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“Impossible.” The emperor murmured, “Impossible!”

“Why is that impossible? That shark girl was poisoned with a compulsion and had her mind manipulated by Concubine Qing,” the Grand Master’s voice was calm and eerily cold, “The power of the compulsion was strong enough for her to gouge out her own eyes without hesitation and then frame Ah-Yan for the crime in front of you!”

“What… what are you…?” Bei Mian Emperor’s feeble voice raised in tone.

“Consort Qing is also really vicious. Not only did she let that shark slave girl gouge out her own eyes, but she also crafted that pair of eyes into condensed blue beads and placed them in Ah-Yan’s room.” Da Si Ming sighed and cast a sympathetic glance at his brother, “You were so enraged and out of your mind that you would naturally not have doubted the words of the woman you loved on her deathbed – Consort Qing had both killed your beloved concubine and also used her mouth to eliminate the rightful Empress, so the harem would therefore naturally pass under her control alone. This was a brilliant scheme to kill two birds with one stone.”

“I witnessed Autumn Water succumb to death in my own arms! She, she clearly told me that it was the Empress who did it…” The Bei Mian Emperor’s entire body trembled as if he was struggling to comprehend the legitimacy of such truths, “After so many years… there is no evidence of your empty words… are you…”

“You still want to have a proof?” The Grand Master sneered at the Emperor’s grimace and pulled out an object from his bosom, handing it to him, “I will let you see for yourself!”

It was a discolored piece of paper with a bloodstained writing on it.

The Emperor shuddered slightly as he stared staunchly at the few simple words written above.

There were only a few short lines on it, but what was written was shocking, “There is no justice in heaven”…

“I have no hope of getting revenge for my injustice”…

“I wish I could kill myself, but I have no one to entrust it to”… was streaked with blood and stained with tears.

Those were the last words written by Empress Bai Yan in her Cold Palace, which appeared to him only a decade later. In there, she wrote about what she had experienced during that day, and about the shock of seeing the Autumn Water Singer suddenly digging out her own eyes – yet by the time the Empress understood what was happening, it was already the end of everything.

The trap had been cast and she could no longer escape.

During the seven days and seven nights when she was sent to the Cold Palace, where she was thrashed around groaning and waiting to die, it was surprising that, as the Emperor of Kongsang, he hadn’t received the remotest news about her – it was only now that in hindsight, he found the whole matter bizarre. It must have been that Consort Qing was manipulating the harem to keep everything about the Empress from reaching his ears in the Purple Palace, wasn’t it? But at that time, he was so engrossed in the grief of the demise of his favorite concubine that even if he would have known, he wouldn’t even have cared about it.

By the time he learned about it, his Empress was already dead in the Cold Palace for a number of days. How much despair, sorrow and resentment did she experience before she died?

“This is the letter Ah-Yan wrote to me before she died, rolled and sent outside the palace.” The Grand Master’s withered hand trembled violently, as did his voice, “The same words were spoken by the woman on her deathbed, so why did you choose to believe that shark slave girl but refused to believe your own Empress?”

The Emperor stared steadily at the note, unable to speak.

Yes, he didn’t even have many memories of that Ah-Yan. Whether it was because he was never interested in her in the first place, or because he deliberately chose to forget – from the time he was a Crown Prince, he seldom met the woman who had been assigned as his wife, and spoke only a few words to her. He did not even bother to take a look at her when she finally died.

She had written more words in this one desperate letter than they had ever exchanged in their entire lives.

What a twisted and desperate fate for such a married couple.

“When that incident happened a decade ago, I happened to be in seclusion at the Dream Flower Peak, and by the time I got out of seclusion it was already a whole year later. When I came across this letter, I immediately rushed back to the Imperial Capital, but it was already too late.” There was a tremor in Da Si Ming’s voice as he sternly proclaimed, “Ah-Jun, from that day onwards, I hated you to death!”

The Emperor gasped out a long breath, “Why didn’t you… told me then?”

“There was no evidence. Consort Qing acted very stealthily, and all the witnesses and tangible evidence have been eliminated. Besides, in your rage at the time, you wouldn’t have listened to what I had to say anyway.” The Grand Master paused, a hint of ruthlessness suddenly appearing in his eyes as he snapped, “At that time, I even considered to outright kill all of Concubine Qing’s relatives and children to avenge Yan’s death!”

