Although Mingsha Mountain originally covered a large area, compared to the whole desert it was still just a speck.

By rights, searching this region for a person should have been easy.

But Yelu Qianqian and Yingzi had turned the place over three feet deep, and still found nothing.

Where had Ziqing gone? Had she vanished at Mingsha Mountain, or left long before the tornado struck? What exactly happened in that whirlwind — besides Situ Haonan, Jun Beiyue, and Bai Mengmeng, no one else knew.

But all three of them were still unconscious.

Situ Haonan had stayed behind in Hamabachu, the new capital of Xijing. Jun Beiyue and Bai Mengmeng, along with Jun Beichen and Imperial Physician Gu, had been brought back to the capital of Da Zhou. Though there had been no peace conference, the world’s situation remained in the ruins of the aftermath of war — but aside from Da Zhou, every other nation had suffered grievous losses. For at least the next few years, as long as Da Zhou did not move, the Longyuan Continent would not fall into chaos.

Since parting from Situ Haonan, Yelu Qianqian had never gone back. In truth she could barely stand it — she wanted so badly to return — but she kept telling herself: not until Ziqing was found.

She had been searching this area alongside Yingzi, but no matter how she tried to make peace, Yingzi ignored her completely. In the end she didn’t even dare speak, searching in silence, shouldering the enormous pressure from her father the Emperor.

She had mobilized an army to search for a missing person, after all!

Yingzi had only his shadow guards. He had no authority to deploy troops, and doing so would require negotiating with the Xijing royal family.

Jun Beiyue was still unconscious, still under treatment. In the army, the only ones with any real say were Jun Beichen and a few tiger generals; at court, the only one with influence was Prince Baxian.

Asking Prince Baxian to send men to find Ziqing was a fantasy — he’d be thrilled if Han Ziqing never came back at all.

Jun Beichen, to his credit, was doing everything he could, but there was only so much he could do. He held military authority but couldn’t actually move troops, because sending an army into Xijing was no small matter.

If Jun Beiyue had been conscious, perhaps a few words to the Xijing Emperor would have settled it. But Jun Beiyue lay unconscious, and Jun Beichen didn’t have that kind of clout. Besides, the fact that the Xijing Emperor hadn’t seized this opportunity to turn on Da Zhou was already an enormous show of face toward Yelu Qianqian and Situ Haonan — he would never make any further concessions.

Yelu Qianqian watched Yingzi digging like a madman, feeling both guilty and heartbroken. Just then, Yingzi suddenly stopped, as though he’d struck something.

Seeing Yingzi’s frozen posture, Yelu Qianqian unconsciously held her breath. Could something have turned up?

They always said no news was the best news, but they were searching for a person — no news was the worst possible news. Even the faintest clue would have been better than this hopelessness.

Yelu Qianqian, no longer minding the awkwardness between them, dashed over, her feet sinking deep into the thick sand with every stride. She quickly reached Yingzi’s side — luckily he reached out in time to stop her, or she would have tumbled straight into the sand pit!

She didn’t even need him to explain — the sight before her left her stunned. She’d heard Haonan mention a hidden chamber beneath Mingsha Mountain before, but she’d never quite believed it.

Yet here was the proof. It really was a hidden chamber. Though part of it had collapsed from the digging, it was clearly a secret passage.

“Let’s go down and look!” Yelu Qianqian said urgently, about to jump in, but Yingzi suddenly shoved her back. Without a word to her, he barked coldly at his shadow guards, “Five of you hold the entrance. The rest come down with me!”

With that, he was the first to leap down.

“I’m going down too!” Yelu Qianqian stamped her foot in frustration.

Yingzi simply ignored her. His shadow guards blocked her way, and there was nothing she could do — she knew perfectly well that any conflict here would draw Xijing soldiers, which would be bad for Yingzi and his men.

But she was so anxious!

“Yingzi, what will it take for you to speak to me! Situ Haonan didn’t mean it — he had his reasons!”

“Yingzi, if you’re angry at Situ Haonan, go find him — why ignore me? What did I do to you?”

“Yingzi! Stop right there!”

“Yingzi!”

…

No matter how Yelu Qianqian shouted, Yingzi paid her no mind, his figure quickly swallowed by the darkness of the tunnel.

Yelu Qianqian glared uselessly, then simply sat cross-legged at the entrance.

Yingzi ignoring her wasn’t the real problem — the real problem was that, judging by his attitude, Jun Beiyue might well refuse to even look at Situ Haonan.

That was what worried Yelu Qianqian most. Truly, Haonan was the one caught in the hardest position of all — one side his brother, the other his closest kin.

He’d gotten himself covered in wounds, and still pleased no one, welcome nowhere.

Yelu Qianqian had no idea what she could do to make up for it.

All she knew was that she had to find Ziqing.

But now, with a lead finally in hand, all she could do was wait, hoping Yingzi would find something in that hidden passage.

If Ziqing truly had vanished in this place, and digging three feet down turned up no bones, there was only one possibility left — she was hidden inside the secret chamber.

Yingzi made his way forward through the passage, the ground rising and falling unevenly, many sections collapsed, requiring several men working together to shift boulders aside.

Clearly, this place had suffered deliberate destruction.

What Yingzi couldn’t understand was that the sand above the hidden chamber was perfectly intact — the tornado hadn’t swept all the sand away, and its destructive force hadn’t reached this deep at all.

So why had the hidden chamber itself been damaged?

Could something have happened down here in the underground chamber too?

Yingzi had no time to dwell on it, moving swiftly through the tunnel. At last, after a long while, they reached an open space. Though it had been destroyed, more than half collapsed and buried under sand, it was clear that before the destruction this had been a massive hidden chamber.

And the underground passage ended here.

“Chief, should we… dig?”

The shadow guard forced the words out with difficulty. The reason they were searching this area at all rested on a single assumption: that Her Highness the Princess Consort had vanished here.

Either she was alive, hiding somewhere below ground — or she was dead, buried somewhere below ground.

The only place she could be hiding was right here, beneath this pile of collapsed rock and sand.

Without question, after all this time, if she’d been trapped here, she would certainly be dead.

Yingzi’s lips trembled. He couldn’t answer.

It wasn’t that he resented Yelu Qianqian — he resented himself. All because of him, if he hadn’t been taken hostage by Situ Haonan, Prince Yao would never have been so easily deceived.

He had betrayed the trust Prince Yao had placed in him!

He had failed the Princess Consort!

He hadn’t dared ask about the situation back in the capital of Da Zhou — he only knew the Prince was out of danger, but he never dared ask whether the Prince had woken, or when he would.

He was afraid.

He was afraid that when the Prince woke, the Princess Consort would be nowhere to be found.

He had no idea what to do. Who would tell him what to do?