After my father was sent to marry into the princess's household, I became the darling of the en

The herb garden was much larger than she had imagined.

The medicinal herb gardens on both sides of the stone path in the front yard are layered and arranged in an orderly manner.

Fine moss grew in the cracks between the stone slabs, as if no one had set foot there for a long time.

Tian Jiu walked up to her, about to take a step forward to scout the way for Shen Jingque.

Rong Jing stretched out his arm, barely managing to block him from the chest.

"The Hundred Herbs Garden is no ordinary medicinal herb garden; there are hidden mechanisms beneath the stone paths."

Tian Jiu looked down at the foot that had almost stepped out, and silently withdrew it.

Rong Jing gently brushed a strand of hair from his forehead, becoming unusually serious.

"Follow my steps, and do not deviate more than one foot to the left or right."

"Take the wrong step on the wrong stone slab, and you'll bear the consequences."

Shen Jingque glanced at the ground. The pebbles embedded in the soil were of different sizes and depths, and at first glance they were just ordinary paving stones.

Upon closer inspection, the spacing between some of the stones does indeed reveal a strange pattern.

"What are the consequences?" she asked.

Rong Jing had already stepped out, answering without turning his head: "At best, you'll be stabbed in the knee; at worst, you'll be blocked by falling rocks. It all depends on your luck."

Shen Jingque's lips twitched, and she immediately followed obediently.

Tianjiu followed behind, ready to grab her and run if anything went wrong.

Rong Jing's steps were extremely irregular, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, sometimes fast, sometimes slow.

Each time his toes landed, they landed precisely on specific pebbles, as if he were stepping on some kind of array route that others couldn't understand.

Shen Jingque stared intently at the soles of his shoes, carefully stepping on the marks he had left behind.

Behind her, Tian Jiu followed her example, her steps steady, but her expressionless face paired with those devilish steps made her look like she was performing a bizarre folk ritual dance.

"Can't you just walk in a straight line?" Shen Jingque bent down to step over a protruding bluestone, stumbled, and almost fell to the ground.

"The traps were set up by our predecessors, not designed by me." Rong Jing didn't even turn his head. "If you're afraid of getting lost, you can hold my hand."

Shen Jingque looked up and gave him a fake smile, "No need, I'm afraid that if I hold your hand, the ancestors of the Great Yan will appear in my dreams in the middle of the night and scold me for frivolous behavior towards a hostage."

Rong Jing's feet didn't falter, but his shoulders twitched slightly. "My ancestors can't control things that far away."

After many twists and turns, Rong Jing finally stopped in front of a bamboo house.

He turned around and pointed to two slightly darker stone slabs in the northeast and northwest corners of the courtyard. "You two stand in those two spots respectively."

Shen Jingque walked over and stepped onto the stone slab, looking down at her feet. "And then?"

"Just stand still and don't move around."

Rong Jing reached out and grasped the neck of a Vermilion Bird stone beast at the entrance, twisting it half a turn to the left.

The stone beast's base emitted a dull clattering sound, and then the surroundings fell silent, even the sound of the wind rustling through the bamboo leaves became clearer.

Shen Jingque saw his movements and suddenly realized what he meant.

It turns out that the mechanisms in games that require three people to work together to open actually exist.

Rong Jing loosened his grip, patted the dust off his palms, and gestured with his chin behind him.

"The yard is safe now, feel free to wander around."

"Are you sure?" Shen Jingque tentatively took a step forward, hunched her neck, and waited for two breaths to confirm that no hidden arrows were shot out and no stone slabs collapsed.

"I'm sure, I'm not so bored as to use you as a test subject."

Shen Jingque then strode confidently toward the herb garden.

What comes into view is a whole patch of silvery-gray dendrobium, with stems twisted like dragon bones.

A golden panel suddenly popped up in front of him: [Rare medicinal herb detected: Dendrobium nobile.]

She reached out and gently touched it, and it immediately displayed [Points +5].

Looking around, she could see no fewer than a dozen rare species.

Each lit-up item earns five points, enough for her to upgrade her alchemy furnace several times over!

Tianjiu followed behind, looking on blankly as she became so excited about the weeds that she became incoherent.

He simply couldn't understand what was so exciting about these lush green grasses.

Rong Jing leaned against the door frame of the bamboo house, gently waving his folding fan, watching with great interest Shen Jingque, who was squatting in front of the herb garden with shining eyes.

Why would a twelve-year-old girl be so obsessed with rare herbs?

According to his intelligence, Shen Jingque was just an ordinary little girl before she went to the Princess's residence.

Where did this shift come from?

Shen Jingque wandered around the herb garden for a good half hour until the points on the system panel jumped to 50 before she finally came back to her senses from that excited state.

She patted the dirt off her knees, stood up, looked around, and found that the area in front of the bamboo house doorway was empty.

"Rong Jing?"

no respond.

"Tian Jiu, have you seen where Rong Jing went?"

Tian Jiu shook his head. He had been paying all his attention to whether there was any danger around Shen Jingque and hadn't noticed Rong Jing's movements at all.

Shen Jingque wiped her hands on Tian Jiu's clothes and walked towards the bamboo house. "I'll go in and look for him."

The interior of the bamboo house was simply furnished, with a desk, a rattan chair, and a half-person-high medicine cabinet in the corner, with yellowed paper labels on the drawers.

She walked around the desk and went inside, but suddenly stopped.

A piece of coarse brown cloth hung on the wall of the bamboo house. Most of the edges of the cloth had rotted away, and it was barely held in place by a few bamboo nails.

Shen Jingque walked to the wall and reached out to touch the piece of coarse cloth.

The old bamboo nails finally gave way and fell off, the cloth falling off in one piece, raising a cloud of dust.

"Ugh...cough cough cough..."

She covered her mouth and nose and moved away, only opening her eyes after the dust had settled to see what was on the wall.

It was a celestial map meticulously drawn with extremely fine ink lines on a whole piece of cowhide.

The positions of the stars were marked with cinnabar, interspersed with dense annotations in vigorous and archaic handwriting.

Shen Jingque leaned closer to look at the annotations and found some symbols next to the handwriting that she couldn't understand, which seemed to be a special notation used for some kind of deduction.

Next to several vermilion marks, there were additions written in different colors of ink, as if the owner had revised them repeatedly in different years.

Who exactly owns this courtyard?

What is her relationship with Rong Jing, and why does he have a key to this place?

But what is the meaning of this enormous star map?

Mohist mechanical arts, rare medicinal herb gardens, celestial charts...

The fact that these three things appeared in the same place doesn't seem like the work of an ordinary scholar.

One mystery after another rushed towards her, and Shen Jingque felt as if she had touched upon some unspeakable secret.

She raised her hand, her fingertips gently tracing the direction of the ink lines, when a lazy voice suddenly sounded behind her.

"What did you figure out?"

Shen Jingque's back stiffened, her fingers hovering in mid-air.

She turned around.

Rong Jing had somehow appeared three steps away, leaning against the door frame.

His dark eyes reflected the light streaming in through the bamboo window, churning with emotions that were impossible to fathom.