The young expert began interpreting the records that followed.
“The second boss of the Yan dynasty lived like an ascetic for a full five years. Aside from work, his greatest hobby was cultivating immortality and practicing qi. Finally, in his fifth year as emperor, this boss successfully fell ill.”
Yun Yi instantly tensed, staring fixedly at the words on the damaged page.
He got sick?
He was ill for a full month. During that time, the Emperor declined the Dowager Empress’s visits and summoned only Imperial Physician Zhou from the Imperial Hospital for diagnosis and treatment.
Yun Yi of course knew that limping Imperial Physician Zhou—he was Xiao Zhi’s most trusted doctor.
Could someone have assassinated him? The Emperor was too injured to get out of bed? And not wanting it made public, he secretly had Zhou treat him?
At this thought, her heart pounded uncontrollably. An impulse rushed to her throat.
Fortunately, in the spring of the fifth year after Xiao Zhi ascended the throne, he recovered.
“Ah, once he recovered, he held a consort selection,” someone noticed the blind spot. “No wonder the harem was empty before—the Emperor was impotent!”
“Imperial Physician Zhou deserves the title of master of andrology!”
Those stacks of traditional small characters transformed into this scene: the Emperor holding a grand consort selection, taking the legitimate daughter of Censor-in-Chief Yue Minye—Lady Yue—as empress. Consorts… concubines…
The missing pages were full of holes—places that should have held the surnames of consorts and concubines.
Yun Yi felt top-heavy. She quickly grabbed a chair and sat down weakly.
That proud, unrestrained young lady. That girl who loved writing storybooks. In the end, she had married Xiao Zhi.
Emperor and Empress in harmony, lute and zither in accord.
A perfect match.
Yun Guoqiang saw his daughter’s expression was poor and stuffed his thermos into her hand, whispering: “Don’t believe this. It’s just unofficial history compiled by Xiao descendants, falsely attributing it to the royal name.”
Yun Yi held the thermos, no heart to savor the goji and ginseng tonic tea. She replied sullenly: “It’s not unofficial history. It’s official history.”
“You child.” Yun Guoqiang said. “Go home and adjust to the time difference.”
“What about you?”
“I saw on the village chief’s social media that yesterday the Fuyun Temple master returned from abroad and specially held a ritual at the temple. Elder Xiao from Xiao Family Village also came back from Switzerland—the one you met. He’s almost a hundred years old.”
Elder Xiao. She hadn’t expected him to be so old.
Xiao Zhi had even pushed his wheelchair.
“Dad’s going to Xiao Family Village to investigate again. Some things need to be asked of Elder Xiao. He’s the oldest person in the village.”
“Oh.”
“By the way, that packing and shipping lady you hired.” Yun Guoqiang pulled out his phone and brought up the surveillance feed.
The surveillance faced the warehouse in the backyard of the villa.
The lady Yun Yi had hired was busy, neatly stacking a pile of packed boxes into the camper van.
Yun Guoqiang spoke to his phone: “Sister Wang, thanks for your hard work. My daughter will be home soon.”
Sister Wang was clearly used to the surveillance suddenly speaking. She tilted her head slightly and spoke to the air: “Don’t worry. The courier will be here soon.”
Yun Yi gave her dad a thumbs-up. Impressive, Comrade Old Yun.
Although Sister Wang had relevant work experience before, Yun Yi’s home was a villa—there were inevitably valuable items inside. The suggestion to install surveillance had come from Sister Wang herself.
She lived her life cleanly and hoped her employer would do business transparently.
Yun Guoqiang didn’t hog the credit: “That was Sister Wang’s idea, right, Sister Wang?”
In the surveillance feed, Sister Wang responded faintly, buried in counting inventory, deeply hiding her merit and fame.
“Dad, does this surveillance cover a wide area?”
“Of course!” Yun Guoqiang adjusted a few angles, showing the tulip field on the other side of the courtyard. “Beautiful, right?”
“Mm!”
The purple-black flowers swayed in the bitter cold wind—unyielding, unbending, fully displaying their nobility.
Between the father and daughter’s heads, another head squeezed in.
Xiao Liu, who had rushed back from the airport, stared at the surveillance and asked: “Teacher Yun, send me the screenshot. The Night Queen artificial flowers are made so realistically—I’ll give the seller a good review.”
“Artificial?” Yun Yi tilted her head at her dad.
Yun Guoqiang’s face went dark: “Liu Ping, I see you don’t want to graduate.”
Xiao Liu’s mouth twitched: “Ah, Xiao Yi didn’t know the flowers were fake? How would tulips bloom in the dead of winter…”
Yun Guoqiang took back the thermos, opened the lid, and brought it to his daughter’s lips: “Daughter… heh heh, moisten your throat.”
Xiao Liu knew he’d misspoken and tried to help Yun Guoqiang: “Teacher Yun originally bought seven-color tulips. They looked fake at a glance, so I ordered the Night Queen.”
“…”
A hundred years of professional undermining, right!
Yun Guoqiang looked pitifully at his daughter: “Dad just wanted to make you happy.”
Several staff members were processing the flake-like damaged pages.
The moment she thought of the records on them, Yun Yi felt a stuffy tightness in her chest.
“How about you go sleep in Dad’s break room for a while?” His lively precious daughter had become a wilted little cabbage. Yun Guoqiang felt uneasy.
Yun Yi only said: “Let me download a surveillance app.”
“Alright.”
Yun Guoqiang installed the app for his daughter, entered the password, and opened the surveillance page.
It was still that tulip field in the backyard. Cold air threaded between the petals. Waves of purple-black flowers surged—but no longer resembled someone’s fluttering robe hem.
