# Chapter 92: The Fall of Jade Scales Peak
"What am I supposed to do?" Jiang Wang asked.
"First, we leave this place," said White Lotus. "The beast cages stay here. Nothing in this place may be carried away."
Jiang Wang set the cages down, and White Lotus stepped forward, crushing both of them to powder beneath one foot. Two containers that were no less than treasures vanished in a puff of smoke.
"But they can be destroyed," she said.
They turned and followed the same route back, draping the beast hides over themselves once more, and walked right past the two Office of Inquiry cultivators, who still lay unconscious. Just as on the way up, they slipped through the pack of ferocious beasts with ease and made for the foot of the mountain.
"What is it like, up at the summit?" Jiang Wang asked.
White Lotus did not pause her stride. "You wouldn't want to know. Once you've witnessed the grandeur of Jade Scales Peak, perhaps you'll no longer be able to bear destroying it."
"Then never mind."
Had there been no danger, Jiang Wang would rather have liked to see the summit of Jade Scales Peak for himself. The men of old climbed every height and composed verses on every height. He dearly wished to know what the people who had stood atop that peak had been thinking, to see whether any trace of their hearts had been left behind up there.
But then again, it was just as well not to look.
They reached the mountain's foot without mishap, and Jiang Wang asked again, "Can you tell me now what I'm to do?"
"Not yet. A bit farther."
The two of them took off the beast hides and burned them away with a casual Dao art. Once they had left Jade Scales Peak behind, White Lotus immediately quickened her pace.
After Jiang Wang had raced at his utmost speed for roughly a quarter of an hour, White Lotus came to a halt. By then the silhouette of Jade Scales Peak could only be made out in the far distance.
She drew an array plate from inside her robes and placed it in Jiang Wang's hands, then taught him a sealing gesture. Only then did she speak. "Do you remember the array plate I left in that cave? That was the Earth-Dragon Heaven-Overturning Array. What you hold is the child plate. Think it over clearly — the moment you finish the gesture on your end, that great formation will be triggered. And then..."
She parted her crimson lips. "Boom! Mountains crumble and the earth tears apart."
So the array plate Jiang Wang had taken for a concealment formation had in truth been the very means by which Jade Scales Peak was to be destroyed.
Jiang Wang did not hesitate, but began to form the gesture at once.
This business was something like a letter of fealty. White Lotus could perfectly well have done it herself, yet she had chosen to hand it to him.
Setting the matter itself aside, Jiang Wang was deeply repelled by acts of this kind. Yet neither could he place his hopes in White Lotus's pity for the people of the Sanshan City domain. Though his dealings with her were few, he sensed in his very gut that White Lotus would not care a whit for those people.
And besides, he had promised her three tasks in repayment for saving his life.
This did not go against his principles.
As Jiang Wang finished the gesture, a great surge of Dao essence gushed from within his Tongtian Palace and poured into the array plate. The plate scattered into smoke like mist.
And at that very moment, on the distant Jade Scales Peak, black smoke billowed up all at once!
Curses rang out. Wails shook the sky. Countless threads of black smoke rose and finally congealed into five colossal figures that surrounded Jade Scales Peak.
"Is this the Earth-Dragon Heaven-Overturning Array?" Jiang Wang strained his eyes at those immense, hideous silhouettes in the distance, and a fury born of being toyed with welled up within him.
Though he had never handled an array plate before, and did not know the true power of the Earth-Dragon Heaven-Overturning Array, no reading of the name could possibly produce something like *this*!
"Maybe I misremembered — it's the Five Phantoms Mountain-Crushing Array!" White Lotus laughed lightly and waved a hand. "Still, no great difference."
"I trusted you. I've cooperated with you all along, hoping to repay the favor of your saving my life. But you've been mocking me this whole time?" Jiang Wang could barely contain his rage.
"Mocking you? What would I gain by mocking you?" White Lotus looked at him, and her gaze turned strangely cold. "Put away your shabby pretense of righteousness. The only thing bothering you is that commanding the dead weighs on your conscience. But do you know that there is a ferocious beast on Jade Scales Peak called the Soul-Devouring Bird? The war-dead who fell on Jade Scales Peak, the lingering spirits that cling to those beasts — even if we did not make use of them, they would soon be devoured all the same."
