The Mirror of Startling Beauty: Her courtiers are everywhere

The Frosty Prison of Black Iron.

The room was pitch black, dark and without windows.

When consciousness slowly awakens like an undercurrent beneath an ice layer, the first thing one perceives is a chill that pierces to the bone.

The chill seeped from the black stone ground, climbing up the spine and freezing the blood inch by inch.

Si Xingzhou opened his eyes in the chaos.

As far as the eye could see, there was only heavy darkness, so thick that it seemed impenetrable, as if one had fallen into the seabed of eternal night.

He lay still for a long time before his pupils gradually adjusted to the absolute darkness, and he could barely make out the smooth, mirror-like outlines of the four walls.

It was a Xuanming Stone specially mined from the depths of the Northern Frontier. It was harder than iron and had the strange property of absorbing internal energy. It was designed specifically to imprison experts of his level.

A dull, restraining feeling came from my wrist.

He lowered his eyes and saw two dark, dull iron chains wrapped around his wrists. The chains were as thick as a child's arm, and their ends were deeply embedded in the stone wall.

The inside of the lock ring is engraved with fine patterns. As his internal energy flows with each breath, those patterns become slightly hot, as if countless fine needles are piercing his meridians.

"...Snow in Tangxi".

He uttered the name in a low voice, each word like an ice blade scraping between his teeth.

What surged in his chest was not just anger, but also a burning flame of near-shame.

"She—she truly knows no bounds, actually poisoning me!"

He is Si Xingzhou, the emperor of the Xingze Dynasty. He tempered his body in the poisonous swamp since childhood, tasting hundreds of herbs and testing thousands of poisons. He should have been immune to all poisons by now.

"What kind of drug was that? Even I fell for it?"

But that faint fragrance...

That faint, almost imperceptible sweet scent mixed with the fragrance of plum blossoms caused his consciousness to dissipate in an instant.

How absurd!

"Click—"

The black iron chains emitted a dull grating sound in the darkness.

"You think you can trap me like this? What a joke!"

Si Xingzhou closed his eyes and concentrated, and the vast inner energy within his body began to surge.

In an instant, a light golden glow emanated from his body, and starlight seemed to flow beneath his skin.

Those two black iron chains, which were said to be able to lock up dragons, actually began to crack and shatter from the inside!

"Click—"

The broken chain fell to the ground with a crisp sound.

He slowly rose, his star-studded robe flowing down like water in the darkness.

"Where exactly is this?"

Fingertips traced the cold stone wall, and internal energy tentatively seeped in.

"They'll stop at nothing to trap me."

A dull echo came from deep within the rock wall. Just as he had expected, the secret chamber was carved directly through the mountain's belly, with tons of rock outside the four walls.

If we force our way through the wall, we will likely be buried alive in an instant.

What a meticulous plan.

"She is indeed as crazy as Ah Zhe said. She actually went to such great lengths to get me."

Si Xingzhou sat down with his back against the stone wall, the icy cold seeping into his skin through his clothes.

He suddenly remembered the last thing he saw before he lost consciousness.

Her light blue skirt bloomed like a lotus flower on the snow, and a pearl on the toe of her shoe shimmered with a warm glow in the moonlight.

The woman stood under the plum tree, and when she turned to look at him, her eyes sparkled with joy.

"Do you want me—so you have to force yourself on me? Without even asking?"

She went to great lengths to set up this trap, imprisoning him here. Could it be that she wanted to possess him all to herself?

"She's... she's insane! Does she really like me that much?"

The thought had barely formed when he forcibly suppressed it.

Yet, in the darkness, a suspicious heat rose uncontrollably from the roots of his ears.

"If that's really the case..." he murmured to himself, his fingertips unconsciously tracing the cold stone wall, "I will definitely not comply."

"I am the ruler of a nation..."

"No matter how beautiful she is, she cannot be imprisoned here and treated as a plaything."

"..."

He didn't know how much of his imprisonment was due to his personal grudges with Yun Boyan.

Juyue Pavilion is built by the water, and its hexagonal eaves are covered with snow, making it look like a crane lying quietly when viewed from a distance.

The pavilion was filled with the fragrance of medicinal herbs.

Amber-colored medicinal soup simmered on a small copper stove, its steam rising and condensing into a thin mist in the cold air.

Si Xingxuan, wrapped in a snow-white fox fur coat, sat on a cushioned stone bench, the scroll of "The Record of Heavenly Weaving" in his hand untouched for a long time.

He gazed at the falling petals outside the pavilion, his eyes vacant.

A commotion arose from the waterside pavilion; it seemed that Shen Yan had been poisoned and was receiving emergency treatment.

suddenly.

A dark shadow ripped through the pale sky!

