The ancestral temple caught fire, and the Youning Emperor hurried back to the capital before he could deploy his forces, leaving the main troops to prepare for departure. The emperor took several princes with him, but Xiao Huayong, as the Crown Prince, was too physically weak to travel swiftly. An imperial edict was issued, stating that all matters were to prioritize the Crown Prince.
Even though the Youning Emperor had left Liu Sanzhi behind, he dared not make decisions overstepping Xiao Huayong's authority.
"Your Highness, Worldly Son Bu has gone missing," Liu Sanzhi said anxiously. He had a vague sense that if they did not send someone to "search" for Bu Shulin soon, the emperor's plan would fail.
"Cough, cough, cough..." Xiao Huayong coughed weakly, appearing deeply unwell. Tianyuan handed him a soothing throat tea, which he drank, only to vomit it out shortly after.
Tianyuan's face paled with alarm, and he immediately summoned the imperial physician. The Chief Imperial Physician rushed over, checking the prince's pulse and inquiring about what he had eaten from the previous day until now. Tianyuan's answers did not align with the physician's expectations, prompting further questions.
After nearly half an hour, the physician concluded that the Crown Prince might have caught a chill.
Liu Sanzhi waited for a long while, finally seeing the physician emerge. Before he could re-enter, Tianyuan also came out, closing the door and addressing Liu Sanzhi, "Eunuch Liu, His Highness has been unwell lately and has just managed to rest. Unless it is urgent, please allow His Highness to recuperate properly."
"Guard Cao, Worldly Son Bu is missing. I implore His Highness to issue an order to search for him," Liu Sanzhi insisted.
"Worldly Son Bu is missing?" Tianyuan exclaimed in surprise, then immediately pointed to a young eunuch. "Go and summon Worldly Son Bu's guards for questioning."
Jinshan arrived quickly and firmly insisted that his master was merely playing hide-and-seek and was not missing at all.
Left with no grounds to persist, Liu Sanzhi inwardly lamented that the emperor's plan to deliver a final blow would likely fail, hoping only that the dispatched agents would succeed.
Did the Youning Emperor's agents succeed?
Naturally, they did not. Bu Shulin was tormented by guilt over Shen Xihe's disappearance after being thrown from her horse due to Changling Princess's scheme. She had brought Shen Xihe out but failed to protect her, so she searched day and night without rest.
Xiao Huayong intended to use this incident for his own purposes, and the fewer people who knew Shen Xihe's whereabouts, the better. He did not inform Bu Shulin or Xue Jinqiao, allowing them to search frantically outside to avoid raising suspicions. He even sent his own men to pretend to look for Shen Xihe.
No one had anticipated that the Youning Emperor would plot to kill Bu Shulin at such a time.
Despite grieving the loss of his daughter and facing the unresolved threat of an unknown giant serpent, the emperor still had the mind to scheme—truly worthy of one who had sat firmly on the Dragon Throne for twenty years.
Bu Shulin returned in the morning to find that Shen Xihe was still missing and, ignoring her exhaustion, went out to search again. She refused to believe Shen Xihe had died so easily in the serpent's belly. Perhaps Shen Xihe had not fallen from that spot at all, so she ventured farther into the forest.
Shortly after entering the woods, her horse grew restless. At first, she thought they had encountered a wild beast, but when an arrow whizzed past her ear as she turned her head, she realized she was being ambushed.
Already exhausted, and facing the emperor's top-tier assassins, she narrowly escaped death only because of her horse's keen instincts and their seamless coordination. Even so, she managed to kill just one assailant before being forced, like Shen Xihe, to ride her horse off a cliff, gambling on whether she could survive.Shen Xihe jumped down a slope, while she leaped off a cliff. Although she used the trigger on her wrist to shoot an iron spike into the rock face, which caught her and dragged her along the cliff wall for a distance before leaving her dangling at the edge, the slender, uniquely forged iron wire also held her suspended. Yet she was severely injured, with wounds bleeding profusely all over her body.
If she remained hanging like this for a day, she would undoubtedly die.
During the fall and suspension, her arm had dislocated. If she continued hanging like this, she feared she might lose the use of that arm.
She knew it was Your Majesty who wanted her dead. Even if she survived as a cripple, the Shu Southern Royal Manor would exist in name only.
How could a disabled heir lead troops into battle?
She bit the tip of her tongue to stay conscious and looked down to see a lush pine forest below. The distance wasn't too great—if she was lucky, she could use the pine branches to cushion her fall and likely avoid fatal injuries. "I've never swindled anyone, never killed innocents, and never peeped at women bathing. I refuse to believe Heaven would deny me a way out!"
Gritting her teeth,
Bu Shulin tore off the trigger bracer from her wrist and plummeted straight toward the pine forest. She calculated precisely, using the pine branches to break her fall, but the impact with the ground still left her feeling as if all her internal organs had shifted. With blood flowing incessantly from her wounds, she couldn't stay there, or she would attract wild beasts.
Every bone in her body felt shattered, but driven purely by a will to survive, she found a tree she could climb and leaned against it, breathing heavily.
Though completely exhausted, Bu Shulin didn't dare let her guard down or allow herself to close her eyes. The sound of a bear's growl filled her with despair. "Damn it, if you can't stand how dashing and charming I am, then why give me this handsome face? Do you have to resort to this method to take it back?"
Why couldn't it have been a tiger? At least those things can't climb trees. Of course, it had to be something that can climb.
Especially when the massive, dark figure came clearly into view, Bu Shulin's first thought was to check if her slender frame would even be enough to fill its teeth.
What a huge bear! By her estimate, it would take four of her to match its size!
Bu Shulin held her breath, silently chanting, "Can't see me, can't see me, can't see me!"
But when her tree began to shake, she had to look down. The bear was licking the blood she'd left on the trunk and ramming the tree roots. When it couldn't shake her down, it started climbing.
Bu Shulin retrieved the hidden weapon concealed in her boot, holding it firmly in her palm. As the black bear climbed close enough, she swiftly and accurately launched the hidden weapon, striking the bear directly in the eye. It crashed to the ground with a thud.
Enraged and injured, the bear furiously slammed into the tree roots. Bu Shulin clung to the trunk with all her might, nearly shaken loose, but fortunately, the poison on the hidden weapon acted quickly. The bear collapsed below, foaming at the mouth until it died.
Just when Bu Shulin thought she could finally relax, she never expected that while the bear was after Bu Shulin, wolves were waiting behind.
The wolves tried to climb but lacked the grip strength, sliding back down each time. After snarling at her for a while, they brazenly lowered their heads and began tearing at the bear's carcass. Seeing this, Bu Shulin sneered, "Eat up, eat up. The last meal of your life—no, the last meal of your wolf life."
Daring to eat a bear that died from poisoning? Truly, hunger knows no bounds.After all the commotion, she actually became more alert. When Duanming arrived with Moyu and Sui Axi, Bu Shulin was crouched on a tree branch, counting with great interest and calculating the time until the wolves would die.
Before the wolves could succumb to any poison, Moyu and Sui Axi shot down two with arrows, causing the rest to flee.
However, before they could approach, Bu Shulin shouted from the tree, "Be careful, the wolf pack!"
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