“So long as his men know what they’re doing, that’s enough. We’re relying on them to search those few townships and towns.” Cen Boqing jerked his chin toward the Lotus Palace. “Once Lord Fan finishes the job, just watch how that magistrate surnamed Tian starts fawning and flattering.”

“I only hope Fan Sheng doesn’t fail again this time.”

Cen Boqing laughed heartily. “What’s there to be afraid of? Time and advantage are both on our side. Every day this drags on, He Xiao becomes that much more passive.”

Zhongsun Mou thought it over and relaxed a little as well. Judging from the current situation, even if that man surnamed He wants to bite back at us, he has nowhere to sink his teeth.

Status itself was the best shield.

Even as the special envoy of the State of Chiyan’s Crown Prince, without hard evidence in hand, he could not touch them in the slightest.

“That’s true.” His gaze swept across the profound crystals on the table, and he felt a little regretful. “I should even thank him for delivering such a generous gift to me. It’s a shame about that mirror shield, though.”

That magical artifact was an excellent defensive treasure, perfectly suited to someone as fragile as Zhongsun Mou. If Fan Sheng killed He Xiao, then the mirror shield would become Fan Sheng’s war trophy and have nothing to do with Zhongsun Mou.

* * *

He Lingchuan was not good at everything, and his rowing skills were terrible. Fortunately, the man paired with him was one of Commander Lu’s soldiers, named Jia Yu. Before joining the army for his rations, Jia Yu had been a fisherman from Tangmi Township, someone who could pole a boat through rapids. Navigating toward a mere Lotus Palace was no challenge to him at all.

Jia Yu rowed while teaching him a few tricks. After trying several times, He Lingchuan gradually got the hang of it, and their speed through the water increased dramatically.

The current here was gentle. What the contest really tested was the competitors’ ability to find their way.

Of course, the most important factor was luck.

However, He Lingchuan held a cheat and had decided to win by ability rather than luck.

He could use the divine bone amulet’s heat to determine the treasure’s location.

That was, assuming the treasure recognized by the divine bone really was that so-called “Overlord Lotus.”

Only when he drew near the Lotus Palace did He Lingchuan understand what was meant by lotus leaves stretching endlessly and meeting the sky. This place truly was an entire swath of lotus leaves.

The lotus leaves formed wall after wall of green, and once the boat entered, it did not take long before he lost all sense of direction.

Let alone the people inside the maze, even the spectators looking down from the height of Chao Lake Tower could probably not make out what was happening within.

“How did people search for the Overlord Lotus in the past?” He Lingchuan asked Jia Yu. “Couldn’t they ask the aquatic races for help?”

“No.” Jia Yu said, “To keep it fair, all the aquatic races have to leave the field after clearing away the duckweed. Only then does the Overlord Lotus grow. And besides, the lotus token contest is open only to humans.”

“What if those aquatic races just refused to leave?” Fish and turtles could hide underwater. They wouldn’t be easy to detect, would they?

“The local water spirit is a lotus monster over two hundred years old. It watches the competition area closely.” Jia Yu worked hard at the pole. “In the past, sixty to seventy people tried to cheat. None of them believed in evil consequences, but every last one got caught and severely punished by it. After that, nobody dared act so arrogantly anymore.”

He Lingchuan shrugged. “That’s good then.”

That lotus monster’s magical energy must be formidable indeed. In only a few days, it managed to grow such a dense Lotus Palace across the water’s surface.

Within the maze, the widest waterways were less than seven meters across, so the boats could basically only move forward and had almost no room to turn around. At the narrowest points, the channels were only about a meter and a half wide, so the hull had to squeeze through.

Once inside the maze, everything grew quiet.

All they could hear was the sound of paddles splashing, along with stray voices from other boats, coming from who knew which hidden corner.

“Head east,” He Lingchuan suddenly said. “Ah, go forward another thirty-three meters.”

Jia Yu said in surprise, “Do you know what the Overlord Lotus looks like?”

