Lin and Luo

Moonlight spilled like white silk across the courtyard of the Celestial Master Residence.

Lyu Fang’s figure had already vanished into the depths of the night, leaving only Lin Qingyan standing alone before the Tower of Stillness.

The night wind brushed past, stirring the hem of her robes, yet she seemed not to notice.

She simply gazed in the direction where Lyu Fang had disappeared, her eyes deep and unfathomable.

A Tri-Department Joint Tribunal.

A deadline of three days.

Lin Qingyan silently turned those words over and over in her mind, trying to glean more meaning from them.

But no matter how she thought, the direction of this oral decree could not be clearer.

Someone was making a move against Gu Chengyong, and they were dead serious about it.

Why?

Who?

Lin Qingyan already knew the answer in her heart.

Just as she had been certain the earlier imperial edict had been issued by Luo Zhao.

This oral decree, too, Lin Qingyan believed, was Luo Zhao’s handiwork.

Others might not see it, but she knew Luo Zhao too well.

This style—pressing forward step by step, allowing no room to retreat.

This decisiveness—when she could have boiled the frog over a slow fire, she instead insisted on raging flames.

Lin Qingyan had hardly needed to think before her suspicion landed squarely on Luo Zhao.

But why?

Why would Luo Zhao target Gu Chengyong again and again?

Was he not her Junior Preceptor?

From Luoshui Commandery to the Divine Capital and now—hadn’t Gu Chengyong been the one who pushed her all the way up?

What had happened between them?

Lin Qingyan couldn’t understand.

She found Luo Zhao’s motives and actions even more incomprehensible.

So instead of returning to the Tower of Stillness, she stepped forward.

One step, two steps, three steps.

Lin Qingyan’s figure gradually grew faint in the moonlight, as if dissolving into the night itself.

In the span of a few breaths, she had disappeared completely.

...

The Heir Apparent’s Palace.

Lin Qingyan stood outside the doors of the main hall.

The night was deep, and silence reigned within the palace grounds.

The female officials on duty each tended to their tasks, and the Golden Plume Guards patrolled only occasionally.

No one noticed Lin Qingyan’s sudden appearance.

Or rather, with her level of cultivation, moving among these close attendants was like walking through an empty space.

Lin Qingyan stood outside the hall and let her spiritual sense sweep out slightly.

In an instant, the entire layout of the Heir Apparent’s Palace was clearly mapped in her mind.

Where people were, where they weren’t.

The person she was looking for was at this moment inside the bedchamber.

Luo Zhao.

She hadn’t yet rested.

It seemed… she was waiting for someone?

Lin Qingyan’s brow furrowed slightly.

Luo Zhao’s aura was steady and deep, with no hint of sleep. Instead, it felt like a quiet anticipation.

Like someone sitting by a window, waiting for the person who was bound to come.

Was Luo Zhao waiting for her?

This thought flashed through Lin Qingyan’s mind only for an instant.

She didn’t dwell on it, simply disappearing once more.

When she reappeared, she stood directly outside the doors of the bedchamber.

The two female officials guarding the entrance sensed only a brief breeze caress their faces and instinctively looked up.

The corridor was empty, with only the moonlight flowing silently.

They exchanged a glance, paid it no mind, and continued to stand with heads bowed in stillness.

Between the Foundation Establishment stage and the Golden Core stage lay a chasm that mortals could never cross.

The door to the bedchamber opened without a sound, and closed without a sound.

Lin Qingyan stood just inside, her gaze falling upon the figure before the window.

Luo Zhao sat on a soft couch by the window, one hand propping up her cheek, gazing at the bright moon outside.

She did not turn around. She did not even move a fraction, as if she had not noticed anyone entering at all.

Moonlight fell upon Luo Zhao, outlining her profile in cold, lonely beauty.

That face was exquisite, with features that resembled Lin Qingyan’s by six or seven parts—yet their temperaments were entirely different.

Lin Qingyan was a mountain stream, a chill pool beneath the moonlight, the Fairy Jingzhe whom the world saw as untouched by mortal dust.

Luo Zhao, on the other hand, was a blade forged in the depths of the palace, a weapon honed in the vortex of power.

She was the moon itself—high in the sky, but intent on trampling everything beneath her.

“Aunt.”

Luo Zhao spoke softly.

She still did not turn her head, merely raising a hand to gesture at the empty seat across from her.

Her tone was utterly flat, as if Lin Qingyan’s arrival were nothing more than a trivial matter she had anticipated.

Lin Qingyan stood where she was, quietly regarding Luo Zhao for several moments.

Her gaze was deep and complex, as if she were looking at someone deeply familiar, and yet at someone gradually turning into a stranger.

Then she stepped forward and sat down on the couch across from Luo Zhao.

As she sat, she also turned her head to gaze out the window at the same bright moon.

The moonlight unfurled, enveloping both of them in the same clear radiance.

The same features. The same moonlight.

Yet between them lay a distance that all the words in the world could not fill.

“Zhao’er.”

Lin Qingyan’s voice was as light as a falling petal. “You knew I would come?”

Luo Zhao gave a faint “mm” in acknowledgment.

She did not explain immediately. Instead, she lowered her gaze from the moon to look at her own outstretched palm.

Moonlight poured into her hand, illuminating the fine lines of her palm with perfect clarity.

The life line, the career line, the love line—crisscrossing in chaos.

As if fate, with an invisible pen, had long ago written a destined ending into her hand.

“No matter what Gu Chengyong does, it always follows basic logic.”

Luo Zhao spoke slowly, as if talking to herself. “What he thinks, what he wants, what he will do next.”

“It can all be deduced, measured, and countered.”

“So even if he suspects me, it remains only suspicion.”

“It is only when irrefutable evidence is placed before him that he will believe completely.”

At this, Luo Zhao turned her head to face Lin Qingyan across the table.

“But Aunt is different.”

Their eyes met.

Lin Qingyan’s pupils shrank for a split second, then returned to normal.

“Aunt never follows logic. You don’t need any reasoning.”

A faint curve appeared at the corner of Luo Zhao’s mouth, half a smile and half something else. “You only follow your heart.”

“What Aunt wants, not even a mountain of blades or a sea of fire can stop you.”

“What Aunt dislikes, not even the heavens can move you by an inch.”

Luo Zhao paused, the inflection in her voice carrying an indescribable nuance:

“And besides, I grew up under Aunt’s watch. So Aunt was bound to come.”

Lin Qingyan didn’t deny it.

She could deduce it was Luo Zhao because she understood this niece she had raised since childhood.

Understood her willfulness, her recklessness, the desires buried deep beneath her cold and aloof exterior.

And that Luo Zhao could guess she would come was naturally for the same reason.

They were blood kin—the most alike and the most different people in this world.

“The imperial edict and the oral decree.”

Lin Qingyan’s voice was still as soft as ever. “You issued both.”

It was not a question. It was a statement.

Luo Zhao neither denied nor admitted it.

She simply tilted her head slightly and looked back at the bright moon outside the window, a faint smile floating across her features.

It was as light as ripples spreading across water under the moonlight.

But if one looked closely, beneath those ripples, there clearly lay something unpalpable, something unnameable.

“Since Aunt has come,” Luo Zhao suddenly said, her voice carrying something different now,

“it also confirms one thing.”