After Wang Xingzhi and the others withdrew, Qin Yao and Lin Xiao remained sitting in the outer study a good while longer, each lost in their own thoughts.

What occupied Lin Xiao’s mind was why Yuan Jue would have harbored murderous intent toward the Emperor, and whether Qing Xuzi, being an old acquaintance of his, might have had some part in it.

What occupied Qin Yao’s, however, was this: if this so-called A’Ling really had become Consort Hui after coming to Chang’an, then both Yuan Jue and Qing Xuzi were old acquaintances of hers. Yet Consort Hui had died shortly after giving birth to the Crown Prince, and by all appearances had been quite beloved in her lifetime. Just what reason could have driven these two men to abandon their respective family estates and relocate all the way to Chang’an?

“I have to go to the temple right away.” Qin Yao couldn’t wait another moment. She rose, rolling up Qing Xuzi’s portrait, and said to Lin Xiao, “Master has kept far too much hidden from me. Before, not knowing anything of his past, even if I wanted to persuade him I had nowhere to start. Now that we know this much, when I go ask him, surely he won’t be able to keep hiding it from me anymore.”

Lin Xiao looked at her. Though she had always conducted herself openly and honestly, she was usually quite measured, rarely acting with such bluntness—proof that no matter what had happened, she had never once doubted her master’s character.

But whatever Lin Xiao himself privately thought, without any proof in hand it would hardly do to voice suspicions about her master to her face, lest it cause her needless grief.

Qin Yao had taken a couple of steps when she turned back to find Lin Xiao still standing there, quietly watching her. She paused, startled, and asked, “What is it?”

Lin Xiao smiled and stepped closer to her. “It’s nothing. Let’s go—to Qingyun Temple, to get the truth from the Daoist Master.”

Seeing the trace of doubt in Lin Xiao’s manner, Qin Yao vaguely understood—after all, Lin Xiao hadn’t lived with Master for over a decade as she had, and knew very little of his true character. Especially now, knowing that Master had hidden his past identity, he had likely already grown suspicious of him.

This seemed to be the first time the two of them, as husband and wife, had differed over any matter.

And yet he had still chosen to trust her, accompanying her to seek out the truth all the same.

Her heart swelled full to the brim. She glanced at him in silence, took his hand in hers, and swallowed back the word of thanks rising in her throat.

In the hours between midnight and the first light of dawn, the night lay thick as ink, the wind cold and harsh, moaning without pause the whole night through, leaving nowhere to escape it.

Qin Yao, wrapped in thick winter clothes with both hands held in Lin Xiao’s, was warm from head to toe, and yet still felt waves of cold creeping through her heart. She knew that beyond her low spirits, her body too had been worn down to the point of utter exhaustion.

Lin Xiao took off his own cloak and wrapped it around her, holding her close as he coaxed her. “There’s still some way to go before we reach Qingyun Temple. Sleep a while first.”

Qin Yao nodded, curling against him obediently and closing her eyes, but her mind simply would not settle.

Ever since they had begun looking into the matter of the academy some time ago, the further they dug, the more uncontrollable the situation seemed, and the more it filled her with a heart-stopping dread.

To think that whoever stood behind it all could slip silently into the academy and kill the female official Lu, simply to close the academy and re-secure the array—it showed they possessed both the means and the ruthlessness, a person extremely difficult to deal with.

What worried her most was that Master’s attitude toward the academy was far too strange—he had clearly already seen through something within it, yet for reasons unknown, he had hesitated to take any action for so long. And now tonight, they had discovered that both Master and Yuan Jue had been old acquaintances of Consort Hui’s.

She hardly dared think any further. She didn’t know what truth they might uncover if they kept digging, nor whether they possessed the wisdom and strength to bear it once they did.

She opened her eyes to glance at Lin Xiao—his face was as calm and steady as a mountain, as ever; this whole cascade of tangled troubles hadn’t left a single trace of worry on his face.

