Cen Meng, hating iron for not becoming steel, snapped harshly: “Do you know how many people were mobilized to rescue you? Because of your willful flight, even His Highness the Crown Prince was alarmed to act personally! If you were not my sister, I should have left you be!”

Hearing that the handsome, delicate young man before her was the Crown Prince, Cen Yu was both ashamed and miserable. She pushed Cen Meng and said: “Who needs you meddling in me!”

Zhao Yen started slightly.

The wind stirred the dust of memory—in Cen Yu’s shame-stricken figure, she seemed to glimpse the shadow of another girl.

Cen Yu held back her tears, stamping her foot: “Brother is the most hateful! I never want to see—”

Zhao Yen promptly caught hold of Cen Yu’s sleeve, halting the hurtful words on the verge of spilling out.

“Do not speak angry words against your heart.”

Her gaze seemed to pierce through heavy memories as she softly told the girl, cheeks flushed with fury: “Otherwise, the one who regrets will be you yourself.”

Cen Yu faltered. She did not know why, but in the eyes of this overly beautiful young Crown Prince, she seemed to see a trace of sorrow.

Had His Highness once quarreled with family too?

And had they reconciled, or not?

“Honored one, do not blame Sister A’yu.”

Liu Xiaomei, dragging her injured leg, limped forward and spoke the truth with clarity: “Those people wanted to burn us alive. It was Sister A’yu, nimble of skill, who opened the prison door and released us. Everyone else ran, but my leg was hurt…”

At this point, tears brimmed in Liu Xiaomei’s eyes. “All the others cared only for their own escape. Only Sister A’yu turned back into the fire to save me and bring me here to survive.”

Cen Meng panted, staring at his sister in a daze.

He could even imagine, beneath the raging sea of flames, his pampered sister running against the fleeing crowd—so bright, and so brave.

Cen Meng lifted his hand high. Cen Yu’s eyes flickered, but still she raised her chin proudly and stood firm.

Yet that rough, burned hand merely fell lightly beside her cheek, wiping away the smear of soot.

“It was Brother who was wrong.”

Cen Meng’s voice rasped. “A’yu did very well. The Cen family is proud of you.”

“Brother…”

The tears Cen Yu had held back at last fell in heavy drops. She threw herself into her brother’s embrace.

Zhao Yen watched the brother and sister weeping in each other’s arms by the cavern’s entrance. In her eyes welled an envy even she herself had not perceived.

In this world, there was no longer a thin yet tolerant chest for her to lean upon. That the Cen siblings could be reconciled was, for her, perhaps no small comfort.

“Have all the evidences been collected?”

Seeing Gu Xing nod, Zhao Yen said in a low voice, “This place is not fit for lingering…”

As she spoke, her gaze caught the faint outline of a shadow in the corner, and she was startled in alarm.

It was a young, cold-faced Daoist nun, appearing like a phantom without a sound, holding in her hand a copper pellet the size of an egg, standing in the darkness.

“Your Highness, be careful.”

Gu Xing instantly pressed his hand to his sword, leading the guards to shield Zhao Yen behind them.

Cen Yu clearly recognized the Daoist nun. Her eyes widened as she suddenly cried out: “Stop her! She means to blow up the pill furnace!”

Having shouted, she rushed forward heedlessly toward the Daoist nun, actually attempting to block with her own body.

“Don’t move!” Zhao Yen grabbed Cen Yu and pushed her toward the direction of the cavern entrance.

Almost at the same time, the Daoist nun threw the copper pellet in her hand into the blazing furnace, raised her right hand upright before her, lowered her eyes, and chanted: “Shen Guang descends upon the world, Infinite Immortal Master!”

With a boom, the pill furnace exploded, fragments bursting, the earth quaking and mountains shaking.

Zhao Yen instinctively dodged inward, thrown to the ground by the tremendous force, then at once was encircled and shielded by Gu Xing and the others.

The chamber’s beams and pillars collapsed, dust and rubble showering down from overhead, only after nearly the span of one tea’s time did it gradually settle.

“Your Highness, are you unharmed? Were you injured?”

Gu Xing picked up the fallen torch from the ground and asked in a deep voice.

Zhao Yen brushed off the heavy layer of dust from her body, holding her head ringing from the blast, and said: “I’m fine. What about you?”

Gu Xing’s arm bore a light wound, the other four guards were likewise somewhat disheveled, and the rest of their men had been separated, trapped on the other side of the chamber.

The massive boulders blocked the way out. Gu Xing led the guards to shoulder against and attempt to move the obstruction, yet it did not budge in the slightest.

