Chapter 105 He was saved by her! A millennia-old nemesis emerges, Qingqing, don't be afraid!
Chapter 105 The Appearance of the Final Boss
When Lu Zhanting returned, it was a drizzly morning.
There was no prior notice.
Su Wanqing was pruning the herbs that had been soaked by the rain in the courtyard. Just as her fingertips straightened a crooked gentian, her heart suddenly skipped a beat.
She looked up.
The man stood outside the ornate iron gate, his posture as straight as a pine tree, covered in dust.
He had lost weight, become darker-skinned, and had bluish stubble on his chin; exhaustion seemed to emanate from his deep-set eyes.
But the way he looked into her eyes was astonishingly bright, as if he had shattered a sky full of stars just to reflect her image alone.
Clang—
The silver scissors in Su Wanqing's hand fell to the ground and smashed into the damp soil.
She couldn't care about anything else.
She lifted her skirt, rushed through the cool rain, and crashed headfirst into his strong embrace.
The familiar embrace carried the dampness of rain and a faint smell of gunpowder. He tightened his arms, his strength almost making her his very bones.
"I'm back."
He whispered in her ear, his voice hoarse beyond belief.
"Mmm." Su Wan buried her face in his strong chest and nodded frantically, her tears mingling with the rain, quickly soaking the military uniform on his shoulders.
The two embraced tightly in the misty rain, as if trying to crush all the fear and anxiety of the past few days into this embrace.
After a long while, Lu Zhanting finally loosened his grip on her and cupped her face in his hands.
When he saw her noticeably thinner face and the unconcealable weariness in her eyes, his heart clenched with pain.
"Qingqing, you..."
"I'm fine." Su Wanqing interrupted him directly, reaching out to touch the front of his shirt.
Through the soaked fabric, she could clearly feel a deep crack on the jade pendant.
Her heart ached as well.
Lu Zhanting grabbed her hand and glanced down at the area of his underwear.
He knew that this crack was the result of her hard work and dedication.
Back inside, Su Wanqing hurriedly prepared hot water for him and then went to the kitchen to make ginger soup.
Lu Zhanting followed closely behind her, watching her slender figure bustling about for him. Returning from the battlefield amidst gunfire to this peaceful, everyday life, he felt truly alive again.
"Qingqing".
He wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and rested his chin on her fragrant neck.
"Don't be busy, let me hold you for a while."
Su Wanqing stopped what she was doing, leaned back, and rested against his firm chest.
"Are you hurt?" she asked softly.
“No,” Lu Zhan Ting replied quickly. “The things you gave me are all very useful.”
He didn't talk about how he hovered on the brink of death, nor did he mention the divine power that surged from thousands of miles away and pulled him back from the edge of death.
Telling her would only make her more frightened.
Su Wanqing also did not inquire about the crack in the jade pendant.
There was already an unspoken understanding between them.
After drinking ginger soup and washing away the smoke and fatigue, Lu Zhanting told Su Wanqing about the most bizarre discovery of this mission.
"That mercenary leader, 'Viper,' has a tattoo on his wrist."
Lu Zhanting spoke in a low voice, picked up a pen and paper, and quickly drew a pattern.
A black snake is devouring its own tail, forming a closed and eerie ring.
Ouroboros.
Su Wanqing's expression changed instantly.
“Furthermore,” Lu Zhanting frowned, “the things they’re researching at their base are very strange. It doesn’t seem like pure biological weapons; it’s more like… grafting ancient poison techniques onto modern genetic technology. I saw many modified poisonous insects, their toxicity more than a hundred times stronger than in their natural state.”
As Su Wanqing looked at the pattern on the paper, a chill ran down her spine.
She had seen this pattern before!
She closed her eyes and quickly searched through the vast sea of memories left by her mother.
She found it very quickly.
It was a mark drawn with vermilion pen in the most inconspicuous corner of a mother's journal.
Next to the mark, there are only two words: "Divine Punishment".
“My mother called this organization ‘Divine Punishment’.” Su Wanqing’s voice was a little dry.
Lu Zhanting's pupils suddenly contracted.
He immediately realized that the seriousness of the matter had gone beyond the scope of a routine military mission.
That afternoon, Lu Zhanting took Su Wanqing and the rubbing of the pattern and entered the Bai family's secret realm again.
When Bai Jinghong, the patriarch of the Bai family, and Bai Qishan, the third elder, saw the ouroboros pattern, their expressions changed drastically at the same time.
"The Black Serpent Cult!"
Bai Jinghong's voice carried an almost overflowing anger and apprehension.
He stared intently at Su Wanqing, his eyes filled with complex emotions, which finally turned into a long sigh.
"Come with me."
This time, he did not take them to any pavilions, but instead led them into the Bai Family Ancestral Hall.
After passing through the main hall where the ancestral tablets of past generations are enshrined, Bai Jinghong stopped in front of a wall at the deepest part of the hall, bit his fingertip, and smeared a drop of blood on a brick in the center of the wall.
