After Ziqing finished talking things over with Guxi and came back out, Situ Haonan was nowhere to be found.

“Where’d he go?” she asked, displeased.

“Off to find Lord Changming. But Lord Changming’s actually waiting right outside the door now, to escort you to your audience with the King of Nanzhao,” Hongyi said, shrugging helplessly. She was becoming more and more convinced that while Young Master Situ’s martial arts skills were impressive, he wasn’t someone you could really rely on.

Ziqing didn’t say anything more and hurried out. Along the way she tried probing Lord Changming several times, but with little success.

The audience didn’t last long, and as soon as Ziqing came back out, she found Xuanyuan Zhaoxi walking straight toward her.

Ziqing acted as though she hadn’t seen him—though of course, she still remembered the pain in her hands. Xuanyuan Zhaoxi held his head high and brushed past her, then said quietly, “Princess Consort Yao, my brother’s here too, you know.”

Ziqing paused slightly, stopping in her tracks just as Xuanyuan Zhaoxi had.

Xuanyuan Lige coming here was something she’d expected. And if she wasn’t wrong, Jun Beiyao had probably come too.

She understood well enough that hesitating when a decision needed to be made only invited trouble, and would end up hurting everyone involved.

She didn’t like ambiguous relationships. She was afraid of getting entangled in messy feelings. She preferred to be decisive—if she liked someone, she’d like them wholeheartedly; if she didn’t, then she simply didn’t. Enemy or friend, it had to be clear. Friend or lover, that needed to be even clearer.

“That’s your own business. It has nothing to do with me.”

Xuanyuan Zhaoxi immediately grew furious, letting out a cold snort. “Han Ziqing, you’ve got some nerve! You swindled my brother out of his qin and his wind-blade technique, and now you just turn around and act like you don’t know him? You’re shameless!”

“I never asked for any of it. I never wanted it,” Ziqing said coldly, and turned to leave after saying so.

The qin, Wuzheng, had been a gift from Xuanyuan Lige—she hadn’t wanted it, but he’d insisted on giving it to her anyway.

The finger technique had been something Xuanyuan Lige forced her to learn.

Lishang had been promised to her by Xuanyuan Lige after he’d taken her captive.

But her actual skill with the qin, the wind blades she could unleash with a flick of her fingers—those she’d earned herself, through nights of gritting her teeth and enduring pain that shot straight to her heart with every callus that formed.

It had been a long time since anyone had held her hand—if they had, they would have found her fingers entirely covered in calluses.

How exactly was she shameless?

She deserved every bit of what she’d earned. But she also knew clearly that if it ever came down to facing off against Xuanyuan Lige, she wouldn’t use the wind blades, and she wouldn’t use her qin to kill. That was a line she wouldn’t cross.

Xuanyuan Zhaoxi stamped his foot furiously before finally walking on ahead. He didn’t notice that, at that very moment, Xuanyuan Lige was sitting silently on the roof of the main hall, watching that graceful retreating figure from afar. His eyes were calm and clear, nothing like Situ Haonan’s exaggerated display, and yet he too had lost himself all the same.

After a long while, he finally curved his lips into a self-mocking smile. “If you asked, I’m not even sure I’d give it to you.”

Ziqing walked back to her lodgings alongside Lord Changming, deliberately slowing her pace.

“Lord Changming must surely hold an important position at court. Having you come personally to receive me is truly more than I deserve.”

“Princess Consort Yao is too modest. Being able to attend to Your Highness is this humble official’s honor,” Lord Changming said, equally modest in words, though wariness was clearly hidden beneath his gaze.

“I’ve heard Lord Changming has a fondness for raising spirited horses. I happen to…”

Before Ziqing could finish, Lord Changming cut her off immediately. “Princess Consort Yao, your lodgings are just ahead. This humble official still has pressing matters to attend to, so I won’t accompany you further. Tomorrow’s Water-Splashing Festival opening ceremony is a grand affair—I’ll have someone come collect you. Please rest early, Your Highness, and be sure not to oversleep.”

His refusal was unmistakable. Ziqing didn’t want to spook him further, so she simply smiled and said nothing more.

Lord Changming hurried off. Passing by Chu Feiyan’s residence, he couldn’t help but pause, thinking to himself that what the Western Chu princess had told him did seem to be true—Situ Haonan had just tried to feel him out, and now Princess Consort Yao seemed to have the same intention. Fortunately, he’d learned about the matter of the Enchanting Fragrance from the Western Chu princess early on—otherwise, had Princess Consort Yao managed to use him, wouldn’t he have become a criminal against Nanzhao himself!

The thought sent a chill down Lord Changming’s spine, and he quickened his pace away. Anything related to the Lone Island was forbidden in Nanzhao—doubly so within the royal capital of Nanzhao. He needed to find a way to deal with this.