She let out a small breath of relief. This man carried within him a strength that settled the heart—no matter what happened in the world outside, he always seemed able to manage things as best as they could be managed, never flinching, never indulging in self-pity. With this thought, her mind finally calmed, and weariness swept over her. This time she didn’t fight it, and before long she had fallen asleep in his arms.

Prince Lan’s residence lay across the better part of Chang’an from Qingyun Temple—it would take a full hour to get there.

Whether from sheer exhaustion or simply how comfortable Lin Xiao’s arms were, Qin Yao fell into a deep sleep, not waking until the clash of metal against metal reached her ears, jolting her from her slumber.

“What’s wrong?” That sound had always signaled danger and assassination. Her drowsiness vanished in an instant, and she sat up straight, blinking sleep from her eyes as she looked toward Lin Xiao.

Lin Xiao had his sword in hand, the carriage curtain thrown back, his eyes fixed unblinking on something outside. Firelight cast mottled, shifting shadows across his face, his expression colder and grimmer than she had ever seen it.

Qin Yao’s heart lurched, and she leaned out to look as well—the carriage had, at some point, already reached Qingyun Temple.

The sounds of fighting were coming from within the temple.

Worse still, the temple had, at some point, caught fire, the flames now roaring skyward.

Her pupils contracted sharply, fear seizing her completely. “Master—Senior Brother!” she cried, and made to rise and leap from the carriage.

Before she could rise, a flying sword suddenly shot toward the carriage, aimed straight at the window, driving directly toward Lin Xiao and Qin Yao inside.

Lin Xiao swung his arm, knocking the flying sword aside, then tore down the curtain and leapt clean out of the carriage, landing steadily on the horse’s back. Taking in the scene within the temple, he sprang down to the ground and called back to Qin Yao, “A’Yao, everyone in there is a first-rate master—stay in the carriage and don’t come out.”

Before he had even finished speaking, two men in black charged at him from the side, blades swinging down at him together.

Lin Xiao parried the long blade aimed at his face, twisted his body, and lashed out with a kick that landed solidly in the other man’s gut.

Fearing Lin Xiao might be at a disadvantage, Qin Yao secretly formed a seal and sent a talisman flying out, casting an illusion spell on the two assassins.

The two men suddenly felt as though endless snares had sprung up beneath their feet, and the moment they struck out, they crashed straight into each other and tumbled to the ground in a heap, the impact ringing out with a heavy thud.

Every move the two had made just now had been a killing strike, every blow aimed straight at taking Lin Xiao’s life.

This was no time for mercy—it was a matter of kill or be killed. Without the slightest hesitation, Lin Xiao ran each man through with a single thrust, killing them both where they fell. He bent down and tore the cloth masks from their faces; just as he’d expected, beneath the masks were two faces he had never seen before.

He frowned, and without wasting any more time on the two of them, swung his sword and pressed on into the temple.

Chang Rong and the others had already gone in ahead and were now deep in the thick of the fight.

The men in black who had come numbered more than ten, every one of them a first-rate fighter; Chang Rong, Wei Bo, plus Wang Liang and Lyu Qinhuai—the two guards Qin Yao had earlier stationed at Qingyun Temple to protect Qing Xuzi and his disciple—came to no more than five or six in all. Outnumbered, they couldn’t gain the upper hand for the moment.

Qin Yao climbed down from the carriage after him and lingered a moment at the temple gate, peering inside, but with shadows of figures shifting and the clash of blades everywhere, she couldn’t make out the state of the battle at all.

Looking up, she saw the courtyard wall was quite high, and simply gathered her breath and leapt up onto it. Once she had steadied herself, she began anxiously scanning for any sign of Master.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long before she spotted a gray-blue figure beneath a bare locust tree in the corner of the courtyard—the build and fighting style left no doubt it was Master.

The men in black clustered around him were the most numerous, four or five at least. No matter how hard Wei Bo and the others tried from the outer ring to draw the pressure off him, these assassins clung to Master without letting up, willing to be cut and bleeding all over rather than dodge—it seemed they would settle for nothing less than his death.

