Tonight, the Marquis mansion was decorated with lanterns and colorful banners, festive and lively, yet inside the bridal chamber was a stretch of silent stillness.

Xue Yu lowered her head, looking at the flower blooming on the vine between their fingertips, her lips gradually pursing together where lip rouge had been applied.

The Thousand Vine Connection originated from Chi Shui and was the most ruthless and domineering method among the Six Sacred Lands’ means of binding subordinates. One thought brought life, one thought brought death. Once the connection was established, the two people would be linked by an invisible vine that could not be severed or burned, bound for life under another’s control.

If the controlling party experienced significant emotional fluctuations and couldn’t control them well, they would transmit to the other person.

At such times, what bloomed on the vine would not be flowers, but frost blades and sword rain, icicles and molten rock. To put it bluntly, it would be torment worse than death.

A flower blooming under such preconditions – Su You might not understand what it meant, but Xue Yu could not ignore it or turn a blind eye.

Xue Yu had witnessed the Thousand Vine Connection bloom once before.

Among the Six Sacred Lands, the Xihe Sacred Land relied on two sacred objects and always loved to put on airs as the eldest brother, particularly emphasizing rules and ceremony. The other lands, though not as high-profile, each had their special characteristics. But when it came to “mystery,” Tai Hua was undoubtedly the one.

It was so mysterious it hardly seemed like a Sacred Land. The people inside rarely came out, and even when they occasionally appeared, they were always wrapped in black robes, their forms completely concealed as if afraid of sunlight. Their responsibilities also differed from the other five lands. Human disasters, conflicts, rivers of blood – none of these concerned them. They only needed to handle one matter: clearing various “qi” from the mortal world.

Because of this, Tai Hua’s Crown Prince Cang Ju was often the most elusive and unfathomable among the Sacred Land successors. Unlike Xue Yu’s coldness born from personality, wherever he stood, he was incongruously antisocial.

This Sacred Land’s successor, whose entire being was written with secrets, had one widely known romantic affair.

Once, while descending to the mortal world to handle death qi, he brought back a wary yet fragile ghost.

She was a newly deceased spirit, sustained only by unwilling resentment and hatred from complete dissipation. In life, she had been a noble lady of the human race with a spiritual treasure on her person. Therefore, after death, she neither entered Yedu nor was willing to enter reincarnation, just following Cang Ju back to Tai Hua in bewilderment.

Cang Ju was too lazy to manage her, letting her do as she pleased, only controlling her with a Thousand Vine Connection before turning away to do whatever he needed to do.

One hundred years, two hundred years – she grew rapidly under Tai Hua’s rich spiritual energy and the heavenly materials and earthly treasures Cang Ju provided. Along with her understanding and tactful nature, she developed a rare flexibility of spirit.

Later, this young lady knelt for a long time in the Crown Prince’s Eastern Palace, broke with Cang Ju, and resolutely descended to the mortal world the next day.

She plotted step by step, overturned her family’s case, stirred up storms, and after the truth came to light that year, before waiting for the court’s verdict, she dragged the chief culprit to her family’s mansion gate and delivered three hundred sixty-five cuts. Only with the last cut did that person finally die.

Blood flowed like rivers.

At that time, Qiu Tong’s father was still ruling. The old emperor, long muddled, had never seen such a scene. He immediately flew into rage and issued several secret decrees to the Sacred Lands demanding an explanation.

Tai Hua quickly sent people, imprisoned the lady, combined multiple charges, and sentenced her to thirty Scattered Immortal lashes, to be carried out immediately.

By unfortunate coincidence, the Sacred Land successors were all gathered at Tai Hua at the time, so several of them had the privilege of witnessing such a scene personally.

Cang Ju’s expression sank to an indescribable degree. He stood up, grabbed the lady’s thin wrist to make her step aside, said nothing-as if mentally exhausted and too lazy to say anything – and just took those thirty punishments for her, lash after lash.

Under everyone’s shocked or entertainment-seeking gazes, in the lady’s stunned, tearful eyes, he frowned while looking uncertainly at the blooming rice-white small flowers on the Thousand Vine Connection, hissing in pain.

This incident reduced the Crown Prince’s mysterious aura by more than half. For a long time afterward, when Yin Ling and others mentioned him, they couldn’t help but laugh, saying that only after this event did they truly understand what it meant for one’s heart to bloom with joy.

So the Thousand Vine Connection had such wonderful uses.

