Knock, knock, knock—knock, knock, knock.
The sound of someone rapping at the door broke the stillness of the room. White Lotus rose to answer it, and the first thing she saw when she pulled it open were two eyes filled with nothing but white.
She blinked, then forced a smile. "Second Elder, to what do I owe the honor?"
"Old man here can't come to check on the Holy Maiden?" The Second Elder laughed, the smile on that ancient, wrinkled face ought to have seemed kind, but with nothing but white in his eyes it looked profoundly sinister. "The Holy Maiden's cultivation has grown by no small measure. Truly a blessing for our Bone Path."
"Surely not. It's the Elder who is the sect's white-jade pillar holding up the heavens, the golden beam that spans the sea."
"Ha ha ha. Are you not going to invite the old man in to sit awhile?"
"This..." White Lotus's eyes showed a flash of reluctance. "I am, after all, a young lady. Would it not be rather improper?"
"Old man has watched the Holy Maiden grow up since she was a child. You are like a daughter to me. What impropriety could there be?" With that, he shouldered his way into the room, casting his gaze over the quarters before asking with feigned casualness: "Why would the Holy Maiden wear her night veil to shield herself inside her own room within the sect?"
White Lotus blinked. "My natural beauty is a treasure rare in this world. I have no choice but to keep it hidden."
"Ha ha ha ha—" His laughter burst out, only to cut off abruptly. "Ouyang has returned. I can smell him."
"This is wonderful news!" she cried. "It wouldn't do to waste all the painstaking effort we poured in, all the accomplices we sacrificed, covering his trail. Then why is the Grand Elder not coming forward to show himself?"
"Who can guess his mind?"
"If even you cannot, then I surely cannot."
"Is it that you do not know? Or that you do not wish to know?"
"I have no need to know." White Lotus giggled. "Matters of great importance within the sect are for the Elders to decide. I have only to wait quietly for news."
The Second Elder took a long, measuring look at her, then rose to leave, pausing at the threshold. "Why is the Holy Maiden so agreeable today?"
White Lotus let out a teasing laugh. "Look at what you're saying. When have I ever been disagreeable? And even when I am occasionally in a temper, is it not always for the sake of the sect's great matters?"
The Second Elder departed at last, and the crushing pressure that had hung over the room seemed to die with the closing of the door.
...
"Perhaps that was the final test."
She sat quietly until she was sure no one else would come to disturb her. Only then did she set down a formation plate, swing open the wardrobe, and drag out Jiang Chen—his eyes shut tight—flinging him onto the bed. At that moment he was sealed within the Five-Senses Seal, the only way he could escape the vigil of those all-white eyes.
White Lotus formed a hand-seal and released him. Jiang Chen sat up abruptly, his hand resting on his sword, saying nothing. Though he had heard none of her exchange with the Second Elder, he had emptied his senses and calmed his heart, turning the day's events over in his mind.
"Ask whatever you wish to ask." White Lotus walked to the table and sat down.
"You saved my life again." His voice came with difficulty.
White Lotus smiled. "Think nothing of it."
"This is the nest of the Bone Path. Are you a woman of the Bone Path?" Jiang Chen asked.
"We are all people of the Dao." she said.
Knowing it was pointless to argue whether the Bone Path counted as orthodox Dao, he repeated: "I ask you plainly. Are you a woman of the Bone Path or not?"
"It is not I." White Lotus reached out a jade finger and tapped Jiang Chen. "It is we."
"What do you mean?"
"I did not wish to tell you so soon, because your 'transformation' is not yet complete." White Lotus sighed. "But since you have come here tonight, you will not leave until you have your answer, will you?"
Jiang Chen did not answer her question. "So Fang Lin's coming to Ox-Head Mountain today was a trap? Set for whom?"
"A casual move by the Bone Mask Messenger, aimed at no one in particular. It is only that tonight, whoever followed Fang Lin was to die here. We are abandoning this place soon enough regardless. You and that hidden sentry of the Bureau merely came along at the wrong time."
So the Bone Path would be leaving Ox-Head Mountain soon. Jiang Chen seized on the information sharply, but set it aside. "What does 'transformation' mean? What is this 'we'?"
"The Bone Lotus on your back. The Flesh-Restoring Soul-Return Art you mastered without warning... Are these not enough to make the connection?"