It was a jet-black cloud falcon, its wings spread like blades of night, piercing through the thick snow curtain, and shooting into the pavilion like an arrow, landing steadily on the stone table beside him.

A plain white paper note was tied to the anklet.

Si Xingxuan untied the paper and unfolded it.

There was only one line of text on the paper, written with powerful strokes that seemed to penetrate the paper:

"To bring spring back to barren trees and change the daytime star."

At the bottom of the signature, a bright red lacquer seal shaped like a flowing cloud is visible – it is Yun Jue’s unique seal.

"Good...very good."

Si Xingxuan's fingers tightened around the paper, and her pale knuckles turned a bluish-green color from the force.

The paper crumpled and curled under his fingers, eventually crumbling into dust that fell softly onto his moon-white robe.

He looked up.

In those eyes that always held a hazy, sickly air like the misty rain of Jiangnan, a chilling tide surged, as if an ancient ice abyss had suddenly cracked open, revealing scorching magma beneath.

"Yun Jue—" he repeated the name softly, each word sharp as ice, "Dare to touch my brother?"

Before he could finish speaking, a violent cough suddenly struck his throat.

He suddenly arched his back, his thin shoulders trembling violently beneath his fox fur coat, his whole body looking so haggard that he seemed about to turn into a handful of snow and vanish in the cold wind.

When the handkerchief covering her lips was unfolded, several striking scarlet spots bloomed on the snow-white silk, like red plum blossoms on a snowy ground, extremely beautiful and poignant.

"Qizhu," he called out in a hoarse voice, his voice still carrying the broken breaths of coughing.

The snow outside the pavilion was slightly disturbed.

A figure in green robes swayed like a bamboo shadow, kneeling silently at the foot of the stone steps outside the pavilion.

"My lord."

"Investigate," Si Xingxuan uttered only one word.

Before half an incense stick's time had passed, the shadow guard in green returned, his voice colder than the wind and snow outside the pavilion:

"Your Majesty, His Majesty... has disappeared. The last trace was found deep in the plum grove behind the mountain. There were no signs of a struggle at the scene, His Majesty's sword was not drawn, and his jade pendant was intact in the snow... He must have been subdued in an instant, without any power to resist."

"Where are the shadow guards who are by my side?!" Si Xingxuan clenched the blood-stained handkerchief tightly, and even deeper red seeped through his fingers.

"Your Majesty... left all the Star Abyss Guards by your side." Qi Zhu's voice was hoarse. "When he went to the back mountain alone, he didn't take a single person with him."

"The back mountain..." Si Xing closed her eyes briefly, her long eyelashes casting two fragile shadows on her pale cheeks. When she opened them again, her eyes were filled with a chilling clarity. "Who was on the back mountain then?"

"According to intelligence reports, Princess Tang Xixue once danced on the frozen lake. In addition... Qi Wang, the God of War of Yunchuan, was once seen halfway up the mountain at that time."

"Praying for the sake of the delusions—" Si Xingxuan suddenly sneered.

That smile was pale and sharp, like an ice blade slicing through glass, carrying a kind of resolute determination to destroy everything.

"Yun Chuan is truly... despicable to this extent."

He almost instantly concluded that Qi Wang must have interfered in this matter.

Otherwise, with your brother's abilities, even if you faced a thousand troops, how could you be powerless to resist and be manipulated by others?

As for that Princess Mirror...

She merely danced a dance in Merlin.

The frozen lake reflects the snow, red plum blossoms accompany the dancers, it is an elegant thing to do, what wrong could she have done?

If I really have to say there's anything wrong with it...

Si Xingxuan's eyes darkened. That must be why he wasn't there at the time and missed her dance.

"My lord, His Majesty has truly fallen this time..." Qi Zhu's voice trailed off, almost disappearing into the wind and snow. "Should we... atone for it?"

"Should we just abandon him?!"

Si Xingxuan interrupted sharply, but his agitated emotions triggered his lung meridians again.

The fox fur coat slipped off his shoulders, revealing his shockingly thin frame underneath, as if a strong gust of wind could break him.

After a long while, he finally sat up, panting, and slowly wiped the corners of his lips with a blood-stained handkerchief.

Each word was deliberate and deliberate, like a nail driven into wood.

"Go to my room and fetch that withered tree that will come back to life."

Qi Zhu suddenly looked up, a flash of surprise and pain in her eyes:

"My lord! That is your hope for survival!"

"go."

Si Xingxuan said no more, only waved his hand lightly.

What hope does he have left?

He turned to look at the falling blossoms outside the pavilion, a chilling darkness settling in his eyes.

Like eyes quietly opening in the abyss before the last ray of light is swallowed up by a blizzard.

"Since you want to mess with my brother..." he muttered to himself, his voice drifting away in the wind and snow, "I'll see if you're even alive to enjoy this great gift."