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

Only two people remained in the room.

Helian Jing stood by the bed and looked down at her. Her eyes were closed, her breathing was steady, and her brows were relaxed. Her pale face looked particularly small in the pillow, but his gaze fell on her closed eyelids, and her pupils were rolling very gently.

He bent down, leaned close to her ear, and whispered, "If you're awake, stop pretending. I know you're awake. The hand you had on my arm clenched three times."

Xi Yueli's eyelashes trembled suddenly. She had indeed been awake for a while, ever since he carried her out of the blacksmith's shop.

But she dared not open her eyes. What he had just said had cornered her, and she didn't know how to answer his probing questions, so she could only continue to pretend.

Helian Jing straightened up and looked down at her.

"Xi Yueli," he said in a low voice, "I won't force you to answer now, but remember this: I've waited four years, a few more days won't make a difference. Come to the Tian Shu Division to find me when you've thought it through."

He took a step back. "Next time you pretend to faint, remember to slow down your breathing too. Your breathing was three times faster than a sleeping person just now, you gave yourself away."

He turned and walked towards the door, the curtain was lifted and then fell back down, and his footsteps disappeared into the night through the courtyard.

The Jinxian Courtyard fell silent, with only Qingdai calling out in a low voice from outside the door, "Your Highness, please take care."

Xi Yueli opened her eyes, leaned against the headboard and slowly exhaled. The stone that had been pressing on her heart for so long suddenly loosened a lot.

She threw back the covers, got out of bed, walked to the table, and sat down. She wrote down a few things she was certain of: "Northern border, dilapidated temple, saved someone, that person said it was me, Dark Pavilion, token, Liu San Niang."

She added, "There's more than one fragment; the fighting style, intelligence intuition, and composure in dealing with assassins—it's not just one style."

The precise and ruthless tactics used when facing assassins are not the same as the practiced fingertips that move skillfully across the table when reviewing files in the Wan Shi Lou.

The former is the knife's sense of smell, the latter is the master's composure; there are at least two fragments within this body.

The person who stitched up Helian Jing's wounds in the dilapidated temple four years ago was not the leader of the Dark Pavilion.

She had just read the Pavilion Master's file in the Wan Shi Lou. The Pavilion Master's fighting style was more aggressive and short, but the person Helian Jing described was calm and meticulous, which was completely different from the style of the Dark Pavilion's Pavilion Master.

She stood up, blew out the lamp, and walked back to the bed in the dark to lie down. In the darkness, her breathing gradually calmed down.

The Tian Shu Division has spies all over the capital. She was already cornered in the blacksmith's shop by Helian Jing today, and it probably won't be so easy for her to leave the mansion on her own again.

As for Helian Jing, she probably won't go anytime soon. She's too easily exposed in front of him, and she doesn't want to be forced to feign unconsciousness to escape like she was today.

……

On the tenth day of Fang's confinement, a small blue sedan chair arrived at the palace.

The eunuch stood beside the tea table in the front hall, slowly blowing away the foam from the teacup with unhurried demeanor. When he saw Xi Mingyuan enter, he put down the teacup and cupped his hands in greeting.

"Lord Xi, Her Majesty the Empress has heard that your wife has been unwell recently, and has specially ordered me to invite her to the palace for a chat."

Xi Mingyuan was stunned for a moment. The Empress? Fang Shi?

He opened his mouth, but swallowed the words back. The Empress was the mother of the nation; she had countless ways to find out what was going on with the family of a fourth-rank official.

"This..." He hesitated for a moment, his gaze involuntarily drifting towards the ancestral hall.

The eunuch smiled faintly, "Lord Xi, there's no need to worry. Her Majesty only summoned the lady for a chat; she'll be sent back after noon."

Xi Mingyuan nodded, bowed, and turned to walk towards the ancestral hall.

When he pushed open the ancestral hall door, Fang was kneeling on a prayer mat with her eyes closed, fiddling with a string of prayer beads. Her face was haggard, her hair was disheveled, and she was still wearing the plain nightgown she had worn when she was confined.

