The iron-masked man waved his hand, and white smoke rapidly spread along the ground.
Lu Ji inhaled only a tiny wisp of it, and a dry numbness immediately bloomed at the base of his tongue. He instantly held his breath, his expression turning even grimmer.
This was no ordinary knockout smoke.
This scent was mixed with the residual medicinal properties from the Meridian-Sealing Needles, specifically designed to force one's internal energy into reverse.
The reason the person in the coffin had been able to knock on the lid was because the poisonous smoke had forced their meridians into reverse.
If things dragged on any longer, the person inside would not survive, and those outside would not be able to leave either.
Wei Cen looked back and shouted, “Retreat!”
But Lu Ji suddenly raised his hand and pressed his half-moon jade pendant into the groove on the side of the seventh coffin.
A soft click sounded from beneath the wooden board.
As expected, this mortuary was not just a place to store corpses. The seventh coffin itself was a lock for a secret door. When the half-moon pattern aligned with the mechanism, the bottom of the coffin slowly slid open to reveal a gap.
The iron-masked man's expression shifted slightly. “Stop him!”
Wei Cen's saber strikes suddenly grew heavier, forcefully carving out half a step of breathing room for Lu Ji.
Lu Ji bent down, flipped open the coffin lid, and retrieved the jade pendant along the way.
Lying inside the coffin was a middle-aged man so emaciated he was practically skin and bones.
The man's face was an ashen gray, his chest rising and falling weakly. On his wrist was a complete half-moon pattern that had not been gouged out.
Lu Ji pulled out three Meridian-Sealing Needles from near the man's heart, then tapped three acupoints with his fingertips: Shanzhong, Tiantu, and Shaofu.
The man coughed up a mouthful of dark blood. His eyelids trembled as a few broken syllables squeezed out of his throat.
“Xuan... Pivot... Valley...”
Lu Ji leaned down. When he clearly heard those last few words, his eyes narrowed.
The man tremblingly raised his hand, pointing toward the inner wall of the coffin.
A small section there was smeared with blood and medicinal mud. Lu Ji scraped it away with his broken saber, revealing a thin bronze sheet.
The bronze sheet was densely engraved with names and dates.
Lu Ji only swept a glance over it, but his chest felt as if it had been struck heavily by something.
He stuffed the bronze sheet into his robes, then reached back and slapped the hidden catch at the bottom of the coffin.
The entire coffin sank backward, revealing a narrow passage leading underground.
Wei Cen was forced back by a palm strike from the iron-masked man, retreating right to Lu Ji's side.
Gritting his teeth, Lu Ji grabbed the man's shoulders and back with his right hand. Using the edge of the coffin for leverage, he dragged him halfway toward the secret passage, his arm trembling slightly from exhaustion.
He squeezed a single word from between his teeth: “Go.”
Wei Cen immediately hoisted the man onto his shoulders, holding his saber horizontally with his other hand to block the entrance.
The poisonous smoke pressed lower and lower, and the oil lamps flickered wildly in the wind.
The iron-masked man stepped through the white mist, his voice as cold as a blade scraping against bone. “Lu Ji, you cannot take him away.”
Lu Ji looked back from the entrance of the secret passage. His face was pale, and he clearly struggled to even stand straight, yet his expression was exceedingly provocative.
“The person, I'm taking.”
He pressed the mechanism. Before the coffin closed back up, his voice drifted out through the gap.
“And the ledger, I'm taking too.”
The bottom of the coffin slammed shut with a boom, and the stone gate locked tight, cutting off the white smoke surging along the ground outside.
“Cut!”
He Chuan's voice rang out.
Jiang Yue climbed out of the coffin and stretched his body.
The special actor playing the person in the coffin was also helped up by the staff. He let out a long breath first. “I'm finally out of that coffin.”
Lin Ziyang, who played Wei Cen, wiped the sweat from his face and teased, “You had it pretty good, getting to make your entrance lying down.”
The special actor looked at Jiang Yue. “When Teacher Jiang suddenly flipped the coffin lid open just now, I really felt an incredible sense of oppression from inside.”