Certainly, Xue Yu, who had observed coldly and indifferently back then, never imagined that one day the same thing would happen to her.

She quietly looked at that flower for so long that her breathing gradually slowed before she turned her head to look at Su You.

Su You was also looking at her – at the swaying pearl hairpins on her head, at her furrowed brow and pursed lips. That gaze was different from any other time he had looked at her.

In his ink-dot pupils settled a layer of pure, brilliant joy settled, like crystalline pearls and precious stones flickering with lustrous light in the faint candlelight.

The man before her carried the ease of one in high position in every gesture, yet when his eyes curved slightly and he smiled with lifted corners of his mouth, he revealed a different kind of pure, deep affection.

Undeniably, this face, this person, this personality – every aspect was satisfyingly flawless in her eyes.

Xue Yu reached out and pressed down the flower that had sprouted on the Thousand Vine Connection. Then she stood up, wearing that heavy phoenix crown, and leaned toward Su You in imitation, until her nose tip touched the skin beside his ear, her exhaled warmth falling into his ear one breath after another.

Until he could hardly bear it and slightly raised his chin, his palms clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“Lady.” His neck was straight and slender. With the slightest movement, he exposed all his vulnerable and fatal weaknesses before her eyes, his voice slightly low: “What do you want to say?”

Xue Yu didn’t want to say anything. She stared at his cold, pale, delicate neck hollow for a long while, her eyes moving slightly. Then her long sleeves fell like clouds on his thin shoulder bones. Finding a point of support, her long eyelashes drooped, and her lips quickly, tentatively touched his earlobe.

The large bright pearl held by the phoenix on her crown fell precisely into his collarbone.

A dragonfly touching water, skin against skin.

Su You maintained this posture, his entire body rigid.

He hadn’t expected this move – truly hadn’t expected it at all.

Was it for the task, to draw out the demon woman, or something else—

Xue Yu bent at the waist, her eyes falling into a rare daze. Maintaining this posture, she lowered her gaze and used her cool fingertip to slowly wipe clean the skin beside his ear that had been stained red by lip rouge, but the more she wiped, the more chaotic it became, like a messy smudge under a paintbrush.

She simply stopped bothering with it and instead touched her own lips with her fingertip – they seemed to still retain a bit of strange residual warmth.

Her heartbeat was somewhat fast.

So this was what people called “liking.”

In this unexpectedly intimate atmosphere, Xue Yu said nothing, and Su You maintained this posture of letting her do as she pleased, pressing his knuckles and saying hoarsely: “Lady.”

Xue Yu withdrew and sat facing him. Their bright red wedding robes overlapped and tangled together, pearl ornaments colliding, bells chiming, creating a somewhat decadent beauty.

Her almond eyes opened slightly. Under the candlelight, she saw the man opposite slightly raise his chin, his Adam’s apple sharp, his expression rarely bewildered, his pale ear roots flushed with cloud-like red. Looking like this, he revealed an innocent yet seductive purity.

“Mm.” She responded lightly and slowly, lifting her eyes to ask: “You like me, don’t you?”

Su You had imagined countless scenarios of having his feelings exposed, but he had never imagined this situation. He was silent for a moment, then under those direct and clear almond eyes, he pressed his tongue against his teeth, smiled with resignation, and said: “Yes.”

Reason told him countless times that now wasn’t the time, wasn’t the time, but in such circumstances, he couldn’t deny it.

It couldn’t be hidden.

Xue Yu was emotionally slow, but having judged so many people, she understood perfectly well how men looked at women. No matter how well he hid it, those gazes – whether deliberate or unconsciously revealed – were more direct and burning than any tender confession.

Vaguely, she had sensed it early on. Now confirmed, she only held her breath briefly, feeling it natural and proper.

“You are a demon.” She lowered her eyes, her fingers drawing out several long silk threads that she wound and twisted into a bundle, hanging softly and harmlessly, hundreds of strands fluttering. Yet her words were completely orderly: “Pure demon bloodline, not a demon ghost. That couple from years ago were not your birth parents.”

“Your background is questionable, your talent quite high. That disappearance years ago – your clan elders may not have been without their reasons.” She paused, then said: “If you were acknowledged back, your status would be no lower than others.”

“I promised you could leave at any time.”

Having said this much, Su You completely understood her meaning. He slightly lowered his head, looking at her slender white fingers, and reached out to hook one of the long threads.

“I won’t leave.”

