Yingzi forced himself to stop thinking and simply kept digging with all his strength, determined to find the Princess Consort and bring her safely before his master.

Staring at the mountain of sand before him, of unknown depth, Yingzi couldn’t stop himself from breathing hard. He stood there for a full hour, staring, unable to give the order.

What order was he supposed to give?

Dig?

Dig for what? A corpse?

He didn’t want that. He would rather believe the Princess Consort hadn’t vanished here at all. He would rather believe she had left long ago.

Suddenly, a shadow guard cried out, “Chief, come look!”

Only then did Yingzi snap back to attention, striding over in a few steps — water was seeping up from the ground!

Water?

Akebachu had always been the largest oasis in the Xijing desert, so finding water this deep underground wasn’t actually so strange.

“Chief, do we dig or not.” the shadow guard pressed again.

At that moment, Yelu Qianqian somehow slipped past the other shadow guards and made her way here too. Even from a distance she’d sensed something was off, and up close, she drew a sharp breath of cold air.

No way forward, a dead end — the end of the passage was a heap of collapsed rock and sand. In an environment like this, how could anyone survive?

Only then did Yingzi turn slowly to look at her, his expression blank, his eyes hollow — but finally, he spoke to her. His voice was very, very soft. “Princess Qianqian. This is as far as it goes. Tell me — do we dig, or not?”

Dig or not?

Dig for what?

The first question that surfaced in Yelu Qianqian’s mind was itself the whole question.

If they dug, would they find bones?

She didn’t quite understand what was happening to her either. She looked at Yingzi, and he looked back at her, and the two of them simply stared at each other, stunned, for a long, long time.

Finally it was Yingzi who spoke first. “Let’s dig. The Princess Consort… might not even be here. It was all our own assumption. Let’s dig. If she’s not here, we’ll search elsewhere.”

When he finished speaking, silence still hung over everyone, no one moved. Then he suddenly barked, sharp and fierce, “Dig!”

With that he turned and walked away, and the shadow guards streamed out after him.

To clear this collapsed chamber, of course they couldn’t dig from underground — that would be suicide. They had to come back out and dig their way in along the passage from above.

There was no denying it — given the length and depth involved, this was a massive undertaking.

Yelu Qianqian hurried out as well and called in Xijing soldiers to help. This time, Yingzi raised no objection.

This time, they dug for a full ten days and ten nights, finally cutting a path along the entire tunnel down to that hidden chamber. Yelu Qianqian and Yingzi both worked with their own hands.

By now the bright moon hung overhead, the cold snap of early spring had passed, and the weather was gradually warming — though the desert nights remained as bitterly cold as ever.

No one stopped to rest. All around, torches and a great bonfire had been lit, enough for both light and warmth.

Just ahead lay the hidden chamber — the very end of this lead.

Yelu Qianqian and Yingzi only exchanged a glance, saying nothing, before beginning to clear the collapsed chamber. This time it wasn’t as frantic as before — every scoop was taken with great care, for fear of harming whatever might be beneath.

Yelu Qianqian was, after all, a pampered princess who had had no proper rest in over ten days. Once the pace slowed, exhaustion overtook her, and as she dug, her eyes grew heavy and she began to sway to one side, half-asleep on her feet.

At that moment, a guard shoveling sand beside her quickly caught her, murmuring respectfully, “Princess, you should rest a while. If you wear yourself out, His Majesty will be furious.”

His voice was low and pleasantly deep — though clearly deliberately lowered, Yelu Qianqian found it strangely familiar.

She paid it no mind, though, and pushed his hand away, saying flatly, “I’m fine. Leave me be.” With that she went back to shoveling sand.

The guard beside her said nothing more. He wore full guard’s attire, a wide hat shading most of his face, his head bowed so his features were hard to make out — but on the rare occasions he looked up, his eyes were still visible.

Clear and bright, with the pure serenity of a lotus at the moment it blooms — whose eyes could those be, if not Baili Weisheng’s?

He had been hiding among the Xijing army for a long while now, always searching.

But what he was searching for was different from what Yelu Qianqian and the others sought. They were searching for a person; he was searching for an entrance.

Beneath the hidden chamber lay the world of poison beasts, and there was only one entrance — the pool of spring water inside the great chamber. If water could still seep up through the sand of the chamber, that meant the spring could still be found.

Just follow the direction the water flowed, and they were bound to dig their way to it!

No matter which direction everyone else was digging, the general direction wouldn’t be wrong — Baili Weisheng aimed every scoop toward the damp patches of ground.

In truth, he hadn’t expected that girl to fall into the world of poison beasts at all.

There was only one entrance, and it was buried deep underground — even a tornado on the surface shouldn’t have been able to affect the world of poison beasts at all.

Later he’d worked it out — this tornado must have been deliberate. He vaguely remembered reading, as a child, some scripture recounting the legend of Akebachu, but he’d never finished reading it, never fully understood it.

Thinking it over now, the only one who could know about the tornado, who could know how to open the gate to the world of poison beasts, was Nanny Gu.

The only ones who knew of the underground world of poison beasts were the Nanzhao royal family — and Nanny Gu.

It couldn’t be the Nanzhao royal family; they would want this secret buried underground forever.

It was Nanny Gu who had found Ziqing — she meant to cultivate her into a human Gu!

That old crone who refused to die!

Baili Weisheng didn’t even notice his own anger. All he knew was that he had to find her, quickly, and get her out.

Because if that girl entered the world of poison beasts, if she were cultivated into a human Gu, then he — a positive-polarity human Gu himself — would be in serious trouble!

Only he could suppress a negative-polarity human Gu. If it came to that, it wouldn’t just be Nanny Gu coming after him — it would be the whole world.

Thinking of this, Baili Weisheng’s bright eyes darkened. He thought the simplest solution would be to go straight into the world of poison beasts and kill that girl with a single blow.

Yet somehow, that thought immediately made him laugh at himself.

He lowered his head and went back to digging in earnest, so no one could see the color in his eyes.

This time, they dug for another full ten days and ten nights, until all the sand they’d cleared away had piled into a small hill. Though the chamber was collapsed, once the sand was cleared its shape became clearly visible.

But there was nothing there!

Nothing but sand, and more sand. Yelu Qianqian sank to the ground in defeat — she who wouldn’t have collapsed even after another ten days and nights of digging, utterly drained by the reality before her.

How could this be?

There was nothing!

It wasn’t only Yelu Qianqian who collapsed — Yingzi sank down too, without a sound.

But the stillest of all was not Yingzi or Yelu Qianqian, but Baili Weisheng. He stared silently at the dry sand, his bright eyes completely hollow…