Dead silence.
Su Qingxue's palm was still frozen in mid-air, the edge slightly reddened from the backlash of her True Qi.
She stared at the puddle of mud-like flesh on the ground, less than a foot away from the pearl-embellished tip of her embroidered shoe.
The killing intent had not yet faded, but it had struck empty air.
The stifling frustration felt like a venomous snake gnawing at her heart, even more unbearable than actually killing him.
"Cough..." The person on the ground hacked up another mouthful of blood and foam.
Dark red blood splattered onto the pristine white hem of her skirt, resembling vicious red plum blossoms blooming in the snow.
"Ah—!" Su Qingxue retracted her hand as if electrocuted, her scream piercing the congealed air.
She looked at the stain on her skirt, trembling all over with rage.
"Qingxue!" Xia Yuanchen stepped forward, his voice suppressing a faint trace of anger.
He swept his gaze over Qin Lie, who was at his last gasp on the ground, his eyes as cold as icicles.
"Your Highness! He... he's feigning death! He did it on purpose!" Su Qingxue pointed at Qin Lie, her fingertips shaking violently.
Xia Yuanchen ignored her, his line of sight falling beside Qin Lie's face.
That grey, unassuming "Shitou" was stained with a bit of bloody filth.
And that deep purple annulment letter once again lay neglected in the dust.
"Enough!" Xia Yuanchen's voice wasn't loud, yet it choked Su Qingxue into silence.
"Zhao Gui!"
"This slave is here! This slave is here!" Zhao Gui scrambled over, his fat face as pale as death.
"Clean this up! Get him out of here! Don't soil this place!" Xia Yuanchen spoke extremely fast, every word steeped in ice.
"Yes! Yes!" Granted a pardon, Zhao Gui whipped his head around and shrieked, "Are you dead people?! Still not dragging him away fast enough!"
Two coarse-handed old maids hurried forward, roughly hoisting Qin Lie by the arms.
"Wait!" Xia Yuanchen spoke up again abruptly.
The maids froze.
He paced forward slowly, his black python-patterned boots stopping beside Qin Lie's dangling hand.
Bending down, slender fingers pinched the grey, unassuming "Shitou."
It felt slightly cool to the touch, coarse, and carried a trace of damp stickiness.
He rubbed it between his fingertips, scraping off some dust and dark red bloodstains.
"Your Highness... this filthy thing..." Zhao Gui ingratiatingly tried to take it.
Xia Yuanchen ignored him, applying pressure with the pad of his thumb.
The Shitou didn't budge an inch, not even leaving a mark.
His gaze narrowed slightly, a trace of the faintest doubt flashing across it.
"Just a stubborn stone." He tossed it aside casually.
The Shitou traced an arc and, with a "clack," landed precisely back into the pool of blood beside Qin Lie's face.
Splashing up a few tiny droplets of blood.
"Carry him away." Xia Yuanchen straightened up, not bothering to look another time.
"Bad luck charm! Move, move quickly!" Zhao Gui urged viciously.
The maids grabbed Qin Lie with all their might, dragging him outward like a dead dog.
His head hung limply, his toes dragging across the spotless golden bricks.
They scraped away the bloodstains on the deep purple document, leaving behind even dirtier mud tracks.
"Wait!" Su Qingxue suddenly snapped.
She rushed forward in a few strides, staring fixedly at Qin Lie's hanging hand.
That hand had just touched the document and had also touched that stone.
At this moment, the pads of the thumb and index finger were stained with a bit of dust and dark red.
"His hand!" Her voice was sharp.
"Su... Miss Su?" Zhao Gui was baffled.
"Wipe his hand clean!" Su Qingxue ordered, her eyes filled with obsessive revulsion.
Zhao Gui started, then immediately understood.
"Hey! Did you hear that? Wipe! Wipe the Young Lord's hand!" he shouted with a sarcastic sneer.
One of the maids hastily yanked at her own relatively clean sleeve.
And indiscriminately wiped twice over Qin Lie's filthy hand.
The rough fabric brushed across his skin.
Qin Lie's fingertips curled imperceptibly.
The sleeve became stained with even more black and red filth.
"Alright, alright! Get him out of here at once!" Su Qingxue waved her hand impatiently, as if swatting away a fly.
The heavy carved wooden doors of the front hall were pulled open.
A biting cold wind carrying snow granules poured in.
The maids propped up Qin Lie, stumbling across the threshold.
"Bang!"
The door closed heavily behind them.
Cutting off the glittering luxury inside, and also cutting off those venomous gazes.
In the corridor outside, the cold wind was like a knife.
