“Changshou!”
If you hadn’t given me that poison pill from Elder Wan Linjun, I might never have seen you again!
Sigh…“
At the Broken Sky Peak, in the residence of the Nine Immortals of the Wine Pavilion, inside Jiu Wu’s loft.
It had been two and a half months since the ambushed group from Duxian Sect safely returned to their mountain gate.
Li Changshou waited until Jiu Wu’s injuries stabilized and the wave of disciples visiting to check on him died down. Then, he brought Ling’e along to pay their respects to Uncle-Master Jiu Wu.
His master had been in seclusion and remained undisturbed by the incident.
In the past two and a half months, Li Changshou had worked tirelessly to push both the outer and inner protective arrays of Little Qiong Peak to their current maximum capacity. He exhausted all his accumulated rare materials—but at least he felt a little more at ease.
As soon as Jiu Jiu led them into the loft and they approached Jiu Wu’s bedside, they heard him sigh and make the earlier remark while seated cross-legged.
Li Changshou stepped forward, bowing solemnly with Ling’e beside him, paying their respects.
Ling’e set down the tonic wine she had brought as a gift, and Jiu Jiu dragged her into the side room for a chat.
The tonic wine was specially brewed by Li Changshou for Jiu Wu—meant to replenish energy, stop internal damage, strengthen the body, and stabilize one’s core essence.
“Sigh…” Li Changshou also sighed, stepping up to the bedside.
Thanks to Li Changshou’s earlier warnings, Jiu Jiu hadn’t revealed that the “dream” about the poison pill had been a vision. Even so, Jiu Wu was deeply grateful to him—after all, that poison pill had saved his life at a critical moment.
“Uncle-Master, how are your injuries?”
“I’m managing,” Jiu Wu let out a long breath and said with sorrow, “But the two fellow sect members who traveled with me weren’t so lucky. They were killed in Zhong Shenzhou, their souls scattered… there’s no bringing them back.”
Li Changshou nodded, letting out a quiet sigh at the cruelty of the world.
After a few moments of shared solemnity, Li Changshou got straight to the point.
“Uncle-Master, any progress in the investigation?”
“There are some clues… but honestly, it might be worse than knowing nothing at all,” Jiu Wu said with some helplessness in his eyes. “It may be tied to the main Dao lineage of Chan Sect.
It seems someone doesn’t want the Three Sects Assembly to proceed smoothly. They might be plotting something behind the scenes.”
Li Changshou thought to himself,
“There’s no way it’s that simple.”
But outwardly, he just sighed and said, “This is a tangled mess.”
“No kidding,” Jiu Wu shook his head with a heavy expression. “Longevity, about that poison pill…”
“You want a couple more for self-defense?”
“Exactly! I’m willing to trade you immortal treasures, pills, anything you want!”
But Li Changshou gently shook his head, his tone turning serious.
“That pill I gave you was actually from Elder Wan Linjun. He gave it to me for studying pill refinement.
Instead of asking me, maybe you should go directly to him…
Uncle-Master, let me tell you something privately.”
Whisper whisper, mutter mutter.
Soon after, Jiu Wu nodded in agreement, his face thoughtful.
Although Elder Wan Linjun had a fearsome reputation, after experiencing the pill’s power firsthand, Jiu Wu knew its value.
Sometimes, a pill that saves your life is worth as much as the one that can take it.
“Alright,” Jiu Wu said. “I’ll take Shishi with me to visit Elder Wan Linjun.”
Li Changshou nodded slightly, then remembered Wan Linjun’s self-created divine art. He planned to visit the elder himself soon to learn that technique, called ‘Poison Heaven Netting Hand’, for his protection.
He and Jiu Wu discussed the ambush in greater detail, going over many specifics from the Golden Palace Gate incident. Jiu Wu was fully cooperative.
When Li Changshou asked why the group had left secretly, Jiu Wu sent a voice transmission:
“I’ve only told the sect leader and the elders. We’ve ordered the disciples not to spread it.
And honestly, I wouldn’t even be telling you if it weren’t for how much I owe you.
It was a senior… an internal steward. He told us a master from Ren Sect wanted to meet us discreetly to discuss the Three Sects Assembly.
So we followed him… but it was a setup.
There were three Heaven Immortals and sixteen True Immortals lying in wait.
Before the fighting even started, that steward suddenly collapsed.
Later, when we examined him, his soul had been completely drained, just like the ones who ambushed us.
From the little we could deduce, the attackers may have belonged to Chan Sect’s immortal faction.”