Master was already hard-pressed on every side, struggling to hold them off.

Qin Yao watched in an agony of worry, but didn’t dare cry out, fearing the moment she made a sound, she would become a target for the assassins herself.

She edged carefully into position, sighting in on the assassins’ shoulders and backs, steadied her breath, and sent the talismans in her hand flying one after another behind them, murmuring incantations under her breath to cast her illusion spells.

With so many men crowded together in too narrow a space, the spell wasn’t nearly as effective as it had been against the two men at the gate earlier—only when one of them leaned forward, about to strike at Qing Xuzi’s shoulder, did he stumble slightly off-balance.

Wei Bo and the others knew exactly how to seize an opening, and that single moment of weakness was all it took for one of them to run the man through.

Qin Yao repeated the trick to help deal with the remaining men, gradually breaking the deadlock.

Other assassins in the courtyard, sensing something was wrong, turned to look and saw a young woman in fine fur robes standing on the courtyard wall, talismans flying from her hands—clearly someone skilled in extraordinary arts.

One man’s face darkened, and raising his sword, he prepared to send it flying straight at Qin Yao.

But before he could raise his arm, he felt a sudden heat at his wrist, and then, with a ringing clang, his sword fell to the ground.

He looked down to find his wrist had been cleanly severed, and out of the corner of his eye caught sight of someone now standing beside him who had not been there a moment before—this person had approached without the slightest sound, his blade so sharp that for an instant he felt no pain at all.

His face changed completely, but years of training kept him from crying out in pain. Gritting his teeth, he clutched his streaming wrist and tried to roll aside to dodge whatever blow came next.

But Lin Xiao gave him no chance to catch his breath at all—having severed the man’s wrist, he immediately drove his blade into the man’s abdomen, every blow a ruthlessly decisive killing strike.

Only once he had struck the man down dead did Lin Xiao’s expression ease somewhat, though he didn’t dare let his guard down, keeping constant watch on Qin Yao for fear someone else might try some underhanded move against her.

With Qin Yao’s illusion spells aiding him, Qing Xuzi gradually freed himself from his predicament, slipping back to one side at a chance opening to catch his breath. He looked up, following the direction the talismans had come from, to where Qin Yao stood on the wall, and thought of leaping up there himself to send out talismans against the assassins below. But the moment he tried to gather his energy, a thick, metallic taste of blood roiled up in his chest—he had clearly already suffered internal injuries.

He didn’t dare force it, standing where he was to slowly steady his breath, before finally drawing a talisman from his robe and sending it flying toward a few nearby assassins locked in combat with Chang Rong and the others.

His talisman craft was clearly more advanced than Qin Yao’s—whoever it struck would, within the space of a single breath, fall to the ground without fail.

With Qing Xuzi and his disciple’s help, Chang Rong and the others soon gained the upper hand, blades rising and falling, cutting down the assassins one by one, leaving only the last two alive for questioning. They bound them hand and foot and tossed them off to one side.

But once everyone had finished clearing the courtyard and went back to question the two prisoners, they found the men had already breathed their last, leaving no chance for questioning at all.

Qin Yao leapt down from the wall and ran to Master’s side, just about to ask where her senior brother was, when the fire in the temple, having spread from the rear courtyard all the way to the front, set the rafters and window frames crackling and popping in the roaring flames. The wind, far from putting out the blaze, only fanned it further out of control.

Any further delay would only see them all trapped inside by the inferno, with no one able to escape.

No one dared linger, and they all hurried out of the temple.

Lin Xiao instructed Chang Rong to pick out two of the corpses and load them onto the horses, then turned and saw Qin Yao and Qing Xuzi gazing with faces full of regret at Qingyun Temple as it was gradually swallowed by the flames. Fearing their mood would only grow worse the longer they watched, he hurried them both into the carriage.

Once Chang Rong and the others had finished tying things up, Lin Xiao had them drive the carriage toward an obscure villa belonging to Prince Lan’s household that no one else knew of.

In the carriage, Qin Yao looked anxiously at Master. “Where is my senior brother?”