Hearing the door open, she looked up and saw Xi Mingyuan rushing in with a worried expression. Something flashed briefly in her tired eyes.

"Get up and change your clothes." Xi Mingyuan's voice was urgent and hoarse. "The Empress summons you to the palace, quickly."

When Fang stood up, her legs felt a little weak. She steadied herself by holding onto the offering table. "The Empress?"

"Your brother is in the palace—" Xi Mingyuan lowered his voice, "He's probably put in a good word for you. Don't ask any more questions. Hurry up and get ready; the sedan chair is waiting at the door."

Fang's lips twitched slightly, a very slight movement. A layer of color returned to her haggard face. She lowered her head, straightened her cuffs, and said nothing. She then led the nanny back to her own courtyard to do her makeup.

Half an hour later, when she came out of the second gate, she had completely changed her appearance. She wore a lotus-colored embroidered gold jacket, and a red gold hairpin with rubies inlaid in her hair. A thin layer of powder on her face covered up her tiredness. Her eyes were focused, and her lips were pursed straight.

Before getting into the sedan chair, she glanced at Xi Mingyuan standing under the porch, a look that carried a hint of smugness.

Xi Mingyuan gripped his sleeves and watched the blue sedan chair disappear into the alleyway. Unbeknownst to him, the back of his clothes was already soaked with sweat.

Fang stayed in the Empress's palace for nearly two hours.

As she left the palace, dusk had already fallen over the palace walls. The eunuch who had delivered the message personally escorted her to the palace gate, bowing and saying, "Madam, please take care. Her Majesty has said that she will invite you to come and admire the flowers another day."

Fang nodded and got into the sedan chair. The moment the curtain fell, her fingers, which were gripping the hem of her skirt, loosened and then tightened again, her palms sweating profusely.

The next morning, officials from the county government came to Xi's residence to remove the notice.

When a young clerk stood in front of the notice board and peeled off the red paper, the alley was packed with onlookers.

"They withdrew it? Didn't they say the evidence was conclusive?"

"I heard the key evidence is missing; the metal tag doesn't match..."

"It doesn't match up? Wasn't it all set in stone the other day?"

That afternoon, Xi Yuefu was released from prison. She looked thinner and her cheeks were sunken. The gauze had been changed and was wrapped around half her face. When she crawled out of the carriage, her eyes were unfocused and she looked extremely tired.

But by evening, another piece of news spread even faster than Xi Yuefu's release from prison.

Xi Mingyuan was promoted from Assistant Minister of the Ministry of Revenue to Minister, skipping two ranks. The official document was approved on the same day, and the clerks from the Ministry of Revenue personally delivered his official robes to the gate of Xi's residence.

He stood in the study, holding the new official robe, his hands trembling so much that he couldn't even grip the cuffs tightly. He looked at the appointment document over and over again, then glanced at Fang's arrogant and smug demeanor after leaving the palace, and his brows furrowed deeply.

After Fang returned, she simply sat in the main room and drank a cup of tea. Then she had her maid remove the prayer mats from the ancestral hall and retrieve the keys to the household affairs from Jinxian Courtyard.

When the maid was sent to Jinxian Courtyard, Xi Yueli was sitting by the window flipping through account books. Upon hearing that it was Fang Shi's idea, she put down her pen and handed over the key.

She didn't argue, because when she woke up this morning, her memory of checking the files at the Wan Shi Lou yesterday afternoon was just a blurry outline.

She didn't remember exactly what Liu San Niang said that night, only that she felt a heavy weight on her heart, so heavy that her temples throbbed with pain when she sat up.

She lost another piece of her memory. Right after Helian Jing brought her back, right after she wrote those few lines, she fell asleep, and when she woke up, another part of it had been cut off.

The paper under her pillow with "Beishuo", "Damaged Temple" and "More than one fragment" written on it was still there. The handwriting was hers, but when she looked at those lines, her mind went blank, as if she were looking at someone else's notes.

Her face was so pale it was almost transparent. Qingdai paced anxiously beside her, and when she brought in ginseng soup, she barely drank a few sips.