Dragon Boat Secret Realm 26: Zhang Wenhui

Bringing a fish wasn’t easy.

Unlike ordinary fish, easily strung through the mouth with a straw rope and carried to a visit, this one was different.

When Su Qing went to the embroidered tower to fetch Lord Chen, she found him already caught by another fish—either Lord Song or Lord Li—biting his tail, unable to move.

Chen’s fish-like face remained numb, but his gills trembled violently, betraying his pain.

She had to settle for taking some of his scales as evidence.

With Chen’s seal and the Peach Blossom God painting, Su Qing and Tian Ning slipped through the night to the Second Lady’s house in the fishing village.

After two days of chaos, only one day and night remained before the Flower God Festival. Sleepless, they felt no fatigue, only a taut urgency driving them forward.

Su Qing’s intuition told her she’d found the illusion’s eye.

If the illusion was the core of the Dragon Boat trial, the eye was surely tied to the fish demon. The key to breaking the illusion likely lay at the festival. If they didn’t find a breakthrough then, they risked being trapped forever.

The Second Lady wasn’t home, but a faint blood scent, imperceptible to mortals, lingered. To cultivators with sharp senses, it clearly came from the cellar below.
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Su Qing lifted the cellar’s hidden door, exchanged a glance with Tian Ning, and jumped down, Tian Ning following.

As expected, the Second Lady stood guard by the dried peachwood.

Hearing movement, she whipped around, her gaunt, skeletal face tense, eyes blazing like embers in deep sockets.

She brandished a dagger, holding it before her. Su Qing noticed her other wrist oozing dark red blood, trickling from her withered skin into the soil beneath the tree.

“Who are you?” her raspy voice demanded. “What do you want here?”

She sensed their cultivation surpassed hers and caught a foul stench on them.

“Are you working for that fish demon?” she said coldly. “After all these years, it still holds that old grudge? So afraid of a frail old woman?”

She raised her weapon. Tian Ning, unyielding, stepped forward, gripping her sword, its silver glinting in the dim candlelight.

The Second Lady scoffed, eyes wary. “Your sword’s not even sharpened.”

“It’s more than enough for you,” Tian Ning replied calmly.

“Enough,” Su Qing interjected, cutting through the tension. “Second Lady, we’re not with the fish demon. We’re on your side.”

The Second Lady stared icily. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You will.”

Su Qing placed a box on the ground, knowing the Second Lady’s caution wouldn’t let her approach. She opened it, revealing the fish scales and Chen’s seal.

The stench came from the fish-man scales.

The Second Lady glanced at the box, intending only a quick look to discern their intentions. But her gaze froze on the contents.

Fish scales and Chen’s seal?

Chen Qiang?!

They’d subdued him?

Instead of the triumphant expression Su Qing expected, the Second Lady’s breathing quickened, blood rushing, only to be forcibly calmed. Her lips trembled, then flattened.

“Who are you?” she asked again.

A forbidden question. Su Qing pressed a finger to her lips, softly shushing her.

She trusted the Second Lady would understand.

The Second Lady stared deeply, then burst into hearty laughter, her blood-red gums exposed, laughing so hard she gasped and coughed violently.

Her dagger-holding hand shook as she wiped tears of mirth with its back. “Good, good, excellent.”

“As long as you’ll help me kill that fish demon,” she said, “I don’t care who you are.”

“You can count on that,” Su Qing and Tian Ning said in unison. “We’re here to kill it.”

“This is yours.”

Su Qing tossed the painting from a distance. The Second Lady caught it with her injured hand, unsteady, letting it unroll and fall partly to the ground, revealing the vivid beauty within.

The painted woman was radiant—clear brows, luminous skin, a warm smile.

In contrast, the Second Lady was haggard, terrifying.

Yet, despite decades apart, they were the same person.
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The Second Lady was the sole survivor who escaped the Flower God Festival years ago.

