Chapter 276: Conjecture

Even if He Jin had pledged allegiance to whoever had captured him, they wouldn’t trust him easily. They would soon send him out on a job, either to be watched while committing some great evil as an initiation pledge, or to be brought under control by some special art.

And apart from Hu Chaohui’s death and Jiang Lanting’s assassination attempt, there had been no other evil deeds worth noting in the Flame Capital in recent days. As for special arts for controlling others, Ding Songyan could name several at once:

The Demon Seed method, the Celestial Heart imprint, the Moth God Scripture...

It had all happened too fast, and He Jin had fled quickly, so Ding Songyan hadn’t had time to examine him with Candle-Star Pupils. He couldn’t tell which art had been applied to him, and could only judge from the familiar style that it had probably been done by his undeserved little sister, Ji Hanyi.

After Twelfth Madam scared her off, Demoness Ji must have realized she’d paid too little attention to the streets near Prince Kang’s estate, so she made a fairly thorough sweep around the Cheap Wine Shop? And He Jin and the others were still searching this area for Wu Zheng at the time, so it’s very likely she spotted them...

With the Heaven-Man Realm’s Establishing the Six Directions plus the Divine Art of Heaven and Earth Transmutation, and the Moth God Scripture on top, she could capture two Grandmasters and their subordinates without anyone noticing, and control them into slipping away, vanishing eerily...

From a bystander’s perspective, that’s terrifying...

If He Jin and Hou Yang fell into Demoness Ji’s hands, it’s not so bad. If she wanted to expose Twelfth Madam’s identity, she would have spread rumors long ago, with no need to go to such trouble...

Sigh, and if it really is Little Sister, she’s mastered the Five Elements Escape Art now too. Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl.

What does she mean by making He Jin parade in front of me like that?

Telling me, ’Little Sister misses you a lot, so let’s see if you can stick to Luo Mingyin your whole life’?

Ding Songyan suddenly felt a headache coming on.

He had originally thought that after Demoness Ji was scared off by Twelfth Madam, and noticed Twelfth Madam might be hiding in the dark to protect him, she would turn her attention back to important matters and stop watching him. The calm of the past several days seemed to prove it.

Now it looked like when a kid goes quiet, they were definitely up to something nefarious.

Before Twelfth Madam leaves the Flame Capital, I at least have to come up with a way to evade Demoness Ji’s tracking... Ding Songyan didn’t think he stood a chance of confronting Ji Hanyi within a year or so. He couldn’t afford to cross her for now, so the only option was to hide.

"Brother Ding?" Seeing Ding Songyan freeze for no apparent reason, Li Baima stopped and asked with concern.

Ding Songyan came to and said with a smile, "I suddenly remembered something I have to take care of. You go find Miss Zhang yourselves.

"Just say I asked you to help. You wanted to report back to me but couldn’t find me, so you went directly to Miss Zhang. That makes more sense and spares you any awkwardness."

The suspicion that Demoness Ji had taken control of He Jin and the others had to be passed on to Twelfth Madam promptly.

Fan Chunlin, Wu Mo, and Li Baima were uneasy at first, then felt Brother Ding had a good point, since otherwise their behavior would be full of holes, like performing a play before Miss Zhang that she already knew by heart.

After parting with his three colleagues, Ding Songyan headed toward Tiger Tail Alley.

On the way, he thought it over carefully and felt he still couldn’t rule out the Demon Sovereign.

With the Demon Sovereign’s realm and strength, and with the Demon Seed’s stealth and bizarreness, quietly controlling He Jin, Hou Yang, and the others wouldn’t be too hard...

He may have noticed activity at Prince Shen’s estate and traced it to He Jin and the others...

He Jin’s appearance was to bait Prince Shen’s people, and my running into him was only a coincidence...

It’s true that the odds are low this was the Demon Sovereign’s doing, but from the clues so far, I can’t be sure it wasn’t.

If the Demon Sovereign captured He Jin and the others, that’s not so bad either. Like Demoness Ji, he presumably doesn’t want to add major variables to the consort selection...

Thinking of the Demon Sovereign, Ding Songyan naturally turned his thoughts back to Hu Chaohui’s death.

The thread of this affair was fairly clear by now, but Ding Songyan still had a question in his mind.

Why had they targeted Hu Chaohui and turned him into a Two-Faced?

The white cat, Zhouxue, was a Demon Seed Two-Faced, and Hu Chaohui, converted by it, had no ability to infect others. That ruled out the guess that the Demon Sovereign wanted to use Hu Chaohui to influence Shilin Temple’s eminent monks.

The consort selection concerned the upper echelons, and the odds of the Accumulated Evil Way trying to seize the Sea-Treading Gang through Hu Chaohui were extremely low.

If they truly had that idea, they should have acted on it long ago rather than coercing only a bookkeeper to launch a scheme, and they wouldn’t have gone on to assassinate Liu Cheng repeatedly, making the Sea-Treading Gang a key target of the Martial Prohibition Bureau.

Though the Accumulated Evil Way might have changed its mind and risked taking over the Sea-Treading Gang, Ding Songyan ranked this guess last.

After thinking it over, combined with the timing of Cheng Yuping finding the cat, he arrived at a bold guess.

Did the Demon Sovereign, or some other Two-Faced Heaven-Man, target Hu Chaohui because of the Celestial Thearch’s gaze?

Having discovered that the Celestial Thearch’s gaze had fallen on Hu Chaohui’s dream, did he want to covertly convert Hu Chaohui into a Two-Faced to learn the details?

