Traveling a mountain at night — danger within danger.

Beneath her feet were slippery wet stones and grass-covered ledges. Above her head was boundless darkness, not a single star or ray of moonlight to be seen.

In a daze, she seemed to have returned to the stone passageway inside Jingbo Tower — that silent, pitch-black, cold and damp stone corridor.

Only this time, the end of this darkness would hold no light, no gentle breeze. Nor would there be that person sitting amid the glow of the lake and the colors of spring, waiting for her to draw near.

In this darkness, the only person she could rely on was herself.

But the long night always passes, and dawn always comes. Doesn’t it?

Xiao Nanhui gritted her teeth, drove her dagger into the tumble of stones, and with every last ounce of her strength, hauled herself over that mountain ridge.

At the quiet summit, only thin wisps of mist drifted with the clouds and rain.

Then she saw it — by a mountain path half buried in mudslide at the base of the ridge, seated on a stone, a familiar, broad, sturdy silhouette.

That back was slightly hunched, utterly motionless.

Her heart leapt with joy. She called out tentatively.

“Bolao?”

The figure still did not move.

Anxious about Xiao Zhun’s whereabouts, she was somewhat impatient with the other’s seemingly playful stillness. She had no choice but to laboriously climb down the ridge.

The moment her foot touched the mountain path, Xiao Nanhui sensed something was wrong.

The path was scored with deep and shallow gouges of varying depths. The cliff face to one side had crumbled away by half, and everywhere bore the marks of a fierce struggle.

She walked a few more steps forward. Her foot struck something hard beneath it, producing a jarring, grating sound.

She moved her boot aside and found half a blade buried deep in the earth.

Her heart lurched. She quickened her pace, crossed the remaining distance in two or three strides, reached the stone, and quickly turned the figure toward her.

Beneath a pair of short, thick eyebrows that were pinched together on that broad face, two eyes slowly opened after a moment.

“Why did you come?”

Xiao Nanhui exhaled in relief, then pressed urgently:

“What happened? Have you seen Foster Father—”

Her voice cut off. She lowered her head in a daze, eyes falling to her own left hand.

At first she had assumed the warm, wet sensation was from the rain. But rainwater would not feel so warm and thick.

Red saturated her palm — a color soaked and darkened by the night into something almost like ink.

That hunched figure finally stirred — but only enough to shift its body partially to one side.

“The Marquis was taken away by that purple-robed bastard. You should go quickly — there might still be time to catch—”

“Quiet!” Xiao Nanhui’s voice was fierce in a way she had never been before. She tried to use her hands to tear a strip from the hem of her dark mourning robe, but whether because the wretched fabric was simply too sturdy or because her hands were trembling so badly, she could not tear it no matter how she tried.

“Don’t bother. If wrapping it in a bit of torn cloth would fix things, what would we need doctors for?”

Bolao spoke, then coughed up half a mouthful of fresh blood. Her expression held an exhaustion unlike any she had ever shown before.

“That son of a bitch really had a ruthless hand. If I’d had even half of his ruthlessness, I might have been your master back in those days.”

Xiao Nanhui’s face had gone white as paper. She forced herself to use her weakened arms to prop up that short, stout body.

“Come on — we’re going to find a physician—”

“Never mind.” Bolao withdrew her arm, then casually patted her own hair. Her bun was still there, still round. “I hate the smell of those medicines the most. Weren’t all of Lady Dai’s medicines decocted by you anyway?”

Xiao Nanhui clenched her teeth. She tried to speak with an angry voice, but when she opened her mouth, a thread of something close to crying had crept into it.

“Are you — are you completely out of your mind?! I only told you to follow and keep watch — I never told you to come and get yourself killed!”

“Quiet down, you’re deafening me.” Bolao’s voice grew lower and lower. “Besides, it wasn’t for you. I did it for the grapes—”

The warm rain fell on her face, carrying a kind of drowsy comfort.

“Xiao Nanhui — don’t avenge me. You can’t beat him.”

She raised a stubby, mud-stained finger and pressed it to that grief-stricken face, leaving a few fingerprints behind.

She sighed, and looked at the water on her fingertips.

“What are you crying for? Stubbornness is the Andao Academy’s tradition. It’s not as if you only found out today—”

Xiao Nanhui dug her fingernails into the soaking wet earth before her. She felt as though something sour and scorching was lodged in her throat, and it took enormous effort before she could force words out.

“You don’t belong to them — you don’t have to listen to them. Just listen to me. Don’t die. You’re not allowed to die. You can’t die—”

Bolao suddenly laughed.

“Then beg me.”

Xiao Nanhui’s lips trembled. A broken sound rose from deep in her throat, hoarse and rough — like someone else’s voice entirely.

