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

She put down her teacup, her gaze falling on the courtyard. After a moment's thought, she asked, "What about Fang Shi? Hasn't she gone to check on her daughter?"

Qingdai pursed her lips: "Madam Fang's side is quite quiet. I heard that she invited Doctor Wang to the mansion and had him take her pulse twice, saying that she wanted to prescribe some nourishing medicine to regulate her body."

"The second young lady was throwing things and making a huge fuss in her room. Granny Zhang went to report it once, but Madam Fang only said, 'Let her cry. She'll calm down when she's had enough,' and didn't even go to the second young lady's courtyard to take a look."

Xi Yueli listened and sneered. Fang Shi didn't even care about her daughter's face anymore.

In the past, Xi Yuefu was the apple of her eye; even a minor bump or bruise would cause her pain for three days. Now, her daughter was publicly driven back from the Deng residence, and she simply said, "Let her cry," while she stayed in the courtyard seeking medical treatment.

What this is about is obvious to anyone with eyes to see.

Ms. Fang was in her early forties, which was not young, but she had not yet gone through menopause.

Now that Xi Yuefu's face is ruined, it's hard to say whether she can marry into a good family in the future. Fang's position in the mansion is also precarious because of the old incident in Willow Lane. Of course, she should hurry up and get pregnant again.

Ideally, it would be a son. With a son, there would be more people vying for the position of the eldest daughter, giving her new leverage in front of Xi Mingyuan.

Xi Yueli leaned back in her chair, slowly turning the old bracelet on her wrist with her fingertips, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

That "note" wasn't something she made up out of thin air. The note clearly stated who went where, who they met, and what the outcome was—all information about people related to her.

Moreover, the source of that content seemed to be an invisible network of informants watching the entire mansion, intercepting useful information, and stuffing it into her mind in some way she hadn't yet figured out.

She looked down and opened her diary, stopping at a certain page. On the corner of that page, she had pressed a faint symbol with her fingernail—three short lines, exactly the same as the scratches that had once appeared on her cuff.

She used to think it was just random scribbles made unconsciously when she was having an episode, but now, looking at it again, the three short lines were extremely regular in shape and evenly spaced, like markings in some kind of code.

When she is awake, the intercepted intelligence will occasionally drift into her field of vision like scraps of paper, like that note this afternoon, which flashed by but was as true as the words.

"Miss?" Qingdai called softly when she saw her lost in thought.

Xi Yueli snapped out of her reverie, closed the diary, and ran her fingertips along the cover a couple of times. "It's nothing. You go and rest; I want to be alone for a while."

Qingdai acknowledged and left, gently closing the door behind her. Xi Yueli sat alone in the sunlight by the window, taking the black iron token out of the oilcloth and examining it in her palm.

The character "渊" gleamed with a dark, matte light under the sunlight. She stared at it for a long time, and the thought in her mind became clearer and clearer.

The token, the alley, the dusty door, the notes that kept slipping through my mind like intelligence reports—all these are connected by a thread, and "she" is slowly handing that thread over to her.

As for Fang Shi, whether she wanted to have a son or wanted to throw her out of the mansion, she could remember far more things than they could imagine.

In the dead of night, a sound came from the roof tiles of Jinxian Courtyard.

The sound was extremely soft, like the footsteps of a wildcat crossing the rooftop, almost indistinguishable amidst the wind and insect chirps, yet Xi Yueli opened her eyes in the darkness.

She simply lay flat on her back, her breathing steady and normal, her eyelids slightly open, her pupils slowly focusing in the extremely dim light, like a beast pretending to be asleep quietly pricking up its ears in the darkness.

The moonlight outside the window was dim, and only a very faint sliver of light from the corridor lamp seeped in through the crack under the door, casting a narrow gray line on the floor in front of the bed.

Another sound, closer than before, came from directly above the roof beam.

Xi Yueli silently pulled her right hand out from under the covers, her fingers already reaching for the celadon teacup on the bedside table.