"Bah!" Zhao Gui spat a thick glob of phlegm directly at Qin Lie.
The sticky yellow liquid hung on his tattered lapel.
"Damn it all, what supreme bad luck! Useless trash!"
"Making me lose such a huge face in front of His Highness!"
His fat fingers jabbed fiercely at Qin Lie's lowered forehead.
"Still playing dead? Still trying to latch onto us? Latch onto your mother's leg!"
"Is Miss Su someone you can scheme against? Is the Second Prince someone you can drag into this?"
"Serves you right to be poisoned to death! Serves you right to be a cuckold!"
The vicious curses mixed with the cold wind, washing over him head-on.
Qin Lie showed no reaction whatsoever, his body swaying slightly with the maid's dragging.
Like a real corpse.
"What are you looking at? Scram!" Zhao Gui turned and roared at the servant boys peering out from the corridor.
The servant boys shrank their necks back in fright.
"Drag him further away! Throw him into that dog kennel of his! Don't soil the masters' territory!" Zhao Gui waved impatiently.
The maids propped up Qin Lie, turning down the veranda and stepping onto the gravel path leading to the most secluded corner of the Prince's Mansion.
The accumulated snow crunched loudly underfoot.
Several jackdaws were startled from the withered branches, flapping heavily toward the lead-grey sky.
"Dead heavy..." one maid complained, breathing heavily.
"Stop talking nonsense! Just throw him and be done with it!" the other maid shoved upward with force.
Qin Lie's limp body swayed accordingly.
Beneath his tightly closed eyelids, his eyeballs rolled extremely slowly.
His icy fingers, concealed beneath the maid's coarse clothing,
moved with extreme stealth, brushing against the inner layer of his tattered lapel.
They touched a hard, cold, irregularly shaped protrusion.
It was another "Shitou."
Identical to the one on the ground.
At the end of the path stood a dilapidated moon gate.
Inside the gate, a few low and dilapidated side rooms huddled in the cold wind.
Thick snow accumulated on the eaves, and withered grass poked out from the tile cracks.
This was the current "residence" of the Prince's Mansion's Young Lord.
"Here we are, here we are! Right here!" The maids felt a sense of relief.
Working together, they treated him like a bag of garbage,
flinging Qin Lie down onto the mud covered with a thin layer of snow at the entrance of one of the side rooms.
"Thud!"
His body slammed onto the cold, hard ground.
"Aiyo, this is going to be the death of me!" One maid pounded her lower back.
"Let's go, let's go! This broken place has heavy yin energy!" The other maid rubbed her arms.
The two of them didn't even look at the person on the ground, turning and leaving immediately.
Their footsteps quickly vanished beyond the moon gate.
Dead silence enveloped the area once more.
The cold wind swirled snow granules, letting them fall onto Qin Lie.
He lay face down, buried in the cold mud and snow, not moving at all.
Only his slightly rising and falling back proved there was still a shred of vital breath left in this body.
Time ticked away drop by drop.
Twilight gathered, and the cold grew heavier.
The dilapidated wooden door of the side room creaked in the wind.
Like the groan of a dying man.
Finally.
The fingers of the "corpse" on the ground twitched ever so slightly.
Then, another finger followed.
His head, covered in mud and snow, lifted extremely slowly.
Messy black hair adhered to his pale cheeks, mixed with muddy filth and dried bloodstains.
Those tightly shut eyes snapped wide open!
No confusion. No pain.
Only a bottomless pool of icy cold!
As sharp as an unsheathed blade!
Qin Lie drew in a sharp breath.
The freezing air, mixed with the stench of mud and blood, poured into his lungs.
Triggering a fit of tearing coughs.
"Cough cough... ugh..."
He turned his head, spitting out a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva.
Propping himself up on his elbows, he used every ounce of strength to lift his shattered body away from the cold ground inch by inch.
Every subtle movement pulled at bone-fracturing agony throughout his entire body.
Cold sweat instantly soaked his single garment.
Yet his gaze lacked the slightest fluctuation, retaining only a cruelty bordering on obsessive focus.
He leaned back against the cold door panel, panting violently.
Every breath carried a wheeze like a broken bellows.
The cold wind carrying snow granules poured into his neck, piercingly chill.
He paid it no mind.
His trembling right hand, covered in mud and bloodstains, groped laboriously into the inner layer of his tattered lapel.
Feeling around.
His fingertips brushed against that hard, cold object.
His movement paused, his gaze sharpening further.
Like the most cautious hunter checking a trap.
With extreme care, he fished that object out.
Palms unfolded.
A grey, unassuming "Shitou," the size of a fingernail with irregular edges.
