By the time Wei Xiao extinguished the final flickering flames, the entire Ancestral Hall had collapsed into a blackened skeleton.
Thick smoke billowed toward the sky. The red-gold incense burner lay overturned in the ruins, its surface charred black, while embers smelling of pine resin danced through the air like snow. Su Wanzhao sat huddled on the ground, wrapped in a tattered hemp shroud. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes vacant and hollow. As her body racked with violent tremors, turbid tears dripped from her cheeks in rhythmic, shaky intervals.
"Young Mistress! My poor, ill-fated Young Mistress..."
Chapter 52