She listened intently to the sounds above her head. The person on the roof moved, and the tiles made a very faint creaking sound as they were pressed down. Then it was quiet, quiet for about ten breaths.

Just when she thought the man had left, the window was pried open from the outside with a thin blade.

A dark figure leaped in through the window, landing silently, and walked towards the bed. A narrow-bladed dagger slid out from the cuff of his right sleeve, its blade gleaming matte in the darkness.

The moment the dagger was raised, the blanket on the bed was suddenly pulled off.

Xi Yueli sprang up from under the covers, gripping the celadon cup in her right hand and hurling it at the dark figure's face with the speed of a long-lurking beast.

The shadowy figure tilted its head to avoid the porcelain cup, but Xi Yueli's next attack had already arrived.

She used the momentum of her right elbow to sink down, and the tip of her elbow slammed hard into the inside of the shadowy figure's wrist that was holding the knife. The accuracy of the strike was terrifying, hitting the gap between the wrist bone and the ulna bone. It was both numb and painful, and the dagger slipped from her hand and fell to the ground with a clatter.

The shadowy figure grunted and reached for Xi Yueli's throat with his left hand.

But she had already spun halfway around, and she grabbed a broken piece of porcelain and stabbed it hard into the shadowy figure's right shoulder.

The shadowy figure took a half step back, looking down in disbelief at the wound on his shoulder.

With a flick of her wrist, Xi Yueli threw a black iron token from her hand. The shadowy figure was about to dodge, but intercepted the familiar token at the last moment.

It has the character "Yuan" engraved on it, which is the token of the Dark Pavilion Master.

The assassin's hand trembled as he gripped the token. He took a step back in disbelief, then knelt down, raising the token high. The people of the Dark Pavilion recognized the token, not the person.

Xi Yueli waved her hand, and the dark figure put down the token and retreated towards the window. He moved as fast as a startled night bird, jumped out of the window, and disappeared into the night.

Seeing the assassin leave, Xi Yueli loosened her grip on the broken porcelain shards, staggered back two steps, her knees hitting the edge of the bed, and she slid down, her back against the bed frame, panting heavily.

She closed her eyes and opened them again, but there was no longer any murderous intent in them. She didn't remember what had just happened; the middle part seemed to have been completely removed.

But her right arm was in pain, her fingertips were bleeding, there was a pool of blood on the ground that didn't belong to her, the window was pried open, and the wind was blowing in through the open crack, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

The wind outside the window suddenly changed direction.

A figure in black silently fell from the eaves and landed on the outside of the window.

Helian Jing put one hand on the window frame, turned sideways and climbed in, his boots landing first. His eyes quickly scanned the room: broken porcelain, bloodstains, scattered daggers, and Xi Yueli sitting on the edge of the bed.

He crouched down, leaned close to her, and looked at her in the little moonlight coming through the window. Her pupils were still unfocused, and there were drops of blood on her eyelashes. She was trembling all over.

He looked down at the two cuts on the web of her right hand, then at the pool of dark red blood on the ground, and his brows slowly furrowed.

"Did he hurt you?" he asked.

Xi Yueli shook her head.

Helian Jing placed his fingertips on her pulse point; it was beating fast and erratically, but the tension in her muscles and bones was rapidly subsiding, and her body was withdrawing from a state of high alert, a state of "combat readiness."

A person waking up from a dream and fighting back and injuring the enemy unarmed in the darkness where they cannot see the enemy is not something someone with "dissociative identity disorder" would do.

The scene he had just witnessed from the rooftop opposite—a shard of broken porcelain piercing his shoulder—was precise, decisive, and without the slightest hesitation; it was the physical memory of someone who had undergone rigorous training.

"You just now—" He had just started to speak when Xi Yueli suddenly looked up at him, her eyes, still veiled in mist in the darkness, met his gaze.

"...I don't remember."