Starting as the heir of a marquis's mansion, I gained access to a summoning system.

It is located three miles outside the imperial mausoleum.

The Blood Shadow Elder of the Heavenly Demon Sect stopped and raised his hand to signal the four people behind him to stop.

The massive burial mound ahead was clearly visible. At the base of the mound was a bronze gate. After three sections of the seal script on the gate had crumbled, the remaining dozens of ancient characters were still slowly glowing, like a pool of water that had been boiled but was barely contained.

"If we take another half step forward, the aura of the Demon God Lü will directly press down on us."

The Blood Shadow Elder's voice was extremely low, "Your techniques can't withstand it. I'll go in alone and come out within three incense sticks' time. If I don't return after three incense sticks' time—"

He paused for a moment.

"Withdraw to the Western Regions and do not set foot in the Central Plains again for a hundred years."

The four elders looked solemn, but none of them refuted the argument.

The Blood Shadow Elder was at the peak of the ninth level of the Grandmaster realm, only one step away from becoming a half-step Celestial. Among everyone present, he was the only one who could barely maintain his freedom of movement under the suppression of Lu Moshen's aura.

He took a deep breath and took the final step.

Within three miles of the imperial mausoleum, the oppressive aura suddenly intensified by three points.

The old man with the blood shadow bent his knees slightly and then straightened them forcefully. The veins on his forehead bulged as he gritted his teeth and walked step by step toward the bronze door.

When he reached a hundred feet, he could see the three broken seal characters on the door.

The three characters were blurred and illegible, but the underlying runes exposed at the broken ends emitted a chilling dark golden light.

"This is..." The Blood Shadow Elder's pupils shrank suddenly.

He suddenly realized that these three seal characters had not collapsed naturally. They had been shattered from the inside by some force.

For a century, the Demon God Lü had been sitting in the imperial tomb in solitude. In his sleep, he unconsciously struggled for a moment.

That's it.

The old man's hand had already touched the edge of the bronze door, and the cold metallic touch made him shiver.

He pressed his face close to the crack in the door, trying to see what was inside—but the crack was too narrow, and it was pitch black inside; he couldn't see anything.

But in that darkness, he heard a heartbeat.

Steady, slow, as rhythmic as the pendulum of an ancient clock. Each heartbeat carried a vibration that traveled through the bronze door to his fingertips, sending a tingling sensation deep into his bones.

The old man withdrew his hand abruptly.

At that very moment, he heard a very light footstep behind him.

He turned abruptly—a hundred miles away on a hillside, the sect leader of the Four Extremes Sword Sect was watching him from afar, while the head of the Chu family stood on the other side. None of the three approached each other, all waiting for the first person to enter the imperial mausoleum to reveal the truth.

The Blood Shadow Elder took a deep breath, suppressing the pounding in his chest, and gave them a cold look.

Then he turned around.

gone.

He didn't enter the bronze gate. The aura he had sensed at close range told him that the Demon God Lu inside might truly awaken at any moment. And for him, with his current cultivation level, entering would be suicide.

He returned to the four elders, his face ashen: "Let's go. Retreat first."

Without asking a single question, the four elders escorted him and quickly retreated into the dense forest.

After an incense stick's time had passed since they left, the sect leader of the Four Extremes Sword Sect also departed. The head of the Chu family was the last to leave, but she knelt for a moment before the bronze gate before leaving.

No one knows what she knelt for.

Half an hour later, Shi Zhixuan and the Qinglong Society members appeared on the low hill three miles from the imperial mausoleum.

Standing atop the hill, Shi Zhixuan gazed at the tightly closed bronze gate in the distance and suddenly smiled.

"It seems someone scouted ahead for us. The door wasn't open, but none of them went in. They were afraid."

Bai Yujing stood beside him, her white robes fluttering slightly in the mountain breeze. "And what about us?"

"We're not in a hurry."

Shi Zhixuan turned to look south. "We haven't received any news from the young master yet. The White Lotus Sect's strategy hasn't fully unfolded. Only after the south makes its move can we see who's fishing and who's taking the bait at the Imperial Mausoleum."

He paused, then added:

"Second Dragon Head, your men should keep an eye on the Heavenly Demon Sect and the Four Extremes Sword Sect. That old lady from the Chu family… she knelt down. That detail is more important than whether any of them get in the door or not."

Bai Yujing glanced at him.

Shi Zhixuan pointed to his heart:

"She's afraid. What could make the Chu family patriarch, a Grandmaster at the ninth level, kneel before the Demon God Lü's gate wasn't intimidation. It was that she had a guilty conscience."

Southern Xinjiang, Red Capital.

Dongfang Weiwo's carriage arrived at the edge of the White Lotus Sect's controlled area the following afternoon.

He did not enter the city, but instead reined in his horse and stopped on a desolate hill ten miles outside the city.

Looking out from here, the walls of Chidu are covered with crimson flags, each embroidered with a huge "Chi" character. Faint chanting sounds drift from the city on the winter wind to the barren hills; it is the unique chanting of the White Lotus Sect, long and fervent.

Dongfang Weiwo looked at it for a moment, a playful smile appearing on his lips.

Wanfo Temple had nurtured this pawn for a hundred years, and finally pushed it onto the chessboard. Every victory of the White Lotus Sect was a test of the court's bottom line for Wanfo Temple—testing when Qin Muzhi would send troops, and testing how long the court could remain in power after the aura of the Demon God Lü was leaked.

The fact that the Red-Robed Dharma King called himself the King of the South and established his country as Red shows that this pawn has begun to have its own ideas.

A hunting dog that has been raised for a hundred years may not obey its owner once it tastes blood.

"Let's go," he said, lowering the carriage curtain. "Twenty li further ahead. I want to see how well the White Lotus Sect's defenses are set up."

When the carriage started moving again, Dongfang Weiwo leaned against the carriage wall and closed his eyes to rest. He touched the slightly warm jade pendant at his waist—it contained the power of a Grandmaster's strike given to him by his father.

The numbers on the system panel remained quietly at 468,000.

He won't summon it again for now. He'll keep these less than 500,000 energy points for emergencies, and only use them when absolutely necessary.

The horse-drawn carriage rumbled southward.

The three lines—the Imperial Mausoleum, the East China Sea, and the Southern Frontier—are all stretched taut, like a bowstring pulled to its limit.

He didn't know which line would break first, but all the lines would eventually converge at the same node.

He just needs to be in the right position before that point appears.