Back then, she was renowned across villages for her beauty and virtue, cherished by her parents, admired by all. Betrothed to Chen Qiang, she awaited her coming-of-age to marry into his family.

But the Flower God chose her, sending her on a bamboo raft to serve at her side.
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She went willingly, expecting to leave her home forever for divine service, harboring no resentment.

But upon arriving with nine other girls at the Flower God’s abode, she realized it was a complete sham.

The fish demon, in its lair, shed its Flower God guise and beautiful human skin, revealing a reeking fish body, scales coated in a nauseating stench.

The Second Lady had never smelled such foulness—it churned her empty stomach, bile rising despite having nothing left.

As her companions perished, she understood: the stench was their rotting flesh and decaying bones.

It would soon envelop her too. No one survived.

When her vitality was nearly drained, the demon prepared to feast on her flesh, savoring every bone.

But she had a sliver of luck. As half her body was swallowed, pain jolted her awake. In desperation, she yanked out her wooden hairpin and stabbed a discolored scale beneath the demon’s belly, exposed in its excitement.

All fish and snakes aspiring to become dragons have a fatal weakness: the reverse scale. The demon, not yet a dragon, already had one. Normally cautious, it would never reveal it, but in its lair, who guards against food on the table?

Thus, the scale appeared before her.

Her luck lay in the hairpin, a peachwood heirloom from her mother, matching her Peach Blossom God title—the demon’s bane.

Seizing the chance, she struck.

The demon, writhing in agony, lost half its cultivation. In the chaos, she escaped, drifting on a log for three days and nights back to Falling Spring Island.

“There are no peach trees here,” she told Su Qing. “Either there never were, or the demon and its allies had them cut down. I’ve never heard of mass tree-felling, so I believe it’s the former.”

Her mother’s hairpin, likely inherited from ancestors, suggested one thing—

“Your ancestors likely came from outside,” Su Qing finished. “There must be another world beyond, or the peachwood’s origin is inexplicable.”

Yet the Second Lady had told Xiao’e there was no greater world beyond.

“Because the path to the outside is blocked by the demon’s lair,” she said coldly. “Until it’s dealt with, leaving is a death wish.”

Her gaze fell on the cellar’s dried peachwood.

“The hairpin broke in the demon. After escaping, I searched for peachwood. One day at sea, I found a piece drifting from afar—this tree.”

Her tone darkened. “But it’s too small to defeat the demon, and it was already dead when I found it. No matter how I nurtured it, it wouldn’t grow.”

Reviving dead wood was near impossible for low-level cultivators. Even for Su Qing, with her wood spiritual root, it was no easy feat. The Second Lady’s single sprouted bud was a miracle.

She’d fed it with her blood.

“After escaping, my body changed,” she said. “I look like this from blood loss, but initially, I was stronger, healing faster, likely from the demon’s blood granting me some cultivation.”

Accidentally stepping into cultivation without guidance, she didn’t know how to use spiritual energy. Since her blood held faint traces of it, she used it to nourish the tree.

The story surfaced, but one part she omitted.

Escaping after three days adrift, her parents hid her, keeping her return secret.

But no wall is airtight. Chen Qiang, her former betrothed, learned she’d escaped. By then, nearly six months had passed, and he’d moved on to a wealthy city family’s daughter. Fearing entanglement, he reported her to the city.

The demon’s allies, informed, rallied hundreds with torches, storming her home, demanding her parents hand her over.

Her mother, protecting her, was dragged aside, weeping. Her father was beaten bloody. The Chen household’s doors stayed shut, as if uninvolved.

The Second Lady, tears dry, burned with rage. Kneeling, she swore, “By the Flower God, pitying my youth and separation from my parents, I was allowed to return for a reunion. If I’m taken back, my soul will serve her. Your actions defy her will!”

A lie, but who would verify with the demon?

Injured by her, the demon was in no state to appear. She’d planned to rally the island against it, to honor her fallen sisters.

But this betrayal made it clear: they already knew.

