Yuan Jue and his disciples stayed on at the Jade Spring to reinforce the formation. Qin Yao and the others returned to the main hall of the travelling palace to help mop up the remaining jiangshi.

Chang Rong and his men, bolstered by Qing Xuzi’s talismans for warding off evil, had been fighting with the wind at their backs. Aside from the few greatly advanced jiangshi that had already begun to take on a semblance of humanity, most had been scattered and destroyed.

When Qing Xuzi’s master-and-disciples returned to the hall, they swept through the remaining jiangshi without a word and finished them off one by one.

Lin Xiao thought of Pei Shao and the others. He searched in every direction, but could find none of them. He returned to the main hall, crouched down, and lifted Chun Qiao by the collar. “Where did you put all those people who lost their souls?”

Chun Qiao had been placidly waiting for Lin Xiao and the others to die horribly at the Jade Corpse’s hands — only for these people to survive against all expectation, crawling back from the very jaws of death.

All she could think of was the wasted effort of recent days, her plan to return to Miao territory completely undone. Rage flared inside her, and she fixed her particular resentment on Lin Xiao and the others. She could barely keep herself from leaping up and taking them all down with her.

At his question, she gave a cold laugh, tilting her face up at Lin Xiao. “Why should I tell you?”

As she said it, finding herself so close to him, old instincts took over. Her eyes narrowed as she looked him over carefully.

She found that Lin Xiao’s features, seen this close, were even more striking than they had appeared from a distance — eyes like pools of ink, a face that put Pan An to shame. The closer one stood, the faster one’s heart raced.

She stared and secretly ground her teeth. A man this devastatingly handsome, and she couldn’t get her hands on him to enjoy for herself — what a waste.

Lin Xiao saw that even now she was being stubborn and shameless, her eyes roaming over him with not the slightest pretence of restraint. A wave of revulsion rose in his chest. He threw her back on the ground without another word and stood. “Get it out of her,” he said to Chang Rong and the others.

Chang Rong acknowledged the order and walked up to Chun Qiao. He bent down — and then Chun Qiao let out a shriek so piercing the air seemed to split.

On the other side of the hall, Qin Yao had just finished burning the last jiangshi. At the sound, her hands gave two involuntary trembles. She thought privately that Chang Rong and his men more than lived up to their reputation — they were Prince Lan’s personally trained elite guards, and their skill at extracting confessions under torture was truly exceptional.

Chun Qiao was drenched in cold sweat from the pain. Before Chang Rong’s men could dislocate her other shoulder, she went ashen-faced and spoke: “Past the Jade Spring, going east, there’s a bamboo grove. All the soul-lost are there.”

Qing Xuzi heard this and strode out without a word. Qin Yao followed two steps behind, then couldn’t help looking back. “Why did the Jade Corpse want to collect all those people’s souls?”

Chun Qiao said nothing.

Lin Xiao gave Chang Rong a look.

Chang Rong drew a dagger and laid it along Chun Qiao’s right ear, wearing an expression somewhere between a smile and not. “Miss Qu has been asking you a perfectly good question, and you treat it like air. What use is this ear, then? May as well cut it off for a drink.”

With that, he made to do exactly that.

A mixture of rage and hatred churned inside Chun Qiao. These methods of tormenting people were her own specialty — she had never once, before doing it to others, stopped to care whether they could bear it. Who could have imagined that one day she would be on the receiving end of the same treatment.

She felt the thin blade draw a line of blood along her ear. Her heart hammered in her chest. Above all things she prized her appearance, and she would sooner die than be left without all her features. She cried out hastily: “I genuinely don’t know! All I know is that the Jade Corpse needed to collect the souls of one hundred men within forty-nine days, and they all had to be strong and healthy — no illness or infirmity. It seemed she was setting up some kind of formation.”

Chang Rong heard this, and the dagger pressed deeper into the smooth white flesh, drawing a bright line of red blood down along Chun Qiao’s ear.

Chun Qiao felt her cheek burn hot. She shrieked: “You could cut me into a thousand pieces and I still couldn’t give you a different answer — I genuinely don’t know!”

Qin Yao looked at her face, every feature distorted with fear, and heard the ring of truth in her voice. She reflected that the Jade Corpse, though willing to use Chun Qiao, would hardly have had the patience to explain her own reasoning to her — the answer might well be genuine.