Her phone was a bit hot. She found the exit button on the surveillance app. The moment she raised her finger to press it, the screen suddenly trembled, like a TV with bad signal.
Sister Wang’s scream came through.
“What’s wrong?” Yun Guoqiang said sternly.
“There’s a thief! Someone broke into the house!” Sister Wang was a woman who had seen the world. Her voice trembled for a moment, then quickly steadied.
A thief in the house? Yun Guoqiang hurriedly switched surveillance angles. The screen finally showed an image.
Father and daughter stared at the phone screen without blinking.
Yun Yi’s eyes slowly widened.
A living person fell from the sky, landing straight in the tulip field, face-down on the ground. The artificial flowers beneath him were crushed to a pulp.
The surveillance caught Sister Wang.
She gripped the box cutter she used for packing, pointed it at the person on the ground, and said in a trembling voice: “Wh-who are you? I’m calling the police!”
Yun Yi was stunned for half a second, then turned to Yun Guoqiang: “Dad, you saw him too?”
Yun Guoqiang had no time for that. He immediately contacted the villa manager.
But Yun Yi snatched the phone and said to the manager: “That’s my friend! Not a thief! Please hurry to my house—there’s a lady there who doesn’t know my friend!”
She stumbled to her feet, didn’t even bother with her suitcase, and bolted out of the research institute.
Her blood surged wildly. Her heart felt gripped. The thump thump thump of its beating crashed from her chest all the way into her ears.
Her watch displayed: Your heart rate is above 150 bpm. The app cannot detect atrial fibrillation…
Yun Guoqiang chased after his daughter: “Yun Bao—”
He also raised his phone and shouted at the surveillance: “Sister Wang, that’s my daughter’s friend!”
Hearing her old father’s shout, Yun Yi quickly opened her phone and imitated him, shouting: “Xiao Zhi—!”
The man on the screen froze.
Ignoring Sister Wang’s box cutter, he looked left and right on his own, unable to find the source of the voice.
After a moment of hesitation, he could only ask hoarsely: “Yun Yi?”
His voice was deeper and heavier than she remembered.
Yun Yi held the phone, her fingertip pressing his figure, rubbing the empty air through the screen.
In this moment, she forgot the consort selection, forgot the empress—even that unearthed Yan dynasty history book was forgotten.
As if old friends reunited, Yun Yi sniffled heavily: “You came?”
“Mm.”
“Wait for me. Fifteen minutes! No—the time it takes to burn a stick of incense!”
“Alright.”
.
After more than ten hours on a plane, Daoist Priest Qingxuan rushed back to Fuyun Temple without stopping.
He sat at the center of a ritual array. The array was surrounded by a thousand Three Pure Ones bells. In the middle lay an ancient rare book with yellowed pages.
Green smoke rose on all sides. Qingxuan chanted incantations at the ancient book without stopping, from moonfall to sunrise.
Before this, the array had been set up for a full eighty days. His disciples had kept watch day and night, casting spells and incantations into the array. On the eighty-first day, the master himself would perform the ritual.
A thread of wind came, and the bells stirred restlessly.
Qingxuan suddenly opened his eyes. He took a knife and cut his finger, writing the character “破” (break) on the Heavenly Revelation Star Chart.
A yellow talisman suddenly slapped onto the booklet’s cover.
In an instant, the Heavenly Revelation Star Chart burst into blue flames. Daoist Priest Qingxuan felt no pain at all. He gripped it tightly until the book turned to black-gray powder, completely dissipating into the air.
Blood flowed from the corner of his mouth.
“Master, are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” Qingxuan smiled. “What my old friend entrusted to me—I have done it.”
.
Yun Yi arrived home. Before even taking off her shoes, she rushed headlong into the backyard.
“Sister Wang! Sister Wang!”
The bloody scene she had imagined—”transmigrating on the same day and being stabbed in the stomach by a fierce older sister”—did not appear.
In the backyard, Sister Wang was busily cleaning up the messy flower field.
The artificial flowers scattered across the ground reminded Yun Yi that Xiao Zhi had been here.
“Sister Wang… he left.” Yun Yi’s throat felt glued shut, and along with her heart, it was choked with bitterness.
“Huh? He went upstairs.” Sister Wang looked at Yun Yi strangely. Her boyfriend went upstairs—what was so strange about that?
So he… left?
Yun Yi’s pupils instantly dimmed: Hadn’t he promised her? He would wait obediently for her at home.
Why were they always missing each other?
“Xiao Yun, why are you crying?” Sister Wang was somewhat at a loss, not knowing which of her words had been wrong. “Aiya, young couples quarreling—Sister Wang understands. Did you go abroad to play without telling your boyfriend? You ignored him, so he got anxious and climbed over the wall to see you. Look, he even trampled the ground.”
Yun Yi instinctively defended him: “He didn’t do it on purpose.”
Fine, fine. Sister Wang could only point to the third floor.
“Such a handsome young man, crawling up from the dirt, all bedraggled, a mouthful of mud, his face black with anger. He went upstairs to shower.”
Yun Yi followed Sister Wang’s finger and gazed toward the third floor. That was Yun Xi’s room. The window was wide open. The cold wind blew in, rolling the white gauze curtain in waves.
Countless clouds soared in her heart. There was only one thing in her mind.
“Hey, the courier’s here. I’m going to ship the packages.” Sister Wang called to Yun Yi.
The latter paid no attention, quickly walking into the living room. She didn’t even take the elevator.
The girl’s figure ascended the stairs step by step, urgently heading upward.
Third floor. The window shadow swayed. Sister Wang saw Yun Yi indeed run into that room, directly open the bathroom door, and rush in.
Sister Wang coughed unnaturally: “Aiya, you young people, so impatient… But Sister Wang understands. We all understand.”
Who hadn’t been young?
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