The two of them left the palace and had only just returned to the Siru Studio when Wei Bo came to request an audience.
Qin Yao was in the middle of helping Lin Xiao change his clothes. Hearing the message relayed by Nanny Wen, she looked up at Lin Xiao — at this hour, what business could have come?
Lin Xiao looked down at her. “Most likely it concerns the kinsman of female official Lu. I’ll go and be right back.”
Qin Yao had not expected Wei Bo and the others to have moved so quickly. She nodded, lifted her hands from Lin Xiao’s sash, and walked him to the door.
Even knowing that Wei Bo might not have brought good news, she still clung to a thread of hope. It was clear by now that nothing could be found from the body itself — but through this “kinsman” who had appeared out of nowhere to collect it, there might yet be some breakthrough to be found.
She settled on the bed platform and had Cai Ping turn up the lamp. Then she took up a volume of Daoist formation texts copied down by the patriarch of their sect and began to read. Though she had never met the patriarch of the Azure Cloud Observatory in person, this forebear had clearly possessed an extremely organized mind. The texts he had transcribed were laid out with perfect clarity and were easy to take up.
The entire volume progressed from easy to difficult across four levels. The first level contained beginner formations — the Household-Settling Formation, the Four Symbols Formation — all of which she had long since committed to memory.
The second and third levels were of moderate difficulty. Though not commonly encountered, they were of great use in warding off evil and subduing monsters. In the past, limited as she was by her inner power, and always wary of dragging her shifu and senior martial brother down, she had always sought to compensate by throwing herself into the study of talisman arts and monster-subduing formations. The contents of these two levels she had mastered down to the last detail.
The most difficult was the fourth level. Not only were the formations obscure and hard to grasp, but they were also immense in scope and structure, demanding exceedingly high Daoist attainment and considerable resources from the practitioner. Her shifu had never been willing to waste large quantities of talisman paper and cinnabar guiding them through the laying of such formations, and had simply never taught them. She herself had only flipped through a few pages in idle moments, acquiring the barest surface knowledge. Truly understanding them, let alone mastering them, was evidently still a very great distance away.
The spirit-sealing formation was among the most difficult of all those in the fourth level. After studying it for a long while, she could only determine that the formation required re-fortification once every six months, and that when it was being worked, all incidental persons in the vicinity had to be cleared away so as not to disturb the flow of the gilt-gold sand.
Reading this, Qin Yao’s brow furrowed. From the time the academy had reopened to the present, had not roughly six months passed? Re-fortifying the formation was tremendously demanding, but as long as the academy remained closed, the person behind this could come and go at will and perform the re-fortification on whatever schedule they wished.
The trouble had begun when the Emperor, on a whim, ordered the academy to reopen, after which a large number of students and female officials had moved in all at once. For that person to re-fortify the formation now without alarming anyone in the academy would require the utmost caution — and even then, all manner of unforeseen circumstances might still disrupt their plans.
Could this have been why the sinister energy had suddenly broken loose within the academy, drawing in malevolent spirits? And could the person behind it, desperate to conceal what was happening, have been driven to commit murder overnight — just as Lin Xiao had said: this person could have been anyone, chosen in the end for being an official with no one in the world to miss her, simply so as not to draw attention?
If so, then this person had been maintaining the formation within the academy for a span of time measured not in months but in years.
She was deep in her reflections when a soft sound came from the courtyard gate — Lin Xiao was back. She quickly threw on her outer robe and walked with light steps through the inner chamber to meet him at the veranda.
Lin Xiao was tall and long-legged and walked with swift strides. In moments he was already mounting the steps. Looking up, he saw Qin Yao standing on the veranda waiting for him, with Cai Ping and Cai You behind her holding glass lanterns to light her way. He paused for a moment, then quickly pulled Qin Yao inside. “It’s too cold out. There’s no need to come out to meet me.”
Inside the inner chamber, Qin Yao helped Lin Xiao change his outer robe, then took the hot tea from Nanny Wen’s hands and passed it to him. The night wind outside was sharp and cutting to the bone; Lin Xiao’s long, slender fingers were as cold as jade. “How was it?”