“Your Highness, are you inside?” From the other side of the rock came Cen Meng’s faint voice, scarcely louder than a mosquito’s buzz.

“We are all here!” Gu Xing shouted back at the top of his lungs. “And you all?”

“We are still fine.”

Cen Meng’s hoarse voice cracked nearly into a break. “Your Highness, do not fear, we will go at once to fetch people to save you!”

Yet such a massive stone lay across; whether by blade or axe, who knew how long it would take to clear it away.

In the stifling darkness, only a single torch remained to give light. All around, for a time, it was so silent one could hear the beating of one’s own heart.

“There is wind.”

Gu Xing fixed his eyes upon the slanting flame of the torch. His voice, certain and steady, reverberated within the narrow space, stirring a thread of hope.

Zhao Yen recalled that Daoist nun who had appeared out of nowhere…

A person could not possibly emerge from the earth itself. Remembering also the time she had followed the artisans’ diagrams to break into the secret chamber of Huayang Palace, she at once understood: “There must be another exit. Quickly, search!”

Holding the torch, Gu Xing groped along the wall without pause. Then his hand stilled, palm pressing upon a stone that jutted slightly outward, twisting it with force.

After several grating clacks, the stone wall behind Zhao Yen responded by opening. Yet the furnace’s explosion had damaged the mechanism; the stone door opened only to a gap of little more than a foot before it jammed fast.

Zhao Yen’s figure was slender and small; she slipped through with ease. The guards, however, were not so fortunate.

Gu Xing removed his armor and, with two other guards, barely squeezed through. The remaining two, their builds too broad, tried inhaling deeply and pressing in their chests, yet could not pass no matter what. Helpless, they could only remain behind and wait in place for rescuers to arrive.

The secret passage was narrow, long, and winding, with no end in sight. In the dim glow of the torchlight, something ahead faintly reflected strands of light.

“Wait.” Zhao Yen raised her hand, her gaze tightening.

She signaled the guards to bring the torch closer. When the outline of the object became clear, her pupils abruptly contracted.

It was a lotus-pattern jade pendant of exceptionally fine quality, identical to the one Zhao Yan had once worn.

Summer’s end, the seventeenth year of Tianyou—those damp and painful memories surged up once more, sweeping over her with the shrill echoes of the past.

“Who wants your gift!”

The young girl had suddenly flung her sleeve, and the exquisite green sandalwood box inlaid with mother-of-pearl struck against the lotus-pattern jade pendant at Zhao Yan’s waist, clattering to the ground.

The golden hairpin rolled away, and upon the youth’s lotus-pattern jade pendant appeared a faint crack, like a shard of ice.

In the wavering torchlight, Zhao Yen saw that on the left corner of this pendant she now picked up, there was the very same crack.

And beneath this all-too-familiar lotus-pattern jade pendant hung a small private seal—engraved with the courtesy name of Prince Yong’s heir!

Why would Zhao Yan’s jade pendant be in Zhao Yuanyu’s possession!

The mist dispersed; the conjecture in her heart gradually took shape. Zhao Yen’s gaze flickered as she tightly clenched the jade pendant.

This journey—she now knew she had come to the right place.

Was it dropped by Zhao Yuanyu in his frantic escape? If so, then the suspect behind her elder brother’s death was right before her eyes.

At this thought, Zhao Yen pressed her lips together, raising her gaze toward the pitch-black depths of the passage, her expression calm and cold.

……

Sparks rode the wind, flying like countless fireflies, yet before they could be touched, they turned to ash and scattered.

At the secret chamber’s entrance, Wenren Lin stood against the firelight upon scorched earth. His crimson robe billowed, gorgeous as though steeped in blood.

He bent over to look at the Daoist nun half-dead from the blast, and with gentle warmth asked: “Speak—where is His Highness?”

Blood welled from the nun’s mouth and nose. Pressed to kneel by the guards of the Prince Su’s Manor, she gave a broken, cold laugh: “He traced it… to the pill chamber’s secret room, obstructed… the great undertaking of the Immortal Master, and was long since blasted to death…”

Knowing Zhao Yen was in the secret chamber, Wenren Lin inclined his head slightly, murmuring, “Many thanks.”

As he spoke, he still wore his elegant, smiling expression. Yet in the very next instant, cold light flashed—her eyes flew wide, and she toppled lifelessly to the ground.

Until the moment of her death, she never saw how the man before her, godlike in appearance, had moved his hand.

Wenren Lin did not trouble himself to wipe away the stench of death from his hand. When he rose, the smile in his eyes sank, turning into a deep, chilling cold.

He gazed at the collapsed stone wall, speaking only two sentences: “Two quarters of an hour. Break it open.”