Chapter 67: Chronicles of the Jade Maiden
Su Yao arrived at the city square in a flash of spiritual light. Her white hanfu billowed around her. The false Seimei stood on a raised platform, surrounded by microphones and adoring cultists. His voice boomed about his ‘heroic’ deeds.
Without a word, Su Yao landed directly in front of him. The crowd gasped, but before anyone could react, she moved.
Her fist connected with his jaw in a crack of spiritual energy that sent him flying off the platform. He crashed into a row of chairs, scattering his followers. She was on him in an instant, delivering a series of precise, brutal strikes that shattered his defenses. He crumpled on the ground, groaning.
The entire assault took less than ten seconds. Su Yao ignored the stunned audience or the panicking reporters. She turned and vanished in another flash of light, leaving behind only whispers of the Jade Purity Maiden’s sudden appearance and the false Seimei’s humiliation.
She reappeared on a quiet rooftop overlooking the chaotic square. Her white hanfu settled around her as she watched the pandemonium below with a cold, satisfied smirk.
Action speaks louder than words, she thought. The phrase tasted both archaic and perfectly apt. How can they possibly believe that fraud was the one who subdued a primordial flood dragon, when it only took one woman less than ten seconds to reduce him to a groaning heap on the ground?
Sometimes, violence was the most eloquent and undeniably correct answer. Let them try to spin this in their news reports.
No amount of narrative could erase the image of their supposed savior being effortlessly dismantled in front of them. The seed of doubt was planted. Now, she just had to watch it grow. The satisfying image of the false Seimei’s crumpled form was already being broadcast on every screen in the city. Let them chew on that.
Her phone vibrated almost instantly. It was Zhang Wei.
“Was that necessary?” His voice was strained, a mixture of professional alarm and personal exasperation.
“Was it effective?” Su Yao countered, already walking toward the rooftop access door.
“...The Wild Hunt is in an uproar. Their public figurehead just had his credibility shattered on live television.”
“Then they should have chosen a more competent figurehead,” Su Yao replied, entirely unsympathetic. “My point has been made. Let them scramble.”
She ended the call. The next move was theirs. While they dealt with the fallout of their broken prophet, she would be free to hunt the scriptwriter in the shadows. Sometimes, the most direct path through a tangled web was to simply set it on fire.
Su Yao phased back into her apartment. The pristine white hanfu dissolved back into her modern casual wear. A faint, uncharacteristic smile touched her lips.
That was fun, she thought. The phantom sensation of her knuckles connecting with the false Seimei’s jaw still pleasantly buzzing. There’s a certain primal simplicity to just beating people up. I should do that more often.
She grabbed her phone and collapsed onto the sofa, pulling up social media. The video of her brief, brutal assault was already trending. She scrolled through the comments with detached amusement.
“OMG the Jade Purity Maiden is a QUEEN! She slayed!”
“But why would she attack Seimei-sama? Maybe he’s a fake??”
“Theory: The Maiden is the true guardian, and Seimei was a demon in disguise she had to purge!”
“Nah, this is clearly a lovers’ quarrel. The drama!”
“She didn't even say anything! That’s the most badass part!”
Su Yao snorted. Mortals would create entire epics out of a ten-second clip. Their capacity for creating narrative from chaos was almost as impressive as their stupidity.
The thought crystallized with delightful clarity. Why stop there?
In the next day, a businessman in a tailored suit casually tossed a soda can onto the sidewalk. A blur in a white hanfu materialized, snatched the can from the air, and crushed it against his forehead with a dull thwack before vanishing. He stood there, stunned, a perfect red circle forming on his skin.
Outside a restaurant, a woman blew cigarette smoke directly into the face of a passing mother with a stroller. A sudden gust of wind, smelling inexplicably of lotus blossoms, ripped the cigarette from her lips, extinguished it, and shoved the filtered end up her nostril. She shrieked, clawing at her nose.
Su Yao reappeared in her apartment. Another faint smile graced her lips. She scrolled through local news feeds on her phone. “Mysterious Jade Purity Maiden Vigilante Strikes Again!” and “Public Menace or Celestial Enforcer?” dominated the headlines.
This is even more fun than I anticipated, she mused, watching a shaky cell phone video of the businessman clutching his head. It’s memorable. And it sends a very clear message about civic responsibility.
Her phone rang. It was Zhang Wei. She could feel his headache through the receiver.
“Are you personally punishing people for littering now?” he asked. His voice was tight.
“They were being stupid. I corrected them,” Su Yao replied. Her tone was utterly matter-of-fact. “The false Seimei’s narrative is broken. The city needs a new, clearer moral compass. I am providing one.”
“You're causing mass panic and a 300% increase in calls to our emergency line!”
“Then your people are clearly underworked. Good. This will build their character.” She ended the call. Her gaze drifted back to the window. A man was about to jaywalk. Her eyes glinted. This new hobby had promise.
Su Yao watched the jaywalker from her window. A faint, predatory smile was on her lips. It’s time the people of Duwang had a new symbol. One that delivers consequences with its fists.