Lin Xiao drew Qin Yao down to sit beside him and fixed his gaze on the teacup resting on the small table nearby. He was quiet for a moment before he spoke. “The man who claimed female official Lu’s body from Dali Temple did not delay a single moment. He had the coffin out of the city that same day, traveling not by the official roads but by waterway. He had barely boarded the boat, however, before it sank. Both that so-called kinsman of the Lu family and female official Lu’s body vanished without a trace.”
Though Qin Yao had braced herself for something like this, hearing it still left her shaken. She had not imagined the person behind this would act with such ruthless efficiency, unwilling to leave even the smallest trace. After all of this, female official Lu’s body would almost certainly never be found again. And though the Duke of Wei’s household had once arranged a livelihood for female official Lu, they were unlikely to spare much thought for the whereabouts of her remains. In the end, this matter could only become one more unsolved case gathering dust.
She let out a despondent sigh. It was exactly as Lin Xiao had predicted — the lead had been cut off at the midpoint.
Lin Xiao looked up at her. In the lamplight, his wife’s face was exceptionally luminous and lovely, and he was unwilling to look away. He reached out and touched her cheek with his fingertip, then decided to voice the worry he had been carrying: “Yao’er, this person can slip past the Imperial Guards’ defenses without anyone’s knowledge and can marshal their resources to destroy female official Lu’s body right under our eyes. Their methods are inexhaustible — they are not easy to contend with. We have entered and left the academy several times now, and I fear we have long since drawn their suspicion. Rather than waiting passively for them to move against us, we would do better to find a way to uncover the academy’s secret as early as possible.”
“How do you intend to investigate?” Qin Yao’s eyes began to glow with a dim, rising light.
Lin Xiao said: “Don’t forget that Yuyin Academy only reopened this year. More than twenty years ago, when the late Emperor suddenly closed the academy, there must have been reasons. Even if everything was sealed in silence afterward — both inside the palace and outside — if one is truly determined to investigate, there will always be some thread to pull. Something can always be found.”
Qin Yao gave a start. That was true. Twenty years ago, the academy had been in its fullest bloom, without any apparent irregularity, when the late Emperor issued a decree ordering it closed — and it had remained so for twenty years.
She remembered that when she had first entered the academy, she had asked Pei Min and the others about the matter. Unfortunately, no one she asked had any knowledge of what had happened at the time.
Her spirits lifted. She reached out and covered Lin Xiao’s hand with hers. “Once the people we sent to Suizhou return in a couple of days, we can pursue two threads at once. One thread to understand the full story of Yuan Jue, and another to investigate what happened at the academy twenty years ago. Following both lines together — we may be able to trace our way back to whoever is behind all this.”
Lin Xiao’s gaze fell on their joined hands where her touch rested against his. He felt the warm, soft press of her palm against the back of his hand, and thought of how he had spent these past few days alone in the palace duty room — the torment of missing her that had been almost unbearable — and he lost himself for a moment.
Coming back to himself, he heard the brightness that had returned to her voice, and knew the weight on her mind had lifted somewhat. He said, in a tone that was only half attending to the matter: “Even though this is urgent, it can’t be done all at once — it will take considerable effort and planning. It’s already late. Let’s rest.”
Qin Yao had been deep in animated discussion when Lin Xiao abruptly changed direction and steered them firmly toward bed. She was momentarily taken aback — but then she raised her eyes and saw Lin Xiao with his perfectly straight face, calling to Nanny Wen to have water prepared. Understanding dawned all at once, and she found it both funny and a little flustered. She had no choice but to rise and, with great cooperation, called to Cai Ping and the others to come and help her remove her hairpins and ornaments.
By the time she came out of the washing room, the two of them had barely gotten into bed before Lin Xiao turned and pressed himself over her, bracing his arms on either side of her shoulders. He gazed at her face, tracing her brows and eyes with his gaze, reining in his desire, and asked softly: “My good Yao’er — did you miss me?”
Qin Yao held his gaze and looked at him for a moment. When he continued to hold still without making any further move, she grew impatient, pursed her lips, and simply threw her arms around his neck, pulling him down to her lips.
Lin Xiao was not expecting Qin Yao to kiss him first — it was the first time she had ever been the one to take the initiative in bed. He went still for a second. Feeling his wife, with a touch of inexperienced awkwardness, trying to coax his lips apart, a silent laugh rose within him. He immediately took back control of the situation, kissing her back while drawing off her clothing, advancing without hesitation toward what he had been wanting all along.