“The empire’s divine altar beast was not some fool who had simply been used all along.”
Mengze let out a soft gasp when she heard this, startled.
“He already knew during the Battle of Dongting Waters?”
“Yes.”
“Then…… then could it be…… could it be that when he stabbed Brother Mo Xi back then, and did not stop me from taking him away while he was seriously wounded, he did it deliberately so that I would discover that Brother Mo Xi’s spirit core had already been eroded by the puppet pill?”
Murong Lian nodded.
“Most likely.”
Mengze murmured, “At the time, it was precisely because I had to treat Brother Mo Xi’s injured spirit core that I was able to discover that he had been poisoned by the puppet pill. So I exhausted every method to separate it from him. But I did not report this matter to the Monarch. I felt that something was suspicious, and after investigating repeatedly, I finally learned that it had been secretly orchestrated by the Monarch……”
She turned to look at Gu Mang, who was completely unaware of what they were talking about. Her face paled.
“So back then, you…… you actually did it deliberately……”
Gu Mang looked at her blankly.
“What? What did I do deliberately?”
Mo Xi shook his head.
“Impossible. I once read the letters between Gu Mang and the Monarch. For five years, he had been continuously sending intelligence to the Monarch. If he knew the truth, why would he have been willing to continue offering black magic incantations to the Monarch?”
“Then, Fireball, did you ever notice that in Gu Mang’s earlier letters to the Monarch, he attached a large amount of information about the methods and secrets of casting Liao’s black magic curses? But later, he often only provided confidential military and national intelligence, while rarely discussing black magic techniques?”
“……”
After Murong Lian pointed it out, Mo Xi recalled the letters he had read back then and realized that it truly had been so.
Murong Lian said, “Gu Mang knew very well that if he exposed himself, Murong Chen would kill him without hesitation, or simply abandon this chess piece and find someone else to continue going to Liao to collect forbidden techniques. So even though he already knew what kind of person Murong Chen was, he continued to endure it, writing letters to the Monarch as he always had.
“It was just that after that, he became very careful. His letters to the Monarch rarely mentioned black magic techniques. And even when he did mention them, he only wrote about things that appeared to be highly confidential but were actually of little practical use.”
Mo Xi said, “……How do you know all of this so clearly?”
Murong Lian filled his pipe with tobacco, lit it, brought it to his lips, and took a puff. Through the pale blue smoke he exhaled, he said in a low voice,
“Because these were words Gu Mang told me himself.”
Mo Xi’s expression changed abruptly.
“When……”
“The day before he was sent back to the city as a gift for peace negotiations.”
“!”
Amid everyone’s astonished gazes, Murong Lian slowly said, “……There’s no need to be too surprised. The Monarch once placed me in charge of dealing with Gu Mang. So, on the day before he returned to the city, I left the city on my own. I met him privately.”
“On his way back?”
“On his way back, right by the Fu River.”
“……”
“Everyone thought that Gu Mang had had all his memories hollowed out by Liao, that his spirit core had been shattered and two of his souls extracted, which was why he had become that ghastly state back then.”
Murong Lian paused.
“But that wasn’t actually the case.
“Liao did indeed destroy Gu Mang’s consciousness to prevent him from leaking secrets. But they did not destroy those memories that had nothing to do with Liao’s secrets.
“So, first, Gu Mang’s memories were not all destroyed by Liao.”
The ministers were horrified.
“What?!”
“It wasn’t Liao?!”
“Correct. Second, everyone says that the two souls Gu Mang lost were extracted by Liao. That is also false. Gu Mang’s souls were not extracted by anyone. He took them out himself and used them for another purpose. He willingly gave them up himself. It had nothing to do with Liao.”
This sentence was even more shocking than the previous one.
If the first revelation had merely caused ripples, this one was a gigantic wave.
Mo Xi took a step backward. His already pale lips lost what little color remained.
“How…… how could that be? Why would he……”
“As for why he did it, the Monarch should know better than anyone.”
Murong Lian glanced at Murong Chen.
“But let’s not talk about that yet. We still have a third matter to discuss—”
“Third, the place where Gu Mang ultimately lost his memories was on the banks of the Fu River. The erasure of all his memories was actually the doing of our Chonghua monarch!”
