Flower Stealing Master

Chapter 1108: No Antidote Under Heaven

Song Qingshu gave a rueful laugh. “My tolerance must be declining.” He closed his eyes as he said it.

A few seconds passed. Then they snapped open — sharp and hard.

Something was wrong! 

At his current level of cultivation, a thousand cups would not bring him down. If he routed his internal energy through to burn away the alcohol, wine was no different from water. Dizziness was simply not possible.

Had he been poisoned?

His expression darkened. He replayed the evening’s details. Everyone at the table had eaten the same dishes and drunk from the same jars — with his all-encompassing awareness of his surroundings, slipping poison into his food or drink in that company would have been impossible. And beyond that, while he couldn’t claim to be immune to every toxin, ordinary poisons could no longer touch him.

If it hadn’t happened at the banquet, then when?

He went back through everything after leaving the table — nothing unusual, nothing out of place. He had come directly back to his quarters and—

A faint, sweet fragrance reached him. Another wave of dizziness followed it.

Song Qingshu turned sharply and fixed his eyes on the golden flowers.

Could it be them?

He did not wait to reason it through. He bolted from the room. The cool night air in the courtyard steadied him somewhat.

So it was them.

He looked back at the blossoms from the doorway. The golden petals seemed to pulse with a cold, eerie light.

What poison is this powerful? He tried to circulate his internal energy to force the toxin out — and felt a jolt of genuine terror. His qi stuttered and broke apart. It would not flow. Since reaching full cultivation, his true qi had moved in an unbroken circuit through his meridians, self-sustaining and perpetual as a wheel. Now it would barely stir.

The Seven-Heart Sea Crabapple?

The most feared poison in all of Jin Yong’s works floated into his mind — the toxin before which every master of poison in Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain and its companion novel had trembled. But he dismissed the thought almost immediately. The Seven-Heart Sea Crabapple was colorless and odorless — nothing like this.

Then, in the same moment, something moved in him — instinct, more than thought. He raised his eyes toward the covered walkway.

A slow sound of clapping reached him. “The Golden Serpent King lives up to his name. To have breathed the Heavenly Devil Flower and still be standing this long without collapse — truly remarkable.”

The Heavenly Devil Flower.

Song Qingshu went cold. He knew exactly what it was — he knew Jin Yong’s novels too well not to. In The Blood Sword, it had killed Ding Dian, whose Divine Illumination Scripture had reached full completion and whose internal energy was nearly without equal in the world, and it had killed him without giving him a moment to resist. The Bloom was less famous than the Seven-Heart Sea Crabapple simply because The Blood Sword was less widely read — but in Song Qingshu’s estimation, it was the more terrible of the two.

The Seven-Heart Sea Crabapple killed painlessly, and for all its lethality, there was a cure.

The Heavenly Devil Flower killed — and there was no antidote anywhere under heaven.

That he was still on his feet was only because his cultivation ran deep — far beyond even the fully-realized Ding Dian — and because, unlike Ding Dian, he had not made direct skin contact with the flower itself. Even so, he was barely holding.

What his poisoners did not know was that Wan Gui had coated the table, the chairs, and the bed with the Heavenly Devil Flower poison as well, intending any contact with Song Qingshu’s skin to be lethal. What Wan Gui failed to understand was that at Song Qingshu’s level of mastery, a continuous mantle of circulating true qi sheathed his body — the poison dust could not reach his skin through it. Unfortunately, true qi could deflect powder but could not stop fragrance from being breathed in. That was where the trap had caught him.

Feeling his power begin to slip beyond his grasp, Song Qingshu steadied his mind and fixed his gaze on the people filing into the courtyard.

The man at their head was unfamiliar — but the young man beside him was not. Song Qingshu’s voice carried fury and cold recognition in equal measure: “Wan Gui. Of all people — you.”

Wan Gui bared his teeth in an ugly grin. “Did you really not expect this? I’ve known for years that you and Di Yun were hunting me in the shadows. How fitting that you should die by my hand first.”

Song Qingshu let out a cold sound and sent a thread of sword Qi cutting straight toward him.

“Gui, be careful!” Wan Qili had not anticipated Song Qingshu still possessing any capacity for offense. He cried out in shock. Nearby guards lunged forward, raising shields to cover the two men.

The shield burst apart with a crack. The guard directly before Wan Gui took a blood-wound through the chest and fell. Wan Gui let out a scream and went down behind him.

“Gui!” Wan Qili rushed toward his grandson. More guards moved in immediately, shields raised in a solid wall, cutting off any further opening.

“A pity.” Song Qingshu’s brow was drawn tight. The poison was consuming a portion of his power, and another portion was being spent suppressing it. What remained to act with was barely one part in ten of his normal capacity. Punching through that shield and the man behind it had spent the last of the sword Qi — not enough to finish Wan Gui.

The moment he drew on his true qi, he felt the poison surge in response, lashing back through his channels. He locked it down with grim concentration and went still. He dared not move again. And yet the Heavenly Devil Flower’s toxin worked with hideous patience — each second that passed, a fraction more of his true qi was corroded away. The balance was shifting. Before long, it would reach a fatal threshold.

That he had lasted this long was already extraordinary. When Ding Dian had inhaled a single breath of the Bloom’s fragrance, he had immediately lost consciousness. Song Qingshu had been enclosed with it for the better part of an hour — eight or ten full breaths of the fragrance at minimum — and had not only remained standing but managed to wound an enemy.

That was where Wan Qili and Wan Gui had miscalculated. It was why they had approached so carelessly.

It had still not been enough to kill them.

Even so, the grandfather and grandson were shaken to their marrow. Everyone present had drawn back to a distance of several zhang from Song Qingshu, staring at him as though he were something that should not exist.

Wan Gui’s chest wound had been bound — not fatal. He crouched behind his guard wall and watched Song Qingshu with venom in his eyes, but made no sound. That last exchange had broken his nerve. The thought of provoking Song Qingshu into spending his last strength on a killing strike — even dying, that man might drag him down with it — was not a risk Wan Gui was willing to take. His grandfather was chief minister. Wan Gui himself was young and promising. He had a beautiful wife, a beloved daughter, and a long future waiting. The poison would do the work on its own.

In that moment of razor-edged crisis, a darkly absurd thought floated through Song Qingshu’s mind: If I’d only gone to find Jiao Wan’er when I had the chance, I’d never have walked into this room. The virtuous die young while the licentious live to a thousand — there has never been a truer saying.

“Li Kexiu.” Song Qingshu’s voice came out flat and heavy. “You’re out there somewhere. Are you too ashamed to show your face?”

It was all clear to him now. For Wan Gui’s people to operate openly inside the Commander-in-Chief’s residence — to stage this inside a military garrison — could not have happened without Li Kexiu’s cooperation.

No wonder Li Kexiu had been so forthcoming earlier, agreeing to join the Golden Serpent Camp with almost no resistance. No wonder the afternoon’s negotiation had gone so smoothly, with Li Kexiu conceding at every turn — it had all been misdirection, nothing more than keeping him comfortable and off-guard.

A quiet ache moved through him.

He wondered whether Li Yuanzhi knew any of this.