With the ancestral temple on fire, Emperor Youning had no time for arrangements and hurriedly returned to the capital, leaving the main force ready to depart. The Emperor left with several princes, and since Crown Prince Xiao Huayong was too weak to travel quickly, he left an oral decree that everything should defer to the Crown Prince.

Even though Emperor Youning had left Liu Sanzhi behind, he didn’t dare make decisions over Xiao Huayong’s head.

“Your Highness the Crown Prince, Young Master Bu has disappeared,” Liu Sanzhi was anxious. He vaguely felt that if they didn’t send people to “search” for Bu Shulin soon, His Majesty’s plan would fail.

“Kha-kha-kha-kha…” Xiao Huayong coughed weakly. He seemed quite unwell. Tianyuan brought throat-soothing tea, but after drinking it, he vomited it back up shortly after.

Tianyuan’s face changed drastically with worry and immediately summoned the imperial physician. The Chief Imperial Physician rushed over, took his pulse, and asked what His Highness had eaten from yesterday until now. Tianyuan’s answers didn’t match up, so he asked several other questions.

Finally, after more than half an hour, he concluded that His Highness might have caught a chill.

Liu Sanzhi waited for a long while. He had barely waited for the physician to leave and was about to re-enter when he saw Tianyuan come out as well, closing the door and saying to Liu Sanzhi: “Eunuch, His Highness has been unwell lately and has only just managed to rest. If there’s nothing urgent, please let His Highness rest properly.”

“Guard Cao, Young Master Bu is missing. Please have His Highness order a search,” Liu Sanzhi said.

“Young Master Bu is missing?” Tianyuan was startled and immediately pointed to a young palace servant, “Go find Young Master Bu’s guards and question them.”

Jin Shan came quickly and insisted that his young master was just being playful and hiding, not missing at all.

This left Liu Sanzhi unable to persist. He thought darkly that His Majesty’s plan to deal the final blow probably couldn’t be carried out, and only hoped the people sent would succeed.

Had the people Emperor Youning sent succeeded?

Of course not. Bu Shulin felt very guilty about Shen Xihe disappearing after being thrown from her horse because of Princess Changling. She had brought Shen Xihe out but hadn’t taken proper care of her, so she searched day and night.

Xiao Huayong wanted to use this situation, so naturally, the fewer people who knew Shen Xihe’s whereabouts, the better. He certainly wouldn’t inform Bu Shulin and Xue Jinqiao, letting them search outside to avoid arousing suspicion. He even sent his people to make a show of searching for Shen Xihe.

No one had expected Emperor Youning to develop murderous intentions toward Bu Shulin at this time.

Having just suffered the pain of losing his daughter, with the unknown threat of a giant snake still unresolved, the emperor still had the mind to the scheme. Indeed worthy of one who had sat firmly on the dragon throne for twenty years.

Bu Shulin had returned early in the morning to learn that Shen Xihe hadn’t returned, and despite her exhaustion, went out searching again. She didn’t believe Shen Xihe would so easily die in a snake’s belly. Perhaps Shen Xihe hadn’t fallen from that spot at all, so she wanted to search further away.

She had barely entered the woods when her horse became uneasy. At first, she thought they’d encountered a beast until an arrow grazed past her ear as she turned her head. Only then did she realize she’d fallen into an ambush?

She was already exhausted, and this time His Majesty had sent first-rate experts. If not for her horse’s intelligence working in perfect harmony with her, she would likely have been unable to escape. Even so, she only managed to kill one person and was ultimately forced, like Shen Xihe, to gamble on survival by riding her horse off a cliff.

Shen Xihe had jumped down a slope, but she jumped off a precipice. Although she used the mechanism on her wrist to shoot iron spikes into the cliff face, hanging and scraping along the rock face for some distance before catching herself on the cliff edge, the uniquely forged thin iron wire also caught her, but she was severely injured with unstaunched bleeding from her wounds.

Hanging like this for a day would certainly mean death.

Her arm had also been dislocated during the fall and suspension. If she kept hanging like this, she would likely lose the use of one arm.

She knew His Majesty wanted her life. If she became disabled, even if she preserved her life, the Shu Southern Prince’s Manor would exist in name only.

How could a disabled heir lead troops in battle?

She bit her tongue to stay alert and looked down to find a dense pine forest below. The distance wasn’t too great; if lucky, she could use the pine branches to break her fall, and shouldn’t be fatal: “First, I’ve never cheated or swindled, second, I’ve never killed innocents, third, I’ve never peeped at ladies bathing – surely Heaven won’t deny me a way out!”

Gritting her teeth, Bu Shulin tore off the mechanism guard on her wrist and fell straight toward the pine forest. Her calculations were precise, using the pine branches to cushion her fall, but the solid impact with the ground still felt like it had displaced all her internal organs.

She was bleeding continuously and couldn’t stay there, or she would attract wild beasts.

It felt as if every bone in her body was broken. Powered only by survival instinct, she found a climbable tree and leaned against it, breathing heavily.

Though completely drained of strength, Bu Shulin didn’t dare be careless or let herself close her eyes. When a bear’s roar reached her ears, she felt utterly desperate: “Damn it, if you couldn’t stand to see young master so handsome and refined, you shouldn’t have given me this appearance in the first place. Did you have to use this method to take it back?”

Even a tiger would be better – those can’t climb trees. Yet they had to send something that could climb!

Especially when that huge black shadow entered her vision, Bu Shulin’s first reaction was to check if her small frame would be enough to fill its teeth.

Such a huge bear – by her estimate, it would take four of her to match its size!

Bu Shulin held her breath, silently chanting: “Can’t see young master, can’t see young master, can’t see young master!”

Until her tree began to shake, she had to look down. This bear was licking her blood trails on the tree, ramming the trunk. Finding it couldn’t knock her down, it started climbing.

Bu Shulin pulled out the hidden weapon concealed in her boot, held it in her palm, and waited until the black bear climbed close enough. She threw the weapon with swift precision, the projectile shooting accurately into the bear’s eye. It crashed to the ground with a boom.

The wounded black bear furiously rammed the tree trunk. Bu Shulin hugged the tree trunk with all her might, nearly being shaken loose, but fortunately, the poison on the weapon acted quickly. The bear collapsed below, foaming at the mouth until death.

Just when Bu Shulin thought she could breathe easier, she never imagined that while the bear hunted Bu Shulin, wolves lurked behind.

These wolves tried to climb but lacked the strength in their claws and slid back down. After howling at her for a while, they brazenly lowered their heads and began tearing at the bear’s carcass. Seeing this, Bu Shulin laughed coldly: “Eat up, eat up. Your last meal in life – no, your last meal in wolf life.”

Daring to eat a bear that died from poison – truly eating anything when hungry.

After all this excitement, she had become more alert. When Duanming arrived with Mo Yu and Sui Axi, Bu Shulin was crouching on a tree branch, counting with great interest, calculating the wolves’ time of death.

Before the poison could take effect, Mo Yu and Sui Axi’s arrows had already dropped two wolves, sending the rest fleeing.

However, before they could approach, Bu Shulin shouted from the tree: “Careful, wolf pack!”