, and its intense flames left all three men drenched in sweat. That brat Su Ruhui had already shed his robe; it was just too hot and stuffy. Su Gou shifted his feet, water rippling beneath his soles. With this much water, the ice cellar must have melted away by half.
But so what?
Su Gou’s porcelain face maintained its usual smile, “Boss Su, are you deluding yourself? Do you really expect those frozen Yao corpses in the ice to save you?”
“That’s right, it’s just that kind of wishful thinking.” Su Ruhui’s smile was incredibly irritating, “I’m just naturally lucky. Apart from taking down Sang Chiyu, all my delusions can come true.”
Sang Chiyu was rendered speechless once more.
He suddenly felt Su Ruhui was deliberately teasing him, but how could this guy possibly know he was Sang Chiyu? His height and appearance were no longer what they used to be, and even his voice sounded like that of a fifteen-year-old boy. There was no way Su Ruhui could recognize him. He couldn’t help but glance sideways at Su Ruhui. The bastard looked perfectly normal, not even looking his way. This eased his mind; that guy was just naturally sarcastic.
Su Ruhui said in a low voice: “Su Gou, look behind you.”
Impossible. Su Gou screamed in his heart, impossible. The corpses of his clan members could never possibly come back to life. Even if they did, how could they turn their fangs against him? He slowly turned his head. In the bright firelight, both ice walls had already melted away completely, and the Yao corpses within had vanished without a trace.
Su Gou felt a chill run through his entire body, as if an icy serpent were slithering down his spine. He lowered his head to see his shadow on the ground expanding, growing colossal and muscular, its fangs bared. Raising his head, he locked eyes with a three-headed dog crouching on the roof beam. This was the creature frozen deepest within the ice, two heads severed from its body. The heads were still gone, and it stared at Su Gou with the sinister eyes of its remaining head. Light and shadow jumped across its monstrous face, its two big copper eyes glowing blue like the light of spirit stones.
More blue eyes opened behind it as the beasts ground their teeth, slowly approaching.
Su Gou had no idea what tricks Su Ruhui had used, but he knew one thing for certain: Su Ruhui must die.
He hurriedly reached out to activate the killing lines. The three-headed dog leapt down, biting through his arm. He struggled against the monster, several pale hands emerging from within the ceramic puppet he inhabited. Fine cracks spread across the puppet’s smooth porcelain surface and half of the pale white face shattered, revealing the terrifying face hidden beneath. Pitch black as iron, its tentacles undulating like waves—that was its true form.
Su Ruhui clicked his tongue. What an ugly monster. Sang Chiyu’s true form can’t be this ugly right?
【Information Unlocked: The Hundred-Handed Centipede. Possesses 108 arms, and once sewed 108 gloves for himself. Important Note: Only bullets can kill it.】
Out of the corner of his eye, Su Gou saw Su Ruhui clap three times. The three-headed dog whipped its head around, snapping up his severed arm and snagging several killing threads. The killing array instantly extinguished, and all the flames died down. His body began to warp and elongate, countless limbs sprouting forth as the ceramic puppet shattered like raindrops.
He gradually came to the answer: these “monsters” were not his kind at all.
They weren’t Yao!
He roared as he coiled around the rafters and lunged forward, flinging the “monsters” to the ground where they shattered into pieces. Many of the “monsters’’” eyes flickered, their movements becoming sluggish. Wild joy surged through him as he crawled along the ceiling toward Su Ruhui. He would kill Su Ruhui! Suddenly, a sharp whistling sound pierced his ears— something tore through the air. A surge of flame swept into the center of his vision. Then, a sharp pain shot through his chest. He heard the shattering of a ceramic puppet, and a bullet pierced his chest. Unable to support himself, his limbs slipped from the beams, and he crashed to the ground like a collapsing mountain.
“Only bullets can take your Yao kind’s lives,” Su Ruhui looked down on him from above. “You possess the innate ability to regenerate flesh and blood and have powerful self-healing abilities. All the Yao in the mass graves of the snowy mountains were killed by muskets because the bullets entered their bodies. If they aren’t extracted, you cannot heal yourselves. Delaying the procedure means you slowly wither away. Am I right?”
“I underestimated you,” Su Gou looked around, where the mangled remains of the monsters were scattered everywhere. “What exactly are they?”
“Ever heard of my mechanical arsenal?” Su Ruhui squatted down and said casually, “The Secret Sect has my first-grade beast puppets and star array blueprints. Everything here was made by me, including the stormfire array you just used. My beast puppets are pretty good, don’t you think?”
“Modeled after us?”
“Not exactly, they were inspired by the toy puppets my old man left me.” Su Ruhui propped his face up and sighed. “See, I told you—you’re too confident in your disguise. The moment you stepped into the Secret Sect, someone discovered you. He deliberately made you mistake the mechanical arsenal for the ice cellar where your clansmen’s corpses are stored.”
“Why would he do that?” Su Gou asked in a hoarse voice.
“I’m guessing it’s because of me. My identity has also been exposed, and someone suspects me. You brought me here— If I can control these first-grade beast puppets, then without a doubt, I am Su Ruhui. If I can’t, then I am Jiang Quexie. If I am Jiang Quexie and you kill me here, the next moment the Secret Sect soldiers will burst through this stone gate and capture you. Your killing me would be the work of a Yao who secretly infiltrated the Secret Sect. It would have nothing to do with the sect itself, and the Jiang family would not blame the Secret Sect.”
