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

Xi Yueli sat up straight, her movements three beats faster than she had anticipated, as if her body's reaction always preceded her thoughts.

She reached for the signal bamboo tube given to her by Liu San Niang in the hidden pocket at her waist. Her fingertips had just touched the edge of the tube when Helian Jing pressed down on the back of her hand.

"Don't let them go." His voice was very low. "It will take at least a cup of tea for the Dark Pavilion people to arrive. Judging from the sound of their horses' hooves, this group are veterans from the army. A cup of tea is enough for them to kill three times over."

Before he finished speaking, the first arrow pierced the shaft of the chariot.

Arrows followed one after another, embedding themselves in the outer wall of the carriage. The driver screamed and tumbled off his seat, the horse came to a sudden stop with a neighing hoof, and the carriage lurched violently.

Helian Jing had already lifted the curtain and gone out.

Xi Yueli sat alone in the carriage, listening to the sounds of arrows piercing the air and metal shields clashing together. The sounds of fighting outside crashed against the carriage walls like a surging wave of blood, yet she remained surprisingly calm.

She could clearly feel her frail body trembling slightly, but her heartbeat didn't quicken, her breathing didn't become rapid, and even her palms were dry.

She seemed to have seen far worse scenes.

With her eyes closed, she saw herself standing atop a mountain of corpses, her feet covered in blood. A narrow-bladed longsword was in her right hand, its blade entirely black. Blood droplets rolled down the spine of the sword to its tip, lingered for a moment, and then dripped down.

Another short clash of weapons came from outside, followed by the dull thud of metal hitting flesh, and then a moment of silence.

Xi Yueli opened her eyes, and the bloody scene faded away as the carriage curtain was lifted.

The night wind carried in the rusty, bloody stench. Helian Jing stood outside the carriage, the tip of his short blade pointing downwards, a drop of dark red blood sliding down from the tip and splashing into the mud, forming a small dot.

There was a thin bloodstain on his eyebrow, whether from an arrow or a cut from someone getting close, it was hard to tell. There were also two dark red splatters on his cheeks, half-dried by the night wind, like two dark cinnabar grains stuck to his cheekbones.

He stood outside the car, looking at Xi Yueli sitting upright inside. She was looking up at him, her eyes frighteningly calm in the dim light.

Helian Jing's grip on the short blade tightened slightly. A seventeen or eighteen-year-old sheltered young woman, facing a scene of carnage for the first time, should at least turn her face away.

But she sat there, her gaze slowly shifting from the blood droplets on the tip of his blade to the bloodstains on his cheek, her breathing rhythm remaining unchanged throughout the entire process.

He flicked the blood off his dagger, climbed onto the carriage, and squatted down in front of her. The distance between them was so close that he could see the undercurrents surging beneath the frozen surface of her eyes.

"Aren't you afraid?" he asked. His voice was a little hoarse from the night wind, with a slight upward inflection at the end.

Xi Yueli raised her hand, her fingers lingering for a moment by his cheek, her fingertips gently wiping the two dried bloodstains. The movement was so practiced, as if she had done it a thousand times. The bloodstains were wiped away, leaving a faint red mark on his cheekbone.

"Scenes of murder," she said, her voice very soft, as if talking to herself, "I feel like I've seen many of them."

Helian Jing's heart skipped a beat.

In the last image before he fell unconscious in that dilapidated temple on the northern border, the person who stitched up his wounds raised their hand and wiped his cheek in the same way.

That wipe was of his own blood splattered on his face, but the movement was exactly the same, light and steady.

Then that person said something, his voice coming through the dazed state of being seriously injured and the swirling snow, as soft as a dream.

"I've seen many murder scenes, but I saved your life."

Exactly the same words.

Helian Jing suddenly grabbed her wrist, his fingertips digging into the inside of her wrist bone with such force that they almost dug into her flesh.

"Who is she? I'm asking you who she is, and where she is?" His voice was squeezed out of his throat, low, hoarse, and urgent.

Xi Yueli's wrist was gripped by him, and she was pulled forward half an inch by the force, but the layer of frozen water in her eyes suddenly shattered.

Her pupils dilated suddenly, and she tilted her head, looking at him blankly: "...Who are you?"

Helian Jing's grip on her wrist froze. Her transformation in just a moment was swift and complete. One moment she was calmly wiping the blood off his face, and the next she had become that bewildered and helpless sick man.

He released her wrist, took a half step back, looked at her eyes that were once again veiled with mist, and suddenly lowered his head and chuckled. The chuckle was short and carried a hint of self-mockery and bitterness.

"You go crazy the moment I get close," he said. "Are you avoiding me, or are you truly insane?"

Xi Yueli didn't answer. Her body swayed slightly, and she leaned to the side, her forehead resting against the car wall, her eyelids closing heavily.

As she closed her eyes, her lips moved, and she uttered a few words indistinctly, "The scent of fir trees...it smells so familiar..."

Helian Jing stood at the entrance of the carriage, the night wind blowing in from outside. He looked at the person leaning against the carriage wall with his eyes closed, and suddenly felt a tightness in his throat.

He stood there for a long time, long enough for the night wind to dry the bloodstain on his eyebrow. Then he bent down, picked up the cloak draped over the seat, and gently covered her with it.

The collar of her cloak was turned up, covering half of her face, revealing only a pale forehead and closed eyelashes.

Helian Jing straightened up, pulled down the carriage curtain, walked to the front of the carriage shaft and sat down, gathering the scattered reins back into his hands.

The horses pulling the cart were startled, their hooves still pawing the ground restlessly. He held the reins steady with one hand and pressed the guard token at his waist with the other.

Several shadowy figures immediately sprang silently from the bushes, kneeling on one knee and awaiting instructions.

"The body was buried three miles away. The arrows were retrieved, and the blood on the cart was wiped clean. No trace of the body was to be left on the official road before dawn."

The guards responded and disappeared into the night, their movements as swift as smoke blown away by the wind.

One of them couldn't help but look back at the carriage before leaving.

His Highness Prince Chen sat atop the shaft of a dilapidated carriage, gripping the reins in his hand. Dark bloodstains, still damp, splattered on the hem of his robes. His back was ramrod straight as he personally drove the carriage.

The guard swallowed hard, then ducked back into the night, not daring to ask a single question.

When the wheels rolled back onto the official road, Helian Jing kept the speed very steady. He knew that Xi Yueli's body couldn't withstand the bumps, and that she had just "fallen ill" again.

He still can't tell which time she was being genuine and which time she was faking it, but when he grabbed her wrist and questioned her in the train carriage just now, her pupils were indeed unfocused.

He sat on the carriage shaft and drove for half the night. The carriage rumbled along the official road in late autumn, the curtain of the carriage being lifted by the night wind and then falling back down.

As the first gray-white light appeared on the horizon, the carriage stopped in front of a post station by the water.

Helian Jing jumped off the carriage shaft, lifted the curtain and peeked inside. Xi Yueli was still asleep, her face buried in the collar of her outer cloak, with only half an ear and a small section of the back of her neck showing. She was sleeping soundly, and even his movement of lifting the curtain did not wake her.

He looked for a moment, then lowered the carriage curtain, turned around and went to the entrance of the post station to knock on the door and ask for hot water and dry food.

What he didn't notice after lifting the curtain was that, beneath the cloak, Xi Yueli's lips curved slightly, a very faint and brief smile.

She pretended again.