Jiang Yue smiled slightly, raising his hand to wipe away the residual fake blood near his jaw. “The coffin lid did a great job.”
The prop master chimed in from the side. When it came to their professional domain, anyone would want to show off a little. “Of course. I checked this coffin several times today to make sure there were no issues with the mechanism.”
After the mortuary scenes were finished, the crew continued to work around the clock for another two days.
No matter how high the trending searches were on the outside, the crew's props on set were not lacking in the slightest.
In the drama, the shadow guards of the Grand Tutor's Residence had already followed the clues, closing in on the Old Valley Master's hiding place.
To destroy the evidence that could point to Lu Ji's true identity, the Old Valley Master had taken a direct palm strike from an iron-masked shadow guard and fled to the secret chamber of a medicine shop under Lu Ji's name.
At 10:00 AM, on the set of the underground secret chamber.
The props team checked the mechanisms, and the lighting technician dimmed the main lights.
The air was thick with the scent of fake blood and the heat radiating from the lamps, making everyone's chests feel heavy and stuffy.
Jiang Yue sat on a folding chair in the corner in his costume, half of his face shrouded in shadow.
The makeup artist had just finished touching up his fake blood, and no one dared to approach and strike up a conversation.
Even Jiang Kaiwen lightened his steps when handing him water.
Jiang Yue took the water and took a small sip.
When he was silent, the bloodstains on his face and his lowered brows made him look very fierce. Even Jiang Kaiwen, who usually loved to chatter, did not make a sound to disturb him.
“All teams pay attention, turn on the fog machines!” He Chuan directed.
Old Hong stood to the side and gave a confirmation gesture to the rigging team.
Although this scene was primarily a dramatic dialogue scene, it was followed by action sequences, so the props team had already cordoned off the edges of the set in advance.
The clapperboard snapped shut.
Inside the dim underground secret chamber.
Lu Ji leaned against a blue brick stone pillar. The fabric on his left shoulder was completely shredded, and dark blood dripped down from a mangled wound.
In the battle at the Southern City Mortuary, he had risked half his life to shake off the pursuers from the Grand Tutor's Residence with Wei Cen's help. He had then followed the marks left in his master's medicine shop to find this secret passage.
By the time he stumbled into the secret chamber, the Old Valley Master was already sitting there waiting for him, his face extremely pale and gaunt.
He stumbled over and sat directly on the ground. Noticing his injuries, the Old Valley Master placed his fingers on Lu Ji's pulse, remaining silent for a long time.
“Old man.”
Lu Ji's chest heaved violently, and a bitter smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I've caused too much trouble this time. I doubt your medicine can save this wretched life of mine.”
The Old Valley Master did not withdraw his hand.
His cloudy eyes stirred, and the energetic anger he usually had when scolding people was completely gone from his face, replaced only by a serene calm, as if he were ready to depart at any moment.
“My medicine was never meant to cure illnesses in the first place.”
The Old Valley Master's voice was hoarse and extremely slow. “The formulas I've changed for you over the years were only to suppress the Xuan Pivot energy within your body.”
Hearing this, Lu Ji abruptly snapped his eyes up.
The Old Valley Master withdrew his hand and fumbled out half of a half-moon jade pendant from his robes, his fingers trembling.
“I kept it from you.”
He caught his breath before continuing, “Because I was afraid they would find you before you could even grow up.”
Lu Ji's knuckles slowly tightened.
The Old Valley Master looking at him, finally voiced the words he had hidden for over a decade.
“A hundred years ago, the Xuan Pivot lineage was supreme in both medicine and martial arts. The people of the martial world believed they perished in internal sectarian strife.”
“None of that is the truth. It was the ancestor of the current Grand Tutor, Xie Wuheng, who led thousands of armored soldiers to assault the mountain in order to monopolize the Xuan Pivot Mental Sutra. At that time, the Xuan Pivot lineage was devastated, with countless dead and injured; only a tiny fraction of people escaped. Even down to Xie Wuheng's generation, they still have not given up.”
Lu Ji's breath hitched for a moment.
He had thought he was just an unlucky physician caught up in some martial world vendetta, but he never expected that this dark abyss of a conspiracy ran as deep as several generations ago.
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