It was a slight, slender figure, face covered by a grey cloth — altogether unremarkable in appearance.

But Xiao Nanhui dared not underestimate them, because this was the very same person she had briefly encountered on the fifth story. One truly could not judge by appearances. Did she not have one very close to her — short and round, who had never once lost a fight?

This was already the topmost story of the Pinxiao Pagoda. Above the flowing clouds, dazzling golden light flooded down, almost too brilliant to look at directly. The garland of twenty-four rambling roses hung from a length of rope suspended in the center — casual and unassuming, yet radiating an air of untouchable supremacy.

Anyone who had made it this far was no ordinary person.

In a direct confrontation, she was not without confidence in her ability to win. But the situation demanded she resolve this quickly — if more people arrived to join the fight, there was every risk of losing to a bystander who had let the others exhaust themselves first.

She had caught a glimpse just now of the bandit exchanging blows with this person — brief as it was, Xiao Nanhui had already formed an assessment: this person’s actual cultivation was far inferior to that of the three bandits, but their technique was extraordinarily unpredictable, relying on three parts surprise. Even pressing for a swift decisive victory would not be easy.

She had come all this way. To give up now would be to waste everything she had already done.

Xiao Nanhui had what one might or might not call a flaw — she was somewhat single-minded. Once she had set her mind on something, she would need to give it one try before she could let it go, even if it left her with a bloodied head.

While she was working through her options, the other person was studying her in return — though they did not seem to spend very long on it. Having judged that Xiao Nanhui would not back down, the figure swiftly adjusted their strategy.

The topmost story of the pagoda was very cramped. The garland hung in the air between them. Xiao Nanhui had just climbed up and was the farther of the two from it. The figure abandoned any thought of attacking Xiao Nanhui and moved directly for the garland.

Xiao Nanhui naturally could not allow that. She raced for the garland at the same moment.

As they closed in on the center, the available footholds grew ever fewer. Xiao Nanhui simply leapt, wrapped both arms around the person’s right leg, and dragged them bodily out of midair.

Watching the garland slip past by a hair’s breadth, the person’s killing intent flared. Seeing that both of Xiao Nanhui’s hands were momentarily occupied, they drove both elbows sharply downward at her back. Xiao Nanhui, reading the movement through the air, used the sheer power of her body to twist in midair, raising her right leg to take the blow. But her opponent had been waiting — the moment her front was exposed, a devastating kick from the left foot came slicing in from an unexpected angle.

That move was startlingly familiar. She had seen someone take it on the way up and go plummeting from the pagoda. Even if luck held and they managed to grab something, taking that hit would shatter bones and sever tendons — there would be no climbing back up afterward.

At this moment Xiao Nanhui was positioned below her opponent — in a position of absolute disadvantage. Even if she managed to block the blow in time, falling was still all but inevitable.

It was a dead end on all sides. Dissolving it would require a method that held nothing in reserve.

Xiao Nanhui kept the iron grip of one hand on the person’s right ankle. Her other hand cut directly at the opponent’s side. This move left nothing back — no margin for the opponent, and none for herself, because it left her entire chest and torso completely exposed to the enemy.

But the opponent had clearly not anticipated that Xiao Nanhui would not block at all. By the time they registered the threat to their right side, the reflex to protect themselves had already forced a shift in position — and the killing kick grazed past Xiao Nanhui’s chest, harmless. Her crisis dissolved without any effort on her part.

A true case of turning certain death into survival.

The person landed and found their footing. The look they fixed on Xiao Nanhui was visibly different from before. Though she was a woman, she was a hundred times harder to deal with than the one who had just gone plunging over the edge. But looking closely, he could see she was already wounded — if he simply kept her occupied a while longer, victory was still within reach.

Xiao Nanhui had barely gotten a moment’s breath before the opponent pressed in again, this time not going for a decisive blow, but harassing her — which at this height was no less dangerous than a direct attack. One careless slip and there was no need for anyone else to act; she could fall on her own.

As the exchanges mounted, Xiao Nanhui’s puzzlement only grew. This person’s technique had clearly been shaped by a master, yet their underlying cultivation was evidently not rooted in a lifetime of martial training. If they had been sent by some faction, why would such a faction send someone like this to compete?

She was still mulling this over when the opponent closed in again. Xiao Nanhui suddenly changed direction, reaching for the cloth covering the person’s face. The figure startled and spun back with a palm strike.

The palm had lost all precision, but was thrown with every ounce of force available. Xiao Nanhui sidestepped it — but the section of wooden railing behind her was not so fortunate. It took the full force of the blow, and the crossbeam beneath it snapped in an instant.

