The small, unassuming pill sat on the stone platform, a nexus of conspiracy and danger. The confirmation that Jia Lie Bi was our link to the Hall of Souls didn't bring a sense of relief; it brought a chilling clarity. The phantom in the dark now had a face, and that face was a prominent public figure, insulated by the power of one of the city's three great clans. He was untouchable by conventional means.
"So, we have our man," Ming said, breaking the heavy silence in the forge. He began to pace back and forth, a caged tiger contemplating its prey. "What's the play? We can't just walk up to the Galeo Clan and accuse their chief alchemist of being a soul-eating ghoul. They'd laugh us out of the room before they killed us."
"And we can't go to the Xiao Clan either," I added, my mind sifting through the strategic implications. "Even if the Great Elder believed us, what could they do? Announce it to the city? Jia Lie Bi would deny everything, and the Galeo Clan would paint it as a desperate slander from a failing rival. It would escalate the clan war into a bloody, open conflict, which might be exactly what the Hall of Souls wants."
"So a direct confrontation is out," Ming concluded. "We can't use the city's existing power structures. They're compromised, blind, or both." He stopped pacing and looked at me, a dangerous glint in his eyes that I was beginning to recognize. It was the look he got when he was about to suggest something incredibly reckless. "That leaves us with only one option, doesn't it, Qing-er? We take care of him ourselves."
The thought was both terrifying and intoxicating. A direct, covert strike. A ghost's solution to a ghost's problem.
"Assassination?" I whispered, the word feeling strange and heavy on my tongue.
"I prefer 'proactive threat neutralization'," Ming corrected with a grim smile. "He's a Tier 2 Alchemist. His personal combat strength is probably pathetic. A Dou Shi at best. I could get close to him. With my Infinity, his guards would be irrelevant. One quick, clean strike, and the problem is gone."
His plan was brutal, simple, and tempting. The thought of eliminating the source of our fear, of cutting the head off the snake in one decisive blow, was incredibly appealing. For a moment, I allowed myself to consider it. It would be so easy.
But then, the voice of Taigong Wang, the strategist in my soul, asserted itself, dousing the appealing fire of violence with the cold water of logic.
"No," I said, shaking my head firmly. "It's too risky, and it solves the wrong problem."
Ming raised an eyebrow. "How is eliminating the bad guy the wrong solution?"
"Because we're assuming Jia Lie Bi is the agent," I explained, standing up and beginning to pace myself. "What if he's not? What if he's just a pawn? A contact? A disposable asset that the real agent is using to procure materials? If we kill him, we might be killing our only lead. The real agent, the true power from the Hall of Souls, would be alerted that they've been compromised. They would melt back into the shadows, and we would be left completely blind, having made an enemy of a force we know nothing about. We can't afford to be blind."
My logic was undeniable. A dead end was worse than a dangerous path. We couldn't kill our only source of information.
"Furthermore," I continued, "his death would destabilize the entire city. The Galeo Clan would be thrown into chaos. The fragile stalemate would break. Who knows what would rise from that anarchy? No, killing him now is a short-sighted move. We need to think like spies, not assassins."
"So if we can't kill him and we can't expose him, what's left?" Ming asked, his frustration evident. "We just sit here and watch him?"
"We don't just watch," I said, a new, far more subtle and dangerous plan beginning to form in my mind. "We use him. We turn their own game of deception back on them. He's our only window into their operations. We need to find a way to look through that window without him ever knowing we're there."
"And how do we do that?"
"By creating a new piece on the board," I said, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "A piece that Jia Lie Bi will feel compelled to investigate himself. We need to give him a reason to expose his own network, to reach out to his contacts, to reveal his methods. We need to bait the trap."
The core of my plan was built on a simple premise: a rival alchemist. Jia Lie Bi's power and position in the Galeo Clan were built on his status as a Tier 2 Alchemist. In a backwater place like Wu Tan City, that made him a local authority. But what if a new, mysterious, and seemingly more skilled alchemist suddenly appeared on the scene? An alchemist who could produce pills of a quality that even he couldn't replicate?
"His professional pride and his paranoia would force him to investigate," I explained, the plan solidifying with every word. "He would want to know who this new rival is, where they came from, and how they are creating such high-quality products. He would use every resource at his disposal—both the Galeo Clan's public resources and, if he's truly desperate, his hidden Hall of Souls network."
Ming's eyes widened behind his blindfold as he grasped the sheer audacity of the gambit. "You're talking about setting up shop. You want to become his direct competitor."
"Not me, not publicly," I clarified. "Remember, we're ghosts. But my 'father', the reclusive Master Bai Zemin, is already a figure of mystery and speculation. What if a few... exceptional pills, attributed to him, were to 'accidentally' find their way onto the market? Not through a major auction house, but through a small, independent channel. Just enough to create a stir, to make a name for ourselves in the city's alchemical circles."
The plan was a high-wire act of deception and manipulation. It was a ghost's gambit, using whispers and rumors instead of swords and fists. We would become a rival that Jia Lie Bi couldn't see but couldn't ignore. We would force him to hunt for us, and in doing so, we would watch his every move, ready to follow the trail back to the true source of the shadow.
"And what kind of 'exceptional pills' are we talking about?" Ming asked, a slow, dangerous smile returning to his face. He was fully on board now.
I looked at the pile of Monster Cores in the corner and the mountain of precious herbs in our storeroom. "Jia Lie Bi is a Tier 2 Alchemist. We need to create something that is clearly beyond his skill level, but not so advanced that it draws the attention of the entire empire. Something that feels plausible for a reclusive, eccentric master."
I thought back to the alchemist's journal, to the fragmented formulas and theoretical musings. There was one that had always intrigued me, a pill Feng Moyuan had conceptualized but never perfected.
"I'm going to create a Tier 3 pill," I declared, the words feeling both terrifying and exhilarating. "It's called the 'Spiritual Insight Pill'. According to the journal, it doesn't boost Dou Qi. Instead, it temporarily enhances a cultivator's mental clarity and soul perception, making it easier for them to comprehend Dou Techniques or gain insight into their own cultivation bottlenecks. It's a support pill, but one of incredible value to any serious practitioner. And it requires a level of soul control and refinement that a common Tier 2 Alchemist could only dream of."
The creation of this pill would be the ultimate test of my abilities. It would require me to perfectly blend the elemental energies from the herbs with the purified spiritual energy from the Monster Cores. It was a fusion of traditional alchemy and my own unique soul-forging process. If I could succeed, we would have the perfect bait.
"Alright," Ming said, his voice brimming with renewed purpose. "Phase three begins now. You become the ghost alchemist. I'll handle logistics. We need a distribution channel, a front. Someone to sell these pills without ever connecting them back to us."
Our new mission was set. We were no longer just hiding. We were fighting back, but not with force. We were fighting with whispers, with rumors, with the subtle art of deception. We would become the mystery that Jia Lie Bi was compelled to solve, and in his search for us, we would find the answers we so desperately needed. The forge was no longer just a place of training; it was about to become the heart of a covert war.