Chapter 32: Marriage Contract

At this moment, Lu Jiajia also understood what she meant.

She believed that her fortunate survival was a preordained arrangement by that Lady. Someone like the Lady would not make a move without reason; since she was allowed to live, it must be because there was something she still needed to do.

But if that were truly the case, what was that something?

Tang Yu herself didn't know.

Yet, she desperately wanted to find out, as she had a faint premonition that this matter was crucial and certainly concerned His Highness.

Even though she now understood the Lady's calculations concerning her, and even though she had just felt the absurdity and revulsion of her life's prearrangement, she still chose to trust the Lady. This was because, without her, Tang Yu would have died shortly after her birth.

After all, what could be more important than life itself?

Lu Jiajia asked, "If it's truly as you suspect, then it must be something you know, but His Highness doesn't."

Tang Yu immediately replied, "Any matter of even slight importance, I would inform His Highness immediately. How could I conceal anything?"

Lu Jiajia parted the curtain and looked at Tang Yu's weak, pale face. Tang Yu met the woman's eyes, as clear as mountain spring water, and instantly calmed down.

Lu Jiajia's voice was cool yet gentle: "Think carefully about recent events. Has anything unusual happened?"

Tang Yu closed her eyes, pondering for a moment, her eyelids trembling as if rapidly recalling everything that had recently occurred.

Something unusual...

Tang Yu suddenly opened her eyes, sounding uncertain:

"I met a young man."

"A young man?"

"Yes, his name is Ning Changjiu."

"Ning Changjiu?" Lu Jiajia's expression subtly hardened, thinking about the coincidences in the world. Indeed, this young man was peculiar.

Tang Yu didn't notice her peculiar expression and continued, "He was a Taoist priest invited by Zhao Shisong to perform an exorcism and treat my illness. He saw at a glance that I was feigning sickness. In the middle of the night, he snuck into my room, threatened me, and asked me about the Young Lady. Moreover... he's very skilled. He instantly broke my formation, and he was the one who stopped me when I tried to kill Zhao Shisong."

"Very skilled?" Lu Jiajia had previously examined Ning Changjiu's body, finding his aptitude ordinary with nothing special about him. Hearing Tang Yu say he broke a formation, she merely assumed he had employed some peculiar trick.

"Didn't you tell Zhao Xiang'er about him?" Lu Jiajia asked.

Tang Yu shook her head. "I immediately summoned the messenger sparrow and informed His Highness."

Lu Jiajia frowned. "If you've already reported it, then what's the concern?"

"No..." Tang Yu narrowed her eyes, recalling, "That night, another assassin, one of ours, was also involved. Since Ning Changjiu and his junior sister were both implicated, and to avoid troubling His Highness, we decided on our own to eliminate them. So, shortly after Ning Changjiu came to my room that night, the assassin went to kill his junior sister."

"Ning Xiaoling?" As the name came to mind, Lu Jiajia pictured the girl's delicate and lovely face, yet a chill ran through her, and her fists involuntarily clenched a little tighter.

This time, Tang Yu also noticed her unusual reaction. She thought for a moment, then nodded, "That sounds like her name."

Lu Jiajia asked coldly, "That little girl... did she have any special characteristics?"

Tang Yu recalled, "Afterward, I met with that assassin privately. He described the scene that night, saying the little girl was incredibly agile, as if she possessed an innate sense for danger. Even when he launched several attacks in a surprise ambush, he couldn't land a single blow. Most importantly..."

Lu Jiajia thought back to the girl. She had also probed her body and knew that the girl had started cultivating too late, not even reaching the Profound Realm yet. It was indeed hard to imagine her evading an assassination purely by intuition.

She looked at Tang Yu's somewhat incredulous gaze and pressed, "What's most important?"

Tang Yu looked up at the woman in white and asked, "I don't know if the assassin was mistaken, but the little girl... seemed to have manifested an innate spirit."

"What?" Lu Jiajia was also startled. "An innate spirit?"

An innate spirit is a naturally endowed spirit, hidden within the body's Purple Mansion. Those who possess an innate spirit can absorb spiritual energy as if two entities were drawing it simultaneously, achieving twice the results with half the effort during cultivation.

In this world, cultivators are one in a thousand, and those with an innate spirit are one in ten thousand. Even the Sword Mandate Heavenly Sect has seen very few.

Ning Xiaoling's innate talent was better than she had imagined... No wonder her expression was a little strange when she asked about innate spirits that day.

No, if it were merely possessing an innate spirit, it would just mean the girl was hiding her abilities. The true emphasis must not be there.

A thought flashed like lightning in Lu Jiajia's mind. She frowned and asked chillingly, "What kind of innate spirit does Ning Xiaoling have?"

Tang Yu thought carefully, then said uncertainly, "According to the assassin, it was a creature the size of a kitten, like... a fox with a broken tail?"

