Three gruesome deaths, a returning driverless carriage — the entire villa was plunged into panic.

Most of the people here had been recruited from the jianghu, drawn by money.

Which meant that for Changsun Wuyou, there was no true loyalty to speak of.

And yet loyalty had always been a relative thing.

Cooperation built on mutual interest was, more often than not, more reliable than so-called loyalty.

So now the villa was in turmoil, yet each person could not help but think: I will not be the unlucky one.

People in most circumstances hold fast to two beliefs.

First: disaster will not fall on me. Second: absolute conviction in the first.

“Seal the villa for now. No one is to go out.”

Changsun Wuyou looked at her subordinates and ordered: “Should anyone sneak out without permission and encounter danger outside, no one from the villa is to go out and rescue them.”

“Yes!”

Her subordinates all answered in unison.

“One more thing.”

Changsun Wuyou glanced at the carriage: “Burn those markers.”

She turned and left.

Within moments, thick smoke was billowing through the courtyard as the markers retrieved from the carriage were piled up and set ablaze.

Whatever wood those markers were made of, they produced a tremendous amount of smoke.

And drifting through the smoke was a faint, strange fragrance.

Not even a quarter of an hour later, people in the front courtyard suddenly began collapsing.

Those nearby, seeing their companions fall, hurried over to help them up — and after only a few steps fell themselves.

One by one, a great number of people in the front courtyard slumped to the ground, unable to rise.

The sensation was the same for all of them: strength had left them, their bodies gone limp and unresponsive.

Changsun Wuyou had returned to the rear courtyard in advance, and so was unaffected.

When word reached her, she immediately understood — the wooden markers had been tampered with.

But by the time she realized this, it was already too late.

Because she lived in the rear courtyard, most of the jianghu recruits had been stationed in the front.

She immediately grabbed a cloth, soaked it in water, and pressed it to her face as a mask.

When she arrived at the front courtyard, well over a hundred people were already collapsed on the ground.

Human curiosity is unrelenting.

When the markers were being burned, the vast majority of the people had gathered around to watch, huddled in groups and whispering to each other, speculating on who could be so vicious.

Yet whoever devised this scheme apparently understood human nature all too well.

They had exploited precisely this curiosity, this tendency to cluster — and the smoke from that single fire had felled seven or eight out of every ten people in the front courtyard.

Those standing at a greater distance could still hold out, but even they were dizzy and disoriented.

“Put out the fire.”

Changsun Wuyou called out at once.

Pei Lang, his face similarly wrapped in a wet cloth, came running with two buckets of water. He threw them onto the flames — and the smoke immediately billowed up even more violently, erupting like a cloud of black fog.

Pei Lang stumbled backward in alarm.

Fortunately, with the fire doused, the smoke quickly dissipated.

Pei Lang ran back and forth a few more times to smother the fire completely, leaving ash and charred debris scattered across the courtyard.

Just then, from outside the villa’s front gate, the sound of bells reached them again.

Changsun Wuyou looked toward the gate. An exceptionally opulent carriage came into view.

It was drawn by four tall, powerful horses, and the carriage itself was larger than any ordinary one by a size. The cabin looked reinforced and solid, with a faint metallic sheen — likely plated in iron — likely impervious to ordinary crossbow bolts or arrows.

The four horses were magnificent specimens, unmistakably extraordinary at a single glance.

Eight riders escorted the carriage to the villa gate, all dressed identically in dark navy robes with black leather armor over them. Each wore a metal mask, leaving only the eyes exposed.

Pei Lang strode to the gate and bellowed: “Who goes there!”

The driver was a young woman of about twenty, her figure extraordinary.

Slender-waisted and full-hipped — as she stepped down from the carriage, the lines of her body were traced by her clothing in a way that dazzled the eye.

The woman alighted, then opened the carriage door and stood to one side, respectfully waiting.

From inside the carriage, two handmaidens descended and brought out a chair — clearly of great value at a glance, inlaid with gold and jade.

All the luxury was blunt and immediate, visible to anyone in an instant.

A person also wearing a mask stepped down from the carriage, dressed in ivory-white brocade robes, tall and slender of build, though without appearing frail.

Two young women carried the chair to the villa entrance. The young man in brocade walked forward and settled himself into it just outside the gate.

With a sharp crack, the folding fan in his hand snapped open.

The value of that single fan might well be beyond the means of an ordinary family to accumulate across an entire lifetime.

And yet the words written on it somehow seemed entirely at odds with the occasion.

As the fan snapped open, Changsun Wuyou’s attention was drawn to it — and then she saw the three characters written on its face.

Pitiful soul.

Pei Lang saw the bearing and presence of this arrival and, wanting none of it, was immediately furious. He stepped forward to strike — but Changsun Wuyou called out and stopped him.

Changsun Wuyou clasped her hands behind her back and stepped to the front, studying the person before her once more in careful detail.

“If you came here to kill me, why won’t you even show your face?”

She asked.

The young man in brocade shook his head: “The reason I keep it covered is because the sight of it would startle you. You’re a delicate young lady — frightening you would be ungentlemanly.”

Changsun Wuyou asked: “Mountain River Seal?”

The young man in brocade gave a single nod this time: “Correct.”

Changsun Wuyou, far from growing angry, felt a kind of release. The fear drained away too.

“You are truly bold.”

She said: “Are you not afraid of being noticed by Prince Ning’s people? Given his current stance toward the Mountain River Seal, the moment you show yourselves, none of you will escape.”

The young man in brocade seemed not entirely convinced by this and shrugged.

“Wuyou Gongzi, you should know the Mountain River Seal.”