She dropped the matter and turned to leave the hall, catching up with her master and A’Han to help restore the lost souls to the people who had lost them.

As it happened, Yuan Jue had just returned from the Jade Spring, personally carrying a bundle — a large golden bowl — which held all the scattered souls. While still beneath the Cangheng River, he had applied a soul-protecting technique, taking great care to keep them safe within the bowl.

They found the bamboo grove, and sure enough — Pei Shao and the others were standing expressionless within it, every face an ashen grey, as though the prolonged absence of their souls had left them like lamps on the verge of guttering out.

Qing Xuzi and Yuan Jue’s expressions shifted. They wasted no more time, each establishing a formation of their own, carefully guiding each soul back to its owner one by one.

When the formations were complete, Pei Shao, Xu Shenming, and the others had some colour back in their faces — though, because their souls were still not fully settled, their minds had not yet fully restored. One by one, like newborn children, they fell into a deep and contented sleep.

Qing Xuzi then instructed Qin Yao and A’Han to administer Three-Yang Pills to each person — medicine that nourished and stabilized the spirit-soul.

Afterward, Yuan Jue took several of his most capable disciples and remained on the mountain to continue strengthening the formation. The rest helped move Pei Shao and the others down to the foot of the mountain.

Chang Rong and his men were not idle either. They loaded Chun Qiao and Zeng Nanqin onto a cart, trussed up like rice dumplings. Just as they were about to mount their horses, Chang Rong turned and spotted Tang Qingnian — standing there looking utterly lost — and asked Lin Xiao: “Young Master, what do we do with this one?”

Tang Qingnian had been abandoned in the main hall with no one paying him any mind, and had nearly been torn apart and consumed by jiangshi. He had barely been rescued by Chang Rong and the others in time. Now, hearing the question, he smiled with a kind of hollow resignation — neither defending himself nor begging for mercy — and simply stood there, ready to accept whatever was decided.

Lin Xiao glanced at him and said evenly: “Hand him over to the Tingwei for processing.”

He could understand the depth of hatred Tang Qingnian bore for his stepmother — but he could not condone the method. As Lin Xiao saw it: whether seeking revenge or venting one’s grievances, one should never harm the innocent. Tang Qingnian had not gone after his stepmother, nor the older half-brother from his stepmother’s family who had kept him down for years — instead he had struck at a young, innocent stepbrother. That spoke to a nature that was extreme and deeply petty. To say he had been beguiled by the Jade Corpse seemed a kinder framing than the truth — that he simply lacked, at his core, any sense of openness or integrity.

On the road back to Chang’an, Pei Shao and Xu Shenming — tougher than the others from their martial training — were the first to wake, stirring halfway through the journey. They came to in a state of confusion, not knowing where they were, only feeling as though they had lived through a very long dream, every detail of which remained vivid and present.

Qing Xuzi and the others explained the full story from beginning to end. As they listened, both men’s expressions became increasingly grave. Their souls had not been fully absent at the start — they had been conscious and aware throughout the early stages of what had happened to them, and even later, when body and spirit had both moved beyond their own control, some residual awareness had remained.

They remembered everything — how Chun Qiao had tormented them, and also how someone had come to their aid on the bank of Nanwan Lake.

When the full picture was clear to them, both men were overwhelmed with gratitude, and immediately moved to prostrate themselves in thanks.

But Qing Xuzi and the others, who deeply admired Pei Shao and Xu Shenming’s character, would not accept so heavy a courtesy.

By the time they reached Chang’an, dusk had settled over the city.

By then, all the soul-lost had regained consciousness. Recalling how Chun Qiao had used them to kill while they were under her control, each one was sick with remorse — they beat their feet and lamented bitterly, and some wept openly on the spot, on the very verge of taking their own lives.

Lin Xiao thought of all the missing-person reports that had surely been piling up at the Tingwei’s offices of late. He had Chang Rong keep these people under close watch for the time being, intending to escort them to the Tingwei himself after he had seen Qin Yao safely settled, and have them give a full account of events from start to finish.

For the remaining two: Pei Shao was accompanied home by Qing Xuzi and the others, while Xu Shenming took his leave and made his way back to the palace on unsteady feet.