Her oath wasn’t enough. She sliced her tongue before all, blood spraying, vowing silence on the Flower God’s truth. Satisfied, the city elites relented.

Whether the demon sought her later was unclear. The elites wouldn’t tell it, avoiding trouble, and it might’ve assumed she died en route.

Her father succumbed to his injuries within two years; her mother fell ill and passed soon after. The Second Lady feigned madness, evading scrutiny so well that all believed she was truly mad, forgetting the renowned girl she’d been.

She became the “crazy, mute” Second Lady.

“But Chen Qiang couldn’t let me go,” she said sardonically. “Every festival, he sent people to check on me, maybe fearing I’d die too soon.”

“I knew his filth, but to think he kept this painting—”

She stabbed the cherished beauty portrait with her dagger, shredding it with relish. The revered canvas became tattered rags at her feet.

Unsated, she turned to Su Qing. “Tell me again—what’s Chen Qiang’s fate?”

“He’s a fish,” Su Qing said. “When I left, another fish was biting his tail. By now, it might’ve reached his body.”

The Second Lady laughed, wrinkles unfurling. “Good, perfect—his deserved end!”

Still, she growled, “Not enough. The fish demon must die too.”

“Come closer,” she said. “The festival’s tomorrow. With you here, we might save those ten girls.”

Looking at Su Qing, her eyes sparked. “The girl you came with—her sister’s life depends on us.”

Su Qing tore a strip of cloth, offering it to bandage her wrist. Now trusting them, the Second Lady allowed their approach, her weathered face glowing with purpose.

“Wrap it up,” Su Qing said. “Leave the peachwood to me.”

She knelt, brushing aside blood-soaked soil to reveal the green sprig.

Her palm pressed against it, pouring most of her wood spiritual energy. Soon, the leaves quivered, unfurling, growing larger. The branch thickened, sprouting, until a small tree rose from the dead wood.

It grew until Su Qing’s energy was spent, stopping at roughly ten years old, its trunk requiring two hands to encircle.

Exhausted, her dantian ached, face pale, lips white.

Tian Ning offered an oil-paper-wrapped pastry, urging her to eat.

It wouldn’t help much, but Su Qing nibbled anyway.

The Second Lady, complex emotions in her eyes, said, “I fed that sprig with twenty years of blood. You did it so quickly.”

Her twenty years seemed so frail.

Su Qing shook her head. “Catalyzing growth isn’t hard, but sparking life is. Without your blood giving it vitality, my energy would’ve done nothing.”

The Second Lady sighed.

She explained the fish demon wasn’t strong, but its lair was strategically perilous—a narrow, defensible pass with treacherous currents where ships capsized easily.

At sea, the demon was in its element, its power amplified. Entangled there, escape was unlikely.

Tian Ning, at late Foundation Establishment, was memoryless in the illusion, acting on instinct, her strength halved. Su Qing, less affected, was still low in cultivation and lacked her storage bag’s treasures. Fighting in the demon’s lair was a gamble.

This was likely the trial’s rule: defeat the demon using the island’s resources.

They’d done well so far, knowing the demon’s weakness and attack method.

What they needed was defense.

“With those currents, ships capsize easily. We need one that won’t,” Su Qing mused. “I’d never claim to make one before, but I know someone who can.”

Xiao’e—Qiu Yange.

For a future seventh-tier artificer, it was child’s play.

“The ship needs to hold two, ideally made from that peachwood…”

“Three,” the Second Lady interjected, eyes blazing. “I’ve waited decades. I know its weakness—I wounded it once, I can kill it. I’m going.”

“Then we go together,” Su Qing decided swiftly. “We can’t share our names, but maybe you can share yours?”

“Second” meant “foolish” on the island. Su Qing didn’t want to use it.

The Second Lady paused, then said deeply, “Zhang Wenhui. My name is Wenhui.”

“No one’s called me that in ages, but you can if you like.”

A faint, almost tender smile crossed her fearsome face.

The last to call her that was her mother.

That was so very long ago.