She did not want to wake up at all, nor did she want to face anyone. She even wanted to extinguish the candle beside her that illuminated her face.
The girl nearly bit her lips bloody.
But in the end, once again, she held herself together before the taut strings of her heart could snap.
Who knew how many victories this made? In any case, amid the bleak candlelight, the wooden door to the inner room creaked open, and the girl appeared before everyone, supporting her wounded body, her face pale.
The conversation broke off at once.
In the deathly stillness, a dozen gazes settled stiffly on her. The oppressive atmosphere verged on collapse.
"I'll tell everyone what I know," she said weakly, a steadiness still showing through her grief-weary eyes. "Then we'll look for a way out again."
When she had decided to stake everything on a showdown with Seven Flood Dragon Cave and Joy-in-Death Tower, she had not thought about what would happen if she lost. In a gamble that overdrawed her very life, however she considered it, defeat could only mean death.
But when that ending truly arrived, Li Piaoqing would absolutely not sit meekly awaiting her doom.
It was merely another, deeper impasse, merely another, harder starting point.
She stood before the disciples of Jade Feather Gate once more.
Throughout that night's deliberations, Li Piaoqing showed no weakness. Leaning back in her chair, she raised every sharp, bloody choice herself and personally settled every detail, leading the Joint Deliberation without evasion or surrender.
But when dawn approached in the east and everyone dispersed from the main hall, she truly felt that something had changed.
Silent nods, perfunctory agreement-everyone's mind was elsewhere. From a distance, Li Piaoqing saw Senior Sister Shen and several fellow disciples and elders