Whispers of Fate (Shui Long Yin)

At that moment, several figures scattered like butterflies and flowers, silently exiting the house and climbing the trees.

Feng Feng peeked out from beneath the flower trellis, patted the ground with both hands, glanced outside, and slowly crawled out. He inched along the corner of the house, unnoticed by those outside whose view was blocked by the windows. Feng Feng crawled from the hall into Liu Yan's Elixir Chamber, looking around cautiously. The chamber held nothing unusual—just massive medicine cabinets, tables, and chairs. Gripping the Grand Tutor Chair, he gradually stood up and gave it a push. With a loud "thud," the chair toppled over, landing squarely on the hidden passage's entrance.

The four people in the secret room below were startled by the sudden noise above. A Shui gasped, "Feng Feng..." Fang Pingzhai listened intently, quickly covering her mouth. "Shh! Quiet! Someone's here!"

Intruders had breached the Chicken Coop Mountain Manor. Feng Feng was alone upstairs, in grave danger, but Liu Yan's presence couldn't be revealed—neither he nor Fang Pingzhai could show themselves. Yet A Shui and Yu Tuan'er were no match for the invaders either. What could be done?

How many intruders were there? How could they capture them all without letting a single one escape to report? Fang Pingzhai racked his brain but couldn't devise a solution. Meanwhile, Yu Tuan'er strained against the mechanism, but the Grand Tutor Chair's weight kept it immovable. Trapped in the secret room, the four could only break through the floor to escape.

They all stared upward. A Shui trembled uncontrollably. Had Feng Feng been discovered? Was he still up there? Was he alive? Or had he already been taken?

Feng Feng was indeed still upstairs. The sudden noise had startled the intruders outside. A baby's faint, shallow breaths were hard to detect unless one had exceptional hearing. They exchanged puzzled glances from the trees. Soon, another "thud" came from inside. The leader, clad in purple, spat in frustration. "Damn it, what the hell is going on?" He leaped down and stealthily slipped back inside, crouching as he approached the Elixir Chamber.

The Chicken Coop Mountain Manor still appeared deserted. Following the sound, the purple-clad man crept toward the chamber's half-open door.

The dimly lit chamber revealed two overturned Grand Tutor Chairs, one atop the other.

Nothing else.

No one.

Empty tables, empty chairs. Though the medicine cabinets were lined with bottles, there was no place to hide among them. The man stepped inside, perplexed. A damp stain on the floor—perhaps spilled tea—squished underfoot. He lifted one chair, testing its weight. It was just an ordinary chair, devoid of mechanisms or reason to topple on its own.

Could a master be lurking outside, using palm force to knock over the chairs? He eyed the tightly shut windows. If someone had struck from afar, the windows would have shattered. Was there truly a technique powerful enough to penetrate walls and topple chairs from several yards away?If there truly existed such a master capable of expending such great effort to topple these two chairs, what could their motive be? If it were someone from Liu Yan's faction, they could have easily eliminated all six of them without a trace—why resort to such theatrics?

With a creak, he pushed open the window. Outside lay the woods, and lifting his head, he immediately spotted his companion crouched in the trees. The man in purple glared angrily and waved for him to retreat further, pressing himself against the window. Fang Pingzhai was no amateur—if he returned, how could he possibly fail to notice?

The figure in the trees silently withdrew. The purple-clad man turned back, frowning at the strange chairs in the room. After pondering for a while without reaching any conclusion, he decided to leave. Just as he turned, a faint "clink" sounded behind him, as if something had tipped over and rolled away. Instinctively, he glanced back and saw a small porcelain bottle on the floor that hadn’t been there before. The bottle suddenly toppled, rolling a few times before a colorless liquid slowly seeped out.

Bizarre! With no wind or person around, how could the bottle have tipped over on its own? The purple-clad man was utterly bewildered. As he stood there perplexed, the liquid from the bottle gradually merged with a damp patch on the floor. In an instant, the clear liquid transformed into a deep, blood-like red. Moments later, the entire patch of moisture on the floor had turned to blood.

Every hair on the man’s body stood on end. Disbelieving, he rubbed his eyes, but the pool of blood remained—it wasn’t a hallucination or a dream. His body stiffened as he backed out of the room step by step. Just then, a series of eerie creaking sounds erupted from beneath the floorboards, like a corpse clawing its way out of a grave. The purple-clad man let out a scream and bolted out of the room, shouting, "Ghosts! There are ghosts!"

"Big brother!" The men in the trees outside immediately gave chase as the purple-clad man continued to shriek, "Ghosts! There are ghosts! Ghosts—!"

The hidden door in the floor finally opened as Fang Pingzhai and the others managed to trigger the mechanism and burst out. "Feng Feng…"

The small cabinet door near the desk in the medicine cabinet swung open, and Feng Feng crawled out, giggling uncontrollably. A Shui scooped him up, her terrified heart finally settling. Fang Pingzhai stared blankly in the direction the purple-clad man had fled. "Strange. I haven’t even started killing anyone yet—why is he screaming about ghosts?" Yu Tuan'er pointed at the red stain on the floor. "Blood! There’s blood!" Fang Pingzhai jumped at the sight of the "bloodstain." "Good heavens! Ghosts, ghosts! Where did this pool of blood come from? Could there be a vengeful spirit in this house? Master, have you been secretly killing people in the hidden chamber and now face retribution? Or perhaps even the dead are smitten by Auntie’s peerless beauty and youthful charm—"

"Shut up!" Liu Yan growled. He pried open Feng Feng’s hands, relieved to find no traces of the chemical on them. "Take the child out and give him a bath." Though unsure of the reason, A Shui hurried out with Feng Feng. Liu Yan stared at the "bloodstain" on the floor. Of course, he knew it wasn’t blood—it was merely phenolphthalein reacting with a strong base, turning blood-red. Both the phenolphthalein and the base had been prepared for testing inhibitors, but how had Feng Feng known that mixing the two would create this effect? He vaguely recalled that once, during an experiment, Yu Tuan'er had brought Feng Feng into the room. Could the child have remembered the reaction after seeing it just once?A child barely over a year old—even if he remembered the color-changing potion, how could he possibly devise a trick of pretending to be a ghost to scare someone, let alone push over a heavy chair? Liu Yan stared at the discolored phenolphthalein on the ground. Perhaps Feng Feng was far more intelligent than an ordinary infant, but he didn’t feel happy about it. Instead, he sighed deeply.