“Uh, no.” He only knew they had not reached the spot yet because the divine bone amulet was still quite hot.

“It’s a huge blood-red lotus bud with golden stripes on the surface.”

“Blood-red...” He Lingchuan looked around and saw that the place was full of lotus buds waiting to bloom, all standing upright like arrows; they were even called lotus arrows. Besides the most common rosy pink, there were pale pink, pale purple, pink-white, and light green. The sheer variety was dazzling.

To find one blood-red bud among tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, was little different from searching for a needle in a haystack. Most unopened buds were still mostly wrapped in green sepals, so a single glance might be enough to miss one.

Jia Yu was looking left and right nonstop, practically wishing he had been born with several extra pairs of eyes.

“Generally speaking, the Overlord Lotus rarely appears at the outermost edge or in the dead center of the Lotus Palace,” he muttered. “We need to search more in the middle layers of the maze. Can you remember the waterways?”

“Barely.” He Lingchuan found that odd. “How do you know it rarely appears in the center?”

“In the past few decades, it was only found in the center seven times.”

“Really?” He Lingchuan looked due north. “Forget that, just follow me.”

“You have a way?”

“I do.” He Lingchuan smiled. “I can calculate and divine. That’s got to be better than your wandering around searching blindly.”

Jia Yu’s face lit up at once. “Good, good! Just point where you want to go, and I’ll row us there.”

After a while longer, the boat was buried deep in the maze.

The layout of this Lotus Palace was truly devious. The scenery at both ends of a waterway often looked exactly the same, so after paddling back and forth a few times, one could completely lose one’s bearings.

On a cloudy day like this, they could not even use the sun overhead to orient themselves.

The surroundings were quiet, broken only by the occasional splash of two foolish frogs leaping from the water.

The divine bone amulet suddenly flared hot, and He Lingchuan let out a small sound of surprise.

Their boat was moving slowly and had just been preparing to make a small loop and turn around, so why had the amulet suddenly flared with such heat?

Did the target just move away from us?

Once the Overlord Lotus grows, it should just stay rooted in place, right? Could it be that the divine bone amulet is pointing at something else entirely?

Please don’t screw me over. Those three profound crystals are still sitting up on Chao Lake Tower as my wager!

He Lingchuan’s head immediately began to ache.

However, he had no other option. He could only tell Jia Yu to turn the boat around again and head north.

By now, Jia Yu was already used to this special envoy constantly ordering the boat to change direction and spin in circles. He simply obeyed and kept his mouth shut.

Fortunately, the divine bone amulet stopped acting up and pointed very clearly.

The farther He Lingchuan advanced, the lower its heat dropped.

“Keep your eyes open,” he reminded Jia Yu. “It should be nearby.”

Jia Yu immediately looked around more carefully than ever, terrified of missing it.

At this point, not even an hour had passed since the race began. He Lingchuan and Jia Yu had already reached the northeastern corner of the entire maze. They encountered fewer and fewer boats. Now, it was mostly insects and frogs that accompanied them.

Just as Jia Yu had said, no one liked the edge positions. Everyone thought the chances of finding the Overlord Lotus here were too small. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

And yet the divine bone amulet had led them precisely here.

“There!” Jia Yu suddenly pointed, so excited he nearly jumped up.

He had taken part in this race for six years, always as a mere tagalong, and had never once found the Overlord Lotus inside the maze.

“Shh.” He Lingchuan raised a finger to his lips, telling him not to get too excited. “Row over there. Quick.”

Among the layered walls of lotus plants stood hundreds of lotus arrows, large and small. One of them was blood-red, with two faint, slender golden stripes across its surface. Because it had not yet bloomed, those markings were especially easy to miss.

It was impressive that Jia Yu had managed to notice it at all.

Even He Lingchuan’s heart gave two extra beats of excitement. That thing’s worth fifty thousand taels of silver!

The mirror gave a snickering little laugh. “Had you already planned it out? If someone else found it first, were you just going to snatch the lotus by force?”

If this kid came up empty-handed, his loss would have been a full hundred thousand taels!

