Subtitle:
When a life-saving medicine becomes the sharpest lock; when both players in the game sit at the same board.
Pale dawn light filtered through the lattice, gilding the still air with drifting motes of dust. A fragile peace lingered—thin as spun glass. Shen Yuzhu lay unmoving on the bed, his breathing shallow but regular, the faint lines of pain still etched between his brows. Chu Hongying kept her vigil beside him, her posture as straight and unyielding as her spear, her eyes holding the deep calm after a storm, while watching for the next.
The Medicine Elder had not departed with the night. She sat framed by the window, half in light and half in shadow, her face a mask of serene detachment—a witness to countless cycles of life and death. Her stillness was not empty, but full of a profound attention to the turning of fate.
The air was thick with the bitter scent of herbs, the metallic memory of blood, and the cold, sharp odor from their escape. This blend created an unnatural quiet, the deceptive peace of a sanctuary that might be breached at any moment.
Without a sound, the Medicine Elder rose and approached the bedside. Between her slender fingers, she held a golden needle so fine it seemed made of light. Its tip shimmered with an azure glow as she inserted it into the pulse point on Shen Yuzhu's wrist.
"The Blood Lock connects the heart," she intoned, her voice carrying the weight of ancient knowledge, "the Mirror Lock reflects the soul, the Door Lock bridges realms between." She paused, letting the words hang. "When the Three Locks converge, even Heaven and Earth will yield to the opening of their gate."
The needle trembled almost imperceptibly, the blue light tracing invisible pathways along his meridians. Beneath his pale skin, strange patterns seemed to shift. She turned her gaze to Chu Hongying, calm yet carrying the finality of a verdict.
"Your life mark is not a curse, but the key that turns the Blood Lock. The cold poison raging through him is not mere illness, but the cruel price of the Mirror Lock's reflection." Her eyes deepened. "As for the Door Lock... this is not your first meeting."
Chu Hongying's breath caught. A memory, long buried and forbidden, tore through her mind—the night before the decisive battle in the Northern Frontier. A strange, pulsating light at the edge of the frozen plains. Blood-red radiance twisting with icy blue, patterns writhing like living things beneath the snow. What she had dismissed as battle fatigue now revealed its true nature—the pattern matched exactly the old scar hidden beneath the white cloth on her neck.
Her hand moved without thought, lifting the cloth. The sutured scar pulsed with a soft, rhythmic light, reacting to the mingled scents in the room. Threads of crimson light unwound from it, crawling across her skin toward the edge of her armor, sketching a shape that filled her with dread—the central axis pattern of the "Lu Family Mechanism Diagram."
The Medicine Elder watched the luminescent threads. "As I suspected," she murmured, "The Lu family massacre... the diagram was never stolen. It was engraved into your living blood."
Chu Hongying's pupils narrowed to pinpoints. "Engraved... into my blood?"
The Elder nodded slowly. "That night's slaughter was never about seizing a physical object. Its purpose was to eliminate the one person capable of reading what could not be stolen. Your father, in his final moments, sealed half of the main diagram into your life meridian using a spiritual seal only the Lu bloodline could bear. When the blood resonates with its counterpart, the diagram reveals itself." She lifted her eyes, her tone filled only with stark truth: "You are not merely a survivor of the Lu family—you have become the living vessel of the diagram itself."
In that devastating moment, her father's final whisper seemed to rise from her very blood—"Hongying, remember, the true map is never drawn on paper."
Beyond the safe house, palace lanterns cast a warm glow through the Imperial Study's windows. Dragon incense coiled upward. The New Emperor and the Seventh Prince faced each other across a board of black and white stones.
"Your mirror hall hosted quite the spectacle last night, Seventh Brother." The Emperor placed a black stone, his tone neutral.
The Seventh Prince answered with a white stone, a faint smile on his lips. "Yet Your Majesty's shadow guards missed none of the performance, I presume?"
"The Medicine Elder has shown herself at last." The Emperor looked up, his gaze impenetrable. "Did you draw her into this?"
"The wind follows no man's command." The Seventh Prince's smile remained. "Your Majesty has extended invitations for years, yet never persuaded her to grace the palace."
The Emperor chuckled softly. "An accurate observation. Yet consider this—it was by my permission that she moved."
The Seventh Prince's hand hesitated for an instant. "Then I must ask—is Your Majesty's move one of 'release' or 'restraint'?"
"To release a single thread of life," the Emperor declared, placing a stone with finality, "is to discover who among us dares to challenge destiny itself."
Silence filled the space between them. Then the Seventh Prince ventured, "Your Majesty, if you were to stand before those mirrors, what truth would they show you?"
The Emperor's voice remained mild, yet carried absolute authority. "The world needs no mirror to see itself—because everything that breathes already reflects in my eyes."