The Emperor shuddered violently, momentarily speechless. Only after a long time he whispered, “Then… why you didn’t do that?”

“Heh… At that time the Green King siblings were so powerful that if I were to do that, the entire world would have plunged in chaos. I was well brought up and taught by the Temple of the Gods, and I couldn’t do such a thing.” The Grand Master remained silent for a moment before adding bluntly, “Of course, Ah-Jun, I also considered killing you – but you were extremely auspicious at that time, and your fate was not meant to end, so I didn’t dare to do it casually, for fear of upsetting the balance of the universe.”

At this point, the Grand Master shook his head and released a chilling laughter, “How ridiculous… Just because I was aware of the Mandate of Heaven, I was thinking forward and restrained from doing anything instead! If only I were a disciple under the Sword Sage, I could have been quick to avenge the murder, why would I have to wait until this day?!”

The Emperor was listening quietly, and suddenly asked with a hoarse voice: “Then you… have waited until now to make your move only because… because, ahem, my good fortune is now in decline and my death is imminent?”

“By the time I became aware of it, I no longer had any desire to kill you.” The Grand Master let out a long sigh and glanced at the dying old man, “In her dying note, Ah-Yan pleaded with me not to take revenge for her, as long as I would take good care of Shi Ying – I originally thought that it would be good enough if I could fulfil her wish.”

Here, he paused for a moment and harshly blurted out, “But the breeze won’t stop when the trees yearn for silence – after more than two decades, they will still refuse to leave Shi Ying alone!”

“They? They who?” The Emperor suddenly quivered, “The Green King?”

The Grand Master didn’t really try to deny it and laughed coldly: “For so many years, they’ve been trying to eliminate the root of the problem, sending people to poison him three times during his stay in the palace and you didn’t even come to know about it… I could only preclude any palace maid from approaching him on the pretext that the Heavenly Fates were in collision with each other, in case Consort Qing might try to poison him; when he was five years old, I then stepped in and told you that he must be sent to the Jiuyi Mountain Divine Temple, otherwise the boy would die young. In fact, this was not a prophecy at all, but merely a reflection of the state of things…”

The Grand Master paused and whispered, “You simply did not care to protect the child that Ah-Yan left behind, and if I had abandoned Shi Ying alone in the harem like that, he would definitely have not been able to survive past the age of ten.”

The Emperor coughed violently, with a complex expression of what appeared to be a sense of guilt and mortification.

“Fortunately, you didn’t take this son to heart either, and when I mentioned the matter to you, in order to save yourself the trouble, you waved your hand and let Shi Ying out of your house.” Da Si Ming remarked lightly, “And so I sent Shi Ying to the Jiuyi Divine Temple and let him live all by himself in the Deep Valley, with no outsiders allowed to come near – I’ve gone to great lengths to provide for him throughout all these years.”

He glanced at the dying emperor and laughed coldly, “Whereas you, as a father, would only abandon your own son to his own fate!”

“…” The Emperor remained silent, his fingertips twitching slightly.

Yes, for so many years he was giving everything he had to his guilt-bearing youngest son, while leaving his first-born son to eat and sleep in the depths of the wilderness – in this moment in his dying hours, it all became clear, and great guilt suddenly filled his heart, leaving him in speechless turmoil.

“You can choose to believe it or not… in any case, when you will reach the Yellow Springs, you will know for yourself when you get to ask Ah-Yan yourself.” The Grand Master let out a long sigh and took out an object from his bosom and threw it into Bei Mian’s hand, “I give this to you, maybe you can make use of it.”

“This is…?” The Emperor stared at the strange little silver box.

“Inside there is a needle that will turn into a ghastly turquoise color when it encounters the parasites of the Middle Kingdom.” The Grand Master said calmly, “After I leave, Consort Qing will bring you the ‘Soul Restoring Tonic Soup’ again – you can try it then and see if what I said is true or not.”

“…” The Emperor gripped the silver box tightly, with his entire body shaking.

“What will you do if the evidence turns out to be true, Ah-Jun?” The Grand Master looked at his brother with interest, “I advise you to never provoke that woman… She has a poisonous heart and once she turns against you, I am afraid that you will not be able to live for long afterwards.”

The Emperor held the silver box in a deadly grip, but there was no fear on his face.

