The Mountain Chief came over, inquired about Rong Wei’s injury, and said that Senior Brother Mu’s actions had seriously violated academy rules. When he returned, punishment would be unavoidable. He then led people away. Most students watched from afar with complex expressions, unsure whether to mourn their purses or express awe toward Tie Ci.

Tie Ci was in a bad mood and made a money-counting gesture at them. Everyone scattered.

Tie Ci then said they were all tired and sweaty, should hurry back to wash up, and if interested tomorrow, they could all go out to eat and drink together—her treat. Everyone dispersed. Dan Ye reached out to pull Tie Ci: “Let’s go together!”

Tie Ci said: “You go first, I still have some business.”

Hu Yin pulled Dan Ye away. Tie Ci walked toward Rong Wei, wanting to escort him back to the teaching quarters. But she saw Wei Xuan walk over.

She stopped.

She lowered her head and silently counted for a while, hearing Rong Wei not refuse. The sound of their footsteps faded into the distance.

Tie Ci raised her head and pulled a grass stem to slowly chew.

Dan Shuang said: “Young Master, you’re in a bad mood.”

“Of course, thinking about having so much money I can’t spend it all soon, arranging it will be troublesome, so I’m a bit worried.”

Dan Shuang ignored her Versailles-style complaints: “All the money in the world is yours, yet I’ve never seen you worry about that.”

“Good girl, today I’ll teach you a principle.” Tie Ci spat out the grass stem, a bitter taste spreading in her mouth. “Seeing through but not speaking out is a human virtue.”

A shadow fell over her head—it was Rong Pu. He looked down at Tie Ci: “Shall I escort you back?”

“Wu Hall is too far from here, don’t let the sun damage your delicate flower.” Tie Ci declined. “Since Wei Xuan isn’t here, I’ll escort Xiao Xing back.”

Rong Pu turned to glance in the direction Wei Xuan had disappeared, smiling: “Miss Wei is charming and likeable, generous and gentle—quite compatible with my distant cousin. My cousin appears carefree and unrestrained, but he’s actually quite aloof by nature. It’s rare for him to regard Miss Wei with special favor.”

“Indeed, indeed, it seems we both need to prepare congratulatory gifts early.” Tie Ci said, “I have business, I’ll go first.”

Without waiting for Rong Pu’s response, she dragged Wei Xin away. They hadn’t gone far when she saw Wei Xuan returning. She was somewhat surprised.

With those two walking slowly for a while, then after arriving there would inevitably be tea service, water pouring, and caring inquiries—how could Wei Xuan bear to return so quickly?

Wei Xuan thanked her, saying: “Sir said he was tired and would sleep upon returning. I didn’t want to disturb him further.”

Tie Ci averted her gaze, not looking at that particularly sweet smile on Wei Xuan’s face when she mentioned Rong Wei. Noticing the blisters on her neck, she couldn’t help asking: “You clearly could have used your arm to sweep away that fire arrow earlier. Why did you choose to use your shoulder and neck to extinguish it? Weren’t you afraid of burns leaving scars?”

For such a delicate, precious young lady, wasn’t appearance and skin more important?

“Because I was thinking of keeping my hands free to intercept that third arrow.” Wei Xuan said, “I was already gripping a locust stone then. Fortunately I didn’t have time to act.”

Tie Ci was speechless. She didn’t want to say more, but Wei Xuan seemed to want to confide, smiling as she said: “Brother Shiba, Wei Xin has improved so much following you recently. I’m truly grateful. Sometimes I think, if you could train him to be like a normal person, I might be able to pass that burden on my shoulders to him. Then I could… I could…”

She suddenly became shy, biting her lower lip without speaking, her eyes brimming with emotion, rippling with springtime radiance.

Tie Ci could guess with her toes who she was thinking about. However, she had no desire to delve into these girlish feelings. Wei Xuan kept glancing at her, seemingly wanting her to continue asking. Tie Ci smiled at her, thinking: I just won’t ask.

Am I looking for abuse?

But though she didn’t ask, Wei Xuan couldn’t help but continue, finally saying herself: “…I could bravely pursue what I want…”

Tie Ci said: “Oh my, I suddenly remembered I have some business. I’m leaving!”

She strode away, ignoring Wei Xin tugging at her sleeve and Wei Xuan’s somewhat stunned expression, almost fleeing in panic.

