After that incident, she had indeed gone to the Azure Emperor's Inner Pavilion to retrieve the root of affection. Strangely, though she searched every corner of the room, she could not find it. The root of affection had vanished—it was neither in the bone-china bottle nor anywhere else in the pavilion. Panic consumed her day and night, haunted by the fear that someone had stolen the Azure Emperor's root of affection for unknown purposes.
Fortunately, the Queen Mother never suspected a thing, allowing the secret to remain hidden for a full nineteen hundred years. Yet a gnawing anxiety always lingered in her heart. She felt certain that one day, this fire would inevitably burn her.
Inside the Kunlun Immortal Pavilion, the Holy Queen Mother of the West sat before a pearwood table, holding a jade bowl and slowly sipping a steaming bowl of snow-swift and red-plum broth.
Chapter 62