After the candlelight went out, the room fell into brief darkness. I stood where I was, the feel of the medicine pestle still lingering in my palm, my knuckles slightly numb from gripping it too tightly. The shadow in the Cloud Pattern Official Robe beyond the window had long vanished, yet some unresolved weight seemed to still hang in the air.
I did not turn around, but I heard the door hinge creak softly.
Wind poured in through the door, stirring the scrap of paper corroded by Demonic Powder at the corner of the table and making it tremble faintly. The footsteps were light, barely echoing against the floor, but I knew who had come.
"You didn't go far." My voice was colder than I had expected.
"Didn't you stay awake too?" He stood three steps away, his dark robes carrying the wind, his breathing steady. "You were waiting for an explanation."
I slowly turned around and met his eyes. The candlewick suddenly sparked back to life, illuminating the faint red scar on his left cheek, like an old wound breathing.
I said nothing. I merely raised my hand and pulled the wooden hairpin from my hair. With a twist of my wrist, its tip pressed directly beneath his throat.
He did not move or retreat. Even his gaze did not change.
"Three years ago, when you woke up in the Black Market, the first thing you did was hide your pulse." I stared at him. "You pretended to be useless for so long that even when you walked, you habitually suppressed your footsteps. But when you rushed into this room last night, your Cloud-Treading Boots landed too steadily—that was the instinct of an expert."
He gave a quiet laugh. "So you used a wooden hairpin to test whether I would die?"
"This isn't a test." I pushed it forward half an inch, and the tip left a shallow mark on his skin. "This is confirmation. You saved me not because of an old debt, but because I could help you investigate Ji Hantian. You let me get hurt to observe Demonic Powder's reaction, didn't you?"
He still neither dodged nor yielded. Instead, he raised a hand, spread his fingers, and slowly closed them around the hairpin. Blood slid down the lines of his palm and dripped onto the floor with a faint sound.
"Everything you said is right," he said quietly. "But if I truly meant to use you, I would not have told you that the aura of the Pseudo-Primordial Body had already seeped into your meridians."
My fingertips trembled slightly.
"Then why didn't you tell me sooner? Why wait until now?"
"If I had told you, you wouldn't have believed me." He released the hairpin, letting it hang in my hand. "Just as you still do not believe now that I only wanted to place the truth in your hands, rather than let someone else rip it open."
The room fell silent for a moment.
I withdrew the wooden hairpin but did not lower my guard. "Then why are you standing here now? To keep acting? Or are you preparing to silence me?"
He suddenly took a step forward, close enough for me to feel the warmth of his breath.
"I came to ask you one question," he said. "Do you want to know the real me? Not the useless Young Master from the rumors, not the shadow hiding in the dark, but... the person who was beaten off a cliff three years ago and still crawled back alive."
My heartbeat skipped.
"Do you want to peel back this skin with your own hands?" His voice was soft, yet it rang like a hammer striking a bell. "Three months from now, when the secret realm opens, we will settle the secrets of life and death in a battle on the arena."
I sneered. "A duel? You think I'll play this sort of game with you?"
"This is not a game." He stepped back half a pace, his tone calm. "If you defeat me, I will tell you how the Pseudo-Primordial Body came to be, why it appeared in me, and why it can affect you. If I defeat you..." He paused, his gaze darkening. "Then you must tell me exactly how many stages the Blood Phoenix Body has awakened."
My pupils contracted sharply.
That name—it had been the last word my mother spoke before she died. I had never mentioned it to anyone.
"How could you possibly know that?"
"Just as you know I've been pretending to be useless." He looked at me. "Some things, no matter how deeply they are hidden, will leave traces. Every time you activate your bloodline, your fingertips turn gold. When you are injured, your wounds heal at a speed beyond reason. And that flash of golden light last night... it was not a Protective Spiritual Array. It was your bloodline resisting an external force."
I bit my lower lip and did not deny it.
"I won't force you to agree now." He turned and walked toward the window, then leaped onto the roof. The hem of his clothes fluttered sharply in the night wind. "But you must understand that Ji Hantian has already begun to act, and Yan Jiuxiao is watching us as well. Every step ahead is not something you can bear alone."
I looked up at his figure standing atop the roof ridge. Moonlight fell over his shoulders as though coating him in a thin layer of silver.