As she walked, her thoughts were chaotic. So training Wei Xin was actually helping others achieve their goals—should she stop training him? Halfway through this thought, she couldn’t help but spit at herself. It wasn’t shame about her own pettiness or anything, but rather that in the face of romantic love, no amount of excuses might truly be excuses. If Wei Xuan really threw herself headlong into it, then whether it was responsibility or her brother, nothing might be able to stop her from finding other ways to fulfill her own desires.

Why should she play the petty villain?

Male beauty was indeed a disaster.

As Tie Ci walked and thought, she looked up to see the bright red pomegranate flowers peeking over the wall of the teaching quarters, suddenly realizing she had taken the wrong path.

These legs were incredible—they had their own consciousness now.

Tie Ci stared at the teaching quarters for a while. She knew Rong Wei’s room was the innermost one on the second floor.

Don’t ask how she knew—she just knew.

But since he was already sleeping, what was she doing standing here?

Such stars, such a night—for whom do I stand in the wind and dew at midnight?

No.

She was a woman with three palaces and six courts.

A monarch with no preferences rejects all temptresses.

She turned to leave.

But at the moment she turned, she saw a window on the second floor’s side quietly open, and a figure flew out.

In the cold night under the bright moon, that person’s robes fluttered, his form outlining beautiful lines in the moonlight.

Rong Wei?

He was seriously injured—instead of properly recovering, what was he doing out in the middle of the night?

Tie Ci followed almost without thinking.

Rong Wei headed straight for the woods by the martial field. Not surprising to Tie Ci.

Earlier, Senior Brother Mu had fled into the woods. The academy had sent people to search but hadn’t heard they found anyone. Now Rong Wei had gone himself.

During the day she had seen Senior Brother Mu staring at Rong Wei several times with eyes full of malice. Those three assassin arrows had targeted Rong Wei—the two clearly knew each other and had a history.

But that final arrow wasn’t necessarily from Senior Brother Mu’s side. The direction was different, the style was different, and the target should have been her.

Tie Ci had been accustomed to assassination attempts since childhood and was too lazy to care, but she was quite concerned about the grudge between Senior Brother Mu and Rong Wei.

She always felt that Senior Brother Mu wasn’t quite right, not like a student the academy could have trained.

Just before entering the woods, night patrol suddenly came by. Tie Ci hid, and when she emerged, she had already lost track of Rong Wei.

The woods were vast, connected to the Qingyang mountain range. Once you lost someone, they were hard to find. Tie Ci thought it over and entered through the entrance where Senior Brother Mu’s group had fled that afternoon, carefully searching for traces of them by moonlight.

Sure enough, she soon saw discarded masks and other items. The trampled grass marks were heavy too. Tie Ci calculated that there should have been more people than just those few in the field that afternoon—clearly there were people lurking in the woods for support.

With more people came more traces. Something caught here, something torn there. Tie Ci tracked all the way, but discovered that those people could have originally exited the woods, but somehow suddenly changed direction, gradually heading toward where she had fallen into the trap initially.

The ground gradually showed some shiny traces—the slime left by crawling creatures moving along the ground. Tie Ci crouched down and saw large areas of flattened ground, with more severe trampling of vegetation. She rubbed the dark traces on the grass leaves with her fingers—as expected, it was blood.

That group had begun to be ambushed here. Some were injured, some fell, some fled in panic.

A breeze carried faint sounds of shouting and killing, along with a light bloody scent.

Vaguely accompanied by flute music.

The flute sound was clear and spiritual, with a leisurely rhythm—a quite cheerful tune. Accompanied by these faint sounds of fighting and screaming, under this moon cut into fragments by tree branches, it sounded inexplicably eerie.

Tie Ci quickened her pace and soon saw a clearing ahead in the woods—exactly where she and Rong Wei had killed the wolf pack before. People were fighting in pairs in the field, and the trap she had fallen into before was still there, seemingly deeper now. Someone was climbing up from inside, then people threw basket after basket of things down—some stones, some poisonous snakes.

Tie Ci: “…”

Who had pirated her misfortune? Had they paid copyright fees?

Among the crowd was Senior Brother Mu, being carried on someone’s back, charging left and right, trying to break through the encirclement.

On the high stone where the wolf king had once crouched, now Rong Wei reclined casually. Above his head the crescent moon hung high, distant mountains stretched in the background, behind him brocade-belt flowers grew alongside trees, brilliant and luxuriant like brocade ribbons, winding gracefully among the green trees and creeping plants. Beneath him white stone served as a screen—he was a figure in a painting.

He lowered his head and brows, between his distinct knuckles a jade flute gleamed with warm light.

In the moonlight his profile was indescribably beautiful—a celestial flower among mortals.