"You have always known an awful lot about me. These could all be your doing. I cannot possibly have anything to do with the Bone Path!"
"To alter a person's memories—such a divine power I do not possess." White Lotus laughed. "But I have indeed paid a great deal of attention to you. Even when you were a beggar..."
Jiang Chen was jolted with alarm. To escape Fang Pengju's pursuit, he had disguised himself as a beggar in Huanzhen Temple, long before he had even opened his meridians.
"When your group of beggars settled there," she explained, "it was a choice made under our guidance. It is a place chosen by the Revered God. Ever since the battle in which Zuo Guanglie fell, I have been curious—so many of those beggars died, so why were you the only one to survive? Could it be mere coincidence? And why, after you returned to the Dao Academy, did your cultivation advance by leaps overnight?
Once your meridians opened, your rate of cultivation far outran that of ordinary men. And most importantly—you can devour the bone seed. You can adapt with perfect ease to the secret arts of the Bone Path. You know the Flesh-Restoring Soul-Return Art! You are not ordinary. You are the Bone Dao Child!"
White Lotus finished: "It was only later that I understood. Your appearance at Huanzhen Temple was arranged by the Revered God himself."
"No, that's wrong!" Jiang Chen shook his head. He believed his cultivation had come from the Ethereal Realm, with nothing at all to do with any Bone Dao Child. But the Ethereal Realm was his greatest secret now, and he could not bring it out to defend himself.
"I am only afraid that you protest aloud while weeping inside."
"What Dao Child!" Jiang Chen took a step back. "I have told you, I can never forgive what the Bone Path has done. And I will never sink to your level, consorting with evil. We are not of the same road!"
"That is because you have not yet seen the true face of this world, have not yet stripped away the last of your hypocrisy, have not yet found your true self."
"I know very well who I am. I have no need of your reminders." Jiang Chen steadied himself. "What did you mean by 'bone seed'?"
"It is a thing of great rarity. I have only one. It can absorb the nutrients of its host as it grows, until in the end it perfectly controls them. But I never imagined you would devour it... And so you see, of course a bone seed cannot take effect against the Dao Child!"
Jiang Chen looked at her coldly. "And you tried to use it to take control of me?"
For once, a hint of apology shone in White Lotus's eyes. "Back then, we were not yet familiar..."
"We are not familiar now, either. You have become a stranger to me!" Jiang Chen said coldly. "Say no more! I refuse to believe I am any kind of Bone Dao Child. And even if I were, I would never sink to your level—consorting with wolves in human skin!"
That one word, "even if," betrayed the wavering in his heart.
White Lotus did not press the point. Instead she turned it around: "Pray tell, which is more wolf-in-human-skin—fostering monstrous beasts while the common folk are left to starve, or draining the meridians of the waterfolk to refine Meridian-Opening Pills?"
"Don't think you can shake my resolve with words!" Jiang Chen's voice was resolute. "White Lotus, since our roads differ, let us part ways. As I said, my life is a gift from you. You may take it back this very moment."
White Lotus's beautiful eyes—filled with feigned grievance, with alluring autumn waves—fixed upon him.
"How could I bear to kill you?" Her voice softened to a coaxing lilt. "Rather, if you will but comply, I can erase your memories of this night. As though none of it ever happened. When in time you fully awaken, then you will recall tonight."
"To cover one's ears and steal a bell?"
"No. The time is simply not yet ripe."
White Lotus rose and, before Jiang Chen could react, pressed him down to sit upon the bed.
"Look into my eyes," she said. "I have no power over memory. I merely use a secret art to seal away this short stretch of your memory, and so you must open your heart and cooperate fully. Should any accident occur, the least of it would be a shattered mind; the worst, utter destruction of your soul."
Jiang Chen knew well that this was the best of the choices before him. He had wandered into the den of thieves tonight and ought to have died there. White Lotus's shielding had saved his life, but she could never allow him to carry the secrets of the Bone Path back to Maple Forest City. He would sooner die than ally himself with the Bone Path. Yet now he could postpone the choice without having to die.
He laid his heart fully open, letting his consciousness drown in countless lotus petals. He felt a warmth, a tenderness, a longing that wrapped around him.
And there, in that boundless sea, a single bud drifted toward him, growing taller until it stood level with his gaze.
The lotus bloomed—and at its very center there was no pistil, nor any lotus seed. But rather... a black candle.