The clapper of the bell at the hour of the Rat seeped through the palace walls, shattering into ice shards within the deep corridor of the Imperial Prison.
Shen Xitang’s fingertips brushed against the gaps between the blue bricks; under the glow of a night-pearl, the dark red bloodstains cast a grotesque, glazed sheen. The scent of dragon-saliva incense from the New Emperor’s coronation ceremony three days prior still lingered in the masonry, mixing with the prison's characteristic moldy stench to create a nauseatingly sweet, fleshy odor.
She stopped at a fork in the road a yard away. The silver pendant on her earlobe suddenly trembled—this was a signal Xiao Heng had fashioned from the shards of a Xiuchun Saber, with a half-qian of Return to Void Gu powder hidden in its core.
Chapter 114