A Pawn's Passage

Qi Jiaoyao was the sort of person who never told outright lies yet never told the whole truth either.

Earlier, she had said that Wu Zhen had fused with a semi-immortal object she carried with him, which created a misleading impression. If it was something Wu Zhen carried, then it must have belonged to her.

But in reality, it was a semi-immortal object left behind by the Heavenly Sect that was placed upon Wu Zhen’s remains. Thus, it was not exactly wrong to say that Wu Zhen was carrying the semi-immortal object.

However, the nature of the two cases was entirely different. If it were Wu Zhen’s own item, it could be taken freely, since Wu Zhen would not suppress herself. But the Heavenly Sect would never be so generous as to leave behind a semi-immortal object simply as a burial object. There had to be a purpose in suppressing Wu Zhen. As such, removing such a suppressive artifact would inevitably lead to serious consequences.

If Qi Jiaoyao had stated from the beginning that the Bone-Illuminating Mirror belonged to the Heavenly Sect, Qi Xuansu might not have come with her at all. On her own, she could temporarily suppress the mirror, but she could not simultaneously take it away. She needed another set of hands. Although Qi Xuansu appeared to have taken the mirror with ease, without Izanagi’s Left Hand, he might not have been able to pass through the shadows surrounding the mirror.

But now that the Bone-Illuminating Mirror had fallen into Qi Xuansu’s hands, he felt entirely justified in keeping it.

Anything belonging to the Heavenly Sect belonged to the Zhengyi Sect. What the Heavenly Preceptor’s son had left behind was effectively a Zhang family heirloom. Since he was the Zhang family’s son-in-law, was this not simply returning the item to its rightful owner?

Wu Zhen had been dead for many years. Even though her remains retained some mystical qualities, they were at most comparable to a manifestation of Wu Luo. Moreover, most of the power within Wu Zhen’s remains had already been drained by the Bone-Illuminating Mirror, leaving only fragments that were hardly worth mentioning.

However, the Shadow Realm gave Wu Zhen the possibility of resurrection. That was why the Ancestral Heavenly Preceptor’s son had no choice but to divide her into two parts. Her soul was trapped within an illusion of her final battle, while her remains were placed upon the throne and suppressed with the Bone-Illuminating Mirror.

This was also one of the reasons why the Earthly Preceptor had not taken the Bone-Illuminating Mirror away.

Wu Zhen’s remains were already extremely weak, but once they leveraged the power of the Shadow Realm, everything changed completely.

Countless shadows surged out from the void, circling the throne as they danced, then flowed one by one into the phantom figure, continuously filling it and making it more solid.