The wall opened silently, revealing a dark staircase leading downwards, and an ancient aura, sealed for thousands of years, wafted out.
"This is the 'Forbidden Library,' which contains the Bai family's most core secrets. No one but the patriarch is allowed to enter."
The forbidden library was not large; in the center was a cold jade stone platform upon which lay a book made of an unknown metal.
The cover also features an ouroboros, but this time the snake is pinned down by a gleaming sword.
Bai Jinghong, his hands trembling, opened this forbidden book.
"My Bai family and the Black Serpent Cult share the same origin." Bai Jinghong's voice was extremely heavy. "In ancient times, our ancestors mastered the 'Way of Medicine,' which transcended life and death. Later, due to differences in ideology, they split into two branches. My Bai family advocates following the way of heaven and saving people with medicine, which is 'life.' The other branch, on the other hand, advocates going against the way of heaven and controlling the soul with poison, which is 'death.' They broke away and established the Black Serpent Cult."
"They are skilled in making Gu poison, casting curses, and refining living corpses. They have been fighting with my Bai family for hundreds of years, each wanting to obtain the other's inheritance to complete the 'Way of Medicine'. Hundreds of years ago, my Bai family ancestor paid the price of his life to severely damage the Black Serpent Sect and drive them to the desolate lands overseas. We all thought they had been wiped out."
Bai Jinghong looked up at Lu Zhanting: "But now it seems that they are not only alive, but have become even more terrifying."
Su Wanqing's heart sank little by little.
The Seventh Elder's "Soul-Eating Gu" was no accident at all!
“My mother…” she began with difficulty, “Did she discover their whereabouts?”
Bai Jinghong closed his eyes and nodded painfully.
"Your mother... she is a genius that appears only once in a thousand years in my Bai family. She discovered that the so-called 'curse' on the Bai family bloodline is not destiny at all, but a conspiracy by the Black Serpent Cult that has lasted for hundreds of years!"
“Every hundred years, they use the secret technique ‘blood curse’ to assassinate the most talented successor of my Bai family, disguising it as a death from exhaustion, in order to weaken my Bai family.”
"Your mother discovered this secret and found a way to break it, but in doing so, she was exposed. The Black Serpent Cult, in order to silence her and to obtain the Bai family's treasure on her body, launched a frenzied manhunt for her."
"A priceless treasure?" Lu Zhanting asked sharply.
Bai Jinghong looked at Su Wanqing and uttered four words, one after another: "Mustard Seed Cave Heaven!"
really!
Su Wanqing and Lu Zhanting exchanged a glance, both seeing horror in each other's eyes.
What they were always searching for was her space!
"To protect you and to prevent the war from spreading to the family, your mother had no choice but to feign defection and draw away all the pursuers on her own." Bai Jinghong's voice was filled with regret. "And we... we fools actually believed her! And she has borne this infamy for thirty years!"
All the clues came together at this moment.
The Black Serpent Cult was hunting down my mother.
The Black Serpent Cult was the one who cast the curse on the Seventh Elder.
The Black Serpent Cult was the one that established the biological warfare base in the Golden Triangle.
This ancient organization, hidden in the mists of history, has transformed into a behemoth possessing modern technology, international influence, top-tier military strength, and bizarre secret techniques.
It's like an invisible giant net, its tentacles already reaching every corner of the world.
"How...did they find us?" Lu Zhanting asked the most crucial question.
Bai Jinghong's gaze fell on Su Wanqing, his eyes filled with deep sorrow: "It's you, child, you are just too outstanding."
"You saved Old Master Yan with a single acupuncture needle in the capital, you outshone everyone at the international medical conference, you cured the Seventh Elder's Soul-Eating Gu... Most importantly, Zhan Ting's operation this time directly destroyed one of their important strongholds. All of this has made them refocus their attention on you."
"They may not be 100% sure that you are the baby from back then, but they would rather kill the innocent than let the guilty go free. You have become their top priority target for elimination."
The threat is no longer a lurking venomous snake.
It has bared its fangs and transformed into a prehistoric behemoth about to pounce.
Su Wanqing felt a sudden chill in her hands and feet.
She always thought her enemies were Liu Yuzhen, Song Tingyu, and those petty scoundrels from the Bai family. She believed that as long as she was strong enough, she could protect those around her.
Only today did she realize that those were just minor squabbles.
Her real enemy is a terrorist organization that even the state apparatus may not be able to easily shake.
And the organization's target is her, the biggest secret inside her body!
Once her identity is fully exposed, she and everyone around her will be dragged into an irreversible vortex.
This is the real reason why her mother left back then. She didn't abandon her; she used her life to shield herself from this danger that could destroy everything.
And now, that barrier has disappeared.
"The Black Serpent Cult always acts by eliminating all traces of its members." Bai Jinghong looked at the pale-faced Su Wanqing and Lu Zhanting, whose eyes had become incredibly sharp, and said, word by word, "Since they have their eyes on you, their next move will be swift and devastating."
"This war that your mother postponed for thirty years with her life..."
"In the end, it still came."
"Children, are you ready?"
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