With assets as limited as his, how could he possibly withstand that kind of catastrophe on top of catastrophe?

“No.” He Lingchuan lowered his voice. “Even if I lose, Zhongsun Mou still won’t get to take my money.”

He smiled with such confidence and such nastiness that the mirror actually shivered, as though it had returned to the days when He Lingchuan used to scheme against it.

The boat shot forward. Jia Yu did not even wait for it to steady before diving headfirst into the water, a knife clenched between his teeth.

The essence of snatching the lotus token boiled down to a single word: speed!

Jia Yu went for the Overlord Lotus, while He Lingchuan held his breath and waited.

Two sudden splashes made the lotus leaves sway left and right, startling both of them.

A black-headed duck burst out through the lotus wall, quacked angrily at them twice, and then pattered wildly across the water before making its getaway.

“Damn bird!” Jia Yu cursed. Under normal circumstances, he would have roasted that duck for sure.

At that very moment, a few ripples suddenly spread across the water a little over three meters behind He Lingchuan.

A short reed tube silently emerged from the surface, of which there were plenty in the area, and it aimed itself at He Lingchuan before suddenly firing a blowdart!

Only then did a figure burst out of the water and rush straight at him.

The reed tube might have looked crude, but the blowdart was anything but. Halfway through its flight, its speed suddenly doubled. Then the single dart split into three, shooting in a triangular pattern at the back of He Lingchuan’s head, his heart, and the base of his spine.

The arrowheads were all forged from well-tempered steel and glimmered with a faint white light. They were capable of breaking vigorous qi, and with origin energy layered over them, punching through protective true qi was no problem at all.

If any one of them hit, he would either die or be crippled.

The man bursting from the water moved with terrifying speed. Though he started later, he was already within nearly a meter of the darts, raising his axe in a crescent arc as soon as he came up.

This strike had been nourished and stored for over an hour, gathering until his spirit and energy were both full. The instant he unleashed it, it truly resembled lightning crashing down from heaven. Whether He Lingchuan tried to dodge or block, he would be unable to evade the full force of that blow.

The violent energy howling off the axe blade was so overbearing that it tore the air with a sound like ripping silk. The savage blast wave drove straight at He Lingchuan. Facing it head-on felt no less than having a tornado sweep directly into his face.

Forget keeping his eyes open; even his body would be pinned down under the pressure.

With this man’s status, once he made a move, he intended to finish it in a single strike.

The instant the blowdarts were fired, He Lingchuan seemed to grow eyes in the back of his head. He threw himself forward in a tiger pounce, diving flat with his whole body.

He had waited a long time for his opponent to finally make his move.

The boat could not possibly withstand the force of that dive. Its bow plunged into the water, and naturally, the stern reared high into the air, perfectly blocking the path of the three blowdarts.

Three sharp clangs rang out as the darts punched straight through the wood and buried themselves in the lotus wall ahead.

The force behind them spoke for itself.

The man behind was almost on the heels of the darts, which meant the upturned stern blocked his path as well and smacked him right in the face.

With a cracking crash, the stern shattered into several pieces, splinters flying everywhere.

Yet the remaining force of that axe strike did not diminish. The axe wind surged forward and cut down a section of lotus wall more than two meters ahead. The tall stalks rustled as they collapsed into the water.

Fortunately, Jia Yu had only just poked his head above the surface and had not yet climbed onto the lotus wall, or else he too would have ended up severed in two.

Startled out of his wits, he ducked his head again and heard He Lingchuan shout, “Blow the lotus, now!”

The lotus wall had been hacked down, and the stalk of that Overlord Lotus had already been severed halfway through. The axe wind had also knocked it crooked and swaying. At this rate, it might snap completely the very next moment.

Jia Yu had spent years in the army. Obeying orders was practically ingrained into his bones. At that command, he lunged forward and wrapped both arms around the Overlord Lotus. In his eyes, the ambusher wanted that lotus too. As long as he snatched it first, the overall outcome would already be decided.