“I beg you. I beg you, please. I beg you, please—”

Bolao’s smile stayed fixed at the corner of her mouth. But her eyes slowly closed.

“I’ll think about it.”

The rain of late spring turning into early summer fell. Xiao Nanhui felt the body in her arms grow cold at last, yet she held her position still, repeating those same words over and over.

“I beg you — please — please—”

But her pleas had no one to receive them.

She imagined that in the next instant, the person in her arms would open one eye to peek at her, then roll over with some smugness and turn her back to her — tilting that great round head with an air of proud triumph and saying something like: since you’ve begged me, I suppose I’ll consider doing such-and-such.

But none of that came to pass. And she could not accept this reality: no matter how long she waited, none of it would ever come to pass again.

A bolt of lightning split the sky and illuminated the dagger in her hand and the broken blade scattered not far away.

She tilted her head back and opened her eyes, staring directly at the falling rain.

The rain entered her eyes, and then, mingled with her tears, rolled down — leaving behind a burning trail.

Above the overcast skies of Doucheng Ridge, black clouds blotted out all trace of the world’s contours. Only a single lantern swayed through the mountains — and drawing closer, one could see it was a carriage moving along the mountain road.

The coachman seated at the front went along in no particular hurry, while the wheels pressed along the edge of a cliff, every turn seemingly one moment away from plunging over the side.

Suddenly, he reined in the two blindfolded horses pulling the carriage and waited quietly for something.

Before long, a faint sound of rushing air approached from a distance, coming up from the cliff below on the left and leaping over the edge — resolving into three dark silhouettes standing along the cliff’s rim.

In the instant the flying wires retracted like spidersilk, Xiao Zhun landed, reversed the situation, and thrust the long spear in his hand through the curtain of rain directly toward the person seated atop the carriage.

The thrust came with fierce momentum. And the deepest subtlety of spear technique lay in what was called the “follow-up” — evade one move, and another follows; moves chaining upon moves, until the opponent reveals an opening.

Yanzi understood that it would be unwise to prolong the engagement, so he drew his long sword without hesitation and received the spear’s thrust head-on.

A tremendous clash of metal rang out through the mountains. The swordsman and the general each held their ground, the flesh between thumb and forefinger on both hands slightly numb, each having formed a fresh assessment of the other’s skill.

Yanzi stood with his sword horizontal across the carriage shaft, his tone cold.

“We saved your life, and you repay us with steel. How remarkably rude.”

Xiao Zhun glanced behind him. The two flying-wire assassins had already vanished without a trace.

He tried to keep his thoughts clear and not let himself be dragged into the bewilderment of this strange, distorted scene.

“Why save me?”

The man in the carriage paused, as if considering how to give a rigorous answer.

“Are you asking about this time — or about that time, more than ten years ago?”

Xiao Zhun’s expression shifted.

“You had a hand in what happened back then.”

“Yes, and no.” Yanzi gave a small nod, then shook his head. “The one who wanted you dead was not us — I imagine you already know that much. As for more than that, I cannot tell you yet. But if you come with me—”

The general’s eyes grew increasingly cold.

“And if I refuse?”

“Are you certain?”

Yanzi stepped back unhurriedly half a pace and raised his hand to lift one corner of the carriage curtain.

Xiao Zhun’s pupils contracted. His breath grew heavy.

“Aunt?”

The woman behind the curtain had the wan complexion of illness. The scar carved into her face made her look like a porcelain vessel that had developed a crack — as though she might shatter to pieces in the next instant.

That Xiao Dai would appear here could only mean she had been abducted from the Xiao Mansion. And if the Xiao Mansion had been raided, then—

Xiao Zhun called out in a low, urgent voice.

“Aunt — where are Dujuan and Chencai?”

Lady Dai’s eyes remained vacant and dull, seeming neither to hear what Xiao Zhun said nor to see the person before her — whether from shock or the effects of a sedative drug, it was impossible to say.

“You’re referring to those two servants?”

The violet-robed swordsman, who had been silent until now, spoke up suddenly, as if remembering something.

Xiao Zhun’s palm tightened into a fist, his voice dropping lower still.

“What did you do to them?”

“Killed them.” The man blinked, like a child who had accidentally knocked over a bottle of oil — his regret edged with an air of innocence. “They were useless, and they kept throwing themselves in my way no matter how I tried to send them off. I had no choice but to kill them.”

“What?”

“I said I—”

Before he could finish, a flash of silver erupted in front of him. His instinct made him fall back and twist away, but the silver light shifted direction in an instant, sweeping sideways — striking his already-wounded ribs and hurling his entire body away.

Xiao Zhun kept moving without pause, gripping the spear for a counterattack. The figure that had just been struck leaped with astonishing agility and landed swiftly on top of the carriage.