Both moves exhausted, neither of them had any strength left to maneuver. They dropped, solidly and inevitably, onto the one remaining beam that still had a single support point.

Xiao Nanhui was at one end; the other person at the other; and that beam was a seesaw underfoot.

Yet what Xiao Nanhui had not anticipated was that this person weighed even less than she did. The section of beam beneath her feet immediately dropped. She pushed off in a leap, reaching for the wooden railing nearby, but the person’s hands moved with startling speed — a broken length of wood came flying across, and the railing shattered before her in an instant. Her leap found nothing. She slammed into the central pillar of the pagoda, and the wound she had bound tore open — blood poured freely. Her vision went dark; when she came back to herself, she was already in freefall.

She had to grab onto something — anything.

Xiao Nanhui flung her arms out, grasping wildly for whatever she could reach. Her palms were slick with blood — when she seized a beam, her grip slid straight off. Before she could react she had dropped further, and then her whole body slammed sidelong into another crossbeam below. Her insides felt as though they had been rattled to pieces. Fighting through the pain, she barely managed to flip herself and lock her arms around the beam. Each breath carried the taste of blood.

All right. Still here. Still here.

The next instant, wind came rushing down from above. She threw herself sideways just in time, narrowly avoiding a falling piece of broken timber.

Ignoring the pain throughout her body, Xiao Nanhui scrambled upright and looked above. The slender figure, apparently convinced she was no longer a threat, was sprinting for the garland hanging at the center. Even if she climbed back up now, she would always be one step too late.

Was this truly failure? Failure in this very last step?

Xiao Nanhui bit down on her lip. Her trembling eyes swept rapidly over every detail within her field of vision.

In the clear sky, every corner around her was visible with perfect clarity — the broken beams, the glazed tiles worn by ages of wind and rain, the great faded painting on the massive central pillar, and something that flickered past in the wind.

A rope.

How could there be a rope at this height, ten thousand feet in the air?

Wait — back on the rooftop just now, wasn’t the garland hanging from something that looked exactly like this — the same kind of hemp rope?

Some things allow no time for verification. Xiao Nanhui’s body was faster than her thoughts. In an instant she had already shot forward like an arrow released from a bow. She barely looked at her footing, choosing each landing point entirely by instinct and peripheral vision. Her mind was a blank — only a single conviction driving her forward, the absolute certainty that she would reach it. In this state, she had no room left to feel afraid.

The hemp rope was some distance away from the pagoda’s body. The wind swung it back and forth, making it crack like a struck sail. If she threw herself toward it and missed, she would have no way back to the Pinxiao Pagoda — only the fall from nine stories to her death on the ground below.

In a lifetime, there are always a few moments when one stands exactly at the boundary between life and death. This was the first such moment Xiao Nanhui had ever encountered.

By the time she registered what was truly at stake, her foot was already on the last section of the pagoda’s railing. One more step was the open void. Her momentum was set. There was no possibility of pulling back now.

She could not hesitate. Hesitation meant certain death.

With that conviction, she poured every ounce of strength into her legs. Her entire body rose like a deer leaping from the edge of a cliff.

The wind rushed past her on all sides, and then seemed to rise from below, lifting her up like a pair of hands — on level ground, there was never a wind so fierce as this.

It seems that even being ten thousand feet in the air has its advantages, after all.

That was what Xiao Nanhui thought in the moment she seized the rope.

The weight of her body pulled the hemp rope taut in an instant. From the end of the rope above, a faint snap reached her ears. Xiao Nanhui made a tremendous effort to twist her head upward and look — the end of the rope, a dot of deep crimson, drew closer and closer, until at last it settled before her eyes.

With deep satisfaction, Xiao Nanhui wrapped her arms around the garland she had earned through such extraordinary effort, tightened her grip on the one rope that could bear her weight, and let her body fall.

The clouds and mist roared past her ears. Then the rope in Xiao Nanhui’s hands went abruptly taut, and the force flung her forward — and in an instant she burst through the obscuring fog, and the vast expanse of the Youyin Altar spread below her feet. The sky opened wide before her eyes.

The countless upturned faces below were struck silent by the sight. The moment they saw the garland around Xiao Nanhui’s body, the crowd erupted in thunderous cheering. Waves of noise surged and rolled through the air above the Youyin Altar.

Xiao Nanhui used the rope and the varying heights of the surrounding buildings to slow her descent. At last, after making her way down in stages, she returned to the ground — her palms raw and mangled, her limbs trembling in waves of weakness.