At that moment, a severe chill ran through Lu Jiajia's heart, as if lightning had struck.

Her voice unconsciously turned hoarse: "What... did you say?"

Tang Yu looked at her icy face, unsure of the source of her fear, and repeated, "If I'm not mistaken, it should be a fox."

"A fox..." Lu Jiajia closed her eyes, her tense, rigid body slowly relaxing. She sighed, "So that's it... I know what your Lady wanted you to tell her... I'll take you to see Zhao Xiang'er."

Behind the palace, between the Jade Spring and the Clear Pool, screens cast shadows, and mist hung thick. Only the occasional sound of water splashing could be heard. Jade lotus lamps floated on the water, drifting near and far, gently spinning with the maiden's light touch.

Crystalline water droplets fell from her fingers, gliding over her smooth, jade-like skin and the girl's beautifully contoured young body, melting away the day's fatigue. In the clear, shallow ripples, within her nearly depleted Qi Sea, spiritual energy overflowed, much like the warm, sweet spring water filling the pool.

After a long while, Zhao Xiang'er emerged from behind three silk screens, wrapped in a bathing robe, her figure ethereal in the mist.

Having shed all her killing intent, she was now merely a graceful and stunning maiden. She took a magnificent, lavish long dress from a wooden rack carved with a phoenix, held it up to her body, but eventually put it down, choosing only a simple plain gown.

The girl lifted her long, wet hair, which resembled seaweed. Her slender eyebrows were like a new moon after rain, and her thin lips curved slightly, a delicate vermilion hue. Her slender, snow-white neck, translucent earlobes, and immaculate jade cheeks all glowed with the faint crimson light of the palace lamps, making her appear like a beautifully carved jade figurine—bright and enchanting. There was no trace left of the awe-inspiring resolve she had shown earlier when wielding a sword to slay the great demon.

Zhao Xiang'er slowly walked to the window, gazing at the night. After continuous autumn rains, a crescent autumn moon appeared vaguely among the evening clouds.

Her lips curved slightly as she recalled the times she used to sit under the banyan tree watching the sunset, and she couldn't help but smile faintly.

However, her mother's complete absence remained a lingering regret in her heart.

For over a decade, her mother had mostly left her to her own devices, allowing her to roam freely across the mountains and plains. Only on her birthday each year would her mother personally cook her a bowl of longevity noodles. Yet even then, her mother always wore a veil, and despite being her daughter, Zhao Xiang'er had never truly seen her face in all those years.

She recalled those carefree years and also how, three years ago, after fighting against multiple opponents alone, she had suddenly "opened her mind" and began to cultivate diligently.

The Sword Master from Rong Kingdom could never have imagined that when she shattered his scabbard, she hadn't even entered the Profound Realm yet.

Now, the Violet Court Realm cultivation she had borrowed had been returned to the Vermilion Bird Fire Staff, and her own power still hovered around the Immortal Attainment level, with some distance yet to go before reaching Longevity.

Achieving such cultivation in three years was an unbelievable feat, even among the mountains. And for an Immortal Attainment practitioner to slay a great demon that had once ascended above the Five Paths, using various means, was nothing short of a myth.

She should have been proud enough.

But for some reason, her Dao heart never truly found peace.

The girl in a plain white gown remembered something, casually pulled a wide-sleeved, lapel-front robe over herself, and walked into the night.

Within Jiazi Hall, unimpeded, Zhao Xiang'er reached the innermost part, returned the immortal sword to its bronze sword stand, then turned and proceeded to another room.

That room was filled with many familiar objects, salvaged from the ruins of Qianyue Palace after its destruction, now all gathered and displayed there.

Zhao Xiang'er found an old wooden box from memory. Fortunately, the box hadn't been destroyed by the fire. She opened it and rummaged through it, finding a letter folded like a bookmark beneath some strange toys she had received as a child. Though the letter was over ten years old, it showed no signs of age; the character "婚" (marriage) on the main page still looked brand new.

This was a marriage contract.

On her sixth birthday, her mother had given her this marriage contract, stating that the person mentioned in the letter was her future husband and that the contract would be valid for ten years. If she didn't wish to marry, she could tear up the contract at any time.

As a child, she was naive and clueless. She asked an older girl in the palace, who vaguely and mysteriously told her the words "husband." The little girl paid it no mind, treating it as just another interesting toy, so she took it and put it in the box.

At the time, this marriage contract and the unknown husband held little appeal compared to her interesting toys, so it unconsciously sank to the bottom of the box.

She would be sixteen tomorrow, and this ten-year marriage contract was about to expire. Of course, she didn't want to marry so early, but she always harbored some curiosity about the person on the other side of the contract.

A marriage her mother would agree to certainly wouldn't be simple.