He had seen many children far more intelligent than their peers over the years. He didn’t know whether Tang Lici would have pretended to be a ghost at the age of one, but by the time he was eight, Tang Lici had already known how to set fires by placing pure sodium in showerheads, fought with street gangsters, and tossed bottles of ether into a gang leader’s room, nearly knocking them out before blowing them up. All sorts of bizarre incidents happened precisely because he was an exceedingly clever child.

If a person was too intelligent but lacked a stable enough temperament to control themselves, the smarter they were, the more terrifying they became. He gazed at Feng Feng. Would this child become another Tang Lici? Feng Feng clapped his hands and laughed at him, his faint dimples pure and adorable, occasionally widening his eyes at him with a playful "hmm."

Liu Yan couldn’t help but smile faintly. For some reason, he felt that A-Li wouldn’t have had such an expression as a child.

Because he had always been alone. No one had ever allowed him to act spoiled.

So perhaps it could be said… Feng Feng wouldn’t turn out like A-Li, because he wasn’t alone?

Just as progress was being made on the antidote for the Ape-Demon Nine Heart Pill, Zhong Chunji set out from Good Cloud Mountain with her fifty guards, heading toward Echun.

Echun was a sparsely populated small town. Its few inns were merely resting spots for travelers along the official roads, and the number of visitors each month never exceeded ten.

But it was conveniently located at the intersection of several major routes, surrounded by plains where one could ride a hundred miles in a single day. This was one of the reasons the Dissolute Shop had chosen it as the exchange location for Xue Xianzi. In Echun, they could come and go by any path, making it impossible for anyone to trace their origins back to the gang’s hideout.

Tang Lici did not accompany Zhong Chunji on her journey. In fact, he hadn’t even sent anyone to escort her to Echun initially. Yet by the time Zhong Chunji and her party arrived, he was already there.

He was drinking tea in Echun’s only teahouse—a laughably shabby place with nothing more than a thatched roof and two long benches. Dressed in pristine white robes and elegant embroidered shoes, he held the cup of coarse tea with such graceful ease that it seemed refined. To Zhong Chunji, he was both alluring and terrifying, exuding an irresistible charm at every moment, yet so dangerous that reaching out to him would only leave her hands bloodied.

She had no desire to risk herself for Xue Xianzi, but she feared tangling with Tang Lici even more. She didn’t have the courage not to come.

Yet another thought lingered in her mind: If she could capture Tang Lici before the Dissolute Shop arrived and take him directly back to Bianliang, then he would have no chance to expose her crimes of murder and silencing witnesses in the martial world. She could both secure her prize and avoid the calamity of being imprisoned by the Dissolute Shop in exchange for Xue Xianzi.However, this line of thinking had its drawbacks. If she managed to evade the exchange, the martial world would surely accuse her of betraying her master and forsaking her ancestors, branding her as utterly heartless. Moreover, Tang Lici was immensely resourceful. Even if she captured him alive, his close ties with the imperial relatives in Bianjing meant spreading the news of her silencing him wouldn’t be difficult. She gazed at Tang Lici as she slowly guided her horse closer, her hand slipping into her robe to clutch a vial of icy liquid, her mind heavy with contemplation.

If Xue Xianzi were already dead before the exchange, that would be ideal—she wouldn’t have to take any risks or commit the grave sin of betraying her master. And if Tang Lici were to lose all memory, knowing nothing of the world except her, the Princess of Langya, it would be nothing short of perfection.

In her hand was a vial of poison—given to her by Liu Yan before she left to prick Tang Lici—said to strip a person of their memories, leaving them utterly oblivious. When she had set out from Good Cloud Mountain, she had fifty guards trailing behind her. Now, only thirty-three remained; seventeen had vanished without a trace.

Tang Lici had been sitting in Echun Teahouse sipping tea for some time. He observed Zhong Chunji leading her entourage on horseback, noting every shift in her expression and the subtle dwindling of her guards behind her. He sighed softly.

Perhaps he ought to slap this little girl dead for Xue Xianzi’s sake.

Not so long ago, she had been an innocent and kind-hearted girl. What had twisted her into this?

Was it because of him?

"Young Master Tang," Zhong Chunji called as she rode closer, dismounting and glancing around before biting her lip. "They haven’t arrived yet?"

Tang Lici set down his teacup and handed the teahouse owner a pearl. "No."

"Could it be... they aren’t coming?" she asked in a low voice, her grip tightening on the reins.

Tang Lici glanced at her clenched hands and smiled faintly. "They will."

She bit her lip again, her face pale—whether from tension, worry, or perhaps deep disappointment, it was hard to tell.

"Nothing will go awry. What is meant to come will come," Tang Lici said gently. "Sit."

Zhong Chunji settled onto the bench beside him, still clutching the reins tightly, her brows furrowed. He was right before her, yet she was too terrified to move a muscle.