The celestial flower faced the blood-soaked carnage below, playing “Little Widow Returns to Her Mother’s Home.”

Tie Ci: “…”

Fine, one mustn’t demand too much.

Not playing “Eighteen Touches” was already the celestial flower’s respect for his own beauty.

Tie Ci had originally worried about his injuries, but seeing him at ease, sitting high above, clearly not needing her interference, she quietly hid behind a tree and began observing the two fighting sides.

Both sides wore black clothes unsuitable for daylight, except Senior Brother Mu’s side still had people who forgot to remove the white cloth from their arms, now already bloodstained—showing their desperation.

Both sides’ martial arts and formations showed they were well-trained. Senior Brother Mu’s guards were clearly well-trained, with particular attention to advance and retreat, but didn’t seem military in style. The other side had higher martial arts, learned from various schools, clearly mostly from the martial world, so they didn’t emphasize formation cooperation, but high combat effectiveness compensated for this small deficiency—they clearly had the advantage.

Senior Brother Mu was carried on someone’s back, protected by over ten people, charging left and right within the gradually shrinking encirclement. The people outside were like cliff walls on all sides, with interlocking fangs. The people inside fought fearlessly, like waves surging up mountain cliffs, then shattering against jagged rock faces. Each contact splashed countless bloody spray.

Amidst the flying blood and flesh, Rong Wei didn’t even look, calmly playing his flute.

Mountain winds billowed, his robes fluttered, obscuring that pale moon.

From the crowd erupted a blood-weeping angry roar: “Do you really want to eliminate us all… Rong!”

It was Senior Brother Mu’s voice.

When he said that sentence, Rong Wei’s flute suddenly moved slightly, then Senior Brother Mu’s words had an unnatural pause, as if his injury had flared up and he was suddenly choked.

Rong Wei stopped his flute, tilted his head sideways: “What else?”

His tone was light and airy, the pale red moonlight dyeing the corners of his eyes like rouge, blood-colored enchantment.

Tie Ci felt somewhat dazed watching. She had never seen Rong Wei like this. He was always ethereal, elegant, his eyes always smiling, his smile making sunlight dance and moonlight flow.

She had never seen such coldness, evil, ruthlessness, eeriness, murderous intent—blood from hell, sword among white bones.

A wild shout broke her reverie.

“I’m your older brother!”

Tie Ci suddenly stopped breathing.

But Rong Wei laughed. Under the moon among the tall trees, his laughter looked both beautiful and chilling. “When you shot hidden arrows at me in the martial field, why didn’t I hear you shout that?”

He propped up his leg, one hand resting on his knee, fingers drooping, slightly raising his chin to look at that moon on the horizon, his jaw so thin it seemed moonlight could pass through.

“When you were small, when you led your gang of followers to block me, trap me, tie me up with a group of people and drag me to brothels, why didn’t you shout that?”

He lowered his hand and turned to look at Senior Brother Mu in the crowd, lightly jumping down from the high stone.

The robes that billowed up in that instant were like magnificently blooming flowers—beautiful yet deadly.

He spun the flute between his fingers while strolling toward the center of the crowd.

“When you led people to gang up on me, injured me, stripped my clothes—why didn’t you shout those words?”

His figure flashed, the flute in his hand gleamed with green light. One of Senior Brother Mu’s guards grunted, blood spraying from his head, falling silently.

“When you relied on your mother’s influence to deliberately humiliate my mother again and again, making her vent her anger on me, starving me and making me kneel as punishment—why didn’t you shout those words?”

Rong Wei smiled slightly, ghostlike passing through two guards who blocked him. With a backhand swing, he grabbed one man’s head and viciously smashed it against another’s. With a muffled thud, two corpses fell to the ground.

Only five or six people remained in front of Senior Brother Mu.

Facing Rong Wei approaching with flowing robes, smiling with flickering divine light but with the aura of a ghostly spirit under the moon, those guards standing before Senior Brother Mu were like facing a great enemy, constantly backing away while protecting him. The one in front said hoarsely: “Ten…”

He had just opened his mouth when Rong Wei’s flute struck out. The man screamed, blood flying from his mouth, spitting out a row of teeth.

“You followed your master in silence back then, so don’t be talkative now.” Rong Wei said indifferently, stepping over this man’s fallen body to advance another step toward Senior Brother Mu.

“When you sent people to break my fingers, then framed me for self-harm to seek favor—why didn’t you shout those words?”

