“After I rescued your senior brother, I didn’t dare leave the city, and went straight to find Su Jianfu. He had already bought a residence in Chang’an — since the house had once belonged to a general of the previous dynasty, it had a number of secret passages, so we hid the child within them. Afraid of being discovered, we dared not hire a wet nurse, and could only feed the child rice gruel. Fortunately, he had been well-nourished in the womb and was sturdy through and through, growing astonishingly fast — that was when I realized this child possessed a body of pure yang, rare even once in a hundred years, far easier to raise than ordinary children. After three months, seeing that all was calm outside, we went out to gather news, and learned that on that very night at the Prince of Qi’s residence, both side consorts had given birth — Side Consort Hui had died in a difficult labor, though her child had survived, while Side Consort Yi had come through unharmed, but her own child had died at birth. Devastated by the loss of Side Consort Hui, the Third Prince fell gravely ill with grief, so severely, I heard, that he very nearly did not pull through.
“Only then did we realize that Side Consort Yi was the one orchestrating the scheme behind it all. We didn’t know whether she herself possessed extraordinary arts, or whether someone was assisting her, but somehow she had divined that A’Han would one day ascend to the throne. Fearing she would never rise to prominence herself, she had A’Ling and her child killed, and substituted her own child in A’Han’s place.”
This chain of revelations was simply too shocking. Even though Qin Yao and Lin Xiao had already guessed at the truth, they were both too stunned to speak for a long while.
“By the time he was half a year old, your senior brother already seemed cleverer than ordinary children — he smiled the moment he saw Su Jianfu or me, often shared whatever food was in his hands with others, and had even begun babbling in baby-talk. Perhaps it was because he sensed his mother wasn’t there, but he was remarkably well-behaved, never crying at night, never fussing or clinging. But by the time he turned one, he suddenly grew dull and slow-witted, and by three, he had become even more simple-minded — let alone speaking a full sentence, he no longer even recognized Su Jianfu or me. I noticed that the area between his brows had grown thick with dark energy, and the spiritual light in his eyes had faded greatly, as though he were a different child entirely from the one at half a year old. It suddenly occurred to me — an ancient and evil Daoist technique — and I suspected someone had cast the Seven Killers Infant-Binding Array upon him. So I tried refining a Soul-Settling Pill for your senior brother to take, and the moment he did, his simple-mindedness improved considerably. That was when I knew my earlier suspicion had been correct. I believe Side Consort Yi, knowing your senior brother had been rescued but unable to find him anywhere, lost all peace of mind and used this vicious method to make him simple-minded — without the Soul-Settling Pill to sustain him, he would have died suddenly within ten years. Thank heaven, when the array was first laid, they lacked your senior brother’s own blood to use as bait, so the formation’s killing power was somewhat diminished, and his spiritual essence wasn’t entirely drained before we discovered the problem. Had it been otherwise, even breaking the array later would never have restored his mind.”
“You’re saying that as long as the Seven Killers Infant-Binding Array can be broken, there’s still a way for Senior Brother’s mind to recover fully?” Qin Yao had been listening with a heart full of grief and outrage, but at this final point, she couldn’t help but feel a surge of joy.
Qing Xuzi said, “When the array was laid, your senior brother wasn’t in their hands, so they couldn’t obtain his blood, which weakened the formation’s malevolence somewhat. If the array can be broken, there’s every chance your senior brother’s mind can be restored.”
Qin Yao nodded, her eyes reddening. “No wonder you lingered at the academy so long that night and refused to leave, and later kept asking about the academy on several occasions — clearly you had already discovered it was where the array was laid, and meant to break it for Senior Brother’s sake, but held back for fear of alerting the enemy.”
Qing Xuzi said with bitter resentment, “Though that woman holds no title of Empress, she has sat secure in the inner palace for years, her influence entrenched both inside the court and out — how could a mere Daoist like myself easily shake her? It isn’t breaking the array that I feared, but rather inadvertently exposing your senior brother’s origins and bringing a fatal calamity upon him. All these years, Yuan Jue has been seeking a chance to avenge A’Ling, but I know this is far easier said than done. The closer we got to recent years, the more I hoped your senior brother could simply live out the rest of his life in peace, never again entangled in this storm of blood. Yet despite every precaution, we still could not escape that woman’s scheming.”
