Chapter 26: The Stolen Artifact Trap
Morning smog hung heavy over the Artifact Graveyard, thick with rust and old blood.
Inside his shack, Lin Tian sat cross-legged on the straw mat. Not cultivating. Waiting.
“System.” He kept the thought quiet. “Display the lunar cycle parameters and the target’s physiological countdown.”
[Ding! Accessing environmental and biometric data…]
[Astrological Event: Full Moon will reach its absolute peak in exactly 14 hours and 22 minutes.]
[Target: Madam Shen]
[Condition: Frost-Yin Blockage. Remnants of the Yin-toxin will react to the extreme lunar Yin energy. Estimated time until severe Frost-Yin flare-up: 14 hours.]
His eyes opened, calm and precise. Today was the day.
Last night, [Insight Eye] had shown him Wang’s lackeys burying a stolen dagger beneath scrap metal near his window. Crude. Effective, in a world where power decided who got believed.
Wang’s plan was simple. Plant the evidence, call the guards, watch Lin Tian get crippled or executed under sect law.
But Wang was playing checkers. Killing the lackeys now would only make him a fugitive, cutting off access to the one asset that actually mattered — Madam Shen.
Sometimes you let the malware capture a decoy file. He adjusted his sleeve, unhurried. Wang thought he was sending a rat to its death. He was really handing over a private room nobody would think to check.
CRASH!
The rusted door tore off its hinges and slammed into the far wall.
“Surround the perimeter! Don’t let this rat escape!”
He stayed seated, expression flat.
Six armored Disciplinary Guards filled the tiny shack, halberds leveled at his throat. Behind them, flanked by lackeys, Wang stepped through the wreckage of the doorway.
His silk robes stood stark against the grime. His sneer looked triumphant, but Lin Tian caught the faint twitch in his jaw — the residue of yesterday’s fear, still sitting there under the confidence.
“Lin Tian!” Wang jabbed a finger at him. “Your days of deceiving this sect are over. Did you think stealing from the Resource Hall and hiding in a trash heap would work?”
A crowd had already gathered outside, murmuring, pressing close to the broken doorway. Disciplinary Guards in the slums meant someone was about to die.
Lin Tian stood, brushed dust off his shoulder. No wrist-blade. No Qi. He looked exactly like the scavenger the world assumed him to be.
“Young Master Wang.” His voice carried, clear enough for the crowd. “I haven’t left the Graveyard since yesterday afternoon. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Still playing dumb?!” Wang turned to the Captain, a scarred man with a hard, unreadable face. “Captain Zhang, this rat has always been sneaky. I got a tip he bypassed the Resource Hall’s arrays last night and stole a classified artifact.”
Captain Zhang’s frown deepened. “Theft from the Resource Hall is a capital offense. Search the premises.”
“Yes, sir!”
Guards tore through the shack, smashing the table, kicking apart storage boxes, scattering scrap across the floor. Lin Tian watched it happen without a flicker of reaction.
“Captain! Here!”
The rat-faced lackey yanked something wrapped in velvet from a pile of scrap by the window, movements deliberately theatrical.
The cloth fell away. Azure light flooded the room.
A dagger, forged from rare wind-steel, hilt set with three high-grade spirit stones. Lethal kinetic energy hummed off the blade.
“The Mid-Grade Wind-Piercer Dagger.” Zhang’s eyes went wide. “One of the premium artifacts from the inner vaults. Worth thirty thousand contribution points.”
The crowd gasped in unison, voices overlapping.
“Heavens, a mid-grade artifact? How does a scavenger steal something like that?”
“He’ll be executed for sure.”
“Always the quiet ones.”
Wang’s grin stretched wider. He stepped closer, savoring it. “You see, Captain? The evidence is right here. This rat bypassed the arrays, stole sect property, hid it in his own trash heap. The penalty for a mid-grade theft is a crippled cultivation base and lifetime imprisonment in the Punishment Cells.”
Captain Zhang raised a hand, signaling his men. “Lin Tian. The stolen artifact was found on your premises. Surrender peacefully.”
Two guards stepped forward, spirit-shackles rattling.
Lin Tian didn’t resist. He raised his wrists, let the cold iron lock into place with a heavy click.
Then he turned to the crowd, calm, deliberate.
“Captain Zhang.” His voice stayed level, projecting exactly the tone of a man wronged, not a man scheming. “I’m a weak scavenger. I’ve never learned to read a basic spirit array in my life. The Resource Hall runs Tier-3 defensive formations and Inner Sect guards.”
He let the silence stretch a beat.
“How does someone like me bypass formations that give Level 9 cultivators trouble, steal a glowing high-energy dagger without triggering a single alarm, and then bury it six feet from my own window under a thin layer of scrap? Does that sound like a master thief, Captain? Or does it sound like someone with existing clearance built this for me?”
The crowd went dead quiet.
The logic landed clean. A Level 1 scavenger bypassing formations that challenged Level 9 cultivators made no sense, and everyone standing here knew it.
Zhang’s scarred face twitched. He looked at the dagger, then Lin Tian, then Wang. Everyone in this sect knew Madam Shen was Wang’s stepmother. Only her clearance could pull an item like this from the vault without triggering an alert.
“Nonsense!” Wang’s face flushed as the murmuring shifted against him. “He’s a rat! Rats dig through cracks! The evidence was found on his property. Take him now!”
Zhang exhaled quietly. Suspecting a frame job and proving one were different problems. The stolen item sat in Lin Tian’s shack, and protocol didn’t leave much room for interpretation. He also wasn’t in a position to openly defy a young master backed by a Matriarch.
“The Disciplinary Hall will investigate the full circumstances,” Zhang said, keeping his tone neutral. “For now, Lin Tian, you’re the prime suspect. You’ll be held in the Punishment Cells until your trial tomorrow.”
“I understand.” He bowed his head, playing the part fully.
As the guards marched him out, Wang leaned in close, shoulder deliberately catching his.
“You think that little speech changes anything?” His breath was hot against Lin Tian’s ear. “You’re going to the cold cells. Pitch black. Freezing. Isolated, deep underground. Tonight I’ll bribe the jailers and come down there myself. By morning you’ll be a drooling wreck for that trial.”
Lin Tian kept his head down. Under the shadow of his hair, something close to a smile crossed his face.
*Pitch black. Freezing. Isolated, deep underground.*
Exactly what he needed. No windows. No prying eyes. A place built to keep prisoners contained also happened to keep everyone else out just as well.
Tonight was the Full Moon.
Lunar Yin energy would flood the sect at its peak, tearing through whatever balance Madam Shen’s meridians had managed to hold onto since yesterday. Even at Level 9, that kind of surge wouldn’t care about her cultivation.
Her husband wasn’t coming. The pain would strip away every ounce of composure she still had left.
She was already tied to him, biologically, in ways she hadn’t fully admitted to herself yet. When the cold hit hard enough, sect law and Wang’s little scheme would stop mattering to her entirely.
*Bring her to me, Wang.* Chains rattled against his wrists as the crowd parted around him. *Lock me in the deepest room you’ve got. You think you’ve caged a rat. Tonight you’ll find out you locked a starving predator in with the one person who can’t stay away from him.*
The guards marched him past the slums, toward the black fortress of the Disciplinary Hall.
Heavy iron doors loomed ahead, swallowing the morning light the instant he crossed the threshold. The temperature dropped fast, darkness closing in around him step by step.
The trap was set. The bait was in position.
Now he just had to wait for the administrator to come looking for her Master.