Li Changshou’s heart froze a little, though he only showed a subtle trace of concern on his face. He and Jiu Wu exchanged a few more quiet sighs.
The two chatted in low voice-transmission for quite a while, attracting a few stray wisps of divine and immortal senses from the side room.
Eventually, Li Changshou asked one final question:
“Uncle-Master, I found a jade slip in the inner hall of the Dao Repository. It mentioned a secret array under the sect… a ground vein transfer array for escape?”
Jiu Wu smiled wryly and replied in a low voice:
“It’s real. The elders, peak masters, and older stewards all know, but we don’t talk about it publicly.
After that calamity ten thousand years ago, when the demon horde attacked, the sect leader decided we needed a contingency plan.
That escape route leads to the eastern coast. If the sect ever faces an overwhelming threat, the disciples can enter from the Bai Fan Hall, travel underground, and flee using the transfer array.
But… the only known entrance is in Bai Fan Hall.”
Li Changshou nodded, his heart secretly cheering.
Now there are officially two ways to reach the escape array!
He hadn’t found a jade slip—he’d just… dug his way into it.
About half a month ago, while preparing an emergency escape tunnel beneath Little Qiong Peak, Li Changshou accidentally dug into the sect’s main ground vein. He nearly destroyed the existing array in the process.
The ground vein array wasn’t overly complicated. Although it involved teleportation, it wasn’t a grand ‘Heaven-Earth Transfer Array’. It just channeled the power of the ground veins to move someone miles—or even hundreds of miles—away in a flash.
The sect’s original setup saved him a ton of work.
Still, to play it safe, Li Changshou set up a second, smaller array in a more remote area, pointed in the opposite direction from the sect’s original exit. It cost him his last reserve of precious materials.
Jiu Wu warned: “Don’t spread word of this. If the disciples find out, they’ll panic.”
Li Changshou agreed and shifted the conversation to healing and recovery.
Half an hour later…
Jiu Shi walked in with a bowl of herbal soup and a bottle of medicine.
“Wu Wu, time to take your medicine.”
Li Changshou looked at the scene, which bore an uncanny resemblance to that meme-worthy painting “Darling, time to take your meds,” and tactfully got up to take his leave.
Ling’e drifted out of the side room and also bowed respectfully to the two seniors.
Jiu Jiu had wanted to visit Little Qiong Peak with them, but decided it wasn’t the right time. She stayed behind with Jiu Shi to continue looking after her fifth senior brother.
Playtime can wait. Timing is everything.
Li Changshou and Ling’e visited the Bai Fan Hall to pay respects before the statue of the Grand Pure One (Taiqing Laozu), then finally returned to Little Qiong Peak.
On the cloud road, Ling’e noticed her senior brother seemed slightly grim.
In a soft voice, she asked, “Senior Brother… is the situation serious?”
“We don’t have enough information to say for sure,” Li Changshou replied via voice transmission. “I’ll be in the pill room for a few days to sort things out.
If anything unusual happens in the sect, break that signal charm I gave you.
Don’t worry about wasting it—I can always make another.”
“Alright.”
Ling’e nodded sweetly, watching her senior brother descend into the pill room. She stood on the clouds and sighed softly.
She wanted to feel tense, like her brother… but…
Looking around the sect, she saw peaceful mist swirling in the air, immortal cranes dancing overhead—everything looked as serene as always.
“Is Senior Brother… maybe just overthinking it?”
She let out a gentle sigh and guided her cloud back to her small hut.
Around the pill room, the protective array activated. The nearby forest grew still—no spiritual energy fluctuated. All seemed calm.
But if a sensitive cultivator happened to glance toward that forest…
They might just feel their hair stand on end.
Once he entered the alchemy chamber, Li Changshou casually dropped a paper doll clone, which dissolved into smoke and returned to the underground chamber.
He pulled out a stack of blank scrolls and laid them out across the floor. Then, after removing his shoes, he began to pace across them.
It wasn’t that he needed some strange “posture” to focus his thoughts…
Half an hour later, Li Changshou pulled out a charcoal pencil he’d made himself, sat cross-legged, and wrote a small vertical line of characters on the far-left edge of the top scroll:
“If I were the mastermind behind all this…”
He then drew two arrows beneath it. One arrow pointed straight across, labeled:
“The ambush was unrelated to the earlier debate with the Golden Ao Island cultivators.”
The other arrow angled downward into the large blank space below, labeled:
Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152