As night fell, the bonfire party was held as scheduled.

In Yannan, bonfire gatherings were as common as eating and drinking. They would have one when in good spirits, when in bad spirits, when guests arrived, and also when guests departed. Before coming here, Tie Ci had heard about the local customs of loving bonfires and dancing, so she had even crammed some simple dance steps for bonfire parties, never expecting to encounter such an opportunity only now.

But this time, Aunt A’dan had immediately identified her gender, so aside from one girl offering her blessing wine at the beginning, no girls threw her ribbons. She didn’t know how the Mo tribe could always so easily recognize her gender. A’kou said that male and female auras were naturally different, and the Mo people, who had been immersed in various strange scents all their lives, could tell with one sniff.

Without young women’s courtship, naturally there were more young men’s spring feelings. Young men requesting to dance with her formed a queue, so Tie Ci had to pretend to be lame.

Originally, she felt that dancing was nothing—Murong Yi should still be recovering from injuries in the Mo tribe. But somehow she felt guilty, probably fearing that by some chance, if someone discovered her, she didn’t know how many would be left of the already small Nanyan tribe.

As a self-aware monarch, Tie Ci had long since stopped fantasizing about three palaces and six courtyards. She wouldn’t even spare an extra glance at wildflowers by the roadside, consciously demonstrating her loyalty to the Empress that heaven and earth could witness.

She had merely looked with full appreciation at those vigorous young men’s youthful and beautiful bodies.

But she didn’t know why she always felt these young men were dressed too scantily. The nights in the deep mountains during late autumn were still very cold, and tonight’s wind was particularly strong. Tree branches on the mountaintops rustled and swayed, as if fierce beasts might emerge at any moment.

But Tie Ci’s attention was more focused on A’dan and the chieftain. The chieftain indeed looked only about forty years old, with black hair and handsome features. When he and A’dan came hand in hand, they truly could be called a perfect couple. Between the two, their gazes and smiles were tender and lingering, full of affection—the kind of truly deeply loving couple that even an idiot could see.

Even with Tie Ci’s scrutinizing gaze, she couldn’t detect any flaws in the details.

The chieftain also very enthusiastically toasted A’kou and Tie Ci, saying exactly the same words as A’dan, but he didn’t respond to any of Tie Ci’s probing topics, whether he didn’t understand or was pretending not to understand.

After the chieftain left, Tie Ci looked at A’kou: “How was it?”

But A’kou shook her head.

“He really is that young, very healthy, not injured, and not poisoned. Everything is fine.”

Tie Ci raised her eyebrows slightly.

“However…” A’kou frowned, “there’s something that seems a bit strange…”

…

The bonfire was extinguished only at midnight. The scattered fruit peels and debris on the ground had long been cleaned up. The cold mountain air covered everything eerily, and a thin layer of white frost formed on the open space, looking like a small lake from afar.

The lights in the circular building were extinguished one by one, making it look even more like a giant snake with its head and tail connected, absorbing the essence of plants and trees, sleeping around the lake.

Tie Ci quietly rose and walked to the window, looking up.

If she remembered correctly, three rooms to the west above her head was where the chieftain and A’dan lived.

Tie Ci’s figure swept past two floors like the wind.

She heard sleep talking, murmuring, teeth grinding, snoring, and farting—all kinds of sounds.

She lightly landed on the railing of the third floor. This enormous circular wooden building only had fence-like railings on the third floor, very narrow, barely enough for a person to stand.

She stood on the railing, listening to the sounds inside. The breathing was heavy and uneven, rising and falling in succession. It sounded like more than one person, and they had no martial arts skills.

Somehow she felt something was wrong.

But she couldn’t stay outside for long. If anyone below came out for a night call and looked up, they could clearly see what was above.

She lifted the window and swept inside, landing silently.

The moment she landed, her heart stirred again, but she still didn’t know why.

Directly facing the window was a large bed with people sleeping soundly—it looked like a man and a woman.

Since Aunt A’dan came from the Mo tribe, she hadn’t planned to use any drugs from the Mo tribe to avoid complications.

Tie Ci took an arrow step to the bedside, her hands spreading like parting flowers, one hand each, sweeping over the heads of the people on the bed, preparing to knock them unconscious first.

Her fingers touched the hair below and suddenly withdrew.

The people on the bed still snored thunderously.

Tie Ci was silent for a moment, then lit a fire stick with a snap, as if she no longer cared about the chieftain and A’dan at all.

When the firelight came on, on the bed was an old woman with a child, both sleeping deeply, not even noticing that a light had been lit.

Tie Ci extinguished the fire stick. In that instant, she had clearly seen the interior decoration, which was about the same as her room, even the positions of the utensils were the same.

This was an ordinary room.

But she clearly remembered the room A’dan had entered. Using her own room as a reference point, she couldn’t possibly have gotten such a simple direction wrong.

So had A’dan and the chieftain moved away in an extremely short time, letting this room change occupants?

She suddenly turned back to look at the window. In the evening, red silk had been floating here, summoning A’dan to hurry back.

But now that window had smooth frames with no place to tie a silk scarf.

This was also why she felt something was wrong the moment she swept in through the window.

This room was indeed not the chieftain’s room.

Where had the chieftain’s room suddenly gone?