She reopened the marriage contract and read it again. She already knew its contents by heart; it merely stated that she was to marry the closed-door disciple of a certain temple master.

Since it was written this way, it meant that the closed-door disciple likely hadn't been found at the time.

Originally, she had simply thought that if that young Taoist priest dared to bother her, she would just tear up the marriage contract, as her mother had said the matter was entirely up to her will.

But after all these years... he still hadn't been found?

That Taoist temple master must be quite unlucky... But to know her mother, he shouldn't be an ordinary cultivator, right?

She idly flipped the marriage contract in her hands, looking at the two awkwardly stamped seals at the end. After studying them for a while, she identified one as the seal of Qianyue Palace, engraved with the strange four characters "Holding the Moon, Breaking the Clouds." The other was written in a flamboyant, calligraphic style, making only the first character, "不" (not), legible.

After a moment of identification, she stopped pondering and tucked the elusive marriage contract into her sleeve.

"That young Taoist priest is lucky," Zhao Xiang'er murmured to herself, glancing back at the other objects in the room, thinking that if Qianyue Palace were rebuilt one day, she would move them all back.

For now, it wasn't worth the trouble and expense.

By the time she returned to the hall, it was late at night, and she saw Song Ce waiting outside the door with several palace maids and guards.

The girl in a white gown stood before the hall, her cool voice carrying a hint of authority: "Have they all been found?"

Song Ce saw Zhao Xiang'er approaching, like seeing the clear beauty of moonlight. He only dared to glance once before looking down and bowing, saying, "Reporting to Your Highness, the treasures scattered throughout the imperial city have been recovered. Please inspect them."

As he spoke, four people behind him presented the four "keys" they had found.

After the old fox died, his soul shattered and dispersed like fireworks. The keys he had yet to refine naturally seeped out of his body, falling with his scattered spirit to different corners of the imperial city.

The imperial seal, ancient scroll, red umbrella, and fire staff had all been recovered. Zhao Xiang'er inspected them one by one and felt much relieved, praising, "No problems, well done."

She took the red umbrella and drew out the ancient sword hidden within its handle. The blade was silvery-white, with cloud patterns like water, brimming with spiritual energy.

She nodded gently, then took back the Vermilion Bird Fire Staff. With a light flick of her sleeve, she said, "Return these two items to the Imperial Preceptor's Residence and the Undying Forest. Tell Master that the imperial seal is now restored, and he can cultivate without worry. I know what Mother told him before, so I don't blame him. However, from now on, I will rarely visit him, and I hope he won't take offense."

"Song Ce acknowledges the command." Song Ce nodded, knowing well that although His Highness said she didn't blame him, this incident had left a lingering resentment in her heart.

Song Ce then thought of something else and asked, "The Witch Lord's Palace is now without a master. Should we let his eldest disciple, Qiu Li..."

Zhao Xiang'er raised her palm, interrupting him. "No need. I already have a candidate for the next Witch Lord. By the way, where is Sister Tang Yu? Has she been found?"

Song Ce shook his head. "I've ordered people to search, but there's no news yet."

Zhao Xiang'er frowned. "Send everyone available to search. Even if she's already dead, I can light an eternal lamp for her, ensuring she at least has a next life. But if her soul is completely dispersed when she's found..."

She paused, then sighed softly, "That would be my mistake."

Song Ce had many questions about Tang Yu, but he knew it was inappropriate to ask now, so he kept them to himself and simply acknowledged the command.

After everyone had dispersed, Zhao Xiang'er, holding the red umbrella in one hand and the fire staff in the other, slowly walked back into the hall. Under the moonlight, her slender, snow-white figure was like a wisp of smoke.

The throne had been destroyed by the old fox earlier, and fragments still lay scattered on the floor, uncleaned. The girl simply sat down on the golden steps, her gaze following the central axis of the great hall.

Because the city walls had also been destroyed, her line of sight now extended far into the distance.

She stared blankly for a moment, then suddenly clutched her chest. For some reason, she had recently been experiencing flashes of intuition and unease.

Just as she was about to deduce the source of these feelings, two figures suddenly appeared silhouetted against the light outside the hall doors.

Zhao Xiang'er was startled and immediately stood up.

She saw Tang Yu being helped in by a woman in white. Tang Yu was still wearing the same black, fitted attire she had used to impersonate Zhao Xiang'er, but her clothes were now damaged. Even with assistance, her steps were extremely unsteady, indicating severe injuries.

"Sister Tang..." Zhao Xiang'er quickly descended the golden steps and went to support her.

Tang Yu seized Zhao Xiang'er's hand. She offered no greetings or pleasantries. Her first words exploded like a muffled thunderclap, stunning Zhao Xiang'er into a blank state.

"Your Highness... that old fox might still be alive!"