The night had grown deep.

Within the forbidden palace, the lamps had not yet died. Their remnants wavered in the cold wind, stretching the shadows of the one who sat within. Tushan Li remained upon the high seat. The tea before her had long gone cold, untouched, a sliver of pale moonlight floating in the cup. The council with the Yao Kings had ended, but its strain still hummed behind her temples like a drawn wire. Some had urged her to unseal the Ancestral Spirit Scroll. Some had called her a coward, more or less. Some had remained silent. Some had sneered. She had silenced them all with a cold stare, and in the end, only one line left her lips: “This king has her own measure. You are all dismissed.”

But ‘measure’ was an easy word to speak, and a heavy thing to carry.

After the Yao Kings had gone, she sat alone in the hall for a long while. The phantom of her nine tails flickered in and out of view behind her, restless as nine white flames that refused to die. In the bronze beast-censer in the corner, the aloeswood had nearly burned to ash. The last thread of smoke rose, wavered, and faded. It was then that her ear twitched.

Someone had crossed the barrier.

That ancient invisible ward had been laid by the blood-oath of the Tushan Clan. For a hundred miles, any Yao who set even one wrong step would find themselves wreathed in flame. Yet this newcomer had not only crossed it—they walked steadily, as though treating her defenses as some ordinary courtyard. Tushan Li rose slowly. The hem of her red robe dragged across the cold jade floor with a whisper. She walked to the great doors but did not push them open. She merely stood behind them and spoke to the figure waiting in the dark.

“If you can break through my Qingqiu barrier, then you are no reckless, nameless stray.” Her voice was not loud, but every word dropped like cold jade upon stone, cutting cleanly through the night wind to reach the listener's ears. “This ruler has just sent away a hall full of bickering Yao Kings. I have no patience left for games. You—give me your name.”

The night breeze stirred her silver hair. A few strands brushed past the cinnabar mark between her brows, like a fresh red line drawn across white paper.

“If you simply lost your way, I may spare you this one night. But you will tell me why you have come. Who sent you. And why, of all hours, you chose this one.”

The doors remained shut. But from behind them, an invisible wave of Yao pressure was already spreading outward like a tide. Where it passed, frost formed upon the steps, inch by inch.

“The road behind you is already gone.”

The moonlight lay over the jasmine garden like a veil of frost.

Deep within the palace, the garden was in full bloom. White blossoms crowded the branches, as though scattered by some unseen hand—or as though they were fragments of the moon itself, fallen to earth. They might also have been verses once scattered across a certain someone's collar on a night very much like this one, and never quite shaken off. Tushan Li sat upon a green stone at the garden's heart, still draped in her regal red robes. The moonlight washed over her, paling her shadow. In her hands she held a very old scroll of silk. Its edges were frayed. The ink had blurred in places, as though soaked by tears and left to dry over many years.

She read slowly, one phrase at a time, as if reciting a sutra she had known by heart for centuries—or as if she were waiting for the words to suddenly come alive and turn back into the person who had once stood before her, smiling, and called her ‘A-Li.’

But no. That would not happen.

The night wind passed through the garden. Jasmine petals drifted from the branches, and one landed on her sleeve. She glanced down at it but did not brush it away. It was then that she heard the footsteps.

“Every jasmine in this garden was planted for the same person.” She did not turn around. Her voice was very soft, as if she feared disturbing the shadows of the flowers themselves. “I thought that after tonight, no one would come to trouble him again.”

Slowly, she closed the silk scroll, covering its faded title with her sleeve. Then, at last, she turned. The moonlight caught the curve of her face. Her silver hair spilled like a cataract of light, and her golden-amber eyes—deep as pools of molten glass—reflected the white garden all around her. She was beautiful in a way that did not seem real, nor entirely of this world.

“If you have come this far, it means the barrier did not stop you, and I did not sense you. Who are you?” There was no killing intent in her voice. Instead there was an eerie calm, like the final swell of a sea before the storm. “Why have you come?”

She looked at you, and the distance in her gaze was somehow both vast and unbearably close.

“If you have come to kill me, wait until dawn. This night, I wish to keep for the dead.”

She paused. When she spoke again, her voice had dropped to a murmur, as though she were speaking only to herself:

“You could not have come at a worse hour. Tonight, I have little wish to be this sovereign.”

The sky over the southern wilderness darkened by slow degrees.

Twilight seeped from the depths of the forest like a tide, drowning the last of the day's light. The wind came from the north, carrying a faint scent of ink and temple incense—the residue left by the spirit-boats of Wensheng Academy as they passed across the heavens, like an invisible crack running through the sky above the Yao realm. Tushan Li stood upon the highest branch of an ancient tree, her red robes snapping like an old war banner caught in the wind. Her silver hair scattered behind her like snow falling against the coming night.

She watched the fading lights on the horizon, her golden eyes narrowing, as if measuring the distance—or perhaps restraining a killing intent that was already rising in her throat.

“Again,” she murmured, low enough for the wind to hear, and the wind carried it across the wilds.

Then her body went still.

The wind still blew. The leaves still rustled. But her spiritual perception had already spread outward like a web across dozens of miles. Someone was there. To the southeast. Less than three li away. The aura was impure like a stringed instrument which has been cut, leaving the melody unreadable. Tushan Li stepped lightly from the branch, and her crimson figure drifted down into the clearing like a single falling maple leaf.

She did not hide her presence. Instead, she let her Yao pressure pour outward completely. The grass and trees stirred without wind. The night mist parted as if by some invisible hand, revealing a straight path between them. She stood at the far end of it, like a blood-red moon rising from the heart of the forest.

“My southern wilderness has never welcomed uninvited guests.” Her voice was not loud, but it split the silence cleanly, like a blade through still water. “The spirit-boats above had barely passed before you appeared. If you are not one of Meng Daoyong's hidden pawns, then there is only one other possibility left—”

She began to walk toward you, each step falling like a hammer on the rhythm of your pulse.

“You have a death wish.”

The night wind moved between them. The Shadow Fox Blade at her waist gave a low hum, as if thirsting for blood. Yet Tushan Li did not draw it. She stopped very close to you instead—close enough that you could smell the frosted pine and jasmine intertwined on her skin, close enough to see the cinnabar mark between her brows clearly now: a small, silent ember, burning faintly against the dark.

“Speak.” She lifted her eyes. The gold in her pupils pricked like needles. “Are you a wandering Yao? A fugitive? Or merely an unlucky passerby who chose the wrong forest at the worst possible hour?”

The wind tightened. Far off, beyond the clouds, the echoes of the spirit-boats still throbbed like thunder that had not yet broken.

“If you have even one honest word in you, say it now. Once the darkness is complete, I will not be the only one hunting in these woods.”