"What makes you think I'll accept your challenge?" I called out.
He turned back, the corner of his lips lifting slightly. "You don't trust me, but you didn't destroy that bloodstained wooden hairpin either. You already have an answer in your heart. You simply refuse to admit it."
As his words fell, he leaped away and vanished into the night.
I remained where I was for a long time without moving.
My fingers unconsciously brushed the old mark on the wooden hairpin's handle—it was a symbol I had carved myself when I was ten, a slanted line representing my mother's name. Over the years, I had changed countless ornaments, yet I had always kept this wooden hairpin.
Now, it was stained with his blood.
I lowered my head and looked at my palm. It seemed to still retain the warmth from when he had treated my injuries. That warm current had not been purely Spiritual Power. It felt more like something deeper, slowly flowing through my meridians and faintly resonating with my bloodline.
I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, calm had returned.
I picked up the wooden hairpin from the ground, gently wiped it clean, and slid it back into my hair.
When I pushed open the door, moonlight spilled across the path, and the bluestone slabs glimmered faintly. From the distant city walls came the sound of the night watch. The third watch had already passed.
I walked forward, not quickly, but with firm steps.
When I reached the mouth of the alley, the tips of my ears suddenly burned, as though someone were watching from behind. I stopped without turning back, only tightening my grip around the medicine pestle.
The wind brushed past my ears, carrying a drifting sentence: "Ye Qingwan, don't lose too disgracefully."
I sneered and continued onward.
After walking half a street, my right hand suddenly twitched. The poisoned needles in my sleeve were long gone, yet my fingertips still retained the muscle memory of firing them. I spread open my palm and saw an extremely faint golden line emerge at the edge of my palm print, vanishing in an instant.
This was not Blood Phoenix Power.
It was another kind of power, more concealed and more profound, quietly awakening.
I quickened my pace, passed through two narrow alleys, and turned into a small courtyard at the end of East Street. This was my temporary residence in the city, a place few people approached under normal circumstances.
The moment I pushed the gate open, I noticed a faint scratch on the threshold—it had not been left today.
I immediately became alert, pressing myself against the wall and listening carefully.
No one moved inside, nor were there any fluctuations of Spiritual Power. But the teacup on the table had been moved. Its handle, which had originally faced south, had been shifted fifteen degrees.
Someone had come here.
I slowly drew out the medicine pestle and was about to step inside when I suddenly remembered something and halted.
The words Ji Wuchen had spoken before leaving surfaced in my mind again.
"Do you want to peel back this skin with your own hands?"
I stared at the half-open door, and my heartbeat gradually slowed.
If it were truly an enemy, they would not have left behind only such faint traces. If this was a test, then the other party had to be waiting for me to understand.
I put away the medicine pestle, adjusted my sleeves, and stepped into the room.
No lamp had been lit. Guided by memory, I felt my way to the bedside and took a Jade Slip from beneath the pillow—it was the only relic my mother had left me, carved with a fragmentary incantation.
The moment my fingertips touched the Jade Slip's surface, a scorching heat shot up from my palm and rushed straight to my head.
I let out a muffled groan and collapsed onto the edge of the bed.
A scene flashed before my eyes: a wasteland, blazing flames scorching the heavens, and a figure standing with his back to me, wrapped in golden fire. He turned his head. His features were blurred, yet a faint red scar cut across his left cheek.
Immediately afterward, another aura crashed into my Sea of Consciousness—cold, heavy, like the weight of ten thousand jun, carrying an indescribable oppressive force.
I violently shook my head, and the scene instantly scattered.
The Jade Slip rolled onto the ground with a crisp clatter.
Panting, I raised a hand to wipe the cold sweat from my brow, only to find blood on my fingertips—at some point, my nose had begun to bleed.
This was not an illusion.
Someone had tampered with this Jade Slip and left a tracking mark on it.
I swiftly formed a hand seal to purify the Jade Slip, then sealed it back inside its brocade pouch. Just as I finished tying the cord, the wind outside the window stirred.
I looked up and saw only a black shadow flash past one corner of the roof.
I seized the medicine pestle and rushed outside, but saw nothing but an empty rooftop and a cold moon hanging high overhead.
The wind lifted the hem of my clothes, and the ends of my hair inexplicably gleamed with a trace of crimson.
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