The magistrate and county chief presiding over the ceremony came forward to congratulate the victor. In something of a daze, Xiao Nanhui handed over what she was holding. She had just opened her mouth to remind them to have those three bandits she had kicked from the pagoda taken into custody when it occurred to her — she was still on the territory of the Shen clan of Huozhou. The fact that those three had been moving about so freely might not be because no one had recognized them, but because someone had given the order to let them pass.

The thought made her break into a cold sweat. She swallowed the words she had been about to say, managed a stiff smile, and exchanged a few pleasantries with the officials. A ritual attendant was murmuring in her ear about that evening’s ceremony arrangements, but she could not summon the will to listen — most of it went in one ear and out the other.

When that exhausting exchange finally came to an end, a flash of white broke through the crowd, followed by several familiar figures — it was Hao Bai and the others.

The rest of them looked relatively composed, but Hao Bai’s face was written all over with the word “delighted.” He was practically radiant with it, striding forward with great sweeping steps: “Brother Yao, your skills are something else — so this is the kind of ability you get if you run a pleasure house these days?”

Bolao had been following just behind. Presumably imagining the full-figured figure of Yaoyi, she had failed to hold back a laugh.

Xiao Nanhui quickly covered by laughing along: “You flatter me, you flatter me — pure luck.”

She had worn dark clothing today, and the bloodstains were not obvious against the fabric. Only at close range could one see the mark spreading across her sleeve.

It was then that Hao Bai noticed the blood on Xiao Nanhui’s right hand. His expression turned serious, and he stepped forward to examine it.

“Brother Yao, you’re injured?”

Xiao Nanhui, with a soldier’s thick skin and iron constitution, had treated minor injuries as an ordinary part of life back in the military encampment — and these were nothing more than a few cuts and scrapes. She gave her arm a casual roll to demonstrate its range of motion: “It’s nothing — just surface wounds.”

Hao Bai said nothing, and began inspecting the place where she had bandaged herself.

“Young Master Yao’s clothes are dirty.”

A voice spoke, neither warm nor cold, and then a hand brushed her back in a light, patting motion — as though dusting away dirt.

The hand had barely grazed her back when a burning, searing pain radiated instantly from the point of contact. She sucked in a sharp breath, unable to suppress it.

Xiao Nanhui spun around and fixed the culprit with a furious glare. Zhong Li Jing wore an expression of mild surprise calibrated to perfection — looking for all the world as though it had been entirely unintentional.

Hao Bai had already understood something. With a slight flick of his sleeve, a row of golden needles appeared between his fingertips. Before Xiao Nanhui could react, he had jabbed them precisely into several major acupressure points along her body.

Xiao Nanhui let out a yelp of agony. Bolao stood nearby with arms crossed, watching with great amusement.

“What — what are you needling me for?!”

Hao Bai gave her an odd look: “Medical treatment.”

Xiao Nanhui stared at the quivering golden needles standing upright in her arm, deeply unconvinced: “Can you even get it right through the fabric?”

Hao Bai had already finished redressing the wound she had bandaged herself, and was now knotting it off with his orchid fingers raised in a refined pose: “What do fabric and clothing matter? Even fully clothed, Brother Yao, you are no different before me than if you wore nothing at all.”

Hao Bai seemed entirely unaware of what he had just said. But as the words landed in Xiao Nanhui’s ears, they hit her like a cudgel to the head.

She — had she just been flirted with?

She, a military officer of considerable standing, had been flirted with by some jianghu traveling physician with a pretty face?!

Bolao’s face had crinkled into a smile that resembled nothing so much as a steamed bun. The sight of it made Xiao Nanhui even more furious. In three swift motions she yanked all the needles from her body and tossed them at Hao Bai.

“No more treatment!”

“How can there be no more treatment?” Hao Bai pursued her relentlessly, and Xiao Nanhui backed away in alarm.

“I have no consultation fee!”

“Would I ever charge a friend a consultation fee?”

Xiao Nanhui retreated in all directions; Hao Bai clung on like a piece of sticky taffy.

“Brother Yao! This is what they call refusing treatment out of fear — avoiding the doctor! A surface wound on the arm is a minor matter, but a fall like that means internal injuries. Internal injuries left untreated become a permanent disability in later years. Even if you won’t think of yourself, think of your family at home. You’re still so young — please, don’t throw yourself away like this—”

In the half-light and half-shadow, Zhong Li Jing stood quietly watching the three-person chaos before him. The corner of his mouth curved, almost imperceptibly, upward.

That tiny change was caught entirely in Ding Weixiang’s eyes. He was genuinely startled — and then seemed on the verge of saying something, but in the end kept silent.