"When you invite me, sir, I would never dare refuse."
It was hardly that important... Pei Qing had been about to say that it was all right if she did not come, only to see the person before him lean in close.
"At midnight tonight, at the imperial censor's residence."
Right, they had come out tonight on serious business. He had nearly forgotten, and the spies secretly tailing them had vanished too.
Looking up in realization, he found that they had unwittingly wandered back to where they had first alighted from the carriage.
Midnight-
Lou Yun vaulted over the wall and saw Pei Qing dressed in white, his hair loosely tied with only a ribbon, holding a candlestick as he searched about.
Picking up a lock of hair that hung down along the young man's waist, Lou Yun felt dampness against her fingertips and asked, "Did you bathe before coming, Imperial Preceptor?"
"Mm." The young man turned and, finding his hair in someone else's hand, explained somewhat sheepishly, "My hair hadn't dried, so I just tidied it up a little before coming out."
Lou Yun frowned, her voice full of disapproval. "Next time, you should dry your hair before coming out, Imperial Preceptor. Be careful you don't develop a headache disorder."
With that, she circulated her internal energy through her hand and dried the young man's half-damp hair just like that.
"Mm, I understand." Pei Qing obediently agreed, then thanked her. "Sorry for the trouble."
"You'll remember," Lou Yun corrected.
Pei Qing nodded obediently and repeated, "I'll remember."
Having dealt with a minor bad habit in the Imperial Preceptor's daily life, Lou Yun returned to the matter at hand. "How is your search coming along, Imperial Preceptor?"
The young man slowly shook his head. "I've searched most of this room, but I haven't found where the secret passage is."
He had not found it?
Lou Yun stood where she was, surveyed their surroundings, and said, "I'll search again."
Seeing that the woman's hands were empty, Pei Qing asked, "I have a fire starter here. Do you need it, Your Highness?"
Lou Yun bent down and rummaged about on the floor. With her back to Pei Qing, she waved away his offer. "Keep it for yourself, Imperial Preceptor. I can see at night."
"All right."
They searched Li An's room, neither finding any clues.
"Are we looking in the wrong direction?" Pei Qing asked after walking to the innermost wall and examining it a third time without success.
"We should be on the right track." Lou Yun circled the room's inner walls again and explained, "That side took me ten steps just now, but this side only took eight."
"Where did those missing two steps go?" Standing in the corner, Lou Yun stared at the floor and asked in a low voice.
Following Lou Yun's line of thought, Pei Qing walked over to her and studied it alongside her.
Lou Yun raised her hand and knocked on the wall, but found no special mechanism. Even the sound was the same across the entire wall.
Still, she felt that something was strange.
She knocked on the wall to the side as well, but there was no obvious difference in sound.
Then what was wrong?
Suddenly, both looked toward the very top of the wall, where it joined the eaves.
"Don't you think this wall is a little too well preserved?"
"Isn't this wall a little too resistant to fire?"
They spoke at the same time, exchanged a glance, then stepped back in unison.
Sure enough, most of the burned portions of the room were concentrated near the door. Though the bed and cabinets inside had been burned clean away, this wall and the rear halves of the walls on either side were strangely well preserved.
Had a fireproof coating been specially applied?
Pei Qing scraped some fragments off the wall with his dagger and wrapped them in a handkerchief. He would study the materials used in this wall after returning.
He had only just put the handkerchief away when the wall dropped before his eyes.
Hm?
This unforeseen sight made Pei Qing's eyes widen slightly. As the outer wall fell, another identical wall rose behind it.
Clang!
A flight of stone steps leading who knew where suddenly appeared before them.
They looked upward. The inner wall was only half as long as the outer wall, but twice as thick.
The outer wall's descent pulled the underground wall upward, though they did not know what connected the two walls.
"Shall we go down and look?" Lou Yun stepped onto the stairs first, then turned to invite Pei Qing.
The flickering candlelight fell on the woman, stretching her shadow farther along the stone steps. Only half her body remained visible, the rest concealed in darkness.
"All right." Pei Qing nodded and followed behind Lou Yun.
They had barely descended the stone steps when a clang came from above.
It seemed the secret passage had closed on its own. The dark passage ahead was roughly wide enough for two people to walk abreast.
Lou Yun lowered her head. Several scratches remained on the bricks underfoot, and each brick was large enough for one person to fall through.
There was a scratch at every interval, a scratch at every interval. Several scratches overlapped, making it seem as though the entire path was scratched and the marks were chaotic, but closer inspection revealed that each followed a pattern.
Could these scratches have been left by someone walking in shackles?
Lou Yun said, "Let's go."
At this point, they could only advance, not retreat.
Taking the lead, Lou Yun tentatively stepped onto the brick on the right where the scratches clustered. Nothing happened.
She tried stepping onto the next brick on the right. Still nothing happened.
