Who said the eldest daughter is crazy? She's clearly a woman of high rank and influence in the

After listening, Xi Mingyuan didn't speak. He glanced at Xi Yueli, and in that glance were exhaustion, wavering, and a loosening that even he himself didn't realize.

"Grandmother," Xi Yueli turned to the old lady, her voice softening slightly.

"My granddaughter did say some horrifying things tonight. But think about it, how could a sickly girl who can't even hold a bowl properly suddenly transform into a ferocious beast capable of defeating two men overnight?"

"I admit I was faking my madness. I was just trying to scare Mrs. Fang. My granddaughter has been bullied for too long and is just retaliating."

The old lady looked at her, the candlelight flickering between them, and finally the old lady let out a long breath, as if squeezing out all the fear of the whole night from her chest.

"Li'er, go back and rest tonight. Have Qingdai make you a calming soup. I've got someone guarding the courtyard gate; no one will disturb you in the middle of the night anymore. Your father... he'll investigate."

Xi Yueli nodded, turned and walked out. The night wind rushed towards her, filling her throat, which was chilled by the talisman water, and made her cough violently twice.

Qingdai ran over from the shadows and took her arm, her voice low: "Miss, let's go back to the courtyard. The hot water is ready."

She nodded and let Qingdai help her back to Jinxian Courtyard.

The old woman at the courtyard gate had changed; she was from the old lady's courtyard. Upon seeing her, she bowed respectfully without asking any questions, and was carrying a bowl of freshly brewed calming soup.

Qingdai helped her into the room and helped her change into a clean nightgown. The binding marks on her wrists were even more red and swollen. She applied ointment and brought the calming soup to her lips.

Xi Yueli drank half a bowl and then pushed it away. As soon as the tension in her mind eased, she felt as if all the bones in her body had been disassembled and put back together, and she was in pain all over.

She fell into the pillow without even lifting her eyelids, only feeling her body sinking heavily into a thick, sticky darkness.

She wasn't truly asleep; her consciousness was floating in a shallow state. She could hear Qingdai tiptoeing as she cleared the dishes, the rustling of the wind through the bamboo leaves outside the window, and the distant sound of the night watchman's clapper from the corner tower.

It was past midnight, but she couldn't move. It felt like something was pressing her down on the bed, her limbs and bones felt as heavy as lead. She couldn't open her eyelids, and she couldn't even curl her fingers an inch.

Then that crack in my brain opened up again.

This time it was much more intense than the one in the afternoon. It felt as if someone had struck the inside of her skull with a chisel. A dull pain shot from the back of her head to her brow. She suddenly curled up, and a suppressed whimper escaped her throat.

Her hands gripped the corner of the blanket tightly, her knuckles white, and the veins in her body throbbed beneath her skin, but she dared not utter a sound.

Qingdai went to rest. The old woman in the courtyard was her grandmother's person, so as long as she didn't make a big fuss, no one would come in.

But she had no control over what was in her head.

The images were like shards of glass that had been smashed, each piece piercing her consciousness so quickly that she couldn't even recognize them before being overwhelmed by the next one.

All the visuals were illogical and out of order, and the sounds were intertwined and buzzing together.

Her temples throbbed with pain, and she finally couldn't help but roll over and crawl to the edge of the bed, her knees hitting the bed frame with a dull thud.

She rolled to the ground, her forehead pressed against the cold blue bricks, her fingers digging into the cracks between the bricks, her whole body trembling like a leaf.

She bit her wrist to keep the sound from leaking out through her teeth; her flesh was dug into her teeth, and she tasted the metallic sweetness of the flesh.

Just then, the window clicked softly.

The sound was extremely faint, but Xi Yueli's body reacted before her mind. She suddenly raised her head, and her pupils, which had been dilated by the intense pain, forcibly focused for a moment. She saw a shadow silently land in front of her.

Helian Jing wore a dark black night outfit, with the cuffs tightly bound, and even the plain silver hairpin was replaced with a dark cloth ribbon to tie his hair.

Those eyes, usually both lazy and sharp, were now slightly narrowed, fixed on Xi Yueli, who was curled up on the ground.

He sneaked into the Xi residence tonight, originally intending to raid her Jinxian Courtyard.

Her words in the ancestral hall were too coincidental. She herself might not have realized what was hidden in her words after being "possessed by evil spirits," but he understood them.

The details she recounted about the Fang family's past were not something someone suffering from dissociative identity disorder could fabricate out of thin air, especially since she was just a baby at the time.

But when he climbed in through the window, he saw Xi Yueli curled up on the blue brick floor, the collar of her nightgown askew, revealing half of her thin collarbone, and the dried scab on her forehead shining dark brown in the moonlight.

Helian Jing stood still, his eyes, which usually held a hint of indifference when looking at anything, suddenly fixed on something.

He had seen her standing in front of the prayer mat in the ancestral hall, her back ramrod straight, her gaze as cold as if it had been tempered with ice, each word a knife, nailing her stepmother to the events of sixteen years ago.

But at this moment, she curled up on the ground, trembling, biting her wrist to keep the sound from leaking out. Suddenly, the person who was so hard that he was impervious to blades and spears shattered into pieces, revealing a thin, wounded little girl under the shards.

Xi Yueli's unfocused pupils looked at the person squatting in front of her. Sometimes it was Helian Jing's face, and sometimes it was the outline of a man with a veil covering his face.

"Don't move." Helian Jing's voice was very low, almost a whisper, but those two words gently tugged at her consciousness.

He took out a roll of extremely fine silver needles from a hidden pouch at his waist and gently inserted a needle into the Fengchi acupoint on the back of her neck.

The moment the needle pierced the skin, there was a slight, cool, throbbing sensation, like a ladle of cold water being poured into a boiling oil pan. The churning fragments in my mind suddenly paused.

The second needle was placed on the Shenmen acupoint on the inside of her wrist bone, the third needle on the Baihui acupoint on the top of her head, and for the fourth needle, he paused, his gaze lingering for a moment on the blood scab on her forehead, before finally placing the fourth needle half an inch above her brow, inserting it into her skin very lightly and shallowly.

The moment the silver needle pierced her skin, Xi Yueli shuddered violently, and then the excruciating pain that had been churning her for who knows how long gradually subsided.

Her breathing gradually calmed down, and her ten fingers, which were gripping the brick seams, loosened one by one. Her body was still trembling slightly, and she was extremely exhausted.

Helian Jing squatted down in front of her, placing his left hand on her shoulder to steady her and prevent her from falling forward.

He lowered his head and, by the moonlight, looked at the bloody mark on her wrist that he had bitten. The flesh was rolled back, and the teeth marks were neatly embedded at the edge of the wound.

"Xi Yueli," he called her softly.

Her eyes were half-open, the unfocused pupils slowly closing, but her gaze couldn't find a focus; she just stared blankly in his direction.

The moonlight streamed in through the window, bathing her face and making her pale skin almost transparent. The scab on her forehead, the teeth mark on her wrist, and the bite mark on her lip were all clearly visible under the moonlight.

"It hurts..." she managed a very soft murmur from her throat.

Helian Jing's hand paused on her shoulder for a moment, then he changed his posture, from squatting to sitting down, leaning against the edge of the bed, and half-carried, half-lifted her from the blue brick floor to his front.

Her back was pressed against his chest, the back of her head rested in the crook of his shoulder, and she curled up into a small ball nestled in his arms.

He glanced down at the still-bleeding teeth mark on her wrist, then raised his right wrist and brought it to her lips.

"Bite here," he said.