The public’s confusion was a feature. Let them tell stories. Every whispered rumor about the “violent saint” eroded the false Seimei’s shattered credibility and built her own legend from the ground up.
A colder, more calculating thought followed the amusement. And maybe, the woman who assumed my title will come after me.
The false maiden, the one Suzuka called Madam Li that was supposedly freed from the moon. If she was out there, how could she ignore someone so publicly and violently wielding her stolen identity?
Good, Su Yao thought. Her smile sharpened. Let her come. It will save me the trouble of finding her. She could deal with the impostor and the disciple in one fell swoop.
Her phone buzzed again, but she ignored it. Down on the street, the jaywalker, having seen her at the window and frozen in terror, was now carefully using the crosswalk.
Satisfied, Su Yao turned away. This was working perfectly.
Su Yao’s self-satisfied musings were abruptly cut short by a nagging sensation in the back of her mind. I've forgotten something.
She paused. Her gaze drifted from the window where the now-compliant jaywalker had scurried away. The images from the dragon’s lair flickered in her memory from the scattered treasure, the pinned Jiao Long, to the stone calendar.
The Baiyue calendar. She had taken pictures of it for a reason. It was a spiritual map tracking celestial cycles and terrestrial ley lines. According to its carvings, a significant cosmic event was imminent.
It was a lunar eclipse combined with a planetary alignment that only occurred once every few millennia. The Baiyue had used such events for powerful rituals, often tied to sealing or unsealing entities.
Her blood ran cold as she connected the dots. If the impostor Jade Purity Maiden had been sealed on the moon, and the calendar pointed to an event that could weaken or break such seals, then her sudden freedom made sense.
More importantly, this event might be what the disciple was planning to exploit for their own ends.
I need to study those pictures, she thought, pulling out her phone and opening the gallery.
The intricate carvings showed the eclipse date was only days away. The false Seimei’s “purification campaign” might be a cover for something far more sinister, tied to this alignment.
Su Yao stared at the photos of the stone calendar. The upcoming eclipse date glared back at her. A new, more unsettling doubt began to take root. This ‘impostor’ sealed on the moon, where is she?
The city’s spiritual surveillance, bolstered by Zhang Wei’s government resources and her own senses, had detected no one of that description. There was no powerful, unfamiliar entity making a grand return. If the seal was broken and she was free, why hadn't she appeared? Why was there no trace?
What if there was no seal to begin with? The thought was cold, logical.
What if the story of the maiden’s lunar imprisonment was just a story? A brilliantly constructed piece of misinformation?
Her eyes narrowed. And who created that story?
It was so convincing that even Suzuka Gozen, the CEO of a multinational occult corporation with vast intelligence networks, believed it utterly. That level of narrative control was frightening.
Su Yao’s fingers flew across her phone’s screen, pulling up search engines and diving into obscure digital archives. She bypassed the modern, sanitized versions of the legend and dug into the oldest references she could find to the Jade Purity Maiden’s lunar imprisonment.
The trail was thin. It consistently led back to one primary, crystallized source: a serialized novel from the late Ming Dynasty titled, “Chronicles of the Jade Maiden and the Moonlit Prison.”
Her eyes scanned the digital facsimile of the brittle text. The story was a melodramatic epic, full of righteous sacrifice and tragic betrayal. The author’s pen name was “The Mountain Recluse of Li.”
A Li. Of course it was.
She cross-referenced the publication date. It lined up perfectly with the period just after the historical “Madam Li” would have vanished from public records. A piece of fiction, written by one of the Li family’s own ancestors, had been taken as gospel and woven into the fabric of celestial history.
They wrote the scripture for their own saint,, she realized. A cold fury began to simmer. They created the legend of her betrayal and imprisonment out of whole cloth.
The lunar seal and the disciple was a fantastical backstory crafted to explain the disappearance of the woman who had taken up the Maiden’s mantle and married into the Li family.
The scale of the deception was staggering. It had fooled gods and demons for centuries. It had even fooled her until this moment.
So, Su Yao thought. Her mind clicked through the implications. There is no freed impostor lurking, only a story so powerful it dictates reality.
What is it with novels and their awfully inaccurate presentation of me? Su Yao fumed internally. First, that cinematic trash ‘Azure Mist Chronicles’ paints me as a world-ending demon queen slain in glorious battle. Now I discover this ‘Jade Purity Maiden’ prison saga, a piece of fiction that somehow became celestial canon, was penned by a Li ancestor. My history has been hijacked by bad writers.
The sheer, insulting irony was enough to make her teeth ache. She, an ancient and primordial power, had her legacy defined by two competing works of fiction, both equally wrong. One slandered her as a villain, the other sanctified a fake using her name.
It was enough to make her want to burn down every library in the city. Arson was a temporary solution. A more permanent one was required.
She needed that original Ming-era novel. The physical book itself, having existed for centuries and being the source of this pervasive lie, would likely hold a potent spiritual residue. It could be a key, a compass needle pointing directly to the author’s intent, or perhaps even to the current “disciple” who was still enacting its narrative.
