Chapter 73: The five day war

The first investigator arrived two days early.

No one expected it. Mo Tian’s contacts had confirmed the five day timeline. The chancellor’s office had issued a formal itinerary. Every protocol indicated a structured, scheduled arrival with advance notice and diplomatic formality.

Instead, a woman walked through the sect gates at dawn on the third day, alone, carrying nothing but a leather satchel and a wooden badge that bore the imperial judicial seal. She was middle aged, sharp eyed, and moved with the unhurried confidence of someone who had spent decades walking into places that did not want her there.

Her name was Inspector Luo Zhiyan, and within an hour of her arrival she had commandeered the sect’s formal meeting hall, requested complete access to all administrative records from the past three years, and informed the sect council that the remaining two investigators would arrive on schedule but that she preferred to begin preliminary interviews immediately.

The sect council scrambled. Qin Wen’s quarters remained dark.

“She is early on purpose,” Bai Xuelan said at their morning briefing. “The formal itinerary is a decoy. The real investigators always arrive before the subjects have finished preparing their defenses. Standard imperial methodology.”

“How do you know that?” Tang Xiaoli asked.

“I read.”

Bai Xuelan had restructured the evidence package overnight. Sun Meihua’s dossier now opened the file, with each of the seven victims presented chronologically, their cases building a clear pattern of fabricated accusations and systematic destruction. Zhao Lingxi’s case was positioned as the eighth, the latest in an established sequence, with the demonic cultivation claim framed as the predictable next step in Qin Wen’s methodology.

Mo Tian delivered the package to Inspector Luo personally. He returned forty minutes later looking slightly rattled.

“She read the entire file while I sat there,” he said. “All of it. Every page. She did not speak. She did not ask questions. She read, and when she finished, she looked at me and said, ’Tell the Zhao girl I will need three hours of her time tomorrow. She should bring her medical records.’”

“Medical records,” Lan Yue repeated.

“She knows. Or she suspects. The demonic accusation is already in her briefing materials, and she wants to address it head on rather than let it ambush the inquiry later.”

Zhao Lingxi took the news with her usual composure. She sat at the desk in their shared room, cleaning her tournament blade with long, precise strokes, each movement deliberate and unhurried. The championship medal sat on the windowsill where she had placed it two days ago and had not touched since.

“I will meet with her,” Zhao Lingxi said. “Bai Xuelan will prepare a full medical assessment of my current spiritual condition. I will withhold nothing.”

“Lingxi,” Lan Yue said carefully. “If the examination reveals the seed, the classification under current sect law is demonic. Even with the pattern evidence, even with the framing…”

“I know.” Zhao Lingxi did not look up from the blade. The cloth moved in steady strokes, back and forth, the sound rhythmic and calm. “I have spent four years hiding what is inside me. Adjusting my output. Controlling every technique. Training alone at night in dead circles because I was afraid of what would happen if anyone saw.”

She set the blade down and looked at Lan Yue.

“I am tired of hiding.”

The words carried a weight that pressed against Lan Yue’s chest. Not sadness. Resolve. The particular gravity of someone who had made a decision and would not be moved from it.

“Then we make sure the truth protects you instead of condemning you,” Lan Yue said. “Bai Xuelan’s assessment will show symbiosis, not parasitism. The seed repairs your roots. It strengthens your cultivation. It is not consuming you. It is growing with you.”

“The law does not distinguish between types of demonic energy.”

“Then we change the conversation. The investigators are here for Qin Wen’s crimes. If we present your condition as the target of those crimes rather than a separate issue, the examination becomes evidence of what he was trying to exploit, not evidence of what you are.”

Zhao Lingxi studied her. That quiet, focused regard that made the world go soft. “When did you become a strategist?”

“Somewhere between the zombie apocalypse and the spanking.”

The blade cleaning cloth hit Lan Yue in the face before she finished the sentence.

That afternoon, they gathered in Bai Xuelan’s research room for what was supposed to be a medical preparation session. Bai Xuelan had laid out diagnostic scrolls, spiritual measurement tools, and a detailed chart of Zhao Lingxi’s meridian system based on external observation.

“I need baseline readings before tomorrow’s interview,” Bai Xuelan said. “Spiritual output at rest, under light exertion, and at the threshold where the seed activates. This will allow me to demonstrate the symbiotic relationship quantitatively.”

“How do we trigger the threshold safely?” Tang Xiaoli asked, fiddling with a stabilization pill between her fingers.

“Controlled spiritual exertion. We need Zhao Lingxi to cycle her energy at increasing intensity until the seed responds, then measure the interaction between her original root energy and the seed’s output.”

“That takes a partner,” Tang Xiaoli said. “Someone to push her spiritual energy without actual combat. A resonance exercise.” She paused. Looked at Zhao Lingxi. Looked at Lan Yue. Looked back at Zhao Lingxi.