She gave a cold laugh. "You go on and on about destroying Jade Scales Peak, about protecting the common folk of the Sanshan City domain. And all the effort you've put in has amounted to no more than forming a Dao gesture here. As for me — I hold only a single array plate of the Five Phantoms Mountain-Crushing Array. What would you have me conjure, an Earth-Dragon Heaven-Overturning Array out of thin air?"
Jiang Wang fell silent. He did indeed regard the commanding of the dead as a desecration. Had he known beforehand what kind of array this was, he might not have chosen so decisively.
But his heart had not been shaken by White Lotus's words. He had only realized that he might already have sunk into some whirlpool she had conjured, and was being dragged ever deeper down.
And he did not even know how to struggle.
That was the true root of his anger.
...
On Jade Scales Peak, no fewer than seven figures shot forth in that instant. But with the array plate in play, the Five Phantoms Mountain-Crushing Array was triggered with extreme speed. The five colossal phantoms congealed almost in a heartbeat, and in the next breath, together they crushed the mountain!
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
Mountains crumbled and the earth split apart.
Those seven masters had not yet worked out how to handle the great phantoms when their own Dao arts, hurled against the giants, had not yet taken effect... and Jade Scales Peak had already toppled!
If Jade Scales Peak were a silent colossal beast, then the ferocious beasts upon its slopes were like lice. As the giant beast fell, the lice tumbled off with it.
The five great phantoms did not stop there. Throwing their combined strength into it, they lifted half of Jade Scales Peak and turned toward the east.
With every step, the earth shook and the mountains rocked.
There lay the direction of Flying-In Peak — the last celebrated mountain of the Sanshan City domain, and the final lair of ferocious beasts!
Just then, a silhouette appeared abruptly at the edge of the sky.
Set against the five great phantoms, it was as small as a single black speck.
Yet it stood in midair, as though before the very sun!
Before one could even see it move, the five great phantoms dissolved into smoke.
It made no sound, but its aura flooded heaven and earth.
Trees snapped and stone shattered; birds fell and beasts cowered... even the clouds in the sky seemed driven off by its presence, and all at once the horizon cleared for ten thousand leagues.
But Jade Scales Peak had fallen, and it would never rise again.
The ferocious beasts on the mountain, the yao beasts, the secrets within — all of it turned to smoke.
...
Jiang Wang had only caught a distant glimpse of that black speck, and already a fear was born from the depths of his heart. It was the instinctive dread of a living creature.
"Don't look." White Lotus reached out and covered his eyes. "The moment he senses your gaze, we're all dead."
Her hand was boneless soft, and slightly cold to the touch.
Jiang Wang stepped back, away from her hand. And of course, he drew his own gaze back from Jade Scales Peak as well.
"Let's make for Fenglin City. We'll talk as we walk." White Lotus said.
Jiang Wang followed in silence.
"From now on, the ferocious beasts of the Sanshan City domain are going to thin out by half, and you're the great savior of Sanshan City! There's real hope of you marrying Sun Xiaoman now. And not without a chance at Dou Yuemei, either. Still, marrying Dou Yuemei is the better bargain — you'd gain a son and a daughter in one stroke. What a deal!"
Jiang Wang said nothing.
"Originally I'd looked to wipe out Flying-In Peak while I was at it. But that old thing came far too fast. Honestly! Doesn't he have a commandery academy selection to watch over? Still, I'm quite satisfied already!"
Jiang Wang kept his silence.
White Lotus did not mind in the least, and went on. "Truth be told, an ordinary Five Phantoms Mountain-Crushing Array wouldn't have been enough to work such an effect, even bolstered by the war-dead of that earlier battle. What mattered most was that Dou Yuemei was formidable — her Mountain-Tearing divine skill had already severed the mountain-root of Jade Scales Peak. It would take no less than a century for it to heal. So with a single crushing blow from the five phantoms, it collapsed..."
White Lotus chattered on without end, as though she could talk on alone until the heavens wore out and the earth grew old.
Jiang Wang replied in a low voice, "Your words are never more than half true and half false. I truly cannot tell what sort of person you are."
White Lotus said, in great delight, "Why, the sort that's a peerless beauty, of course! The finest of the finest!"
"..." Jiang Wang very much wanted to say that was not what he meant, but he gave up.
He realized that no one could truly understand the woman White Lotus, unless she chose to bare her heart of her own accord.
But then again, who could say whether this "heart" of hers, once bared, was truly a "heart" at all?