Su Gou hissed: “And if you were Su Ruhui…”
Su Ruhui stood up and fired his musket at the wall, blasting a circular hole through it. Through the hole, all three could clearly see the gear mechanism behind it. The mechanism was activated, gears were spinning rapidly. Sang Chiyu’s eyes narrowed as he asked: “What kind of mechanism is this?”
The system provided the answer: 【A massive wind-stealing mechanism, a super amplified version of the wind-stealing array. It contains one hundred and five gears, composed of eighty-eight smaller wind-stealing arrays. Its effects are extremely powerful, it can even eavesdrop on the host’s farts.】
Su Ruhui fired several shots at the gears, but they remained completely unscathed. Made of Ziji meteorite iron, they were extremely hard and impervious to firearms. Su Ruhui then drew Su Yu’s saber and thrust it into the gear. The gear stopped turning, but stubbornly continued to try, causing the saber to creak under the strain.
Su Ruhui chuckled and said: “What a grand wind-stealing mechanism. And if I were Su Ruhui… then he would learn everything I’ve gleaned from your lips.”
Sang Chiyu’s heart sank slightly. Besides him, who else knew Su Ruhui’s true identity? Who was the person behind it all?
The saber shattered, and the gears started turning again. Su Ruhui thrust his own saber into the mechanism.
Su Ruhui grabbed Su Gou by the collar: “Time’s running out. I’ll ask you one last question: What is Sang Chiyu’s true form? If you tell me, I’ll help you dig out the bullet.”
Just as Su Gou was about to speak, a sudden sharp pain shot through his back. Many thin, thread-like things invaded his flesh, taking advantage of the dense mass of black tentacles covering his body. Sang Chiyu stood behind Su Ruhui with his right hand behind his back, countless meridians emanating from his palm. Su Gou stared at Sang Chiyu, his eyes shrinking to pinpoints. So this was Sang Chiyu! He had been so focused on reading Su Ruhui’s mind that he had overlooked this unassuming, shadow-like youth!
Sang Chiyu’s gaze was indifferent, as if he were looking at a lump of dead flesh.
Su Ruhui shook him, “Hurry up and speak.”
Su Gou’s ugly face was frozen in a look of shock; he was dead.
Su Ruhui was taken aback, “Way too weak, he died so fast?”
Never mind. Su Ruhui felt his entire body, checking for a compass, letters, or anything like that. Su Ruhui found an envelope sewn into the lining of his white hemp robe. Su Ruhui tore open the fabric, took out the envelope, and found a short line of text written inside:
Jiang Xueya is at the lowest level of the Secret Sect’s Infernal Prison.
Shen Tu.
Jiang Xueya wasn’t in the hands of the Yao, but he never imagined she’d be held captive by the Secret Sect. What crime did shijie commit, and why did the Secret Sect imprison her?
And who is this Shen Tu?
“Jiang Xueya?” Sang Chiyu was equally puzzled.
Su Ruhui inspected the beast puppets on the ground to see if any were still usable. After a round, he found they were almost all ruined. None of the beast puppets’ eyes emitted the glow of spirit stones anymore. They were either destroyed by Su Gou, or the spirit stones inside had been completely exhausted. The person behind it all had calculated things very precisely. He had deliberately left the beast puppets with spirit stones that were almost out of power, ensuring that each beast puppet could only be used once.
There was no other choice. Su Ruhui abandoned the beast puppet and led Su Yu through the massive stone gate, descending all the way to the lowest level. They saw no one along the way—the soldiers who usually guarded the passage had vanished. The more Su Ruhui thought about it, the more uneasy he felt. At the lowest level, there was only a cage. Inside hung chains as thick as pythons, but not a single shadow of a person was in sight.
She had been moved. Su Ruhui breathed a sigh of relief. If she had really been here, Su Ruhui wasn’t confident he could have gotten her out.
The two retraced their steps back to the first underground level and headed out along the path they had come. To their surprise, all the meteorite gates remained wide open, allowing them to proceed unimpeded.
What was the deal? Su Ruhui wondered.
The Infernal Prison, in the ice cellar.
After Su Ruhui and Sang Chiyu left, a man who had been lying in the ice cellar’s cage silently stood up. His body went limp and melted like sludge, turning into a phantom on the ground. He crawled out of the cage’s cracks and slithered to Su Gou’s side.
Secret arts: Flowing Shadows
He returned to his original form, tall and slender, snow-white skin, and a red mark half a finger long on his forehead.
Su Gou’s stiff eyes shifted around and he actually moved. He wasn’t dead—he was just pretending. Although he wasn’t far from death, he could at least muster his last breath to say a few words.
“Lord Shen Tu, you heard everything.”
“I heard, I’m not deaf.” Shen Tu squatted down to look at him.
Su Gou smiled bitterly, “I underestimated them. I never understood why Su Ruhui was able to be number one on our clan’s kill list. Now I think I know the reason. The Monarch painstakingly created that list, telling us that the people on the list posed a great threat to our clan, but I thought it was just a fluke.”
Shen Tu patted his head. “Poor little centipede, after you die, can I soak you in wine and eat you? I’ve heard mortals say that centipede wine is an aphrodisiac.” He then asked, “What does ‘aphrodisiac’ mean?”
Su Gou’s face stiffened for a moment. Then he struggled to deliver his last words: “Send a message back to the Snowlands’ royal city. Awaken the old Monarch, and tell him that we have found the child who was lost in the mortal world. The boy named Su Yu beside Su Ruhui is the holy child Sang Chiyu.” Su Gou said hoarsely, “The patriarch’s injuries have been healing for so long, they should be recovered.”
After he finished speaking, he closed his eyes and fell completely silent.
TL corner:
Sang Chiyu: Silence Su Gou so he doesn’t leak my secret