It had brought a thick packet of letters. Li Xizhou raised her hand, and it obediently settled on her arm, allowing her to unfasten its burden.
"A letter from the Nourishing Intent Tower-why was it sent through the Immortal Platform?"
"Because it was inconvenient to send it into the palace, so I entrusted them with it." Li Xizhou released the Soul Bird and opened the envelope. There were three documents in all.
Pei Ye moved beside her desk and quietly looked over.
The first came from the Immortal Platform itself, concerning the small vial of scraped-off old blood Li Xizhou had sent yesterday. That had been the most readily available clue. The Immortal Platform had acted quickly, and now its findings had arrived. They stated that it was "indeed of the same lineage as Her Highness Jinyang," ruling out the possibility that it came from Ziliang or Yu Sicheng.
The second made Pei Ye tilt his head, for the paper had a very old-fashioned form, entirely different from the Immortal Platform's format. It was not very formal, either. The writer had clearly taken a sheet of paper lying at hand and written a few lines on it, with neither salutation nor signature.
"[Mercury Blossoms Floating Raft]-I still recall those words. Twenty years ago, Zhai Haidong devoted himself to this in Daming Palace. I have never seen the thing, nor does the tower possess any drawings or written records of it. As for the principles of its operation and its strengths and weaknesses, which the imperial scion inquires about, I truly know nothing. However, the human skeleton follows the immutable principles of heaven and earth. Stripping bones and replacing marrow always falls within the three major and seven minor paths-the ten paths of bone and vessel. Based on the descriptions in