Star Luo City, an inner chamber of the White Tiger Duke's Mansion.
Zhu Man lay on her sickbed, gaunt and withered, her face as pale as paper. Her violent coughing seemed ready to tear her heart and lungs out at any moment.
Yet when her trusted maid finished reporting, in a trembling voice, the news from the imperial palace and the movements of Shrek and Dai Hao, she suddenly struggled upright. A terrifying light blazed in her clouded eyes.
"Dai-Dai Youheng... has come back?" Her voice was hoarse and shrill, carrying bone-deep hatred and a trace of fear that was hard to detect. "Then what about my sister? Where has my sister gone?"
Zhu Shu had been missing for nearly three months without a single word. There was no sign of her alive, nor any corpse to prove her dead.
Deep down, Zhu Man had long since been swallowed by an ominous premonition. Yet she refused to believe-or rather, dared not believe-that her sister, a peak agility-attack Soul Douluo, could have fallen to a mere Soul Emperor brat. Even if she could not kill him, surely escaping unscathed should have been child's play with her speed and strength!
But now Dai Youheng had returned safe and sound, stirring up an enormous commotion, while her sister remained nowhere to be found. That cruel contrast was like an icy awl, piercing straight through her last shred of hope.
"No-impossible! Something must have delayed her, or she went somewhere else." Zhu Man gasped violently, trying to convince herself, but her trembling fingers betrayed the panic within her.
Suddenly, she seized the maid's arm, her skeletal fingers gripping so hard they nearly dug into her flesh. An almost insane obsession flickered in her eyes. "Give me medicine to force my strength back, and help