Mist swirled within the Icefire Yin Yang Well.
The intertwined red and blue spring waters flowed eternally through the valley shrouded in an energy barrier, their strange glow illuminating the carefully tended garden of poisonous herbs.
Ge Duo's little Crystal House stood quietly beside the springs, with all manner of oddly shaped potion-making vessels arranged outside.
But today, there was another figure in the valley.
A young woman.
She curled up in a wicker chair in a corner of the Crystal House, her golden hair flowing like sunlight all the way to the ground, even winding into several coils across the floor.
Its color was so dazzling that it seemed to give off a soft light of its own beneath the glow of the Icefire Yin Yang Well.
She wore a simple flax-colored dress. Its hem was a little worn, but it had been washed clean.
Her slender fingers unconsciously twisted a lock of golden hair hanging over her chest, while her amber eyes stared blankly at the intertwined red and blue springs outside the window.
Rapunzel, the long-haired princess.
She had been in this world for many years.
Like the other fairy-tale characters Lin Wan had summoned, she had been dropped at random into some corner of this continent.
But unlike Eva, Ursula, and Cinderella, Rapunzel had chosen to hide.
Because she knew someone else was in this world, too.
Ge Duo.
The woman who had stolen her from her parents in the Fairy-Tale World and imprisoned her in a tower for eighteen years.
The woman who had raised her, taught her to read, paint, and sing, yet treated her as private property. The woman who had ultimately fallen from the tower because of her, her fate unknown.
Rapunzel's feelings toward Ge Duo were far too complicated.
*Did she