A grin spread across her face. The kind of grin that preceded either a brilliant idea or a catastrophic explosion.

“You know what would actually be the most efficient method?” she said, her tone light and innocent in a way that was neither light nor innocent. “Dual cultivation.”

The room went quiet.

“Think about it,” Tang Xiaoli continued, warming to the idea with alarming enthusiasm. “Lan Yue has Spirit Devouring. It interacts with external spiritual energy by nature. If she cycles her ability alongside Zhao Lingxi’s root energy, the resonance would push the seed to respond organically rather than through forced exertion. It is actually the safest way to trigger the threshold because the energy exchange is gradual and mutual rather than one sided.”

She held up a finger. “Plus, the red thread already connects their spiritual signatures. The resonance pathway is literally built in. It is practically a medical recommendation.”

Lan Yue opened her mouth. “I do not think…”

“Dual cultivation,” Bai Xuelan said from behind her scrolls, “refers to the practice of two cultivators cycling spiritual energy through shared meridian contact. Traditionally performed through prolonged physical proximity, ideally skin to skin along major meridian points. The chest, the inner wrists, the lower abdomen, and the inner thighs are the primary conduit zones.”

She pushed her glasses up without looking away from her notes.

“The process requires synchronized breathing and a gradual merging of spiritual cycles, which is most effectively achieved when both participants are in a state of heightened physical awareness. Historical texts recommend minimal clothing to reduce fabric interference with energy transfer. Some lineages practiced it entirely unclothed for maximum meridian exposure. The session duration varies, but deep resonance typically requires two to four hours of sustained contact, during which both cultivators experience progressively intensifying waves of shared sensation that have been described in classical texts as, and I quote, ’a fire that begins in the root and rises through every gate until the spirit itself trembles.’”

She turned a page.

“The spiritual climax, when both cycles fully merge, is reported to be the single most intense physical and metaphysical experience available to cultivators. Several historical accounts compare it favorably to breakthrough enlightenment, though with significantly more sweating.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

Lan Yue’s face had gone through every shade of red available to human skin and was now exploring colors that did not have names. Her mouth opened and closed several times without producing sound. Her hands gripped the edge of her seat so hard the wood creaked.

Zhao Lingxi’s expression had not changed. Not one millimeter. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, her posture perfect, her face carrying the exact same composed neutrality she wore on tournament platforms.

She turned to Bai Xuelan.

“Xuelan,” she said. Her voice was low. Quiet. Perfectly level. Carrying the particular frost that made grown men reconsider their life choices. “If you ever describe dual cultivation in that level of detail in my presence again, I will freeze your entire research room, including the scrolls, the instruments, and you, and I will leave it frozen until spring.”

Bai Xuelan adjusted her glasses. “I was providing medical context.”

“You were providing pornography with academic citations.”

“Those are not mutually exclusive.”

Zhao Lingxi’s eyes narrowed by a fraction of a degree. The temperature in the room dropped tangibly. Frost crystallized along the edge of the desk nearest to Bai Xuelan, creeping across the wood grain in delicate, threatening patterns.

Bai Xuelan closed her scroll. “Point taken.”

Tang Xiaoli was biting her fist to keep from laughing. Her shoulders shook. Tears streamed down her face. She made no sound, which somehow made it worse.

Lan Yue had not moved. She sat in her chair like a statue, her brain apparently having decided that the safest response to the last sixty seconds was to shut down entirely and reboot at a later time.

“We will use standard resonance exercises,” Zhao Lingxi said, her tone indicating that this was the final word on the matter and any deviation would result in consequences. “Lan Yue and I will cycle our energy through the red thread at controlled intervals while Bai Xuelan takes measurements. Clothed. At a professional distance. Without commentary.”

“Fully clothed?” Tang Xiaoli squeaked from behind her fist.

The frost on the desk advanced six inches toward her.

“Fully clothed,” Zhao Lingxi confirmed.

The preparation session proceeded without further incident. Bai Xuelan took her measurements in efficient silence. Lan Yue sat across from Zhao Lingxi, their wrists connected by the red thread, cycling spiritual energy back and forth in gentle waves that made the thread glow and pulse between them.

It was clinical. Professional. Completely appropriate.

It also made every nerve in Lan Yue’s body vibrate at a frequency she had never experienced before, because feeling Zhao Lingxi’s spiritual energy move through the thread and brush against her own was like being touched everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and the look in Zhao Lingxi’s eyes, steady, controlled, and carrying something molten behind the ice, suggested she was not the only one affected.

Neither of them said a word about it.

When the session ended, Bai Xuelan had her baseline readings. Tang Xiaoli had her composure back, mostly. And Lan Yue excused herself to go stand in the courtyard and press her burning face against the cool stone of the nearest pillar until her heartbeat returned to something resembling a human rhythm.

She stayed there for fifteen minutes.

“What was that all about?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep