The camel-drawn carriage moved faster and faster, quickly leaving the Xijing emperor’s sight behind.
“Your Majesty, General Dugu still hasn’t sent word. Could it be that Situ Haonan has had a change of heart? Shall we perhaps strike first?” the old chancellor said in a low voice, his expression ruthless.
No matter what, Da Zhou remained Xijing’s enemy!
Allies were temporary—enemies were forever!
The Xijing emperor gave a cold laugh. “Old Chancellor, do you have the ability to kill Han Ziqing?”
The old chancellor quickly waved his hands. “This old subject certainly doesn’t have that ability, but perhaps General Dugu might…”
“You old fool!” the Xijing emperor suddenly snapped harshly. “Even the lord of Nangong Castle was no match for her—what could General Dugu possibly accomplish! To kill her, it would have to be Situ Haonan, no one else. Only someone who knows her best, someone she trusts most, could possibly kill her!”
The strong in this world were never destroyed by others—they were destroyed either by their own hand, or by the hand of someone they held closest and trusted most. This truth, the Xijing emperor understood well.
Hearing the Xijing emperor’s rebuke, the old chancellor didn’t dare speak further.
After a long while, the Xijing emperor finally said flatly, “Send word to General Dugu. No matter what method he uses, I want Han Ziqing unable to attend the peace conference.”
“Yes!” The old chancellor departed to carry out the order.
The wind picked up. With the New Year festivities behind them, the day of the sand ritual drew ever closer, and the northwest wind grew stronger with each passing day. As the date approached, more and more people in Akbachu began discussing this year’s unusual northwest winds.
This wind seemed stronger than in years past, and strangely, more humid than usual.
By all rights, wind blowing from the northwest should only grow drier and drier—yet somehow, this year it carried a strange, humid warmth.
The Xijing emperor slowly turned to look toward Mingsha Mountain. He tilted his face upward, closed his eyes, and quietly felt the strength and temperature of the northwest wind.
It seemed he too had sensed that this year’s wind was different. There was a legend in Akbachu: in the year, month, and day of Jiazi, a great calamity would befall the land.
This year, as it happened, the day of the sand ritual fell precisely on the Jiazi year, Jiazi month, Jiazi day.
Because Akbachu was the capital, situated at the foot of the sacred mountain, holding tremendous significance for Xijing, this legend had been forbidden from discussion ever since the founding of the capital—no one was permitted to speak of it, and over time, it had been all but forgotten.
Yet the successive emperors of the Xijing royal line had always known of it.
Was the great calamity real? And what kind of calamity would it be?
Could it be that this year Xijing hadn’t already suffered enough calamity?
From last year’s sand ritual ceremony, when Yelu Chenyi and Yanzi had lured Jun Beiyue here, to Yelu Qianqian eloping with Situ Haonan, to Wanyan Lie’s declaration of war on the spot—up to now, Xijing was already battered and broken, its treasury depleted, everything in ruins, waiting to be rebuilt.
What could possibly be worse than this calamity already endured?
The Xijing emperor opened his eyes, gazing toward the not-too-distant Mingsha Mountain, unconsciously clenching his fists. Situ Haonan’s grudge was the last chance the sand god had granted Xijing.
He had to seize it properly. He would never allow Xijing to become a vassal state of Da Zhou, a mere stepping stone for Jun Beiyue’s future campaign against Xiliang.
What Jun Beiyue wanted was all of Longyuan under heaven—he’d seen through that long ago.
The northwest wind grew stronger and stronger, and yet at the foot of Mingsha Mountain, everything remained perfectly still.
Baili Weisheng lay quietly beneath the great banyan tree, his head pillowed on a stone, his face utterly serene.
This face was not merely handsome, but refined and elegant—hard to imagine that a body raised as a Gu vessel from birth could possess such a fine, cultured face. Dressed in white robes, pillowed against a stone beneath the tree, one might easily mistake him for some immortal’s senior disciple, sneaking a nap while playing truant.
“Little Qingqing…”
Suddenly, he murmured, his voice very, very soft, too quiet to make out clearly. “Little Qingqing… come home with me…”
“Little Qingqing, let’s go home, back to the isolated island…”
“Little Qingqing, let’s run away quickly… quick… Little Qingqing, go! Go far, far away, and don’t look back!”
…
Once he started murmuring like this, he never seemed to stop. The wound at the back of his head struck a vital point directly—poison had no effect on him, but attacking his meridian points did.
Such a clever method could only have been devised by the very disciple he himself had raised and trained!
The young medicine boy watched Baili Weisheng helplessly, leaning in to listen, but still couldn’t make out what he was muttering.
The young medicine boy gently stroked his face with a small hand, and Baili Weisheng immediately settled down, quiet and obedient.
In this moment, how much he resembled a child! Only, the medicine boy failed to notice the faint curve at the corner of his lips.
“Master, please don’t blame me. Once this storm passes, wherever you want to go, I won’t stop you.”
“Master, you really should think this through carefully. If Grandmother Gu catches you again, escaping won’t be so easy next time. That crafty old woman—do you really think she’ll let herself be poisoned by you a second time?”
“Master, actually, sleeping like this isn’t so bad. Who knows—maybe by the time you wake up, the world will have settled down on its own! It’ll be so much easier to bring her home then!”
…
Baili Weisheng had gone quiet, but the medicine boy kept chattering on and on. It wasn’t really his fault—it was just that this place was unbearably boring.
Aside from the occasional need to watch for Nanzhao’s Black Shark soldiers, this could be called the quietest, safest place in all of Longyuan!
Of course, this was also the entrance to the most terrifying realm of poisonous beasts in all of Longyuan!
At present, aside from the Nanzhao royal family, the only ones who knew this secret were Grandmother Gu and the master-disciple pair of Baili Weisheng.
Grandmother Gu had already been at Mingsha Mountain for several days now. She knew of the secret underground chamber, but she wouldn’t recklessly force her way in.
She knew this place was the ruins of the Isolated Island, and that it belonged to Nanzhao’s territory. Unless absolutely necessary, as a member of the Great Barbarian Witch Cult, she would avoid any entanglement, let alone conflict, with the Nanzhao royal family.
After all, Nanzhao’s Earth God cult was the mother religion of the Xiongnu’s Great Barbarian Witch Cult—tracing the history back far enough, even the Xiongnu’s religious order held the Nanzhao religion in three-part deference. Both were nations where religion and government were unified, so such matters naturally affected state power.
At this moment, Grandmother Gu was secretly hiding in Yanzi’s old lair, the Mingsha Cave.
She sat cross-legged on the ground, surrounded by scattered scrolls of scripture and small bundles of poisonous herbs, along with piles of sand clearly brought in from outside!
What exactly was she doing?
She had been sitting there for several days and nights already. In one hand she held a scripture, reading intently; in the other, she gripped a venomous lizard. This lizard had originally been a vibrant, multicolored creature, but something she’d done to it had turned it entirely black, and it had never changed back since.
Once lively and energetic, it now hung its head listlessly, like a wilted flower, impossible to tell whether it was alive or dead.
Grandmother Gu kept her head lowered, brow tightly furrowed, her already heavily wrinkled face now creased like an old withered orange. She muttered something under her breath, words that sounded like some ancient, forgotten language.
After a long while, she finally closed the scripture, grabbed a few handfuls of the poisonous herbs, then a few handfuls of sand, and mixed them together.
She then produced a vial of poison from her sleeve and poured it all in at once, mixing it with the sand and herbs—then struck a flame and set it alight!
Gradually, a strange, bloody odor began to spread. The moment the venomous lizard caught the scent, it suddenly lifted its head, its black eyes instantly turning blood-red!
What was happening to this venomous lizard?