Chapter 606: The Lie That Went East
Chapter 606: The Lie That Went East
The rest of the estate had to look normal.
Yanning kept the rear garden sealed without increasing the guards on the outer wall. The kitchen fires were lit on schedule. Servants crossed the yards carrying water and ledgers. At first light, a cart of dyed cloth rolled out through the western gate because the same cart left every ninth morning.
From the street, the Shen estate remained an exhausted merchant household recovering from a caravan attack.
Leon left through a concealed spatial fold and emerged four streets away. He circled the compound once before noticing a man in a rented upper room above a noodle shop across from the eastern wall.
The location offered clear sight of two gates and three escape routes. The observer looked like a thin, middle-aged clerk in plain brown robes. His cultivation was far below the four raiders’, but his qi had been compressed so carefully that an ordinary sweep might have passed over him.
He had prepared the room well. Fine powder covered the inner threshold to expose an invisible intruder. A thread ran from the window latch to a bell beneath the table. Two coats hung beside different exits, allowing him to change his appearance before reaching the street.
He was not a fighter sent to survive a Void Immortal. He was an observer expected to notice trouble early and disappear.
The paired tracking device rested in a shallow bowl of water near the window.
Leon took position on the roof of a tannery across the street and waited.
The agent checked the device four times. Each time, his expression grew more uneasy. When the city watch began changing shifts and no one approached the rendezvous, he sat at the table and started writing.
Not yet.
At the eighth mark, the message-jade in his sleeve warmed.
The man stopped writing. He listened to the recorded message twice, then lifted the paired device from the bowl and examined the weakened signal.
The treasure appeared alive, active, and concealed.
Relief loosened his shoulders.
He burned his first draft, wrote a shorter report, pressed his token to the jade, and transmitted it east.
Leon waited until the light faded from the jade. He counted several more breaths to ensure the entire message had gone through.
Then he moved.
The agent sensed him before he reached the window. He fled across the roof tiles and dropped into the alley beside the noodle shop.
He knew the district. Under ordinary circumstances, that might have saved him.
Leon folded the nearest routes.
The agent turned left and emerged in the same enclosed courtyard he had just crossed. He tried the passage behind a stone well and returned to the courtyard again. On the third attempt, he stopped and stared at the walls as he realized the streets no longer led where they should.
His hand shot inside his robe.
Ice locked his feet and wrist. A narrow thread of lightning passed through his arm, forcing his fingers open before he could crush the destruction seal in his palm.
Leon stepped into the courtyard and confiscated the seal, three message-jades, the paired tracker, a fire talisman meant to destroy everything the agent carried, and a narrow knife hidden inside his boot.
"Who are you?" the man asked.
"Someone who needed you to send that report."
Leon carried him back through a concealed fold. No one on the street saw either of them leave.
The agent was placed in the disused eastern cellar, far from the strongroom holding the Void Immortal. Different guards watched the two rooms, and neither prisoner could sense or communicate with the other.
"We can compare their answers later," Yanning said as she secured the final formation. Tiredness showed beneath her eyes, but her hands remained steady. "The report bought us days."
"Days with a deadline," Leon said. "Eventually they’ll expect the treasure."
"Then we move what we can, trace everyone who handled the delivery, and strengthen the estate before that deadline arrives."
She began listing warehouses and trade routes under her breath, but stopped after the third name.
Leon had already turned toward the rear garden.
The strained circulation beneath the estate had changed. For two days, it had carried the uneven pull of something being forced uphill. Now the strain was gone. A slower and steadier rhythm had replaced it.
Yanning ran.
They reached the six stone steps together. The three dead raiders remained covered, and the cracked garden stones still bore the marks of the battle.
Below them, the sealed chamber door moved for the first time since the refinement began.
It opened from the inside.
The man who emerged from the chamber was still old.
Shen Yuanhe’s thin body remained stooped, and his hair was so pale it resembled smoke. He leaned against the doorframe for a moment before climbing the steps. No light spilled from him, and no phenomenon appeared above Moonfall.
The change lay deeper.
Before the raid, Leon had sensed instability throughout the old man’s existence. His Ethereal foundation had been slowly deteriorating, forcing it to spend more with every manifestation and recover less. That loss had stopped. The foundation was still ancient and worn, but it had become stable again.
The treasure had succeeded.
It had not turned him into an Earth Immortal.
Shen Yuanhe reached the top of the steps and saw the three covered bodies.
"How many?" he asked.
"Four entered the estate," Yanning answered. "Three are dead. The fourth is sealed beneath the counting house. We also captured their local observer."
The old man looked at her.
"Void Immortals, Great-Grandfather. Three Early-stage and one Late-stage."
For several breaths, Shen Yuanhe said nothing.
He walked to the nearest body and lifted one corner of the covering cloth. The dead cultivator’s ruined manifestation no longer carried even the faint pull of a surviving foundation. Shen Yuanhe checked the other two before lowering the cloths again.
"Permanent," he murmured.
The word carried more weight from him than it had from Yanning.