“Well, I have an urgent matter to attend and I must leave now. Ah-Jun, you must take good care of yourself and try to live a few more days… otherwise, I am afraid that we will really have to see each other in another life.” The Grand Master stood up with his long frame and turned back to look at his dying brother with a mixed light in his eyes, “After a lifetime of being your brother, it’s a shame that I couldn’t be here to watch you finally give your last breath.”

“You… are going to the Jiuyi Divine Temple?” The emperor finally uttered, with a hoarse voice, “Is it true that Shi Ying is resigning from the Divine Order? Is he trying to come back?”

“Yes.” The Grand Master trailed off, holding up the decree he has written down, “Do you have any objection?”

“No.” It was only after a long time that Bei Mian made that statement, closing his eyes and lying back into the brocade, murmuring, “He is my firstborn son… have him make his rightful return!”

“To come back and to take everything that I owe to him.”

Far out in the Northern Sea, a ship was silently approaching, breaking the waves through the tide. On board there were ten wizards in black robes, sitting in silence, with their hands interlocked across their chests, and the sound of low chants filled the wind like the waves of the sea – there were neither sails nor paddles on the ship, yet with the support of these spells, the vessel flew across the cold, pale sea without any breeze, under the freezing moon.

“Ahead of us is Yunhuang,” whispered the Primarch Wu Xian as he raised his head and looked at the vaguely visible earth in the extreme distance beneath the moon, “as the Lord of Wisdom has instructed, we are to land at the Northern Coldhorn Cape and make our way to the Jiuyi Divine Temple.”

“Alas… we failed to kill him five years ago, and now we have to travel thousands of miles to accomplish it.” Another black robed wizard shook his head and sneered, “I hope that one person is indeed so important that it’s well worth this trip for all of us to run around.”

“Naturally it’s worth it,” Wu Xian blandly declared, “Do you dare question the Lord of Wisdom’s decision?”

All ten wizards bowed their heads and refrained from speaking.

“We, the Ice Clan, were expelled from Yunhuang by Emperor Xingzun seven thousand years ago, and have been drifting around on the Western Sea without a permanent settlement, always dreaming of returning to this land,” Wu Xian gazed at the shadow of the earth in the distance, and his voice was gloomy, “Lord of Wisdom stated that this trip is about to bring major changes to the state of Yunhuang – If we can successfully complete our mission, then the Kongsang Dynasty’s fortunes will also come to an end, and the time for us to return to the mainland will finally come!”

“Yes!” The ten wizards accepted the order in unison.

Wu Xian was just about to continue saying something when he gazed at a certain spot in the night sky and blurted out, “What is going on? Why… why is the astral field shifting?”

In that moment, the black clothed wizards raised their heads in unison and followed his gaze – that would have been an extremely insignificant and obscure corner that no one would have normally noticed if Wu Xian hadn’t specifically pointed it out.

The starfield on the Purple Wall, in fact, was indeed shifting!

That sort of movement, was not the normal movement of the dipper, but a paradoxical sideways migration!

A large star with a red aura glowed brightly, vaulting into the astral plane with a rarely seen brightness. Around that star, as if pulled by an unseen force, the other stars accelerated at an apparently abnormal speed, deviating one by one from their original orbits!

The stars have changed, the fate of the Heavens has been changed! There is someone in this Yunhuang who is performing the art of reversing the Fate of the Heavens! Wu Xian blurted out, “Oh my Lord! Who is changing the trajectory of the stars?”

Even before the words left his mouth, the light of that one great crimson star suddenly converged. At the same time, all the stars propelled by the unfathomable force instantly stopped moving, swayed a little and swished to a standstill!

The sky remained as peaceful as ever, and all the stars shone serenely, uncertain of which shifted and which one never moved… Everything happened in a matter of split seconds, and if the ten wizards in the lonely boat had not raised their heads to witness it with their own eyes, no one in heaven and earth would have noticed the events that took place just in those few moments.

Who is attempting to reshape the stars and alter their destiny?

“Report this to the Lord of Wisdom at once,” Wu Xian ordered in a stern voice, “Speed up and go to Yunhuang!”

On the windless sea, the ship’s single sail suddenly bulged with a breeze that came from nowhere, and like a stray arrow, it swooped swiftly towards the Yunhuang!

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