The two senior disciples said nothing as they escorted Li Wei deeper into the disciplinary hall. Their grips remained firm on his arms, neither harsh nor gentle, merely the impersonal efficiency of disciples following orders.

  They guided him past the main corridor, then down a narrow side passage that led to a winding stairwell spiraling into the earth. Torches lined the walls in diminishing intervals, their flames flickering weakly the further they descended. The air grew colder, denser, tinged with mineral dampness and the faint scent of moldy stone.

  After several long flights of stairs, they reached a stone landing etched with faint cloud-shaped patterns—marks of protection and confinement, the Azure Cloud Sect’s sealwork. One disciple touched the sigil with two fingers, injecting a small pulse of qi. The sigil trembled, then dissolved like mist blown apart by wind, revealing a heavy ironwood door reinforced with qi-tempered metal. They pushed it open and a breath of stale, cold air spilled out.

  Beyond the door stretched the dungeons, the bowels of the disciplinary hall. The corridor ahead was wide but dim, lit only by thin lanterns embedded in the walls. Rows upon rows of prison cells lined each side, the iron bars forged from Coldiron Bamboo, each stem soaked in sealing talismans to prevent spiritual outbursts. Most cells were empty, hollow chambers of shadow and silence. But here and there, a pair of faint, eerie eyes gleamed in the dark. Prisoners—disciples who had committed heinous crimes, elders who had betrayed the sect or lost their minds—watched Li Wei pass with quiet hunger or apathetic dullness. Their faces were obscured by gloom, but their gazes followed him like ghosts tracking fresh life.

  Li Wei kept his eyes forward. The disciples led him down three branching corridors, following a path that wound like a labyrinth. It was said the sect’s dungeon was designed after ancient celestial arrays, meant to confuse escaping spirits and suppress demonic energies. To common eyes, it simply felt disorienting—turn after turn, corridor after corridor, each looking deceptively identical.

  Finally, they stopped at an unused cell near the back of a remote wing.

  “This one,” one disciple said curtly.

  They removed the silk binding from Li Wei’s wrists. The moment it left his skin, Li Wei felt his blood flow more freely, though the oppressive cold of the dungeon swallowed the sensation almost immediately.

  The disciples gestured. “In.”

  Li Wei stepped into the cell. It was small but clean, with stone walls and a simple wooden bench fixed to the back. A faint inscription glowed on the floor, a suppression seal meant to dampen energy fluctuations.

  One of the disciples closed the metal-barred door behind him and activated the lock. A talisman-engraved copper plate slid over the latch. With a soft hum, it released a strand of amber-gold light, which wove itself through the bars like a spider spinning silk. The moment the light faded, the lock was sealed; only someone with the matching talisman strip could open it again.

  As the disciples turned to leave, Li Wei spoke. “Senior brothers…”

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  They paused and looked back over their shoulders, their expressions indifferent.

  Li Wei swallowed. “May I ask… how will I be executed?”

  The disciple on the right blinked in mild surprise at the question, then answered in the same flat tone; “You’ll be beheaded. But don’t worry…” He leaned in slightly, narrowing his eyes as though gauging Li Wei’s measurements. “Judging by your neck, it’s thin enough. You should pass into the afterlife quickly.” Afterwards, the two disciples turned away and walked off, their footsteps fading into the maze-like corridor until only silence remained.

  Li Wei stood still for a moment, staring at the bars. Then, without expression, he moved to the wooden bench and sat down stiffly. A quiet sigh slipped from his lips. He hadn’t asked that question out of ignorance. He had asked because he needed information—any clue to understand how the sect viewed him.

  According to Azure Cloud Sect protocol, executions were carried out in two stages. The first was cultivation extraction. For any disciple who had ever cultivated, the sect would first draw out all remaining cultivation from their body. Raising a cultivator required immense resources; no sect wanted to waste those resources when the disciple died. The cultivation would be extracted using a Linghun Zhu—a Qi-Collecting Bead. The bead absorbed the disciple’s lifelong cultivation and refined it into pure qi, which is then crystallized into spirit stones for the sect’s re-use. Only once the damned person's cultivation had been fully extracted would the execution proceed.

  But the senior disciple had said nothing about extraction. Just beheading. A simple, mundane end. That told Li Wei everything he needed to know. They still think I’m crippled. They think I have no cultivation worth extracting. His fingers curled into a fist on his knee. Maybe… I can use my hidden cultivation base to my advantage, he wondered. But how?

  In the silent, suffocating dungeon, that question lingered like a spark refusing to die. His mind drifted to the crux of the issue, which was that he was clearly being framed. An idiot could see it from a mile away. Yet, the other question that gnawed at him was why anyone would go to such lengths to frame him. And who could possibly be behind it?

  The very first person he thought of was Su Qingyue, but he immediately eliminated that possibility. From the little he knew of her and Guo Liang’s shared past, their relationship ran deep. Their renown was not earned merely through being personal disciples of Patriarch Shigo Tianyu, nor solely because Su Qingyue was celebrated as one of the Three Beauties of the Eastern Province. Their fame had risen due to the extraordinary synergy they had displayed during their adventures together, when their master was not with them.

  There were many stories about Su Qingyue and Guo Liang's relationship, but one in particular had spread throughout the Eastern Province like wildfire. It spoke of how Guo Liang and Su Qingyue had once purged Mount Mojiao of over four hundred demonic beasts in a single night, all to protect the mortal villages clustered around its foothills. This story increased the fame of Heavenly Sword Pavilion, making people marvel at the sect’s righteousness to have nurtured such benevolent and kind-hearted disciples.

  There were also smaller stories, accounts of Su Qingyue pulling Guo Liang from a collapsing cave, or of Guo Liang carrying Su Qingyue on his back for tens of miles after she’d been poisoned during a rogue cultivator ambush. These stories painted a picture of a partnership forged in crisis, tested by blood, and strengthened by mutual trust. And despite the differences in Su Qingyue and Guo Liang's personalities and philosophies, it was obvious from the former's demeanor the day before—her quiet apology on Guo Liang’s behalf during the Inner Sect Trial—that she held deep affection for him and did not wish for people to have a bad impression of him.

  Someone like her would never orchestrate Guo Liang’s death simply to frame Li Wei.

  Li Wei’s eyes narrowed in thought.

  Then… could it be Patriarch Shigo Tianyu?