The Seventh Prince rose and made his departure, his customary elegance now undercut by a subtle tension.
When the door had closed, the Emperor spoke to the empty air. "Night Crow Division, stand down. Prepare 'that item' for transfer. The time has come... to restore it to its rightful owner." He paused, then added, "Let her come and claim what her blood remembers."
In the safe house, a subtle change came over Shen Yuzhu.
Shen Yuzhu stirred faintly, breath catching between life and dream.
"That nursery rhyme…" he whispered, a faint tremor in his voice, "…isn't a song—it's the echo of a key."
His gaze flickered toward her, a fragile spark of trust passing like breath across the void between them.
Then his hand fell back to his chest, and silence pressed heavier than speech.
The Medicine Elder set a white jade vial upon the table. "Three days," she said, her tone neither mercy nor warning. "After that, the heavens will decide."
She turned and left without sound.
When the door closed, Lu Wanning stepped forward, picking up the vial that still held the faint warmth of the elder's touch.
"That scar on your neck…" she began softly, "it wasn't born of battle, was it?"
Chu Hongying, caught in the motion of rising, went perfectly still, her eyes meeting Lu Wanning's with guarded intensity. "You saw the truth."
Lu Wanning offered no denial. "I have seen such patterns in the old military medical archives. A spiritual seal used to lock blood—a technique belonging solely to the Lu family heritage."
A sharp, dangerous glint flashed in Chu Hongying's eyes. "So you knew the truth from the beginning?"
"Suspected," Wanning corrected, lifting her head. Her expression was clear, yet touched with a profound pity. "I researched the case files. The night the Lu family fell, every body was given to the flames, yet the main diagram was never accounted for. But a single note survived—'Where the bloodline flows unbroken, the diagram can never be extinguished.'"
Chu Hongying's fingers tightened on her armored collar. A faint heat spread from her palm, as if something dormant within her blood was stirring.
"Why reveal this to me now?"
Lu Wanning's face showed a complex tapestry of emotions. "I feared that if the true survivor lived, she would become a pawn in games she never chose to play." She hesitated, then continued, her voice low but firm, "That night was never only about destroying a family. Its purpose was to eliminate 'the one capable of opening the door.'"
Chu Hongying tilted her chin upward, her gaze like a shard of ice reflecting a merciless light. "Name the architect."
"The name remains hidden from me. I know only that the order was etched at the highest level of power..." Wanning pressed her lips together. "The year before the new Emperor took the throne, the Seventh Prince briefly held the Imperial Guard's leash. The case files were altered beginning from that very season."
Silence expanded between them, filled with the weight of shared and separate histories.
When Chu Hongying finally broke the silence, her voice was low, layered with the cold determination of the battlefield: "I require no one's pity. The blood of the Lu family does not flow for tears. It flows for memory alone—to ensure the debt owed is never forgotten."
Lu Wanning studied her for a long moment. "What I offer is not pity." She slowly pushed the vial of Heart-Locking Pill across the table. "If you truly wish to unearth what was buried, then step onto the path yourself."
Chu Hongying stood perfectly motionless, the cool vial a heavy weight in her palm. The blood pattern on her neck pulsed with a soft, answering warmth. Images cascaded behind her eyes—Shen Yuzhu's suffering face, the Emperor's inscrutable gaze, the echo of her father's final words—until they coalesced into a core of unyielding resolve.
She tucked the vial securely into her robe, turned, and addressed Gu Changfeng by the door: "To the Seventh Prince's Manor."
Her tone was level, yet it carried the force of an unbreakable vow.
"We go not to shatter the mirror—"
"But to force the man who admires his own reflections to recognize he too is trapped within the glass."
Outside, in the alley, a shadow detached itself from deeper shadows and flitted away. For a telltale instant, the hidden embroidery on its sleeve—the mark of the Night Crow Division—caught the light before vanishing.
Inside, Shen Yuzhu's eyes remained closed in feigned sleep, but a faint, undeniable smile touched his pale lips, forming a silent acknowledgment.
Scene Cut—
In the deep quiet of the Imperial Study, the New Emperor uncurled his palm. Two pieces of charred, torn parchment met upon it, their edges fitting together to form a complete "Lu Family Mechanism Diagram."
His fingertips traced the joining seam with something akin to reverence, and he murmured into the waiting silence: "The blood of the Lu family... however far it flees, in the end, it always circles back to its source."
The highly polished surface of a nearby bronze mirror captured the intricate pattern now made whole in his hand—a perfect, terrifying match for the faintly glowing blood pattern on Chu Hongying's neck.
"The pieces are in motion." His whisper lingered like incense smoke, curling around the mirror's reflection.
"Now… let the mirror bear witness to its general."