That raises a problem: how could the Demon Sovereign be sure that Hu Chaohui’s dream was what drew the Celestial Thearch’s gaze? At that time, Ji Hanyi was sharing the gaze for me, and the heaven-and-earth qi was in chaos over a wide area. None of the other Heaven-Man in the Flame Capital could find the source. How could the Demon Sovereign?

Ding Songyan’s steps slowed unconsciously and his expression grew somewhat grave.

He could think of only two possibilities.

One was that the Demon Sovereign had some special connection with the Celestial Thearch, which let him lock onto Hu Chaohui’s dream.

The other was that the Demon Sovereign’s hideout was right around Hidden River Lane, close to the Liu residence, and he caught where the problem began the moment it happened!

The Demon Sovereign was born at the foot of Mount Dique and often goes to Dingjiang Prefecture where Heaven’s Gate Lookout Island is, so insisting he has a special connection with the Celestial Thearch isn’t impossible. But who knows how many years it’s been since the heaven-earth severance, and such cases should be extremely rare, almost negligible. Both Ji Hanyi and I being gazed at by the Celestial Thearch is already a once-in-an-age wonder. Surely there can’t be another? Besides, if there were really a special connection, the Demon Sovereign wouldn’t have missed Master Yan’s curtain call...

Around Hidden River Lane...

Ding Songyan exhaled slowly, turned into Tiger Tail Alley with a calm expression, and entered the back courtyard of the Cheap Wine Shop.

He told Twelfth Madam Luo everything about He Jin’s sudden appearance and his own guesses.

Twelfth Madam Luo looked at the gloomy gray winter sky and sighed softly.

"Let’s go take a look around Hidden River Lane."

"All right," Ding Songyan agreed.

He understood why Twelfth Madam wanted him along.

The Demon Sovereign, a Supreme Master at the peak of the Heaven-Man Realm, could conceal his own traits and perhaps even hide the evil intent from the Demon Swallowing Evil Devouring Technique so that Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil couldn’t sense him, but the people beside him might not have that ability. Finding them through Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil would also lead to the Demon Sovereign.

Twelfth Madam Luo had the Way of Name and Reality and other martial arts, but she also needed more means of detection.

As for the possibility that Demoness Ji had taken He Jin and Hou Yang, that wasn’t urgent for now.

"I’m going to change my clothes." Luo Mingyin signaled Ding Songyan to wait a moment.

After she went into the west wing, Ding Songyan let his thoughts wander and did not use the Chaos Realm to peek.

Soon Twelfth Madam Luo came out. Her face still had that somewhat puffy look, but her bearing had changed a little.

She had put on a crimson short jacket with arrow sleeves and a cross collar, and below it a darker crimson two-panel skirt that was easier to move in, with the corner of white cloth trousers showing at the hem. On her feet were no longer embroidered shoes but a pair of white cloth boots. Her loose, tilted bun had been undone and tied up with a red silk ribbon. She was less lazy and casual, and more brisk and capable.

She takes the Demon Sovereign seriously, specially changing into clothes suited for combat... Ding Songyan sensed Twelfth Madam’s gravity.

Twelfth Madam Luo put on a thick red cloak with white trim, looked around, walked to a log, pulled out the hatchet embedded in it, looked at it for a couple of seconds, tucked it into her skirt waist, and concealed it under her short jacket and cloak.

"Using that?" Ding Songyan blurted in surprise.

I was just saying that you take the Demon Sovereign seriously as an opponent, and you’re bringing a hatchet?

Where’s your spear?

Twelfth Madam Luo’s eyes turned and swept over him as she said with a smile,

"My saber skills aren’t bad. Want to try them?"

I see... as long as it isn’t a divine weapon, a Heaven-Man Supreme Master does about the same with any weapon... Ding Songyan smiled.

"I’d really like to, but not today."

Getting beaten up would also count as seeing Twelfth Madam’s saber skills, and would surely bring some gains.

Twelfth Madam Luo went back into the main building and took out a fairly large oiled-paper umbrella. In front of Ding Songyan, she pressed the end of the handle and drew out a 72-cm sword.

The sword had nothing special about it, just made from tempered refined steel.

"It looks like rain today, so I’ll take this umbrella along." Twelfth Madam Luo said with a trace of a smile, in a tone like she was heading out on a country outing.

Twelfth Madam, you seem a little excited, itching to go... After so many years as a Heaven-Man, have you never crossed hands with a giant of the heretical path like the Demon Sovereign? Ding Songyan pointed thoughtfully at the umbrella.

"Where did you buy that?"

Pretty cool.

"When I saved Chef Shi, a heretic used an umbrella to hide a sword. I thought it was interesting, so I made one myself." Twelfth Madam Luo slid the 72-cm sword back into the handle.

Ding Songyan instinctively stretched out his hand to take the umbrella.

It was his habit. Unless both hands were full of heavy things, how could the taller one let the shorter hold the umbrella?

Twelfth Madam Luo didn’t stand on ceremony either. She handed him the umbrella and picked up a small, exquisite round copper-colored hand warmer from the desk, cradling it in her palms.

"Twelfth Madam, you feel the cold?" Ding Songyan teased.

Twelfth Madam Luo looked up at him, the corners of her mouth curving.

"The Sage-Severing Way leader’s Second Brother taught me that when acting, you have to watch the details.

"I’m just an ordinary wine shop owner right now, so of course I feel the cold and need a cloak and a hand warmer, and of course I’d have my companion carry and hold an umbrella for me."

Ahem... Ding Songyan cleared his throat, said nothing in reply, carried the sword in one hand and the umbrella in the other, and followed Twelfth Madam out of the back courtyard of the Cheap Wine Shop.