The Empress Can Do It Too

They shared a common goal, and they shared a common enemy.

And now, Gu Chengyin said he had made that promise to Lin Qingyan.

Gu Xiaoli didn’t know what had happened before or after.

She didn’t know when, where, or under what circumstances Gu Chengyin had made that promise to Lin Qingyan.

But Gu Xiaoli knew—Gu Chengyin had struck her to the core.

Not by touching some passing thought or a fragment of memory, but by hitting her whole being.

The entirety of her that had been suspended in midair, unable to find a place to land, ever since Empress Lin’s death.

So Gu Xiaoli decided she would tell Gu Chengyin some secrets.

Secrets she hadn’t been sure whether to tell before, but that she now knew she must.

“Brother...”

Gu Xiaoli’s voice was hoarse beyond recognition, as if a chunk of burning charcoal were lodged in her throat.

Her large eyes brimmed with something—not tears, but something pressed behind her eyelids that refused to fall.

“Actually... your hypnosis was never complete.”

Those words struck Gu Chengyin’s ears like a thunderclap.

His pupils contracted, like a needle piercing skin.

His spine straightened—an instinctive reaction reserved for moments of supreme importance.

His gaze, which had been drifting over the clouds in the distance, snapped back to Gu Xiaoli’s face.

Like a hunter locking onto the trace of prey.

Alert. Focused. Cold.

The kind of sharpness that condenses all attention into a single needle.

“Xiaoli, do you know something?”

Gu Xiaoli nodded.

Her nod was slow—so slow it seemed she was using the motion to confirm something.

Confirming whether she truly wanted to reveal those secrets, and what the consequences might be.

Confirming whether the person before her was worthy of receiving them.

So instead of answering, she asked a question in return.

Her voice was no longer hoarse, no longer trembling—it had become calm in a way that was wholly unlike her.

Her spiritual cat ears stopped twitching, standing perfectly still like two swords pointing in the same direction.

“Brother, will you really avenge the Empress?”

A light shone in Gu Xiaoli’s large eyes that Gu Chengyin had never seen before.

Not hope—hope was too light a word to measure that light’s weight.

It was longing.

The kind of longing that stakes one’s entire being on another’s answer.

Gu Chengyin looked at the light in Gu Xiaoli’s eyes for a long time.

The wind in the courtyard began to stir again.

The leaves shook themselves out of their stiffness and rustled softly.

The wind chime under the eaves clinked and chimed, the copper tongue striking the bell with a crisp, far-reaching tone.

The footsteps of palace attendants in the distance returned, swelling and fading like the ebb and flow of the tide.

Gu Chengyin raised his hand and placed it on top of Gu Xiaoli’s head.

“Xiaoli, I don’t know who they are, or what they are.”

“But I have a feeling.”

“Sooner or later, they will come for me.”

When he said these words, Gu Chengyin’s gaze wasn’t on Gu Xiaoli. It was fixed beyond the courtyard.

Beyond the palace walls. Beyond the capital. Beyond the places shrouded in mist and cloud.

What was there, he didn’t know.

But his instincts told him something truly was there.

Slowly, irreversibly.

Coming toward him.

Gu Xiaoli froze.

Not because Gu Chengyin had said something she didn’t know—quite the opposite.

It was because he had said something she had always known but never voiced.

She had felt it too.

For a long, long time.

Not prophecy. Not deduction. Not ambiguous fortune-telling.

It was instinct—a perception of killing intent.

Like prey knowing a predator is approaching, even before seeing its silhouette.

Before hearing its footsteps—but simply knowing.

Every hair on her body knew.

Those things would definitely find Gu Chengyin.

Gu Xiaoli didn’t know where this instinct came from.

Perhaps it was a spark of spiritual insight Empress Lin had left her. Perhaps it was a kind of heavenly resonance granted by her half-step Nascent Soul cultivation.

Or perhaps it was simply because she cared about Gu Chengyin so deeply that her instincts automatically pointed every danger toward him.

But regardless, Gu Xiaoli trusted this instinct.

And now, Gu Chengyin had told her he shared the same feeling.

“Xiaoli understands.”

Gu Xiaoli nodded heavily.

Her spiritual cat ears sprang up, the downy tips standing on end.

If Gu Chengyin were feeding her empty promises, sweet words without telling her why he would do it or how he could possibly accomplish it—

Gu Xiaoli would still swallow them.

Any promise from Gu Chengyin, even one drawn in the air, she would eat clean down to the last bite.

But while eating, deep down, a small voice would always whisper:

Is this real?

Can Brother really do it?

Gu Xiaoli wouldn’t let that voice rise to the surface.

But it would stay there, like a pebble inside her shoe, an ache that returns with every step.

Not this time though.

Gu Chengyin wasn’t drawing her a picture.

He was telling her: we share the same enemy.

With that, the relationship between them shifted from giver-and-receiver to partners in life and death.

If that was the case—

Then Gu Xiaoli had no choice but to stand firmly by Gu Chengyin’s side.

“Because the Empress knew hypnosis too.”

Gu Xiaoli’s spiritual cat ears swiveled left and right, as if making sure nothing unwanted lurked nearby.

Then she raised her hand and gave a casual flick.

An invisible spiritual barrier spread outward from her palm, like a translucent glass dome, enclosing the two of them.

The barrier’s edge passed beneath the canopy, gently deflecting a few leaves that were drifting down.

Those leaves landed outside the barrier—silent, still.

Gu Chengyin watched the barrier, his pupils narrowing slightly.

It was the first time he had seen Gu Xiaoli set up a barrier of this caliber.

Not an ordinary soundproof ward, not a simple spiritual screen—but something bordering on spatial severance.

Inside and outside the barrier, as if sliced apart by an invisible blade, became two worlds sealed off from each other.

The wind outside, the falling leaves, the footsteps of the attendants—all vanished.

Not muffled. Simply gone.

This was the means of a half-step Nascent Soul.

“That’s why Xiaoli knows how to do it.”

Gu Xiaoli’s words made Gu Chengyin’s heart skip a beat.

Not for the content itself—though that was already enough to make one’s blood run cold—but because of the tone in which she said it.

It was too calm. Too composed. As if she weren’t revealing a secret at all.

But stating something she had simply done every day.

Empress Lin knew hypnosis too.

Those words detonated in Gu Chengyin’s mind like a buried landmine finally triggered.

But on his face—not a trace of reaction.

No twitch of the brow. No flicker at the corner of the eye. The curve of his lips didn’t even shift.