What was she to do?
Her face had been ruined—ruined by the very person she loved most!
Her peerless beauty, and he hadn’t even given her a single word of praise for it yet, hadn’t even given it a proper, serious look!
And now it was ruined!
His sword had carved line after line into her face; he had warned her, yet hadn’t even given her the chance to speak.
“Jun Beiyue!”
Suddenly, Yanzi screamed, “Jun Beiyue! I hate you! I hate you!”
The deeper the love, the deeper the hatred; the deeper the hatred, the more it revealed how much she cared—and the more she cared, the more pitiable it became.
Yanzi was on the verge of collapse, teetering at the edge of madness, muttering over and over, “What do I do? What do I do? I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want to see anyone at all…”
Earlier, in order to survive, she had managed to stay calm—but now that things had quieted down, the crisscrossing pain across her face was gradually becoming clear.
She couldn’t help imagining, again and again, exactly what each and every gash across her face must look like.
She longed to touch her own face, but didn’t dare. Every time her trembling hands rose toward her face, they would instead veer toward her hair, clawing at it viciously, shrieking, “Ah… ah… Jun Beiyue, I’ll kill you!”
Turning someone who loves you like life itself into someone who hates you to the bone is no great feat, since love and hate are, after all, two sides of the same coin.
But turning someone who loves you like life itself into someone who wishes to kill you—true, genuine murderous intent—that is truly a feat.
Jun Beiyue had accomplished it.
At that same moment, Jun Beiyue was in an identical passage, in a situation just like hers—behind him, too, a wall of mixed earth and sand, which anyone familiar with tunnel construction would recognize at a glance as an unfinished excavation, abandoned partway through.
The night pearls illuminated only a limited area, and with no understanding of his surroundings, Jun Beiyue proceeded cautiously, step by careful step, unwilling to act rashly.
The sudden, inexplicable wave of sand must have been stirred up by Yanzi—which meant this sand trap had likely been set by her as well.
In a sense, the Xijing royal family weren’t even the true masters of Mingsha Mountain—Yanzi was. She was its guardian, and knew every inch of this place far better than the Xijing royal family ever could.
Jun Beiyue confined himself, for now, to the area the night pearls illuminated. He wouldn’t easily venture into the pitch-black darkness ahead—who knew what might be waiting there?
Since Yanzi couldn’t defeat him in combat, she would have to rely on traps and schemes instead.
He carefully examined every inch of this short stretch of passage—both walls, the floor, the ceiling—and quickly discovered that the rock here matched the rock in the Mingsha Cave exactly!
This confirmed, beyond doubt, the connection between this underground passage and the Mingsha Cave.
Yet one thing puzzled him—the sand wave had been enormous and thick, and when it fell, it seemed to have dropped an extraordinary distance.
When this passage was built, had they truly needed to clear away all the sand first, construct the passage, and then let the sand cover it back over again?
That would be an immense undertaking!
Not to mention, this was Mingsha Mountain—a place where large-scale construction was strictly forbidden!
If it hadn’t been built through manual excavation, then there was only one other possibility: that this area had once been low-lying ground when the passage was first built, and over the years, windblown sand had gradually accumulated, eventually burying the passage deep beneath the dunes.
Yet even this possibility seemed unlikely, because this spot lay on the southeastern side of Mingsha Mountain!
This region was dominated by northwesterly winds—no matter how strong, such winds could never blow sand away from Mingsha Mountain; they could only pile more sand onto it!
This place should never have been affected by wind erosion at all!
None of these questions had a reasonable answer. Jun Beiyue sensed, vaguely, that the problem lay somewhere in the strange nature of Mingsha Mountain itself, yet for the moment he couldn’t puzzle out why.
He waited in silence, his deep eyes fixed on the darkness ahead.
Waiting had never been something he enjoyed.
His patience had its limits—if the other party made no move, no matter how dangerous, he would act first.
He watched, waited, and at last rose to his feet, walking forward cautiously, step by careful step, until his figure vanished into the darkness.
Yet not long after he left, something strange happened. The wall of sand and rock behind him—seemingly an abandoned section, seemingly the very end of the passage’s excavation—inexplicably began to move.
Slowly, bit by bit, it shifted.
This wall was, in fact, a disguised stone door!
The stone door slowly swung open, and in the glow of the night pearls, a white-robed scholar appeared, back turned, stepping backward out of the opening. His profile was refined and elegant, radiating an air of pure, otherworldly grace—yet his expression was that of a thief, as if checking to see if he’d been spotted.
Nowhere in the world was there a more handsome scholar possessing such a pure, serene quality, like a lotus in bloom.
And nowhere in the world was there a more shameless scholar capable of wearing an expression shiftier than any thief’s, sneaking about so furtively.
This man was none other than Baili Weisheng.
It seemed there was someone beyond that stone door he needed to watch out for.
He peered around cautiously, carefully opening the stone door a little wider to allow himself to fully retreat, and through the gap in the door, he could just make out that the space beyond was noticeably brighter and more spacious than outside—a passage connected to the one outside, with branching paths on either side, faintly resembling a maze.
None of that mattered much, though. What mattered was the group of figures, guard-like in bearing, moving off into the distance. In the glow of the night pearls, he could see they wore the same gleaming black armor as Ziqing’s mercenaries—unmistakably Black Jiao warriors.
“Well, well. Nanzhao’s Black Jiao army! Good thing I got out of there fast!”
Baili Weisheng murmured to himself. Once the Black Jiao warriors had moved off into the distance, he finally dared to move more freely, hurrying to pull the door shut.
Ever since Jun Beiyue had schemed to have Chu Feiyan bring that totem to Nanzhao, the Prince of Nanzhao had dispatched a large number of Black Jiao warriors to search the Longyuan continent for sites the Nanzhao royal family had overlooked!
The sites controlled by the Nanzhao royal family were actually quite few—the Ancient Music Cave, the critically important Qinse Sea Valley, and apparently this one as well!
Clearly, the fact that the Black Jiao army could reach all the way here proved that the Nanzhao royal family knew far more about Mingsha Mountain than Yanzi did.
As for whether this shameless scholar knew, only he himself could say.
He stopped short of the darkness ahead. His mischievous, ever-smiling eyes seemed capable of piercing the darkness itself, catching sight of Jun Beiyue’s retreating figure ahead—yet he didn’t follow. Instead, he casually opened a door beside him.
Set right into the wall, its concealment was so perfect that even someone as sharp and meticulous as Jun Beiyue hadn’t noticed it.
Passing through the door, he found himself in another passage, and faintly heard, not far off, the sound of Yanzi’s screaming.
This place, in fact, was a massive maze, and Yanzi and Jun Beiyue had merely stumbled, by accident, into its entrance—neither of them had truly entered the maze proper yet!
The two passages they were in had a point where they intersected, and at that intersection lay an exit—if they simply kept walking forward, they were bound to run into each other eventually.
A gleam of mischievous delight flashed through Baili Weisheng’s eyes. Producing a small stone from who knows where, he flung it hard toward Yanzi.
…