After the ghost-hunting master descended the mountain, his fame spread throughout the capital.

The carriage fell silent for a moment, with only the sounds of wheels turning and horses' hooves clattering.

Jiang Dusheng remained silent for a moment, but finally couldn't suppress his curiosity and asked softly:

"Who is your mother truly devoted to? Is it His Majesty, or the Duke of Xie? Or…" She paused, "someone else?"

Xie Jinchen did not answer immediately upon hearing this.

He seemed to be dragged into the depths of time by those words, falling into a brief daze.

The light streaming through the window swept across his handsome profile, flickering in and out.

He lowered his voice, as if afraid of disturbing some sleeping soul deep in his memory, "Actually... I don't know either."

"I only heard my mother's old nanny, who used to serve her closely, mention it a few times when she was old and confused."

His voice was as soft as if it were through a layer of mist, "On the day my mother was born, it is said that there was a strange phenomenon in the sky, with seven-colored clouds lingering around the palace for a long time."

"At that time, the abbot of Huguo Temple happened to be in the palace. Upon seeing this, he inadvertently sighed, 'A phoenix reincarnated.'"

"Just because of those four absurd words," Xie Jinchen's knuckles tightened slightly, a hint of cold mockery creeping into his voice, "my mother's life no longer belonged to her."

Jiang Dusheng's eyes narrowed. It was Huguo Temple again. Perhaps she needed to go and take a look at Huguo Temple.

Xie Jinchen continued, "She was treated like a treasure, but also like a bargaining chip. But what she wanted..."

The coldness in his voice gradually melted away, replaced by a rare tenderness:

"...It was never the honor of being the mother of the nation, nor the extravagant wealth of a duke's wife."

"My nanny said that my mother often stared blankly at the flowers and trees in the yard, which were neatly trimmed by the gardener, in the spring, and muttered to herself, 'They are beautiful, but they have lost their freedom and vitality.'"

"She secretly collected travelogues from the streets and envied those peddlers and storytellers who could travel all over the world."

"What my mother remembers most vividly is the Lantern Festival of the year she got married. She doesn't know what method she used, but she persuaded the Empress Dowager, who loved her the most, to let her wear a plain gauze hat and, with her secret guards, blend into the crowd of people to watch a very ordinary street lantern festival."

"After she came back, her eyes were sparkling and her lips were upturned for several days. She said the sugar figurines were sweet, the fish lanterns were beautiful, and the lively atmosphere in the crowd was so heartwarming that it made her want to cry."

Xie Jinchen raised his head, his gaze passing over Jiang Dusheng, as if looking at a point in the void.

It was as if he had pierced through the carriage and was looking at the vast world that his mother had longed for but never managed to set foot in.

"What she wanted was always very simple."

"It's simply about being able to shed fancy clothes and shackles, to be an ordinary person who isn't defined, and to walk freely in the sunlight."

"See the scenery you want to see, and live a life free from the constraints of anyone or anything."

Even if it's simple food and drink, even if it's plain clothes and simple hairpins, even if it's so ordinary that it gets lost in the crowd.

Xie Jinchen withdrew his gaze, looked at Jiang Dusheng, and the deep pain in his eyes was clearly visible, but his voice was unusually calm:

"My obsession with finding my mother's remains is not to fight against anyone or prove anything."

"I just think that if she was like a duckweed in life, her mind was trapped in a cage, and she never truly gained freedom."

"Then at least after she dies, I can place her remains in a quiet place with beautiful scenery and no one to disturb her."

"To allow her to unload all her burdens and truly and completely find peace and freedom."

"Instead of being like a prize to be fought over, imprisoned in life and even having one's bones used after death, never to be free."

After he finished speaking, the carriage fell silent again.

Jiang Dusheng quietly watched the pain that had been hidden for so long in Xie Jinchen's eyes, which was finally revealed at this moment.

Suddenly, all the doubts and speculations from before came to a conclusion.

As a child.

Four simple words, yet they are enough to explain so much.

Speechless all the way.

When it was completely dark, Jiang Dusheng and his party's carriage was still a short distance from the next town.

A not-so-wide river meanders past the official road, and an old stone arch bridge connects the two banks.

The sound of horses' hooves was exceptionally clear in the quiet night.

Just as the carriage reached the bridgehead and was about to cross it, Wang Dazhuang, who had been sitting cross-legged on the roof admiring the night view, suddenly let out a short scream.

"what!"

Immediately, his paper figure, with incredible agility and speed, slid down from the roof of the car and into the carriage.

"What's wrong?" Jiang Dusheng frowned.

Almost simultaneously, a guard's voice, clearly tense, came from outside the carriage curtain:

"Master, Miss Jiang, there's a funeral procession on the other side of the bridge, carrying a coffin this way. It's late, and something seems amiss. Please give your instructions."

Upon hearing this, Jiang Dusheng's gaze sharpened, and he raised his hand to lift a corner of the carriage curtain, looking towards the other end of the stone bridge.

The moonlight was dim, but enough to see clearly the other side of the bridge, where a group of about ten people, all dressed in coarse linen clothes and wearing tall white mourning caps, walked silently.

At the front of the procession, someone scattered handfuls of yellow and white paper money, which drifted and fell aimlessly in the night wind carrying the fishy smell of the river.

In the middle were four burly men carrying a dark coffin. The coffin reflected a ghostly light in the dim moonlight, and although the material was indiscernible, it inexplicably gave people a sense of oppression.

At the end of the procession followed two or three people carrying white paper lanterns.

The candlelight inside the lanterns seemed to glow pale and flicker, casting a gloomy, deathly light on the shadows of the people walking with their heads bowed, making their faces appear ashen and incongruous with the vibrant world around them.

Funerals are usually held during the day, when the yang energy is strong, so that the soul will not be bound by evil spirits.

Even more terrifying was the resentful aura emanating from the coffin, which was unsettling.

Jiang Dusheng's gaze lingered on the black coffin for a moment, then he lowered the carriage curtain and spoke calmly:

"On the bridge, the living yield to the funeral procession; on the road, the funeral procession yields to the living. The living do not block the Bridge of Helplessness, and the funeral procession does not block the Sunny Road. We will give way and pull over."

This is the default rule.

Upon hearing this, the guards did not act immediately, but waited for Xie Jinchen's instructions.

After all, they were Xie Jinchen's people.

Xie Jinchen didn't even lift the carriage curtain, simply saying, "Let me pass."

He paused, then added in a low voice, enough for the guards inside and outside the carriage to hear clearly, "From now on, whatever Miss Jiang says will be as I command, and there is no need to ask any further questions."

"Yes!" The guard responded solemnly, without the slightest hesitation, and immediately maneuvered the carriage to the side of the road to clear the bridge.

Inside the carriage, Wang Dazhuang was still trembling uncontrollably in the corner, the paper rustling softly as it rubbed against each other.

Jiang Dusheng glanced at him disdainfully: "Dazhuang, you weren't really scared to death in your previous life, were you? You were a ghost, for goodness' sake, can't you be a little more dignified?"

Wang Dazhuang, his face contorted with grief, stammered, "Master...no, it's not that I'm spineless! It's just that the coffin...the resentment emanating from that coffin was too strong!"

"Heavier than most of the violently deceased ghosts I've seen in the mass graves combined! This is just my instinctive reaction; my soul is chilled!"