Chapter 26: Spider Spins the Web
Three days pass in deceptive quiet.
Liu Guan Yi maintains a facade of calm—cultivating atop his peak, practicing sword movements in the fading light, exchanging polite words with the few inner sect disciples who dare approach.
To the sect, he is focused. Untouched.
But beneath the surface, he moves like a whisper in the dark.
---
Each night, cloaked in the guise of sword meditation, Liu Guan Yi slips into the shadows. His steps are silent. His presence veiled.
He enters the sect archives under the cover of moonlight, fingers brushing across scrolls and records with surgical precision. Missions. Disciples. Dates.
Patterns emerge.
> "Every missing girl… connected to someone with ties to Elder Qiu or Elder Mo."
Some were direct disciples. Others were merely messengers or mission partners. But the threads always circled back to the same two spiders.
---
Under a crescent moon, Liu Guan Yi shares tea with Han Yun, one of Ji Ning's senior disciples. A quiet man with sharp eyes and a scholar's restraint.
They sit on a cliff ledge overlooking the sea of clouds.
> "Senior Brother Han," Liu Guan Yi says, voice smooth as the tea's steam, "do you remember what Elder Qiu was doing during the Fire Alchemy Banquet, two months past?"
Han Yun's brows furrow. "He left early. Said he had urgent sect business in the outer villages."
Liu Guan Yi nods slowly.
> "And the next morning… three girls vanished from the east district."
Silence stretches between them like drawn wire.
Han Yun narrows his gaze. "You believe he's involved?"
> "I don't believe."
> "I know."
---
But Liu Guan Yi doesn't strike recklessly.
Instead, he begins to unravel them from within.
He sends anonymous spirit notes—delivered by borrowed birds or hidden amidst supply crates. Each message whispers doubt into the hearts of Elder Mo's outer disciples:
> "Your master's secrets are leaking."
"The flute has played its last tune."
"The sword peak knows."
Innocent words. But in a sect like this, paranoia is poison.
Soon, Elder Mo begins snapping at his own servants. He finds a spy outside his chamber and flays the boy's mind in rage. Elder Qiu, normally composed, begins to notice his pill ingredients arriving late. Cold stares follow him at markets.
The shadows have started to whisper back.
---
Then come the rumors.
Disciples talk in hushed tones behind mountain walls and garden paths.
> "Liu Guan Yi uncovered something terrifying in the village…"
> "They say he's going to challenge a core elder…"
> "Did you hear? Ji Ning gave him a sword formation that can cut through a peak Rank 6 cultivator…"
No proof. No names.
But the fear is real.
Because Liu Guan Yi seeded every rumor with care—through casual conversation, overheard sparring matches, and notes 'accidentally' left behind.
> "Fear sharpens the blade before it's ever drawn."
---
Deep within the main hall, Elder Qiu and Elder Mo meet again.
Tension chokes the air between them.
> "He knows," Elder Mo growls, pacing like a caged beast. "He's setting us up. I say we kill him before he drags us before the Sect Leader."
Elder Qiu shakes his head, hands clasped behind his back, jaw tight.
> "No. Too risky. Ji Ning may still be in seclusion, but if we move and fail…"
"We'll be ashes before dawn."
A third voice cuts through the chamber.
Soft. Female. Dangerous.
> "Then perhaps it's time for subtlety."
A woman steps from the darkness, draped in illusion light—a silver sash wrapping her figure like flowing mist.
Elder Yue. Once the sect's most renowned beauty, now a reclusive master of illusions and memory arts.
> "Let me handle the boy," she says, lips curving into a delicate smile.
"Before he exposes us, I'll make him question his own mind."
---
Back on his peak, Liu Guan Yi watches a spirit bird descend toward him.
It drops a scroll, then vanishes into the clouds.
He opens it with calm fingers.
> "Meet me at Red Leaf Grove. I have proof of the missing girls."
No signature. No seal.
Just a place.
Just bait.
Liu Guan Yi stares at the words for a long moment.
Then a cold smile lifts the edge of his lips.
> "The web trembles…"
He rises, sword at his back, cloak stirring in the wind.
> "…now the spider shows its fangs."
His eyes flash with quiet power.
> "But I'm no fly."