Long Feiyan, leaning against the headboard, said hardly anything at all. After more than a decade apart, she had grown so much more silent.

Compared to the woman she had once been, she carried far less warmth now, and far more coldness.

Perhaps anyone, after living through so many trials and disasters, could never again live as carelessly and lightheartedly as before.

And yet, seeing Long Feiyan so cold and distant still made Xue Gu’s heart ache.

To think that, back then, she had been nothing more than a girl in her early teens.

She had never been an ordinary person by nature — by the age of ten she was already a first-rate master in the martial world, and at thirteen she had followed her father into battle, never expecting that a single campaign would make her name famous overnight.

From that day on, the three characters of her name seemed branded onto every battlefield, becoming utterly synonymous with victory itself.

In her entire life, Long Feiyan had lost only a single battle — and it was after that one defeat that she had vanished from the world entirely.

“Have you come to find me also to seek revenge for Jiu’er?” Long Feiyan finally spoke — a voice Xue Gu had longed to hear again for who knew how many years.

That she was willing to speak to her at all left Xue Gu so moved she nearly wept on the spot.

But the moment her thoughts turned to Jiu’er’s current circumstances, Xue Gu’s heart began to ache once more.

“Mistress, she… she is still your daughter, after all. Whatever mistake the young mistress may have made, that inner strength of hers — it wasn’t built in a single day.”

Over the past half year, Feng Jiu’er had run the Heavenly Mechanism Hall while training in martial arts at the same time. Though she always seemed perfectly fine on the surface, only Xue Gu knew just how little time the girl had each day to rest.

She slept no more than three shichen each day — already far too little — not to mention how often she went out at night besides, leaving her utterly run off her feet.

Everyone said the young proprietor of the Heavenly Mechanism Hall was remarkably fortunate — so young, yet possessing such extraordinary medical skill, and martial arts so unfathomably deep besides.

But in this world, was there truly such a thing as luck? Every achievement of hers had been earned through sheer hard work.

And now, in a single stroke, her mistress had stripped away all of Jiu’er’s inner strength entirely — how devastating a blow must that be for her?

Jiu’er… probably still didn’t even know that the one who had destroyed her martial arts was her own birth mother, did she?

“You think I’m punishing her?” Long Feiyan lowered her gaze to look at Xue Gu kneeling on the floor, her deep eyes utterly calm and unreadable, giving no hint of what she might be thinking.

Xue Gu said nothing. If stripping away someone’s martial arts wasn’t punishment, then what was it?

She simply could not understand — what exactly had Jiu’er done wrong?

“Mistress… is it perhaps that you’re unhappy about the young mistress growing too close to the Ninth Prince?” That seemed to be the only possible explanation.

Long Feiyan said nothing, but Qing Ye, standing watch nearby, spoke up instead. “Our mistress gave the young mistress a topographical map. Why don’t you help the young mistress find the location marked on it first?”

“A topographical map?” Xue Gu looked from Qing Ye to Long Feiyan and back again.

Long Feiyan’s gaze remained cool and detached. After more than a decade apart, she was still the same person, and yet there was so much less fire in her now, so much more quiet detachment.

But Xue Gu knew that behind her mistress’s calm exterior lay a deeply suppressed, long-endured hatred.

What exactly had her mistress endured all these years? What had truly happened during that battle so long ago? How had her mistress managed to survive?

Long Feiyan did not answer Xue Gu’s unspoken questions, though she could clearly see the confusion in Xue Gu’s eyes.

“Mistress…” Xue Gu’s gaze fell to Long Feiyan’s leg, the words caught in her throat.

Though the leg had healed by now, Xue Gu had been the one helping prepare the medicines — how could she not know just how severe and long-standing the masked Lady’s leg injury, the very one Jiu’er had spoken of, truly was?

But by Jiu’er’s own estimate, her mistress’s leg had only been injured for a few years — nowhere near as long as a decade or more. So what exactly had happened to her mistress those few years ago?

“Who was it?” She wanted to reach out and touch Long Feiyan’s leg, yet did not dare to — her heart simply ached.

Long Feiyan’s fingers tightened, hatred slowly surfacing in her eyes. “Someone… who should have died long ago.”

…Qing Ye saw Xue Gu out.

The two of them walked through the covered corridor, left the back courtyard, and stepped into the overgrown front courtyard of Li Courtyard.

Xue Gu remained heavy with worry. After a long moment, she finally glanced at Qing Ye, and suddenly bowed deeply to her.

“All these years, our mistress has had only your care to rely on. I am truly ashamed of myself, Qing Ye. This debt of gratitude, I owe you for the rest of my life.”

“Caring for our mistress is my duty. You owe me nothing, and you owe our mistress nothing either. You simply didn’t know she was still alive.”

Xue Gu let out a soft sigh. After more than a decade apart, now that they had met again, she hardly knew what else to say.

Things remained, but people had changed. The fiery young vanguard generals of those days had all grown old now.

Leaving the imperial palace, Xue Gu made her way back to the Heavenly Mechanism Hall, her expression grave the entire way.

Too many secrets weighed upon her heart; in this moment, there was not a single person to whom she dared speak any of them.

That night, she did not go directly to find Feng Jiu’er, but instead made her way to Tuoba Keyan’s room.

She never expected that the moment she stepped through the door, she would find Tuoba Keyan feeding the Blood Ganoderma, the blood on his arm not yet even wiped clean.

“You… you’re actually using your own blood!” Xue Gu strode over and seized his wrist, rolling back the sleeve he had only just pulled down.

“I told you, animal blood would be enough. What are you doing this for?”

“I used animal blood before, but the flower showed no sign at all of wanting to bloom. So I tried human blood instead, and the bud actually began to open a little. Look.”

Tuoba Keyan gazed at the slightly parted bud, his eyes full of delighted laughter. “Godmother, look — isn’t it about to bloom soon?”

Xue Gu glanced at the Blood Ganoderma — the small bud upon it truly did seem ready to bloom; at the very least, compared to the last time she had seen it, the bud had opened up considerably.

The Blood Ganoderma was, in truth, not a ganoderma fungus at all, but a flower — one that simply resembled a ganoderma closely enough to have earned that name.

Once the flower bloomed, it would turn a deep, vivid blood-red — and it could only bloom after drinking its fill of beast blood.

Xue Gu had simply never known that human blood encouraged the Blood Ganoderma to bloom even more effectively than beast blood did — a fact even Feng Jiu’er herself likely did not know.

Still, seeing the many cuts large and small covering Tuoba Keyan’s arm, Xue Gu could not bear it.

“Leave this to me from now on. Your body isn’t strong — stop putting yourself through this.” She moved to roll up her own sleeve, only for Tuoba Keyan to grab her hand and stop her.

Tuoba Keyan said, “I’ve only lost my martial arts — my body is plenty strong, there’s nothing wrong with it. If anything, Godmother, you’re not young anymore yourself. How could you put yourself through this?”

“Hm?” This little rascal — was he saying she was too old now? She was a martial artist herself; surely she hadn’t aged that quickly?

Tuoba Keyan coughed lightly and quickly explained, “I… that’s not what I meant. It’s just, Godmother, since this started with me, let it end with me too. Don’t trouble yourself over it — I’m really fine.”

He gave his fist a little shake and laughed. “Look, I’m still plenty sturdy. What’s the harm in losing a bit of blood?”