The sweeping roar of rain engulfed all. Zhao Yen stood with fists clenched, letting the water stream down her cheeks, dripping off her chin.

Another flash of lightning fell, illuminating Zhao Yuanyu’s ferocious, hideous face into deathly pale.

Zhao Yen tore the lotus-patterned jade pendant from her waist, raising it before her eyes, questioning Zhao Yuanyu as he pressed closer step by step: “This—why is it in your hands?”

Zhao Yuanyu looked closely, then instinctively felt at his empty waist. At this point, he no longer concealed, but gave a grim laugh: “Why… Zhao Yan, Zhao Yan, do you truly not understand, or are you pretending not to? You, sickly, weak as a chick, panting every three steps and resting every five. Yet just because you are the Emperor’s only son, everyone flatters you, indulges you. The position of Crown Prince fell into your hands without lifting a finger—how unjust!”

“And I—whatever I want, I can only seize by my own strength. This war trophy is so, and so is the position of Crown Prince!”

“…War trophy?”

Zhao Yen keenly caught the crucial word, and asked in a low voice, “The one who assassinated the Crown Prince—it was you after all?”

“So what if it was me!”

Zhao Yuanyu wiped the rain from his face, his expression dark and vicious: “If you had been content to remain a short-lived medicine jar, then so be it. But you insisted on reforming the land tax, promoting men of humble birth, cutting down the nobility of merit, pretending to be a benevolent and virtuous enlightened ruler. Here you stood a head above me, there you pressed me a rank lower, as if grinding my face into the dirt under your heel, flaunting your prestige with your gathered companions!”

Zhao Yen pressed her lips together: “You could not tolerate the rise of the Eastern Palace Crown Prince, so those Confucian scholars of the Mingde Academy, about to enter the court through the palace examination—were they also killed by you?”

Zhao Yuanyu bore a look of utter contempt, sneering: “This Heir has disposed of so many obstructing pests—how could I know which dog you speak of?”

His irritation flared into frenzy. Raising his blade, he roared: “Blame only yourself, Zhao Yan. You should have…died on the way back from the palace retreat!”

Lightning flashed, thunder roared, shadows writhed like ghosts.

Zhao Yen raised her hand to grip the scabbard at her waist, hoarse voice pressing out word by word: “So—it was you who killed them.”

“Trying to stall for time? Unfortunately, this deserted outskirt town is no palace retreat. There is no one here to die in your place. Since you were not finished last year, striking you down now is not too late!”

Zhao Yuanyu laughed wildly, swinging his blade savagely toward Zhao Yen’s neck.

Gu Xing, besieged by several men and unable to break free, could only shout in anguish: “Your Highness, run!”

In Zhao Yuanyu’s impression, Crown Prince Zhao Yan was weak, without the strength to bind a chicken, frail beyond measure.

Thus, when that slender figure raised a blade and blocked his killing strike, Zhao Yuanyu froze in dumbfounded shock.

Within Zhao Yen’s eyes gleamed the cold light of the blade, as though beneath the ice surged blazing magma.

Her tiger’s mouth numbed from the rebound, yet she seemed not to feel it, her mind howling with a single thought: Kill him!

Kill Zhao Yuanyu, avenge Elder Brother!

“His Highness’s strength is innately insufficient, his moves must rely on nimbleness to prevail. If retreat is impossible, and one must fight to the death, then at one go strike at the opponent’s weakness—never allow the enemy a chance to recover breath…”

The clear, unhurried dissection of movements in the Wenhua Hall’ rear drill ground, Wenren Lin’s voice was still before her eyes.

She held her breath, twisted the short blade in her hand, and slashed viciously toward Zhao Yuanyu!

On the inn’s upper floor, Zhang Cang and Cai Tian both showed looks of shock.

Neither had expected that, at the brink of life and death, the frail, exhausted little youth could yet erupt with such force.

“Long blade against short edge—difficult to win.”

Zhang Cang clicked his tongue and shook his head, sighing: “The Heir of Prince Yong meant to provoke and humiliate. The little Crown Prince may be too rash.”

In Wenren Lin’s eyes fell the damp light of rain, yet he spoke not a word.

Every stroke of Zhao Yen’s blade was within his expectations, yet each decisive, unyielding strike was beyond his expectations.

He recognized whose teaching the moves bore, and he also recalled that, on a rainy night many years ago, there had been a youth not yet sixteen, lying amid a stinking pile of corpses, one by one identifying the bodies of father and brothers, filled with despair and hatred.

Zhang Cang said the little Highness was too rash—that was because he had never endured the blood-vomiting agony of kin cut down before his eyes.

Wenren Lin had already forgotten what had first provoked his blazing anger.

The rain was too heavy; he could not clearly see Zhao Yen’s expression, could not know whether the little Highness had cried from pain.

He felt somewhat weary of this tedious spectating.

Wenren Lin stepped forward, resting his hand upon the windowsill. Suddenly he stilled, his pitch-black, frigid gaze piercing through the curtain of rain, stabbing straight toward the house opposite.

As a fellow hunter, he had caught the stench of a beast.

…

No slackening, no hesitation! Zhao Yen staked her life and swung the short blade in her hand.

One stroke, two strokes, successive strikes swept forth like a sudden storm of wind and rain. Blades clashed, sparks of water burst; Zhao Yuanyu, under that chaotic yet wrath-filled assault, was forced back again and again, barely raising his blade to block, the contempt in his eyes turning to shock, then to terror!

The blade in his hand soon split with a notch, and then with a crisp clang, under Zhao Yen’s repeated attacks, the weapon broke into two pieces.

Deprived of his vicious tool, Zhao Yuanyu was like a defeated dog with fangs torn out, whimpering as he fell to the ground.

“You… you are not Zhao Yan?”