Almost identical to the one he had "accidentally" dropped in the front hall.
Only the surface was cleaner, unstained by the blood of the front hall.
Qin Lie stared fixedly at this "Shitou," his gaze akin to looking at a peerless treasure.
He extended his left hand—the hand that had been carelessly wiped by the maid's sleeve, still bearing stains of filth.
Tremblingly, using his thumb and forefinger, he pinched the edge of the "Shitou" with utmost care.
Applying pressure with the pads of his fingers along a microscopic, almost imperceptible seam.
With a twist!
"Click."
A very faint mechanical snap rang out.
The surface of the grey "Shitou" actually bloomed silently like a lotus blossom!
Revealing its interior.
It was not made of stone.
Instead, it was a strange material neither gold nor jade, presenting a warm dark silver luster.
The inner walls were densely covered with golden lines finer than a hair strand, shimmering with a faint, flowing light.
At this moment, these lines were pulsing faintly, as if breathing.
An indescribable, extremely subtle flow of Yuan Qi radiated from this tiny core.
Qin Lie held his breath, bringing his ear close to this opened "Shitou."
Listening intently.
No sound emanated from within.
Yet the corners of his icy mouth slowly, very slowly, curved upward.
Curving into an arc as sharp as a knife and steeped in chill!
It worked!
He carefully closed the "Shitou" back together.
The mechanism clicked softly, restoring it to the appearance of an unremarkable stubborn stone.
He gripped it tightly.
His knuckles turned white from the force.
As if he were gripping Su Qingxue's venom-laced pride, as if he were gripping Xia Yuanchen's hypocritical dignity!
And as if he were gripping the very first bargaining chip on his road of vengeance!
Panting for a moment.
He reached into his robe once more.
This time, the movement was even more arduous.
Groping around for quite a while.
Before pulling out another item.
A palm-sized, irregularly shaped bronze fragment.
The deep, antiquated bronze base was covered with unfathomable dark gold patterns.
It was precisely that mysterious Ancient Bronze Mirror Fragment!
The surface of the fragment was covered with a thin layer of dust and bloody filth.
Dim and lusterless.
Qin Lie looked at it, his gaze complex.
There was the fortune of surviving a catastrophe, the hatred carved into his bones, and even more so, a desperate, do-or-die resolve!
He tore off a corner of the relatively clean inner lining of his tattered lapel.
Using his last shred of strength, trembling, he wiped away the grime on the surface of the fragment very slowly, bit by bit.
His movements were focused and devout.
Like a believer wiping a sacred artifact of worship.
The dust was brushed away.
The dark gold patterns faintly circulated a trace of an extremely faint, imperceptible luster in the twilight.
When his fingertips accidentally brushed against a sharp ridge along the edge of the fragment,
his skin, already numbed by the cold, was easily sliced open.
A droplet of bright red blood quietly seeped out.
And dripped.
Landing precisely in the center of the most intricate dark gold patterns he had just wiped clean.
Hum!
A faint yet crystal-clear tremor transmitted from within the fragment without warning!
As if a slumbering heart had been awakened by blood!
Those dark gold patterns stained with the blood droplet suddenly lit up!
Though the light remained faint, like a candle flickering in the wind,
within Qin Lie's fixed pupils, it shone like the very first ray of dawn piercing the eternal night!
Frigid! Profound! Bearing a will capable of piercing all illusions!
This familiar chill surged through his entire body from his fingertips in an instant!
The two "poisonous dragons" within his body that had stirred once more due to the violent emotional fluctuations—the icy, deathly Qi of the Purple Heart Bone-Corroding Poison and the tyrannical corrosive power of the Soul-Dispersing Severed Vein Wine—were enveloped as if by an invisible domain of ice.
Instantly suppressed and frozen!
That bone-deep agony miraculously eased by a fraction once again!
Qin Lie drew in a sharp breath of the freezing air.
Feeling that faint yet truly existing suppression force within his body.
Feeling the icy throb transmitted by the fragment, as if their souls were linked.
He lowered his head slowly, very slowly.
His blood-stained fingertips remained pressed tightly against that dark gold pattern, moistened by the blood droplet and glowing faintly.
Twilight gathered, the cold wind fierce.
The dilapidated courtyard resembled an isolated island forgotten by the world.
He leaned back against the cold door panel, covered in filth, at his last gasp.
Yet deep within those lowered eyes.
Beneath the frozen cold pool.
The flames of vengeance were silently, wildly burning.
At the corners of his mouth, that icy, insane arc bloomed quietly in the dim light like an evil ghost returned from hell.