Hearing the young man in brocade use that name, Changsun Wuyou’s brow lifted slightly.

This address was not one known to everyone in the Mountain River Seal — only a specific few would ever call her by it.

Because those who knew the name were very few.

It had come about the first time she met their Gate Master, when he had praised her: spirited and bold, surpassing even young men.

He had also said: a girl like you, dressed slightly differently and traveling in men’s clothing, would make every so-called dashing gentleman in this world feel ashamed.

And so the few people who had been present at the time jokingly called her Wuyou Gongzi.

“Only those people were there at the time.”

Changsun Wuyou said: “Since you know that name, you must have been among those present. Why keep your face hidden?”

The young man in brocade sighed: “Consider me shy.”

Changsun Wuyou said: “I no longer have any connection to the Mountain River Seal, and I have done nothing to wrong it. Why must you do this?”

The young man in brocade raised his fan and waved it idly. The three characters for “pitiful soul” on its face seemed to come alive, dancing before Changsun Wuyou’s eyes.

Those three characters were like needles, puncturing her pride.

“Wuyou Gongzi, I did not come to kill you.”

The young man in brocade said: “I came to tell you a story. A story about a pitiful soul.”

Changsun Wuyou said: “Then tell it. I want to see just how pitiful this pitiful soul truly is.”

The young man in brocade paused for a moment, then let out a soft sigh.

“Once there was a young girl, cherished and adored beyond measure. Clever from birth, eager to learn — by the age of twelve or thirteen, she already outstripped all her peers, male or female alike, in both literary learning and martial skill.”

Changsun Wuyou smiled slightly: “From the sound of it, you are describing me.”

The young man in brocade paid her no mind and continued: “Her family, for generations, had served the Mountain River Seal, and always in positions of great influence.”

Changsun Wuyou sighed: “It resembles me more and more.”

The young man in brocade said: “Her father held the third-highest position within the Mountain River Seal, wielding great power. The misfortune was that she was his only child.”

He glanced up at Changsun Wuyou.

“So this little girl was exposed to the Mountain River Seal from early on. Her father had already begun grooming her as his successor.”

“Then one day, her father told her: Yuwen Shangyun has been reinstated and given command of a sizable army.”

“He said: My daughter, I am reluctant to ask this of you, but for the sake of the family, you must make a sacrifice.”

“The girl felt it was time she did something for the family, and so she agreed.”

“She was arranged to encounter Yuwen Shangyun by seeming chance, and they fell in love, and became inseparable.”

“Then her father said: it is time to test Yuwen Shangyun. He had her return home — and Yuwen Shangyun truly went to her family’s house and took her away.”

“At that moment, her father was certain: Yuwen Shangyun’s feelings for his daughter were genuine. And at that moment, the girl discovered she had fallen in herself.”

The young man in brocade slowly exhaled: “Truly a pitiful soul.”

Changsun Wuyou actually smiled: “Up to this point, she seems to have little to be pitied about. To be loved truly by someone, to love truly in return — that is not pitiable.”

The young man in brocade said: “I was not speaking of her. I speak of another young man — the one she had been betrothed to since childhood.”

Changsun Wuyou’s eyes went wide.

She now knew who the person before her was.

The young man in brocade said: “The girl’s father thought: she has fallen, so let her. At any rate, Yuwen Shangyun can still be made use of.”

“Who could have anticipated that Yuwen Shangyun would be posted to Jizhou, where he tangled with Li Chi, and was defeated and killed.”

He looked at Changsun Wuyou: “By this point in the story, had the girl begun to become truly pitiful?”

Changsun Wuyou glared at him, silent.

The young man in brocade said: “The young man she had been betrothed to — what a fool he turned out to be. He specially sent someone to the Changsun family to tell her: do not act rashly. The betrothal could even be dissolved.”

“But she had hatred clouding her eyes, and thought only of revenge. So she ignored this goodwill.”

The young man in brocade said: “After returning home, she demanded again and again that the family commit all their strength to support her.”

“Her father was caught in an agony of conflict. If he did not support her, his daughter would be tortured by hatred for the rest of her life.”

“And even without his support, the girl would throw every resource she could mobilize into this vendetta.”

“But if he did support her?”

The young man in brocade suddenly rose and walked to stand before Changsun Wuyou, looking into her eyes: “Then the entire family could be dragged into ruin.”

He spoke each word with deliberate weight: “Because her father, as the third-ranking figure in the Mountain River Seal, knew better than anyone what the Mountain River Seal was capable of. With their family’s strength alone, they stood absolutely no chance of winning.”

“It was precisely at this juncture that the girl gathered all the senior members of the family before the ancestral hall and demanded their full support.”

The young man in brocade sighed: “I actually hold some admiration for this girl.”

Changsun Wuyou let out a cold sound through her nose: “Much obliged.”

The young man in brocade said: “Her father resolved with great determination to grant his daughter everything she asked — to commit every resource they had to supporting her. Then, he had her take all the force she could mobilize and go on ahead to make preparations, with the family’s support to follow.”

The young man in brocade retreated two steps, returning to his chair and sitting.

“In truth, this is where the pitiful soul’s true misery finally begins.”

After saying this, he glanced back at the carriage: “Changsun Uncle, what do you think?”

From inside the carriage, a middle-aged man stepped down, his expression heavy as stone.

The moment he descended, Changsun Wuyou was struck as if by lightning.

The young man in brocade closed his fan and tapped it gently against his knee.

A moment later, he flicked the fan with a flex of his fingers — crack — and it snapped open again.

This face of the fan bore four characters.

Here to claim your life.

—