After hearing all of Qing Xuzi’s words, Lin Xiao’s expression remained calm, but inside, his heart was already roiling like a stormy sea.
If what Qing Xuzi said was true, this matter touched on the very foundations of the dynasty itself, and was certain to ignite a struggle that would shake the entire court. It wasn’t merely a question of whether Qing Xuzi and his disciple would be exposed — Qin Yao herself was now caught up in it as well. Given Consort Yi’s habits over the years, she would never wait for the situation to keep brewing; she would act quickly. He could not allow Qin Yao to suffer the slightest harm from this — he would need to find a way to ensure she emerged from it completely unscathed. Every step from here on would have to be planned with the utmost care; one careless move could spell certain doom.
The thorny problem was that he didn’t know whether Consort Yi alone was pulling the strings behind all this, or whether the Crown Prince and Prince Wu also knew the full details. If it was the latter, the Crown Prince would certainly not allow anyone to threaten his position in the Eastern Palace, and would find some way, by any means necessary, to track down Qing Xuzi and his disciple.
Just as he was frowning in thought over his next moves, he heard Qin Yao speak with a note of sudden realization. “Master, do you remember how the Jade Corpse once wanted Senior Brother to become her Golden Corpse, but later, after the young master came up the mountain, the Jade Corpse tried several times to bite him instead? I couldn’t make sense of it at the time, but you and Abbot Yuan Jue clearly knew the reason and simply wouldn’t tell me. I understand now — Senior Brother and the young master are both of imperial blood, the same blood running through their veins. That Jade Corpse was betrayed by an emperor a hundred years ago, and hates his descendants most of all. That’s why, when tempting someone to become her Golden Corpse, her first condition is that the person must kill their own closest kin — what she would most love to see is members of the imperial family destroying one another. And you once said her second condition outweighs all others. I suspect that so-called second condition is that the Golden Corpse must be of imperial blood.
“Of course, if both conditions could be met at once, she would be all the more satisfied. But even if only the second can be fulfilled, she would still welcome it gladly — because even if she can’t harm that emperor from a hundred years ago, making his descendant become a Golden Corpse unwelcome by Heaven itself, just as she is, would at least ease some of the resentment pent up in her heart.”
Qing Xuzi hadn’t expected Qin Yao’s mind to leap so suddenly, and was caught off guard for a moment, torn between laughter and exasperation. “Child, of all the times — how can you still be thinking about that wicked thing right now?”
Qin Yao said sheepishly, “Well, I’d been puzzling over the Jade Corpse’s conditions for the longest time and never found the answer. Now that I’ve finally worked it out, I just couldn’t help telling you about it.”
Lin Xiao, however, lifted the curtain to glance outside, and said to Qin Yao and Qing Xuzi, “Let’s get out here, and proceed to the hideout through the residence. For the time being, Master Qing Xuzi and Senior Brother will need to stay hidden in the secret residence, where no one can discover your whereabouts. Once everything has settled, we’ll make further arrangements.”
The group got out of the carriage and found themselves before a solemn, secluded residence — an annex of Prince Lan’s estate.
At the gate, a man who looked like a steward already stood waiting respectfully, hands folded.
Lin Xiao led the group through the courtyards and into the main hall, where he triggered a hidden mechanism behind a bookcase to open a secret passage. Once everyone had entered, he immediately shut the door behind them.
The tunnel was pitch dark, and Qing Xuzi had to take out a fire striker to light the way.
As Qin Yao walked, she thought to herself — she had never imagined this annex of Prince Lan’s estate concealed a secret tunnel. Judging by the age of the house, it didn’t seem like something Lin Xiao had ordered dug. Could it have been her father-in-law who’d had it excavated?
But why would the old man dig such a tunnel for no reason? Could he have feared upheaval in Chang’an and wished to have a means of fleeing to a hideout at any moment, to protect himself? Yet, looking at her father-in-law’s carefree, cloud-drifting demeanor, he hardly seemed the sort to plan so far ahead.
She mulled it over for a moment and shook her head inwardly. No, that wasn’t right — of all the princes who had failed in the succession struggle back then, some had died and some had been exiled, yet her father-in-law alone had managed to come away entirely unscathed. If he truly had no scheming in him at all, he would surely have been picked clean to the bone long ago.