A quick, ruthless search on an antique dealer network site she'd previously strong-armed Zhang Wei into giving her access to revealed a listing. A private collector in the city had a first edition of “Chronicles of the Jade Maiden and the Moonlit Prison” in remarkably good condition. The asking price was manageable.
Su Yao transferred the funds directly from the untraceable offshore account Suzuka Gozen had just given her. Using the Yamato CEO’s money to dismantle a conspiracy built on a Li family lie felt poetically just.
“The item will be delivered to your address within the hour,” the confirmation message read.
Good, Su Yao thought. A grim satisfaction settled over her. Let’s see what secrets this piece of propaganda holds.
Maybe she'd even use the pages to line her trash bin afterward. It would be a start.
The doorbell rang precisely fifty-nine minutes later. Su Yao opened the door to find Wong Lei standing there, holding a carefully wrapped rectangular package. She was dressed in the uniform of a premium courier service. Her expression was a mixture of forced professionalism and deep-seated terror upon seeing Su Yao.
Su Yao said nothing about her presence. She simply took the package. Her fingers brushed against the old, sturdy paper. Wong Lei flinched at the contact, mumbled a quick “haveaniceday,” and practically fled down the hallway.
Closing the door, Su Yao tore open the packaging with care. The book was there, bound in faded blue cloth. Its pages were brittle and smelled faintly of dust and sandalwood. As her skin made contact with the cover, a faint, cold spiritual resonance prickled against her senses.
There you are, she thought to the intent woven into its fibers. It was a seed planted centuries ago that had grown into a towering, parasitic tree of lies.
She carried it to her table. Her fingers traced the embossed title on the cover. The spiritual residue was old and meticulous. It felt like the calculated blueprint of a propagandist. This was written for control.
So, this is the source of the infection, Su Yao mused. Her eyes glinted with a cold light. Let’s see what the cure looks like.
She would read it, absorb every nuance of the false narrative, and then she would use this very book to trace the lineage of the lie straight to its modern-day architect. The Li family had written their own history. She would be the one to write the final chapter.
The realization struck Su Yao with the force of a physical blow. Her fingers, which had been tracing the book’s title, stilled.
The Ming Dynasty. The novel was written during the Ming. According to both historical record and her own deduction, that was the exact era when Old Duwang had sunk beneath the waves.
The timing was a correlation, a cause and effect.
They wrote a story to cover up a cataclysm, she thought. The cold fury inside her crystallized into something razor-sharp and focused.
The sinking of an entire island city-state was too big and messy. It needed a narrative. A grand, tragic, celestial narrative was perfect to draw attention away from the earthly, perhaps shameful, truth.
What was the truth? Did the Li family, in their rise to power, somehow cause the sinking? Was it a ritual gone wrong? An attempt to eliminate rivals that escalated beyond control?
Whoever posed as the ‘Jade Purity Maiden’ might have drowned with her city. This elaborate myth of lunar imprisonment was crafted as a glorious alternative to a watery grave.
This book in her hands was a cover-up. It was a several-centuries-old piece of disinformation so successful it had rewritten history itself.
Su Yao finally opened the cover. The first page, yellowed with age, held an elaborate woodblock print of a serene woman in hanfu gazing at a full moon. The caption read: “The Maiden’s Eternal Vigil.”
Eternal vigil, Su Yao thought with utter contempt. More like an eternal lie.
She began to read for the hidden truths buried in the flowery prose. The key to the modern conspiracy was in the original sin this book was designed to conceal. She would unearth it.
Su Yao closed the book with a soft, final thud. She sat in silence for a long moment. The dusty, sweet scent of ancient paper hung in the air. A reluctant, critical part of her mind had to concede. It’s actually decent.
The prose was elegant, the pacing masterful. How it tried to narrate the tragedy of the “Maiden's” betrayal and sacrifice was genuinely poignant. Its author, “The Mountain Recluse of Li,” had been a skilled storyteller. Their lie was beautifully woven. Its emotional core was compelling enough to endure for centuries.
No wonder it stuck, she thought with a mixture of fury and professional respect. The most effective lies are wrapped in truth and told with artistry
Admiration changed nothing. In fact, it made the deception more offensive.
Her phone was in her hand a second later. She dialed Li Xiu’s number. Li Xiu picked up after the third ring, sounding wary.
“Xiao Ling? What is it?”
“We need to talk,” Su Yao said. Her voice was dangerously calm. “About your family’s literary legacy.”
A sharp intake of breath sounded on the other end. “I, don't know what you mean.”
“Chronicles of the Jade Maiden and the Moonlit Prison,” she recited the title perfectly. “First edition. Blue cloth binding. I have it right here. We can discuss its historical accuracy in person. Or I can start sharing my review online. It would be explosive.”
The line was silent for a beat too long. “Where?” Li Xiu finally asked. Her voice was tight.
“My apartment, now.” She ended the call and looked at the book again. It was a weapon, sharper than any glaive. She was about to turn it on its creators.