Lin Yue led Fu Yun toward the Earth Altar, her steps light.
Tear stains still marked her face, leaving her looking pitiful and helpless.
She kept her head slightly lowered.
Yet from the corner of her eye, she swiftly measured the distance to the courtyard walls and the positions of the Jingwei guards.
Thirty feet, twenty feet, ten feet.
Lin Yue silently counted her steps.
The Earth Altar was right ahead.
It was a stone chamber half-buried underground, its entrance sealed by a heavy iron door.
Ordinarily, no one but Zhou Zelin and she herself was permitted to enter.
"Lord Fu, I have the key. Please allow me to open the door."
Lin Yue turned and offered Fu Yun a gentle smile, still wearing that meek, long-suffering look.
Fu Yun stood with his hands behind his back and said blandly, "Open it."
The instant Lin Yue's fingers touched the iron door—
Her body suddenly sprang into motion.
She was no longer a noblewoman with tears like pear blossoms in the rain, but a swift and savage cheetah!
"What is she doing?!"
"Stop her!"
The Jingwei guards' cries of alarm exploded almost at once.
Lin Yue neither fled outside nor attacked Fu Yun. Instead, she dashed deeper into the Earth Altar at astonishing speed.
In the darkness, her hand had already found the fire starter tucked in her robes.
The Pill Hall master stood amid the crowd, and his face abruptly drained white.
At last, he realized Lin Yue's true objective.
It was not escape, nor resistance, but the destruction of evidence.
If Human Pills truly lay hidden within the Earth Altar, Lin Yue needed only one fire. The pills refined from human lives would turn to ash.
Without evidence, who could convict the Zhou Family?
Based solely on a paper