There was a mole!

If there were no mole, how could God-Slayer possibly have known in advance that Tianchou would strike?

Hei Zhou immediately turned a furious gaze on Shuanghan and Zhaoxi. He was certain the mole was one of the two of them. As for the “Shafeng” he had treated as cannon fodder and whom God-Slayer had finished with a single move — Hei Zhou did not suspect him at all. A moron like Shafeng could be idiot enough to tell God-Slayer the truth outright, and God-Slayer would still never believe a word of it.

So which of the two, Shuanghan or Zhaoxi, was the mole?

North Divine Sovereign Zhaoxi, who held the Zhenmiao Divine Mirror?

Or Shuanghan, who held the Suohun ice chains?

Zhaoxi. The terms previously agreed were sole administration of Mountain Beyond the Mountain and Earth Valley — not the name of first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain, but very nearly its substance. With terms that generous, and with a Zhenmiao Divine Mirror that could ascertain the truth in the first place, Zhaoxi ought to know that he was not lying and would certainly honour the promise. That made his participation in the assault on God-Slayer look all the more genuine and credible. Shuanghan, by contrast, had been promised the God-Slaying Mystic Realm out of this war — and only after Tianchou had spent ten years searching it. Killing God-Slayer brought the Northwest Divine Sovereign Shuanghan no direct return whatsoever.

And the most suspicious thing of all.

Was that Shuanghan had been altogether too eager, and altogether too forward.

He had not only joined the West Camp on the stated reasoning of ending the wars of Mountain Beyond the Mountain — he had gone out of his way to persuade North Divine Sovereign Zhaoxi, and pulled Zhaoxi into the West Camp as well.

At the time, watching him work so hard to bring Zhaoxi in, there had been nothing to say about it; Hei Zhou had muttered privately but had believed it for the moment. Yet Shuanghan — the very man Hei Zhou had been quietly looking for a way to turn into cannon fodder himself, to be spent in the Divine War — had just watched a fellow chess piece cut down without a single flicker of the fox grieving over the dead hare.

At that moment, something had felt wrong.

It was extremely suspicious!

Unless he was a mole. A mole who had allied himself with God-Slayer long ago and worked his way into the West Camp to gather intelligence in secret.

Otherwise, Shafeng’s death would have left him uneasy, and afraid at the same time that he might follow Shafeng down the same road. Shuanghan seemed to have no such worry at all. Did he really trust Hei Zhou that much?

Besides which, God-Slayer must surely have promised him the best of terms long ago — this and that, once the thing was done.

Otherwise, how could he have shown himself so utterly free of wants and demands when he joined the West Camp?

Hei Zhou watched closely.

Shuanghan’s gaze was fixed on God-Slayer, and he seemed genuinely shocked.

But Hei Zhou could see that Shuanghan regarded this outcome as a matter of course. And earlier, Shuanghan had gone out of his way to speak of God-Slayer with respect; he had sharply corrected even Shafeng’s contemptuous forms of address. If he was not God-Slayer’s chess piece, why react as fiercely as that?

There was, admittedly, a sword-wound on Shuanghan’s arm.

But it was not a serious one.

The weakest of them had come away the least injured. What was the reason for that?

Whereas North Divine Sovereign Zhaoxi, far stronger than him, was smiling easily on the surface while blood kept welling steadily from the corner of his mouth.

He had struck God-Slayer’s back with that heavy palm and had produced the single largest result of the whole assault — and the backlash of God-Slayer’s divine power had wounded him badly for it.

Zhaoxi was the primary attacker and was hurt to that extent. So how much worse should Shuanghan, whose job was merely to pin God-Slayer down, have been hurt?

That point was extremely suspicious!

Working through how the moment had actually gone: if Zhaoxi were the mole, he could perfectly well have driven that palm into Tianchou’s back instead of slamming it into God-Slayer and leaving him coughing blood. Zhaoxi had the best opportunity of anyone to turn and strike Tianchou, and had not taken it. He could not be the mole. So the mole was not him — it was somebody else.

Tianchou was one of their own.

The moron Shafeng could not possibly be the mole.

And as for Ji Wuri — whoever the mole was, it could never be him!

Therefore, the only suspect.

Was him.

Northwest Divine Sovereign, Shuanghan!