Qing Xuzi paid her no mind at first, focused only on closing his eyes and steadying his disordered breath, before finally saying slowly, “I hid your senior brother elsewhere several days ago.”

Qin Yao started slightly. “Why would you hide him?”

Qing Xuzi said nothing.

Seeing that Master still refused to tell her the truth, Qin Yao, exasperated past patience, unrolled the portrait of him as a young man and laid it before him. “Master, I won’t hide it from you any longer—the Young Master and I have been investigating your past these recent days. We already know you were once a Daoist priest from Yuezhou, that Yuan Jue’s secular name is Su Jianfu, that the two of you were both old acquaintances of Consort Hui, and that you only came to Chang’an twenty years ago. Master, am I right? Now that things have come to this, will you still refuse to tell me everything?”

At the sight of the portrait, Qing Xuzi’s first reaction was shock, as if about to lose his temper, but the moment he caught sight of Qin Yao’s face full of sorrow, his anger collapsed into despair. After a long silence, he shook his head, his face full of reluctance. “You suffered so much as a child, and only just now have a few peaceful days, with you and the Young Master so deeply in love—how could I bear to drag you into this? Foolish child, why must you keep digging?”

Qin Yao said bitterly, “It’s not like you think anymore—keeping us from getting involved doesn’t mean we can stay out of it! Ever since that night we stumbled onto the academy full of vengeful spirits, whoever is behind this has probably already meant to kill us, and tonight made it plain they intend to wipe us all out. If you keep refusing to speak like this, every one of us is going to end up dead!”

Lin Xiao, watching Qing Xuzi from the side, saw how his hair had gone entirely white, his shoulders sagging as though crushed beneath some unbearably heavy burden—a different man entirely from the one in the portrait, proof enough of just how much torment he had endured over the years. He wondered what secret could possibly lie so deep within him that he would rather lose his own life than reveal it.

Qing Xuzi had long since known the situation was beyond saving, and gave up resisting, letting out a barely audible sigh before speaking, his voice distant and hollow. “A’Yao, do you still remember the few extremely sinister Daoist array formations I once told you about?”

Qin Yao blinked, taken aback, then nodded. “I remember! But you said those methods were used by people of crooked hearts to harm others, that they were forbidden by every righteous path in this world, and you never let us learn them.”

Qing Xuzi gave a bitter laugh. “Among them was an array called the Seven Banes Infant-Binding Array. Can you tell me what makes this array so sinister?”

Qin Yao searched her memory for a moment, then said thoughtfully, “To lay the array, one takes a freshly dead corpse and locks the deceased’s soul within the body, preserving the remnants of the dead person’s consciousness. Then bone-piercing nails are driven through the body in a thousand places, and an invisible secret method gnaws at the bones, leaving the dead to suffer agony day and night, with no release possible, trapped as they are between the realms of yin and yang. Once the spirit’s resentment has built up to a certain point, the birth date and hour of the child meant to be suppressed are carved onto one side of an iron plate, the other side smeared with that child’s blood, and the plate pressed beneath the bones—then all the vengeful spirit’s resentment pours wholesale onto the cursed child, so that no matter how gifted by nature, he can only grow more and more simple-minded with each passing day—”

At this point her heart lurched. “You mean—Senior Brother had the Seven Banes Infant-Binding Array placed on him? But that method is said to be extremely yin and extremely venomous—it doesn’t only cause simple-mindedness, it also drains away the suppressed person’s spiritual essence day by day, so that within ten years they’re bound to die suddenly. Unless someone knew the method for crafting the Soul-Anchoring Pill—but even if someone did know it, it wouldn’t be easy to sustain for long, since that pill is called the Gold-Melting Pill, requiring vast amounts of rare and precious medicinal materials to refine every single year—”

As she spoke, she suddenly looked up at Master, and met his gaze, bitter beyond words. Startled for an instant, she said slowly, “Don’t tell me—have you been using the Soul-Anchoring Pill to keep my senior brother alive all these years?”