The First Legendary Demonic Scholar

Chapter 114: Chapter 114: The Trap [1]

The door eased open without so much as a whisper of sound, the hinges—hinges Shen Yuan distinctly remembered creaking every single time he’d used them himself—somehow gliding silently under a stranger’s hand.

Shen Yuan didn’t move.

He’d slipped from his cot the instant he sensed the presence outside, body folding into the deepest shadow the small shed offered, tucked behind the narrow gap between his shelf and the wall. His breathing slowed to something barely perceptible, qi drawn tight and still within his meridians, giving off nothing that even a trained cultivator might notice in passing.

The figure stepped inside.

Moonlight bleeding through the doorway caught the edge of her face for just a moment, and Shen Yuan’s suspicion crystallized into certainty.

Lin Xia.

She moved with the practiced efficiency of someone who’d done this before, her silver eyes—no, not silver, he corrected himself, an ordinary dark brown, sharp and calculating in the dim light—scanning the small room in a single sweep. Her gaze paused on the empty cot, brow furrowing slightly.

’She expected me to be here.’

For a fraction of a second, something like hesitation crossed her expression—the faint recalculation of someone whose plan had just hit an unexpected snag. But she didn’t retreat. Instead, she crossed the room quickly, crouching beside the small wooden chest tucked at the foot of Shen Yuan’s cot, the one place in the shed he kept the few meager possessions the estate had allotted him.

She lifted the lid.

From within her sleeve, she withdrew a folded scroll, movements quick and practiced, and slid it carefully beneath the spare robe folded at the bottom of the chest—positioned, Shen Yuan noted, exactly where a servant might hide something they didn’t want casually discovered, yet exactly where a search would find it without much effort at all.

She lowered the lid, rose, and cast one final glance around the empty room before slipping back out through the door as silently as she’d entered, the wood easing shut behind her without so much as a click.

Shen Yuan remained motionless for a long moment after her footsteps faded entirely into the night, letting the stillness stretch until he was certain she wasn’t lingering just beyond the door to confirm her handiwork.

Only then did he move.

He crossed the small room in two silent steps, the Flowing Mist Step carrying him without a whisper of sound even in a space this cramped, and knelt beside the chest. He lifted the lid and drew out the scroll exactly as she’d left it, unfolding it carefully in the thin sliver of moonlight still filtering through the doorway.

His own handwriting stared back at him.

The transcription from that morning—the embezzlement ledger he’d copied line by careful line under Lin Xia’s watchful assignment, the very document that had been sitting in the small side chamber, meant to be delivered back to Bang Fo’s collection through official channels.

’This is the copy I made. The one I handed back to her before she sent me off to rest.’

Shen Yuan’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly as the pieces clicked into place with cold, mechanical clarity.

’She never intended to file this. She kept it. Waited for the estate’s night watch to thin. And now she’s planted it here, in my own chest, where anyone searching my quarters would find a servant’s personal, unauthorized copy of confidential Hall of Secret Affairs documents.’

He turned the scroll over in his hands, silver eyes narrowing as he extended his senses carefully across its surface, searching for anything beyond the obvious.

There.

A faint trace of qi clung to the parchment’s edges—not his own and not entirely natural either, the kind of residual signature left behind by a minor technique rather than simple handling. Shen Yuan recognized the texture of it after a moment’s focus, the same principle behind the qi-tracing ability Candy had warned him about weeks ago, the very reason he’d started worrying about his own kills leaving traces in the air.

A marking technique. Something that lets whoever checks this scroll later confirm exactly whose hands have touched it and when.

He almost laughed at the audacity of it, cold and humorless.

She’s not just framing me for possessing something I shouldn’t have. She’s building a case that can’t be argued against—my own handwriting, tied to a marked scroll, hidden in my own quarters, discovered whenever it’s convenient for her to "find" it.

The pieces fit together with sickening precision. Lin Xia hadn’t handed him confidential documents out of spite alone, hadn’t withdrawn the surveillance from that side chamber purely to punish him for snooping around a crime scene days ago. She’d been building this from the very beginning—manufacturing a servant reckless or foolish enough to be caught with material he had no business possessing, using Shen Yuan’s own diligence and competence against him. The very qualities that had made him valuable to Bang Fo’s household were exactly what made him the perfect scapegoat.

Whatever secret she’s protecting—whatever role she plays beneath that irritable, overworked servant act—she needs someone disposable to take the fall if anyone starts asking the wrong questions.

Shen Yuan folded the scroll back along its original creases, expression unreadable in the darkness, mind already working through the layers of the problem with the same patient precision he applied to every threat that crossed his path.

’If I destroy it, there could be a failsafe measure that could implicate me as someone who was trying to get rid of the evidence.’

’If I leave it exactly where she placed it, I’m gambling that whatever timeline she’s working toward gives me enough room to expose her first.’

He turned the scroll over once more, considering.

’Or’, a slow, humorless smile ghosted across his lips as an idea settled into place; ’I could make sure that when this scroll is finally "discovered," it leads exactly where I want it to instead of where she intended.’

Shen Yuan carefully returned the scroll to its exact hiding place beneath the folded robe, adjusting the fabric until it looked precisely as undisturbed as it had before Lin Xia’s visit. He lowered the chest’s lid soundlessly and rose to his feet, silver eyes drifting toward the door she’d disappeared through minutes ago.

You’ve made your first mistake, Lin Xia.

You assumed I’d never notice.

He returned to his bed, settling back into position as though nothing at all had disturbed his night, though sleep remained far from his mind.