The wound in his ribs, reopened by that blow, had begun to bleed again. Yet his face showed no trace of pain — if anything, there was a faint gleam of excitement.

“The Xiao family’s spear technique is truly fascinating. You and I should properly exchange a few rounds sometime.” He seemed to remember something, and a look of regret crossed his face. “A pity — not today. Today, we still have somewhere to be.”

His last word had not yet left his mouth when the man across from him roared.

“You killed the people of my household and still expect me to go anywhere with you? Dream on!”

“You will come with me.” He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, then turned toward the carriage cabin. “Come out.”

There was no movement from inside the carriage.

Yanzi sighed, then drew back his left hand and struck it through the carriage roof — a clean punch that punched straight through. A woman’s cry of alarm rang out instantly from within.

The moment he heard that voice, Xiao Zhun’s expression changed entirely.

Yanzi’s five fingers curved into claws, thrust into the newly torn hole, and seized hold, pulling sharply upward. A woman’s silhouette, dressed in white prison garments, was held in his grip — her dark hair loose and disheveled, her composure shattered.

He had grabbed the woman by her hair and wrenched her out of the carriage in one motion.

“I forgot to mention — I brought another person out of the city as well. She took some effort to find. But the Bai family is now useless, and keeping her around is a nuisance. If you don’t come, I’ll kill her—”

As he spoke, the grip of his hand tightened and he lifted that beautiful head straight upward. Bai Yun, to her credit, refused to make a sound.

Xiao Zhun’s movements faltered. The fury in his eyes gradually dissolved into a scattered, diffuse light.

The face that flashed before him was not the blood-streaked face of Bai He Liu from moments ago.

It was a face from very long ago — the side of a face glimpsed in the noise of the setting sun, beneath flowering plum trees lining a wide street, on a broad road in Quecheng.

An indeterminate time passed. In the end, he lowered the tip of his spear.

“I’ll go with you.”

The violet-robed swordsman gave a satisfied nod and finally released the woman’s hair.

“Very well then.”

With the thud of the woman collapsing to the ground, Xiao Zhun stepped quickly forward and ducked into the carriage cabin.

Bai Yun had already lost consciousness. No matter how softly he called out to her, she did not respond.

Yanzi descended from the top of the carriage with effortless grace, and was just about to turn and scout the road ahead. Then, abruptly, something stirred behind him and off to the side, at the base of the cliff.

At first he assumed it was his companions returning. He quickly realized something was wrong.

Mud-streaked hands scrabbled up over the edge of the mountain path, and then a silhouette clawed its way up — pressing close like a mountain-dwelling specter.

The sound of falling rain masked her footsteps and her ragged breathing — but it could not conceal her killing intent.

A bolt of lightning sliced across the night sky and illuminated that dark shadow.

The woman’s long hair had half-escaped its binding, soaked flat against her face by the rain like tattered threads. She held only a dagger in her hand. From fighting her way through thorns and broken rocks along the cliff face, her arms and neck were cut in gashes both large and small. Her lips bore a split — likely from a fall somewhere along the way.

Yet none of this wretchedness could diminish the fury blazing in her eyes. From the long hours without sleep, her eyes were shot through with red — the color of hatred and rage.

“You’re—” Yanzi furrowed his brow slightly, finally recalling something. “You’re the one who serves beside the Emperor?”

Xiao Nanhui did not answer. She did not want to waste a single word on him.

In her heart there was only one voice.

Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.

She pushed off hard with her feet. The hidden crossbow in her right sleeve sent its bolt flying toward a vital point; at the same time, her left hand reversed its grip on the dagger and drove straight for the blood-soaked ribs of that violet-robed figure.

She had already cast aside technique and method — had cast aside even the principle of attacking while defending. What drove this exhausted body now was hatred and rage alone.

A crisp ding, and the crossbow bolt that had flown through the air was split in two. Yanzi remained motionless in place. His sword handle dropped down hard, striking three inches below the woman’s shoulder blade. His other hand reached out like a ghost and precisely pinched the ulna of the hand that gripped the weapon.

The tip of the blade, extended from between her fingers, was only half an inch from the man’s body — and could advance no further.

Xiao Nanhui refused to yield. Heedless of everything, she wrenched her wrist against his hold with brute force, pressed on through the agony of her ulna being ground down, and lunged at him again. He had already redirected his blade — from low to high, he swung it out in a steady arc.

Xiao Nanhui was hurled backward by the tremendous force and slammed into the cliff wall behind her, spitting a mouthful of blood in an instant.

“It is said that thread spun by the Xutu silkworm, woven with a double warp, can withstand the sharpest edge. Having seen it now, the reputation is indeed well-earned.” Yanzi’s gaze fell upon the mud-caked dark robe the woman wore. “That garment of yours just saved your life. But the next time — I can simply cut your throat directly.”