“You suspect me?” Shuanghan was startled first; then, catching the sinister found you look on Hei Zhou’s face, he flew into an instant towering rage. “Whoever else you suspect, I should be the last! I asked for the least of anyone — practically nothing at all. I came to help you with no terms attached. What was I doing it for? I didn’t only come myself, I brought Zhaoxi with me. He was going to stay neutral, but I wanted the Divine War over sooner, so I talked him round and brought him into the West Camp. And you aren’t moved in the slightest by any of that — you suspect me for it. A reaction like yours is simply contemptible!”

“If you had kept your mouth shut instead of arguing, I might have believed you one second longer.” Hei Zhou’s eyes were as viciously fixed on Shuanghan as a venomous snake’s. “Listen to yourself. Listen to what you are saying! Free of wants and demands — is Shuanghan really so noble a man as that? Would you die in my service with no conditions at all? In fact I have suspected you for a long time. I simply didn’t tear your act open then. And I never expected that the instant the Divine War began, you would leak the flaw yourself!”

“Truly — I must have been blind, to have believed you would be the one to win this war.” Shuanghan could not hold the fury down. “When I watched you stand there without feeling and let Shafeng go to his death, that was when I should have withdrawn, and stopped the tragedy from happening. Hei Zhou, you disappoint me!”

“You disappoint me more.” Hei Zhou’s eyes filled with killing intent.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Ji Wuri, withdrawn ten thousand metres clear, applauded and laughed. “Sovereign Shuanghan is no simple man either. To swallow humiliation and shoulder the burden of infiltrating the West Camp — and, to buy trust, to drag in Sovereign Zhaoxi while Zhaoxi was still weighing up whether to join us. Scheming and strategy of that order, ranked merely fifth in Mountain Beyond the Mountain? That really is something of an underestimate. If you ask me, Sovereign Shuanghan belongs in the top three at least, below only God-Slayer and Hei Zhou.”

One deft stroke of sown discord.

And it was not only South Divine Sovereign Tianchou, who already bore Shuanghan a grudge — even North Divine Sovereign Zhaoxi, ordinarily his closest friend, changed expression slightly.

However good a friend a man may be, he cannot be ranked ahead of you.

That is the most basic principle of any martial cultivator.

It is also the bottom line.

The lowest one of all, and the one that cannot be crossed.

“Shuanghan, I have always considered you my brother — always. There is some misunderstanding here today. You had better leave for now; when the Divine War is over we’ll gather again, and drink, and enjoy ourselves.” North Divine Sovereign Zhaoxi drew a deep breath and, with considerable reluctance, urged Shuanghan to go.

“You suspect me too?” Shuanghan roared like a wounded animal. “You are Zhaoxi, the holder of the Zhenmiao Divine Mirror! Can even you not see the truth?”

“The truth of this Divine War is a tangled and shifting thing. It is not mine to spy out.” Zhaoxi sighed and waved a hand. “I believe you. But my believing you, alone, is not enough. Shuanghan — if you leave now, we are still friends and nothing between us changes. If you insist on staying, then even supposing you are no mole, everyone here will be hobbled by their own misgivings.”

“If I leave now, I will never wash this injustice off me as long as I live!” Shuanghan’s eyes had already gone blood-red.

“No need to leave.”

South Divine Sovereign Tianchou drew the divine blade Yinxue slowly from its sheath.

He looked at Shuanghan and said, coldly, “Whether you are truly a mole or an ally, I intend to keep you here. Shuanghan, let me tell you one truth plainly. My principle is this: better to kill three thousand by mistake than let a single one slip past. There’s no need to feel anger or grief over it. You are a weak man, and this is the fate allotted to you. From the day you joined our West Camp, I never once intended to hand you the God-Slaying Mystic Realm. The facts are somewhat cruel — but Shuanghan, you genuinely are not worthy of it!”

Shuanghan shook from head to foot with rage.

He said nothing further.

He only forced his own divine power up to its limit and prepared to resist to the death.

Hearing all this, North Divine Sovereign Zhaoxi’s expression dimmed faintly; but he feigned not to have heard, withdrew in silence to a distance of ten thousand metres, and put himself outside the matter.

“Pitiable little insect. You and Shafeng both — a pair of pitiable little insects!” South Divine Sovereign Tianchou flicked a finger against his blade and declared, boldly and without restraint, “If you can take three cuts from me, I’ll spare your life! Though of course, you may as well despair now — you won’t get through even one!”

“…” Shuanghan said nothing. He brought out the quasi-divine artifact Suohun for the first time; the crystalline ice chains ran a hundred metres long, alive with a spirit of their own, coiling round and round their master and guarding him.

Except that, set against Yinxue — the edge of a true divine artifact.