The next day, everyone set out early in the morning.

The opening ceremony for the Water-Splashing Festival wasn’t held within the palace, nor within the royal capital itself, but on Sacred Mountain, in the western outskirts of the royal city.

This mountain was called Weibao Sacred Mountain. At its peak stood a temple rivaling the royal palace itself, called the Earth King Temple, dedicated to the divine Earth King—the unifying faith of all Nanzhao. It was said that every Earth King temple scattered across Nanzhao traced its lineage of incense and worship back to this one main temple.

This temple held a status in Nanzhao comparable to that of the royal family itself—indeed, according to legend, the royal family were themselves descendants of the Earth King, which was precisely why the orphaned line held such a supreme, unrivaled status in Nanzhao.

At the very center of the temple stood the Great Hall of the Earth King. In front of the hall lay an open-air courtyard where not a blade of grass grew, called the Worship Courtyard—true to its name, a place meant for paying homage.

Aside from the temple’s priests and disciples, not even the King of Nanzhao himself was permitted to enter. At that moment, all sixteen great doors of the hall stood open, and the sight that greeted Ziqing made her draw in a sharp breath—this entire hall seemed built for nothing but housing the divine statue within.

Inside stood a reclining Buddha-like statue, its enormous face veiled beneath a black cloth so that the true visage of this Earth King deity remained hidden from view. Even so, the sheer scale of its form alone was enough to stir an involuntary sense of reverence.

The Water-Splashing Festival was a day devoted to praying to the Earth King for pure water, to wash away the sins of the body and be reborn anew.

The King of Nanzhao stood at the very front. Well into his fifties, he already looked frail and aged—yet, oddly enough, always at his side was a favored consort roughly Ziqing’s own age. Today she wore a pure white gown, beautiful as a white lotus blossom, though she happened to have a pair of narrow, single-lidded, fox-like eyes. During yesterday’s audience, those eyes had swept over Ziqing and the other three female envoys from head to toe, and now, meeting again at the foot of the mountain, she still hadn’t let up.

The way a woman looks at another woman—only a woman could truly understand it.

To the King of Nanzhao’s right stood a cluster of princes and nobles, followed in order by the chieftains of Nanzhao’s three great tribes—the Medicine Tribe, the Beast Tribe, and the Merfolk Tribe—and behind them, the civil and military officials. The arrangement alone spoke volumes about the nobility of the royal bloodline, and just as clearly about the relative standing of the three great tribes.

On the King of Nanzhao’s left, arranged in a single row, stood Ziqing and the other envoys.

They were arranged according to the relative strength of their nations: first the Western Chu envoy Chu Feiyan, then the Western Jing envoy Yelu Qianqian, then the Da Zhou envoy Han Ziqing, and finally the Eastern Qin envoy Xuanyuan Zhaoxi.

No one could say when exactly this ranking of national strength had been established, but it had to be admitted—even now, going by overall national power, this was indeed the correct order.

Ziqing thought quietly to herself: Da Zhou needed to grow strong.

After the ritual worship, the King of Nanzhao respectfully received the scripture from the high priest’s hands, bowed three times in reverence to the Earth King’s statue, and then began to recite aloud in a resounding voice.

For a moment, the entire hall fell silent, the atmosphere heavy with solemnity, everyone bowing toward the statue.

Seeing the sheer thickness of the scripture in the King of Nanzhao’s hands, Ziqing already knew this was going to be a long and tedious beginning. She listened to a short passage, genuinely unable to make sense of it, and began covertly sizing up the people across from her out of the corner of her eye.

All three tribal chieftains were well along in years, yet they had the rosy faces and white hair of the ageless, brimming with vitality.

The Medicine Tribe was the foremost of the great tribes, unrivaled in medicine and poison craft. The Beast Tribe ranked second, its beast-taming experts occupying most of Nanzhao’s forests. Third was the Merfolk Tribe, which monopolized Nanzhao’s coastline, and rumor had it they held territory in underwater caverns as well.

This wild, untamed land, with its complex terrain and countless scattered tribes and peoples, was full of strange talents and extraordinary abilities. Ziqing couldn’t help but wonder—what about the Lone Island, then?

What little was known about the Lone Island amounted to almost nothing—only that it was some kind of island, though its exact location remained a mystery. Was the Lone Island also home to some tribe, one that possessed its own extraordinary powers? And why exactly did the Nanzhao royal family treat it as such an absolute taboo?

Just as Ziqing’s mind began to wander, she happened to glance up—and suddenly found herself locked in the furious gaze of Yelu Qianqian beside her!

She had to admit, it gave her quite a start. She had no idea when this girl had done it, but somehow, without anyone noticing, Yelu Qianqian had turned her back to the statue and was now facing Ziqing instead, staring straight at her!

In such a solemn setting, what exactly was she trying to do?