Qin Yao watched his tall, retreating figure from the carriage window. She thought of how he had endured Chun Qiao’s torments rather than be made an instrument of harm to others — and found genuine admiration rising in her heart. She made a quiet resolution: when she returned to the Academy, she would tell Pei Min the full truth of what had happened, so that Pei Min might put aside whatever misgivings she still held about him.

When they arrived at the Pei residence, Lin Xiao had no intention of going in. He waited outside the gates while Qin Yao went to take care of her business.

Because Qin Yao had vanished from the Pei residence without a trace, and even Pei Shao had disappeared in the middle of the night, the Pei family had been beside themselves — sending word to the Qu family first thing in the morning, then dispatching people to search everywhere for the two of them, anxious as cats on a hot griddle.

When the Qu family had gone to the Qingyun Daoist Shrine to look and found no one there, they guessed that Qin Yao had almost certainly gone off again with her master to subdue some demon or spirit, and that she would be home safe within a day or two at most — nothing to worry about. But afraid of raising the Pei family’s suspicions, they had no choice but to put on a show of frantic worry themselves.

By evening, Pei Min — seeing no sign of either her brother or Qin Yao — could sit still no longer, and was in the middle of discussing with her parents whether to report the matter to the authorities, when Pei Shao suddenly appeared at the door, accompanied by Qing Xuzi and the others.

Pei Min took one look at Qin Yao — covered in mud, dishevelled beyond recognition — and was so startled she didn’t stop to ask where she had been. She just hustled her back to her room to change into clean clothes.

By the time Pei Shao had finished explaining everything, a full hour had passed.

The Pei family’s parents had previously been tormented by jiangshi nightmares themselves, and hearing the truth now, all the doubts they had harboured about their son were at last laid to rest. They were so relieved they scarcely knew how to express it — their eyes reddened as they thanked Qing Xuzi and the others again and again.

Pei Min, for her part, sat in a long daze. When she had finally absorbed everything her brother had told her and was about to ask Qin Yao for more details, Qin Yao lowered her voice and said: “I have a great deal more to tell you. When we get back to the Academy tomorrow, I’ll explain everything.”

Pei Min had no choice but to let it be.

Qin Yao followed her master and the others out of the Pei residence. With the last of the tangled, exhausting threads finally drawn together and accounted for, she could no longer hold herself up — yawn after yawn overtook her, her eyelids fighting a losing battle against each other. All she wanted was to go home and sleep properly.

Qing Xuzi — whether drained of energy or somewhat more at ease with Lin Xiao than before — forgot to keep his customary watch over Qin Yao, and the moment they were out of the Pei gates, he climbed into his carriage with A’Han and drove off in a cloud of dust.

This was exactly what Lin Xiao had been hoping for. He turned to Qin Yao. “It’s getting late. Let me escort you home.”

Qin Yao tilted her face up at him and smiled, the corners of her mouth curving up. “All right.”

Lin Xiao saw the two deep dimples that appeared at the corners of her smile, and without thinking, smiled back — and held the smile for a long moment. He reached out and smoothed the dishevelled hair at the top of her head, looking at her as he said: “You go back to the Academy tomorrow. Sleep well tonight. Whenever I have time, I’ll come to the Academy to see you.”

Qin Yao’s eyes were bright and sparkling, still watching him smile. She nodded. “All right.”

The two of them were both rather bedraggled, looking not in the least tidy or presentable. They had barely exchanged a surplus word between them — and yet they both felt, at that moment, a closeness that had not existed before. Even in the silences, the silence itself was full of something warm and sweet, too thick to stir.

Arriving at the Qu residence, Lin Xiao helped Qin Yao down from the carriage. They stood facing each other.

All around was stillness. Only the sound of each other’s heartbeats.

Lin Xiao looked down at Qin Yao. In the moonlight, her face was softly radiant. He couldn’t help himself — he reached out and drew a finger gently along her cheek, finding the skin beneath his fingertip silky smooth and yielding, like the finest quality silk, and carrying with it the naturally sweet fragrance that belonged to a young woman.

His pulse quickened; his eyes darkened until they were nothing like themselves. He couldn’t hold back — he lowered his head and pressed a light kiss to Qin Yao’s cheek.

Qin Yao’s heart was beating so hard it no longer felt like her own. Her whole body went soft, barely able to hold itself upright. She turned her head ever so slightly, letting him draw close to her.

Then — the main gate groaned open, and from the darkness came a man’s voice, low and sharpened with barely-contained anger: “A’Yao!”