Tie Ci stood in the milky white moonlight within Wan Qing Mountain. In the moonlight, the enormous black building with its head and tail connected was silent, like a ring, encircling all the secrets of this unremarkable yet strange Pacification Office.

Tie Ci stood at the window, trying to find the chieftain’s room that should have had hooks for hanging things.

Suddenly she sensed something amiss.

She turned back and saw that on the large bed, the grandmother and grandchild who had just been sleeping soundly had somehow disappeared.

Almost right under her nose.

Standing at the window, Tie Ci realized quite absurdly that her encounter at Wan Qing Mountain in Yannan this night was the most accident-filled since she had begun traveling.

Rooms mysteriously disappeared, and people disappeared too.

The accidents hadn’t stopped yet.

She suddenly heard creaking sounds outside. The railing outside the window seemed to be slowly moving.

Then the floor beneath her feet also began to move.

Snap, snap, snap, snap—all the windows were slammed shut in succession.

This movement was very swift. The entire room was shaking. Rumbling sounds rose in her ears. The huge inertia caused Tie Ci to stagger back several steps. Just as her back was about to hit the wall, her back suddenly felt empty.

Tie Ci already sensed this. She sprang up, her fingers like hooks, piercing into the ceiling. Looking down, she saw the wooden walls had toppled over, revealing identical rooms behind them. The walls of those rooms were also toppling over, one after another in succession. From afar, it looked like huge dominoes falling in sequence, quite spectacular.

After the walls toppled over, these rooms were connected into one enormous, long narrow room. The entire room was still moving, charging forward violently. Tie Ci heard the sound of sliding rails grinding, and at the front end, the originally empty wall suddenly flipped open, revealing a huge black hole. Countless blue-black liquids flowed out of the hole, and pale purple smoke was already impatiently emerging.

Tie Ci backhanded a slash at the window. The window cracked with a grinding sound, but what the broken window revealed was not the outside scenery, but an iron-colored wall.

At some point, these rooms had been “encased” in another layer.

The design of this circular house was truly unimaginable, like a wonder house.

Suddenly, whistling sounds arose behind her, as if something had reached its limit and was rebounding with even more ferocious spinning force, moving faster. One could imagine that if she couldn’t break out of the house in a short time, she would either be killed by the fleeing house behind her or be carried by this room into that black hole.

Suddenly, there was a snap, and a round-bellied ceramic jar on the table fell to the ground.

The things in this room had originally all been fixed in place, only this ceramic jar was not. Now it fell to the ground, and from the fragments flowed a pool of green water. A pink flower grew from the green water, with slender petals extending gracefully toward her.

On the ceramic jar fragments, two characters slowly appeared: “Eat it.”

The room shook and creaked. The black hole was only three zhang away in front, and the room behind was whistling toward her.

Suddenly, there was a thunderous sound overhead, and an iron cage fell down. The cage door was open, with a sign hanging inside that read: “Come in.”

Inviting her into a trap, was it?

Tie Ci rolled to one side of the room, where she could sense even more violent trembling. There was thunderous noise below the floor, mixed with subtle grinding sounds.

Tie Ci didn’t look at the swaying iron cage overhead, nor at the black hole close at hand and the room behind getting closer and closer. She kicked away the flower that was trying hard to crawl toward her, pressed her ear tightly to the floor, and silently counted in her heart: “…one, two, three!”

She drew her blade. The blade light pulled up a snow rainbow. The next instant, it pierced through the floor like lightning, precisely stabbing between the two narrow sliding rails below.

A clanging sound exploded. The sound of metal and iron-wood grinding inch by inch made one’s teeth ache. The sliding rail was stuck, but the huge inertia kept the rail slowly moving forward. This made even the incomparably tough abyss iron deform, the lower half becoming a thin iron sheet, but though deformed, it never broke, stubbornly jamming between the sliding rails. Tie Ci’s hand was also very steady, pressing down on the knife handle, not letting the short blade be ejected by the tremendous force.

The room behind was still slowly advancing but seemed a bit askew. Finally, the front wall pressed against her boot heel.

Then it stopped.

Tie Ci looked up but didn’t dare breathe a sigh of relief.

Because the black hole was close at hand, purple smoke was still drifting, about to fill the entire room.

But wonderfully, this smoke was very light, so it filled the upper space first. Since she was currently lying on her side, she couldn’t smell this smoke.

But the blue-black liquid in the black hole was still flowing, like countless green snakes meandering along the floor toward her, making hissing sounds wherever they passed.

Since the sliding rail had stopped anyway, Tie Ci was about to get up to avoid this liquid when she suddenly felt lightness beneath her and fell through.

This was unexpected—wasn’t this position supposed to be where the sliding rail was? How could it be empty under any circumstances?

But while in mid-air, without time to think, she instinctively flipped and swung her hand, about to give the person below a beating.

But at this moment, she touched a pair of arms, strong and powerful, gently supporting her buttocks and even giving them a squeeze.

Tie Ci’s punch aimed at vital points immediately became a gentle spring breeze embrace, falling toward the other person’s neck.

Just as they were about to touch what should be touched and embrace what should be embraced, suddenly those arms shook, followed by an annoyed low cry: “Your punishment is to find me!”

By the time Tie Ci landed, where was there any trace of a person?