Murong Chen’s gaze was as sharp as a vulture’s.
“Murong Lian, how long are you going to continue spreading these outrageous lies?!”
Murong Lian said calmly, “I knew you would say that. That was also why you tried to assassinate me before. There was nothing I could do. After all, the person you sent back then to give him the Forget-Worry Powder……”
Murong Lian paused, then raised his peach-blossom eyes.
“……was me.”
Murong Chen: “……”
“I had always regarded Gu Mang as a thorn in my eye and flesh in my side. After learning that he had betrayed his country, I felt deeply humiliated and believed that he had brought shame upon the Wangshu Residence. I hated him so much that I wished I could kill him.
“At the time, the Monarch saw my state of mind and secretly summoned me before him. He told me—Gu Mang had not actually betrayed his country. He was a spy.”
Mengze asked softly, “If you knew that he was a spy, why did you still hate him so much?”
“It wasn’t that simple.”
Murong Lian sneered.
“The Monarch told me that Gu Mang had gone out as a spy back then, but halfway through his infiltration, Gu Mang made a request. He hoped that after he successfully completed his mission and returned to the country, the Monarch would help him become the master of the Wangshu Residence.”
“……Gu Mang would never have demanded such a price.”
“But how was I supposed to know that at the time?”
Murong Lian rolled his eyes.
“The Monarch had accurately gauged my distrust. He told me that he had not agreed to Gu Mang’s condition. Gu Mang’s demand to replace me had been rejected by the Monarch, and he had consequently grown resentful. In the end, his false rebellion became a real one, and he continued working for Liao, using it to take revenge on Chonghua.”
Everyone in Chonghua knew that Murong Lian had treated Gu Mang terribly in the past. The Monarch fabricated the lie that Gu Mang had developed evil intentions and wanted to use the opportunity to earn merit to drag his former master down from his position.
It could not have sounded more plausible.
And as the head of the Wangshu Residence, what kind of state of mind would Murong Lian have been in upon hearing such news?
Murong Lian said, “When I heard about it, naturally I was furious. But I also found it suspicious. If Gu Mang had truly become a traitor, then why would Liao send him back as a gift for peace negotiations?”
Mo Xi glanced at the Monarch before asking Murong Lian, “What did he say?”
“Not a single flaw. He said that he could not tolerate Gu Mang’s behavior, so he had secretly written to the ruler of Liao, telling the Liao monarch what Gu Mang’s original identity had been when he went to Liao. He also told the Liao monarch that Gu Mang had stolen a great deal of Liao’s intelligence and presented it to Chonghua.
“Liao therefore decided that this person was two-faced and deeply corrupt in character, and could no longer be trusted. So they sent him back.”
Murong Lian took another puff of Fusheng Ruomeng and continued,
“Murong Chen told me at the time that Gu Mang was a coward who valued his life above all else. Before Liao had even moved to capture him, he had already sensed their intentions. In order to save himself, Gu Mang had written to the Monarch, saying that he had already discovered the secret chamber where Liao was cultivating the Blood Demon Beast, and had seen a young Blood Demon Beast inside.
“He was willing to use the power of his soul to seal its strength and secretly bring it back to present before the Monarch, asking only that his life be spared.”
“At the time, I completely believed him and became disgusted with Gu Mang to the extreme. In my anger, I questioned the Monarch: Were we really going to agree to the demands of this traitor?”
“The Monarch answered me that Gu Mang had undergone black magic re-tempering. If he were rashly killed, no one knew what unprecedented monster or evil entity he might transform into, so he absolutely could not be killed that way.
“So he really did agree to Gu Mang’s proposal. And he asked me to do two things—”
“First, he wanted me to take advantage of the fact that the procession escorting Gu Mang had not yet entered the city, go secretly meet this person, and make him hand over the soul box containing the sealed power of the Blood Demon Beast.”
Mo Xi asked, “And the second?”
“Second, he gave me a pill. He said that Gu Mang had risen from poverty to a position of great power, which showed how cunning he was by nature.
