Fu Jumei inhaled the floral scent, feeling dizzy and disoriented. The fragrance should have been utterly unfamiliar, yet it felt strangely familiar, as if flowing through his very veins. He pressed his tongue against his teeth, then bit down hard. Only after the sharp pain did he realize—that was... a bottle of poison.
"Ali?" Liu Yan's voice came from beyond the crowd, distant and urgent. "What are you doing? When did you take the venom of Lonely Branch Like Snow?"
Pu Zhu's sword clattered to the ground. The thick fragrance of the poison in Tang Lichen's hand overpowered the toxic aura emanating from Da Hui, its intensity so overwhelming that it left Pu Zhu's mind reeling, unable to even hold his sword steady. The Gu King in the wound on his chest even slowly emerged, peering out to investigate the source of the potent toxin.
That poison wasn’t just Lonely Branch Like Snow—it also contained venom from the Gu Spider, Northern Cold Drink, and even various unnamed toxins from the Wang family.
All mixed together in this single bottle.
Wang Lingqiu’s expression changed. "That’s mine!"
He had been unexpectedly captured by Meng Qinglei and others at the Drifting Eyebrow Garden, and all the poison pills on him had been searched and thrown to the ground. While Tang Lichen was hiding in the Drifting Eyebrow Garden, he had picked up Wang Lingqiu’s poisons, mixed them together, and stored them in this jade bottle.
Tang Lichen slowly sat up, shaking the jade bottle lightly before smiling faintly.
All around him, hundreds of people paled in horror.
After his smile, he reached up, wiped a handful of Gu Spider eggs from his gray hair, and dropped them into the bottle, giving it another shake.
One could imagine that when he had picked up those poisons in Wang Lingqiu’s room, he had done the same—casually tossing them into the bottle and shaking it.
"The Wang family’s poison arts are based on the principle of toxins feeding and breeding off each other," Tang Lichen finally spoke. After dispersing his internal energy and suffering abdominal injuries, his voice was weak, but each word remained clear and logical. It seemed he couldn’t allow himself to sound incoherent, and his posture remained composed. "I think... for such poison insects, potent toxins are food. The Gu Spider resides in a human body, driving the poisoned person to seek out toxins, then forcing them to kill each other—the victor can then consume the toxins from the defeated. If that’s the case..." he murmured, "then this bottle of mixed poisons is the ultimate feast."
"Hah!" Wang Lingqiu sneered. "The Gu Spider feeds on blood toxins. Do you think randomly mixing a bottle of poisons can break my Hu Family’s secret technique? Wishful thinking!"
Tang Lichen lifted his eyelids, his expression half-smiling. "I am indeed wishful thinking. But who told me, in your genius, that the Gu Spider feeds on blood toxins rather than directly consuming poison?" With that, he raised the bottle of bizarrely mixed toxins and poured it into his mouth.
The onlookers had been intently listening to the shocking secrets exchanged between the two, and in that moment, they hadn’t yet grasped what the jade bottle truly was. Wan Yu Yuedan couldn’t see what Tang Lichen was about to do, but the Red Maiden cried out, "Don’t drink it!"
Meanwhile, Cheng Yunpao, Meng Qinglei, and the others still hadn’t understood the reasoning behind it. Seeing Tang Lichen suddenly about to drink the deadly poison, they froze for a moment before reacting—but they were already too late.
But someone who had smelled the fragrance of Lonely Branch Like Snow had already realized what he intended to do and had been struggling to push through the crowd from the start.
Hundreds, even thousands, of people, their minds clouded, tightly surrounded Tang Lichen.
That someone was Liu Yan—and he couldn’t break through.Yu Tuan'er managed to stop a panicked horse. Liu Yan swiftly mounted it and gave it a hard slap. The black steed, already agitated and galloping in circles, let out a long whinny, reared up, and charged straight into the crowd.
The sound of hooves pounding the ground mingled with the cries of people being knocked aside. Riding the frenzied horse, Liu Yan broke through the crowd and rushed straight to Tang Lichen's side.
At that moment, Tang Lichen had just finished saying, "Who told you that you were a prodigy? You said the venomous spiders feed on blood toxins, not directly on poison." Then, without hesitation, he poured the poison into his own mouth.
Cheng Yunpao was too late to stop him—but Liu Yan wasn't.
Perhaps he understood Tang Lichen better than Tang Lichen himself did.
A'Li had allowed Bai Suche to imprison Yu Konghou to lure out Wang Lingze, letting her act as she pleased. The result? The underground of Piaoling Meiyuan was littered with corpses, and Bai Suche had set a great fire, burning herself to death. In A'Li's mind, this wasn't Bai Suche overcoming the strong with the weak, nor was it her achieving her own ends—he would undoubtedly blame Wang Lingze for Bai Suche's death.
And Bai Suche, in A'Li's heart, was undoubtedly worthy of being called a "friend."
Now, Wang Lingqiu held Wang Lingze's remains, manipulating Fu Zhumei here, forcing him to spew out spider eggs to take his life, and controlling countless innocent people as puppets to exact revenge on the Central Plains Sword Assembly.
How could A'Li tolerate such things?
Every moment Wang Lingqiu remained here was unbearable to A'Li, so he would immediately resort to something hysterical, something mad, to seize control and salvage his unyielding pride.
Yet on the surface, he appeared utterly calm.
As Liu Yan charged forward on horseback, he knew Tang Lichen wouldn't care what happened to him after drinking that poison—he only wanted Wang Lingqiu to lose!
He would never allow himself to be controlled.
Liu Yan snatched the jade vial—fortunately, Tang Lichen was severely injured and weakened, unable to stop him with his feeble grip. Had A'Li been given a few more breaths to recover, Liu Yan might not have been able to wrest it from him.
This was fate.
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