At last he realized the problem. The “little youth” before him bore no trace of timidity or mercy, but rather a calm persistence—like Zhao Yan, and yet not like Zhao Yan.

Zhao Yuanyu let out a scream as though he had seen a ghost, struggling to crawl forward, yet Zhao Yen stepped on his back, pinning him to the ground, leaving him only to claw the earth in vain.

“No, don’t…”

Zhao Yuanyu trembled as he looked back, his pupils contracting sharply.

In the lightning’s glare, Zhao Yen, without the least hesitation, raised the short blade—Zhao Yan’s short blade—and drove it viciously toward Zhao Yuanyu’s back.

Her strength was spent; her hand trembled violently. This strike was wrenched aside by Zhao Yuanyu’s struggle, leaving only a bleeding gash upon his filthy body.

But it did not prevent her from raising the second strike.

Zhao Yuanyu screamed in misery, tears and snot streaming, stretching out his hand as though begging some hidden demon in the darkness: “Save me, save me…”

His face was twisted with terror as he cried hoarsely: “What are you waiting for—Qiu Zui!”

Boom—thunder crashed.

Along with the sky-splitting roar descended a tall, gaunt figure, nearly nine feet in height.

He crouched before Zhao Yuanyu, splashing up mud and rain, limbs long and ungainly bent. Beneath his tattered bamboo hat, an old scar twisted across his face, running from his left brow over the hooked bridge of his nose, slashing down his right cheek. His eyes shone with nothing but numb dead silence.

Zhao Yen needed only a glance at those lifeless eyes. Hearing that familiar name, her whole body trembled uncontrollably.

So Zhao Yuanyu still had a hidden card in the dark.

Qiu Zui…

Qiu Zui, whom Elder Brother had once dragged out of the death prison…

“Qiu Zui, kill him! Kill him for me!” Zhao Yuanyu shouted from behind.

Qiu Zui dully scratched the convict tattoo at the nape of his neck, then pressed the broken hat lower, covering the branded mark at his temple. After that, he rose and walked toward Zhao Yen.

His shadow cast against the wall, like a crouching beast, like a flickering ghost.

The death-bringing footsteps closed in. Zhao Yen widened her eyes like a fawn seized by the throat, her body robbed of the strength to stand.

She heard a clattering, jangling noise.

It took her a long moment to realize that the source of that ringing sound came from herself—she was trembling, trembling so violently that the short blade in her hand knocked against the stone floor tiles, producing an unceasing shiver of sound.

It was an absolute oppression of death. Zhao Yen could even feel the overwhelming stench of blood rolling off the other’s body, so strong it set her very soul quivering.

The shadow closed in. Qiu Zui looked down upon her, his silent gaze stirring slightly, until at last both hands slowly reached behind his back and gripped two curved blades wrapped in strips of tattered cloth.

Zhao Yen clenched her teeth and raised the short blade in her hand, only to see Qiu Zui pause in silence, then lightly flick his fingers.

Her dagger flew out of her powerless grasp, shooting aside and embedding straight into the crack of the ground.

Almost at the same instant, a figure leapt down from above, striking a palm toward Qiu Zui’s chest.

A gale shook the air, raindrops shattering apart.

Qiu Zui’s eyes snapped wide; instinctively he crossed his arms before his chest to block, yet the immense impact force struck him back again and again, his back slamming against the wall with a crash, spiderweb cracks spreading outward.

Qiu Zui pried himself out of the sunken wall, raised his arm to wrench his neck with a crack, and spat a mouthful of bloody spittle.

A figure in red robes, like an exiled immortal, withdrew his hand in graceful ease. He lifted away the dark cloak on his shoulders, shook it open, and wrapped it around the trembling Zhao Yen behind him.

Wenren Lin stepped through the rain to pick up the little princess’s short blade. With the same motion he struck down two guards of Prince Yong’s Mansion that had rushed forward. Only then did he lift his sleeve and carefully wipe clean the bloodstains upon the blade, returning it into Zhao Yen’s cold hand.

“It is over. Nothing will harm you.”

Wenren Lin crouched low, half-kneeling, his thumb gently brushing away the rainwater at the corner of Zhao Yen’s eye, softly guiding: “Breathe.”

Zhao Yen’s wide, dazed eyes blinked. At last her halted breathing began again, air mixed with rain rushing into her nose and mouth in frantic disorder, choking her into bent coughing gasps.

Wenren Lin lowered his eyes, gathering her frail, trembling body into his embrace, patting her back in slow rhythm to ease her breath.

“Prince Su…Prince Su.”

Zhao Yuanyu, knowing that a Shura he could never afford to provoke had arrived, hastily urged Qiu Zui: “Go, quickly go!”

“Do not run!”

Zhao Yen drew ragged breaths, crying out hoarsely, “Do not run!”

With the last of her strength, filled with hatred, she hurled the short blade in her hand toward Zhao Yuanyu!

Qiu Zui pulled Zhao Yuanyu up and vaulted onto the earthen wall. A few bounds, and they vanished into the dark night.

The short blade only managed to graze across Qiu Zui’s thick arm, leaving a streak of blood, before it lodged into the cracks of the wall’s spiderweb fissures.

Zhang Cang and Cai Tian immediately rushed to pursue.

One step short—only one step!

“Catch him…”

Zhao Yen’s eyes were wet and red. Like a drowning person, she clutched desperately at Wenren Lin’s flawless robes, nearly despairing as she cried, “Grand Preceptor, help me kill him!”

Called a cry, yet from utter exhaustion it was but a broken whisper of air.

At last, a certain taut string in her heart snapped. The clamor of the rain faded into silence.

The final thing Zhao Yen felt was the faint fragrance of wood at the moment she collapsed into Wenren Lin’s arms.

Her vision went black, and she lost consciousness.