A merely quasi-divine artifact fell enormously short, in innate grade and in raw power alike.

And in the hands of two men whose own strengths were separated by just as wide a margin, that gap was magnified twice over.

At the very moment Tianchou’s divine power and will settled over Shuanghan and the divine blade Yinxue was about to take the head off Shuanghan’s neck, the Eastern Divine Sovereign God-Slayer — who had been watching coldly from the side — suddenly showed a thin, mocking smile. “What an imposing South Divine Sovereign! Tianchou, I wonder — could I, God-Slayer, take three cuts from you?”

“So Shuanghan is your man!” Hei Zhou felt he had finally caught his proof.

“Haah.” Shuanghan, past wanting to defend himself, shook his head and sighed.

He could never have imagined it.

That this was where he would end up.

An ending that did not even measure up to that idiot Shafeng, who had charged in like cannon fodder. At least Shafeng had died gloriously; at least he had died heroically. Whereas he himself had gone, in humiliation, from loyal ally to traitor and mole. There truly was nothing to say.

Had he known it would come to this, he would have done better to charge God-Slayer alongside Shafeng, like a fool.

At least, dying at God-Slayer’s hands.

Would have been worth something.

“Shuanghan was never my man. I say so because I have no wish to do my brother an injustice. God-Slayer’s true brother was Chiqiu, who never betrayed me and to whom I could entrust my life — not you, South Divine Sovereign Tianchou, with your counterfeit benevolence and your posturing. As it happens, nobody had to tell me you were Hei Zhou’s man. I have known for a long time. Did you imagine you could hide it from my eyes? For ten thousand years I kept you at my side, purely to give Hei Zhou a steady signal that he was getting away with it. Shuanghan — I think highly of you, but you are not mine, and I have no obligation to speak up for you. Go. In view of the fact that your nature is not a bad one, I’ll let you off this time. Don’t let me see you again. And the last thing I have to say is this: to be God-Slayer’s brother is to stand absolutely beyond the insult of any petty scum in this world. Whoever dares insult my brother, the Lihen in my hand will cut them down without pardon! Hei Zhou. Tianchou. You dared to kill Chiqiu — so I, God-Slayer, will wipe the pair of you out entirely. Even if you come from the Central Divine Hall, you die all the same!”

As God-Slayer reached that final sentence, his fury, carrying his sword-intent with it, surged skyward.

Violent as thunder.

Detonating until heaven and earth changed colour.

In that instant God-Slayer seemed to grow taller and vaster without limit, until he felt like a giant who could put out one finger at random and grind the ant-small Hei Zhou and Tianchou beneath him into powder.

And when God-Slayer raised the divine sword Lihen toward the heavens, alarm showed openly in the eyes of both Hei Zhou and Tianchou, each in real dread of being finished in a single stroke.

Yue Yang, playing dead inside a rock, lay there perfectly composed, concentrating on his role as an extra’s corpse. He was not about to do what Stephen Chow would have done and ask the director whether he ought to die a bit more mischievously, or possibly die at rather greater length. Playing a convincing corpse is no easy thing these days — still less for a small-time extra whose only compensation is the boxed lunch. Yue Yang, for his part, was wondering whether he ought to award himself a Best Extra prize at some point.

He knew God-Slayer was going to erupt.

But he had a stronger premonition that the thing would not be that simple.

With no more than this three-trick repertoire, Hei Zhou, Tianchou and Ji Wuri could never hope to take God-Slayer. There had to be a more thorough and more perfect plan behind it. In a word: only now was God-Slayer beginning to fall into the trap.

Killing Chiqiu earlier had never been about weakening God-Slayer’s strength. It had been about enraging him.

And as for the ambush.

Whether it succeeded was fundamentally beside the point.

God-Slayer was absolutely not a man who could be ambushed into lying crippled on the ground. He was an untamed knight of the divine sword, a man who could not be bent, snapped, twisted or levered loose. There was only one way to kill God-Slayer: enrage him, and then, in a fight neither side could walk away from, wipe him out completely. If God-Slayer wanted to leave, there was nobody in Mountain Beyond the Mountain who could keep him.

Ji Wuri had calculated precisely this. Kill Chiqiu, and God-Slayer would stop at no cost whatsoever to avenge him.

And next it would be the Best Actor’s turn, Ji Wuri’s, to take the stage.

Set beside him, Hei Zhou was at the very most a supporting player.

Not the lead at all!

(End of Chapter 1184)