The blood-spitting woman propped herself up from the mud and struggled to her feet. Her dark mourning robe had been slashed into something resembling torn rags, but the few fasteners at the neck remained stubbornly in place.

She said nothing. Her eyes held hatred without end. That hatred stripped away her awareness of pain, her judgment of danger, her will to live.

She only wanted to kill the person before her, and for that she was willing to pay any price.

She screamed and threw herself at him. Form and footwork were long since abandoned — she only sought to drive the dagger in her hand into a vital point of her enemy.

Yanzi narrowed his eyes. The long sword in his hand hummed, and the sword energy carried by its edge parted the curtain of rain apart, the tip blazing with starlight, surging forward like a terrible dragon.

Clang.

Xiao Nanhui’s wrist went numb, and the dagger fell from her hand. At the same moment, the sword flying straight at her was also deflected. The sword energy that spilled out severed the reins, and the two horses harnessed to the carriage were startled into anxious, agitated movement.

Then she heard that familiar voice above her, not far away.

“You cannot kill her.”

Yanzi looked at Xiao Zhun, seemingly weighing the cost of seeing this trouble through.

A moment later, he turned and climbed onto the carriage, reconnecting the severed reins.

“If she follows again, I will have no choice but to kill her.”

Xiao Zhun said nothing more. He only turned his gaze toward the lone figure standing at the cliff’s edge.

“Foster father—” she murmured, opening her mouth, and it was as though a brief light had returned to her eyes.

But in the next instant, Xiao Zhun leaped onto the carriage.

He stood at the rear, half-turning to look at her.

His features were blurred in the darkness — or perhaps it was the mud and rain falling into her eyes that made her unable to see him clearly.

“Go back. Don’t follow.”

She seemed almost frozen in place. Sensing the carriage begin to move, about to pull away, she suddenly lunged forward like someone gone mad, seizing the carriage board at the back with both hands.

“Foster father, come back with me—”

Her voice trembled, holding something close to desperate, humble pleading.

Yanzi watched with cold eyes and drove the carriage forward. The woman at the rear was dragged through the earth, leaving a long mark behind her in the ground.

She stubbornly refused to let go, her two eyes locked onto the man standing at the rear of the carriage — as though that alone could make him change his mind, as though that alone could make someone tell her that all the despair and pain of this moment were nothing but a nightmare.

At last, that figure slowly bent down. A rough, calloused palm gently closed over her hands where they gripped the board.

Just like many years before, when he had ridden out across the desert wastes on horseback, taken her by the hand, brought her to this city, and given her a home.

“Nanhui — I cannot go back with you.”

“Why — why can’t you?”

She already knew the reason.

She already knew the answer, yet she still had to ask him.

She so desperately wanted to hear a different answer from his lips.

She so desperately wanted him to tell her he was only leaving for something, and would be back shortly.

“From now on, take care of yourself. If we are fortunate enough to meet again someday—”

The hand resting on the back of her hand suddenly bore down, prying her fingers open one by one.

At last, her palms were empty. Her whole body collapsed into the mud.

The figure standing at the rear of the departing carriage said something more, but she could no longer hear any of it.

“Xiao Zhun!”

She screamed with the last of her voice.

This was the first time in her life she had ever called his name like this.

She poured every ounce of that syllable into those two characters — all the closeness, the dependence, the longing she had accumulated since the day she first knew him.

Don’t go. Don’t leave her alone.

The words she had not yet spoken — could he hear them?

He must be able to hear them.

That shadowy silhouette seemed to pause for a moment — but in the end, it receded with the carriage and did not look back again.

She lay prostrate in the mountain mud, like a stone tablet buried under wild grass, like a wandering ghost who had lost her soul, like a child who had been abandoned.

She wished the passing of time could deliver her from this darkest of moments — but no matter how long it seemed, her heart still ached exactly as it had in the instant he left.

Two hours earlier, the moon had passed its zenith.

Today was the eighth day of the fourth month — her birthday.

A year ago today, she had drawn a fortune lot at a temple.

Gaze toward a lone lamp in the mountain, All around the abyss, the path is hard to find. Seek the figure beneath that light — Yet wind rises, clouds cover the moon.

She had torn the slip to pieces. Yet she had not escaped this ordeal.

Today was the day it came to pass.

She had believed in the bond that had existed between them. She had believed that time would weave a warm set of armor for her, to ward off all loneliness and hardship — and had forgotten that no act of companionship lasts forever.

The meeting of two people is like the moment two birds cross paths in flight — carrying the fate that brought them together, and the destiny that must one day part them.

Dark clouds gathered overhead, and for a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath.

The downpour came crashing down, washing everything away.

His retreating figure. Their shared past. All the beauty and preciousness that had once existed — in an instant, swept away by the rain together with her tears, vanished without a trace.