“Although, because of the dangers of black magic mutation, we could not kill him, if we allowed him to retain a clear mind, he would certainly find ways to spread rumors among the people around him…… the prison guards, the sentries, and so on.
“With Gu Mang’s silver tongue, he could fabricate anything. So his consciousness absolutely had to be destroyed and all his memories erased.
“That pill had been refined for precisely this purpose. He ordered me that after I obtained the soul box containing the Blood Demon Beast’s sealed power from Gu Mang, I was to immediately make him swallow the pill.”
As Mo Xi listened, his fingertips dug deeply into his palm.
As one truth after another from the past surfaced, the threads of the Monarch’s schemes that he had once revealed became crystal clear, like an inescapable net that had enclosed all of them within it.
Mo Xi said quietly, “But after you met Gu Mang, didn’t Gu Mang tell you the truth……”
“He did say a few things. He told me not to trust the Monarch too much and things like that. But do you think I would have believed him at the time?”
“……”
“Besides, when I saw Gu Mang back then, perhaps the guards responsible for escorting him had tortured him. His mind was extremely hazy. There was a fresh wound across his chest that was still bleeding. He had no strength to say much to me before he passed out.”
Murong Lian paused, then continued,
“But there was indeed one thing at the time that I found suspicious. Besides giving me the soul box containing the Blood Demon Beast’s sealed power, he also gave me something else. He told me that no matter what, I had to keep it safe, then find an opportunity to destroy it. And under no circumstances could I let the Monarch know about it.”
Murong Mengze asked, “What did he give you?”
Murong Lian did not answer immediately. Instead, he looked toward Murong Chen seated on the high throne.
“Monarch, you went to such lengths to have Mo Xi bring you another fragment of the Blood Demon Beast’s remnant soul from Daze City, only to refine this bird-beaked, dog-bodied monster of yours. I imagine the soul box containing the Blood Demon Beast’s power that Gu Mang gave you back then is the one you’ve been unable to open for all these years, isn’t it?”
As he spoke, he gave a mocking laugh.
“Do you know why you can’t open it?”
By this point, Murong Chen also knew that there was no point pretending anymore. His voice was cold and grim.
“Why?”
Murong Lian exhaled a cloud of smoke and said calmly,
“Because the soul box Gu Mang forged with a strand of his own soul back then is different from ordinary ones. He personally modified it. To open it, you need a key.”
Mengze exclaimed in shock, “Is that what Gu Mang asked you to preserve back then?”
“That’s right.”
Murong Lian said, “I kept my wits about me at the time. I never mentioned this matter to anyone.”
As Murong Lian reached this point, he looked almost coldly at Murong Chen.
“The soul box that the Monarch worked so painstakingly to obtain couldn’t even be opened. I imagine you spent years studying it without finding the way in. It was fortunate that I was naturally suspicious and also knew what kind of slippery person you were. In the end, I never completely trusted you.
“Otherwise, I’m afraid that in the very year Gu Mang returned to the city, you would have turned everyone in Chonghua into wooden puppets.”
Murong Chen clenched his silver teeth and stared at him before suddenly bursting into a long, vicious laugh.
“Murong Lian…… Murong Lian. So it turns out that back then, you neither trusted me nor Gu Mang…… Hahahahaha……!”
Murong Lian said indifferently, “That’s right.”
“Then who in this lifetime have you ever trusted?!”
Murong Lian said calmly,
“I’m just like you, Murong Chen. The two of us are that kind of person—we trust no one, and only trust ourselves.”
As he spoke, his gaze was indifferent and distant.
“Your farce should come to an end. Give up your grand dream of unifying the Nine Provinces. I destroyed the key Gu Mang gave me long ago.”
Murong Chen’s laughter continued without end. After echoing through the hall for a long while, he stared at Murong Lian with blood-red eyes.
Then his gaze swept from one person to another—from Mo Xi, to Gu Mang, to Murong Mengze…… and finally to all the ministers.
At last, his eyes became like those of a vengeful ghost as he said coldly,
“Murong Lian, do you really think that after all these years of research, I truly failed to find a second method to open the soul box containing the power Gu Mang sealed?”