Pei Qing followed behind her. The moment he stepped onto the first brick Lou Yun had crossed, both he and the brick abruptly sank. At the same time, the brick beneath Lou Yun's feet rose rapidly.
"Pei Qing!" Lou Yun jumped onto a brick on the left, caught the young man's hand, and pulled him up.
The instant the young man's toes cleared the edge of the brick, the brick Lou Yun had been standing on pressed flush against the passage's ceiling, like a pillar that had always stood there.
"Mm..."
Everything had happened so suddenly that Lou Yun had not moderated her strength, pulling him straight into her arms, so that their current posi-
tion was this: Lou Yun crouched on the ground, holding Pei Qing, who was sprawled on his knees in her arms.
Pei Qing's face happened to be level with Lou Yun's neck, his warm breath spilling over her exposed skin with a faint tickle.
What was more, to steady himself, Pei Qing's other hand had instinctively grabbed Lou Yun's arm. Clearly still shaken, the person in her arms even turned toward her, and the young man's parted lips just barely brushed her cheek.
Ahem. Lou Yun now knew what it felt like to hold softness and fragrance in her arms.
Pretending nothing had happened, she asked with concern, "Are you all right?"
Pei Qing was startled by their position too. He hurriedly stood up, apologizing repeatedly. "I'm sorry, Your Highness. I didn't mean to."
As her arms emptied, Lou Yun's heart felt empty for an instant too. She shook her head. "It's fine. Our priority is finding where this secret passage leads."
"All right," Pei Qing answered, then held his hand out to Lou Yun. "Shall I help you up, Your Highness?"
Such good fortune? Looking at the slender fingers before her, Lou Yun took his hand without hesitation. "Sorry for the trouble."
Once she was standing, Lou Yun held her palm out to Pei Qing. "Give me your hair ribbon."
Puzzled, the Imperial Preceptor nevertheless obediently untied his hair ribbon and placed it in the woman's palm.
Lou Yun tied the ribbon's ends around their wrists. "This way, if anything unexpected happens, we'll know immediately how the other is moving."
Chapter 16
Pei Qing followed behind Lou Yun. They had already found the pattern: as long as one walked on the right and the other on the left, nothing would go wrong.
With no need to keep his mind on serious matters, his thoughts naturally began to wander.
At some point, Pei Qing had spent a long time staring at the hair ribbon wound around their wrists. Its other end was wrapped around the hand of the woman constantly moving forward. Ahead lay a dark passage with no light in sight. He gently stroked the ribbon twice. It was as though this person could keep leading him onward forever.
They had arrived. Standing one behind the other before a stone door, Lou Yun opened it using the same method she had used to open the hidden door earlier.
They climbed a flight of stone steps identical to the last, and a wooden hut meant only for shelter appeared before them.
"Where is this?" Pei Qing followed Lou Yun into the room, then headed straight outside.
Lou Yun was pulled outside by the hair ribbon between them just like that.
Woods surrounded them, with only a path one person wide winding away from the hut's entrance. The sun hung at the edge of the sky, faintly shedding its light. There should not have been a place like this inside the city.
Judging by the time, had they reached the outskirts?
Pei Qing examined the surroundings outside, while Lou Yun examined the things inside. The hut was extremely crude, with only a round table and four bamboo chairs in the middle. Hay covered half the floor, with a few ragged strips of cloth laid over it.
There were also quite a few old bloodstains and patches of dirt on the hay. Some iron chains and hemp ropes lay beneath the round table, presumably used to confine people.
"This should be their stopping point." Lou Yun tugged the hair ribbon between them, drawing him to her side.
Pointing to the still fairly fresh bloodstains on the hay, she said, "The previous batch was clearly moved only recently."
Then she asked, "How many people do you think could sleep on this hay, Imperial Preceptor?"
"Ten or so."
The hut was not large, and the hay occupied only half of it. Ten or so people was about right.
Ten or so? Lou Yun smiled faintly without speaking. If they were simply sleeping here, ten or so would indeed be somewhat cramped, but would people who treated human beings as goods really give their "goods" somewhere to sleep?
"Li An has been doing this for a long time. If there were only ten or so people, how long was the interval between each batch entering the capital, and when was each batch taken away from the Li residence after entering the capital? Where were they taken after leaving the Li residence?"
Pei Qing pondered Lou Yun's words without replying.
Lou Yun, however, recalled a question she had yet to verify.
"Imperial Preceptor, were you taking Rouniang's pulse under the pretext of covering her mouth that day?"
Immersed in his thoughts, the young man was caught off guard and fell into the trap. "Mm."
Huh?
When he came to his senses, he saw Lou Yun watching him with her arms folded, a smile that was not quite a smile on her face.
The hair ribbon was not long to begin with, and Lou Yun had drawn her hands back as well. The young man could only pitch forward with the pull, ending up barely half a palm's breadth from the woman, with only a fist's width between their toes.