His eyebrows lifted slightly, containing a smile, sighing like whispered words: “Yedu has rules – young masters cannot marry into external clans for life.”

At this point, Xue Yu strictly corrected him: “If I release someone, it’s permitted.”

“Mm.” Su You cupped that bundle of threads in his palm, his index finger moving slightly, his voice seductive: “It’s me.”

“It’s me who doesn’t want to leave.”

He was no longer that half-grown child caught between cracks, yearning for familial affection. Demon or demon ghost, noble clan or blood relatives – none of it concerned him.

From being thin and worthless, having to read others’ faces, to now having sufficient strength and confidence to stand on the highest peak of this world, able to hold his head high, eyes open, facing everyone in whatever manner he chose to present.

She taught him how to conduct himself, the etiquette of being human and being a ruler, and told him not to belittle or abandon himself. On this path so long it seemed endless, all he saw in his peripheral vision was her.

Wherever she was, that was home.

The thread wound to its end around his fingertip, their hands just one step away from touching. Su You looked into her eyes, analyzing himself with near-complete honesty word by word: “It’s me who doesn’t want to leave Yedu, doesn’t want to leave you, Lady.”

He said: “Let’s be together, try it, all right?”

Just at this moment, wind and rain struck violently in the courtyard. Torrential rain poured down from the sky, and in mere moments, several thunderclaps sounded. Chaotic footsteps rushed toward them, reaching the door in the blink of an eye: “Xue Yu, Su You, she’s here!”

“Don’t try to take her head-on, run first.”

At this time, what else could “she” be?

In that split second, before the enraged demon woman could strike, Su You embraced Xue Yu, his palm wrapping around a section of bed curtain, tearing it down. Then, with a wave of his hand, the curtain transformed into a straight arrow shooting toward the window, while he used that force to roll in the opposite direction to one side of the threshold.

His back hit the ground, Xue Yu pressed seamlessly against his chest, gorgeous pearl hairpins swaying, her dress drawing a stunning arc through the air.

Su You was tall and lean, and though Xue Yu usually appeared slender and tall, compared to him, she showed a delicate, petite quality. At this moment, his palm steadily settled on her surprisingly thin waistline, and even through layers of clothing, it conveyed an undeniably burning temperature.

Why at this moment?

At all times, this moment.

Su You suddenly closed his eyes, and when he opened them to look at the demon woman, that composure and calm that saw through everything returned like a tide.

He rose to join the battle. All the arrays in Marquis Dingjiang’s mansion lit up simultaneously, thousands of lights interweaving. Jiu Feng and others struck with all their might, Su You’s sword intent destroying everything as he resolutely held the rear.

Xue Yu was the demon woman’s secondary body – she couldn’t possibly strike at this time.

She stood before the window that had been rudely broken open with a large hole, her gaze following the man in the battle who could single-handedly shoulder great responsibility, ripples gradually rising in her pure pupils.

This time, her judgment was truly excellent – the kind of excellence that after examining from all angles, she couldn’t find a single flaw from beginning to end.

After a long while, the wind stopped and the rain ceased. The demon woman shrieked as she was bound by the array formation, and the seven performed the Soul Seizing technique one by one. She walked into the courtyard, silently watching this scene until Su You sheathed his sword and naturally took two steps toward her.

Jiu Feng gasped and touched her wounded area, saying: “We’ve used the Soul Seizing technique too. How about it? Can we pass this task?”

“These riddle-like days – I really can’t stand them anymore, not even one more day!”

“Soon, but it might not be that easy.” Yin Ling looked gravely at the increasingly heavy sky that seemed ready to swallow even the courtyard’s lamplight, saying sternly: “I’m afraid what comes next is the main event.”

Xue Yu was also observing the strange phenomena in the sky. Between her fingers she held that letter, still in its sealed, unopenable state.

“Su You.” Looking and looking, she withdrew her gaze and suddenly called his full name with serious formality. After gaining his devoted attention, she pressed her index finger to her lips and asked: “From now on, no concealment, no betrayal?”

Their eyes met. He responded solemnly, his words and actions carrying indescribable depth and allure. Xue Yu watched as a long snow-white thread dropped from her fingertip.

He bent down, hooking that thread back onto her index finger, his voice carrying laughter that couldn’t hide his nervousness in its clear, handsome tone: “Together, yes?”

This time, he even omitted the words “try it.”

Before the overwhelming upheaval struck, Xue Yu withdrew the snow thread and said softly: “Yes.”