Tie Ci listened from behind the tree, momentarily not knowing where she was, her head buzzing, shocked and chilled by the information revealed in those words. Her gaze involuntarily fell on Rong Wei’s constantly drooping hand—that hand was white as jade, the skin on the back taut, fingers with distinct joints, like hands carved by master craftsmen from jade.

It was hard to imagine they had suffered such torment in the past.

But looking carefully, she could see the left pinky had a slight abnormal bend.

Rong Wei kept smiling, raising his hand as several more fell beneath his palm. He walked through blood all the way, staring at that person’s panicked eyes.

“When your group provoked, stirred trouble, and instigated before father, making me get beaten and locked in the ancestral hall again and again, throwing me into beast valleys, ice abysses, white bone plains—why didn’t you shout those words?”

The flute in his palm rose and pierced through the throat of the last person blocking him.

The flute broke through the blood screen, angling up in a cold, cruel arc, pressing against Senior Brother Mu’s temple.

Blood on the jade flute congealed in a line, dripping drop by drop down the flute body onto Senior Brother Mu’s eye corner, looking as if he were crying blood.

Rong Wei bent down slightly, the flute pushing Senior Brother Mu’s head to one side while he also tilted his head slightly, as if curiously looking at the person before him, his voice light and eerily cold.

“Even this time, coming from thousands of miles away, wasn’t it because you feared I would take first place and wanted to resolve me here? Why is it that when things go wrong and death approaches, you suddenly remember blood relations? Oh my, come, let me see what your face is made of—rhinoceros hide? Fourth brother?”

Senior Brother Mu suddenly jerked his head aside, the blood at his eye corner splattering onto Rong Wei’s face, accompanied by a harsh, sinister laugh and a flash of bright blade light shooting from his hair!

“I’ve been waiting for you!”

As the blade flashed, the death warrior carrying him threw him outward while lunging wildly at Rong Wei.

Rong Wei shook his head and shifted his shoulder, the blade light grazing past. As that person crashed toward him, he didn’t retreat but advanced, stepping forward. With a hiss, the flute penetrated the man’s abdomen. Rong Wei actually didn’t let go, using the jade flute to push that man’s large body forward several steps before viciously throwing him backward! The man was thrown flying, then crashed to the ground with a bang, dust rising half a zhang high.

But Senior Brother Mu had already used that throw and obstruction to leap several zhang away.

Tie Ci stood behind the tree, watching Senior Brother Mu’s panicked face grow larger before her.

She remained silent.

For an instant, images flashed through her mind—a crying child, a beaten child, a child with broken fingers…

Senior Brother Mu’s breathing was right by her ear. Tie Ci could see the slight joy in his eyes.

Past this large tree not far was a slope. Carefully sliding down, with dense woods below, the chances of escape were great.

Senior Brother Mu’s body was about to rush past the tree.

Tie Ci suddenly reached out.

Steel-like five fingers, ghostlike extending from behind the tree, grabbed Senior Brother Mu’s throat!

Senior Brother Mu, running wildly, never expected iron hands behind the tree—he had practically delivered his own throat.

He suddenly suffocated, face reddening as he struggled. Tie Ci’s hand was always iron-cast, motionless.

She held Senior Brother Mu’s throat, step by step walking out from behind the tree.

Rong Wei stood in place, smiling at her unsurprisingly, the previous deep, eerie expression suddenly fading, his eyes sparkling with light.

Tie Ci released her grip. Senior Brother Mu had just taken a breath when Rong Wei’s hand arrived, but didn’t grab him—just chuckling as he pushed him in the chest.

“Go if you want to go.”

His push was light and airy, but Senior Brother Mu was like being hit by a cannonball, shooting out violently. Meeting the slope, he rolled down with continuous bangs. Tie Ci walked to the slope edge and saw him scrambling up in panic, ignoring his pain, desperately rushing downward. Just as he was about to reach safety, Rong Wei raised his hand, green light flashed.

The jade flute’s whistling wind brought countless fallen leaves from surrounding shrubs and trees flying up and falling down.

A shallow groove was plowed in the ground.

That groove extended lightning-fast to Senior Brother Mu’s feet.

Tie Ci saw blood flowers explode behind that person in the darkness.

Heard the sound of a body hitting the ground—a sound she’d heard countless times tonight.

When Senior Brother Mu fell, his outstretched fingers were only inches from the forest.

At that moment he struggled to turn back with difficulty.

He saw a hook-like moon slanting above, scattered robes under the moon, Rong Wei’s face brighter than the moon, and that evil, slightly cold smile at the corner of his lips.

That scene flashed bright and dark in his vision like sparks, dark then bright again.

Then darkness crashed down like a curtain.

…