Chapter 206| Chapter 207| Chapter 208
Chapter 206: Asking for Directions
“Mrs. Cui?” Hearing the familiar surname, Lu Yunxi’s gaze inadvertently swept across the woman’s features.
A sliver of doubt crept into her mind. Was this Mrs. Cui actually Cui Shishi’s mother?
Their eyes were incredibly similar!
But…
While the eyes were a striking match, the rest of her facial features bore absolutely no resemblance to Cui Shishi. Most importantly, this face looked absolutely nothing like the person depicted in the portrait!
If this woman didn’t match the drawing, then the young girl beside her wouldn’t either, right?
Lu Yunxi’s gaze shifted seamlessly, casually landing on the face of the little girl supporting the woman.
Just as she suspected—the other Cui family daughter didn’t match the portrait, either!
She paused, ultimately deciding not to press the issue. She simply smiled, bid the two of them a polite farewell, and went to rendezvous with Shen San.
It took nearly the entire day for Lu Yunxi and Shen San to sweep through the entirety of the town.
“Beizhen actually has a pretty massive population. I’m practically dead on my feet after walking around all day,” Shen San complained. He pulled a large water skin from his inventory and tipped his head back, gulping it down greedily. “Master, I didn’t find anyone matching the descriptions on my end. How about you?”
Lu Yunxi was also feeling slightly dizzy. She massaged her temples with a frown. “I did run into a family with the surname Cui, but based on their appearances, they look nothing like the portraits.”
The environment around Beizhen was incredibly desolate. The ground was either blanketed in sparse, tough scrub grass or cracked, bone-dry yellow earth. Trees were a rare commodity. Only as one traveled further south, edging closer to Wuzhou, did the vegetation begin to thicken.
Consequently, upon arriving in Beizhen, the two had immediately noticed a drastic spike in temperature. The dry heat, combined with relentless, sand-choked winds, made the environment stifling and deeply uncomfortable.
If Lu Yunxi and Shen San hadn’t possessed formidable physical constitutions, they likely would have collapsed in the dirt, just like the beggars littering the streets.
Too exhausted to care about the dusty ground, the master and disciple sat down, leaning back against a sun-baked wall to take a quick rest.
…Wait!
Beggars?!
Lu Yunxi’s eyes snapped open.
She nudged a drowsy Shen San and lowered her voice. “Didn’t that guy say there were absolutely no beggars in Beizhen? What’s going on here?”
Recalling the violent, hostile temperament of the locals they had observed, her eyes darted around, her suspicion growing.
Lu Yunxi and Shen San exchanged a meaningful look before quietly approaching a beggar sprawled haphazardly in the dirt a short distance away.
“Master, let me handle him,” Shen San murmured, stepping protectively in front of her. He hoisted the unconscious man up and leaned him against the wall.
He carefully brushed aside the man’s matted hair.
As Lu Yunxi examined the stranger’s face, she immediately noticed something completely out of place.
The man’s face was smeared with dark grime, making him look utterly filthy. However, on a small patch of his neck where the dirt had been rubbed away, his skin was surprisingly pale and unblemished. Furthermore, while his clothes were torn to shreds, a closer inspection revealed that the remaining fabric was woven from high-quality silk—material that a commoner could never afford.
Lu Yunxi’s expression tightened slightly. After quickly checking his pulse and confirming that he had merely passed out from sheer exhaustion, she relaxed a fraction and shot Shen San a subtle, covert wink.
Shen San gave a microscopic nod in return. He turned back to the unconscious man and started shaking him roughly. “Hey! Wake up! Wake up!”
His voice was intentionally loud—so loud that the neighbors in the adjacent houses immediately began screaming curses through their windows.
“Who the hell is out there screaming?! Don’t you know people are trying to sleep?!”
“What are you making a racket for?! Piss off! Stop bothering me!”
The shouting and swearing echoed relentlessly down the street.
Lu Yunxi glanced at the setting sun, then exchanged another look with Shen San.
Without a word, Shen San hoisted the unconscious beggar onto his back, and the two quickly slipped out of Beizhen. They didn’t put the man down until they were a safe distance away from the settlement.
The rich aroma of roasting fish drifted through the air, while the sharp crackle of burning firewood sounded unusually loud against the backdrop of the silent night.
The man lying on a flat stone fluttered his eyelids and groggily pushed himself up.
“You’re awake? We saw you passed out on the side of the road, so we brought you some water.” Lu Yunxi looked at the bewildered man and offered a faint smile. “You’re lucky you managed to wake up when you did.”
The man took a deep, shaky breath, his eyes filling with gratitude. “Thank you both for saving my life. Where are you heading? If you ever need any assistance, please don’t hesitate to seek me out.”
Lu Yunxi’s eyes suddenly glinted sharply. “Get down!”
The instant the words left her mouth, Shen San dropped flat against the dirt. The newly awakened man, however, didn’t possess the same lightning reflexes.
By the time he processed the command, three arrows were already whistling straight toward his face.
All the color drained from his face in a heartbeat.
Seeing this, Lu Yunxi had no choice but to act. She snatched up an iron fire poker and swung it in a blinding arc, effortlessly deflecting the lethal projectiles.
“Who goes there?!” she demanded, her tone freezing over.
“The one who’s going to kill you!” a raspy voice barked from the darkness, making the rescued man flinch in terror.
As soon as the words were spoken, a dozen men dressed in black emerged from the shadows, their long blades glinting ominously in the firelight as they encircled the camp.
Lu Yunxi raised an eyebrow, genuinely unsure whether these assassins were targeting her and Shen San, or the stranger they had just picked up.
While she was still analyzing the situation, Shen San had already moved, dispatching the entire group of assailants in a flurry of brutal strikes.
The rescued man remained rooted to the spot, stiff as a board. It took him a long time to thaw from his shock. He patted his chest, gasping for air. “That was terrifying! When those men jumped out, I was certain I was a dead man!”
After catching his breath, he looked at them in confusion. “Benefactors, do you know who those people were?”
Lu Yunxi and Shen San exchanged a glance.
“We have no idea. Probably just local bandits,” she lied smoothly. “Let’s get out of here quickly, before their reinforcements show up!”
The group picked a random direction and broke into a dead run into the night.
However, the pattern of their journey repeated itself. Along the way, they were subjected to repeated ambushes and poison traps.
While Lu Yunxi and Shen San remained completely unfazed by the constant attacks, the beggar they had rescued wasn’t so resilient. Already malnourished and physically frail from prolonged hardship, the intense stress of constantly being hunted finally broke him, and he fell severely ill.
“How is he? Master, do you think he’s a spy sent by the Prefect?” Shen San asked in a hushed voice, watching from the side as Lu Yunxi checked the man’s pulse.
“He’s genuinely sick, and his body is incredibly weak. It’s likely due to severe malnutrition compounded by chronic anxiety,” Lu Yunxi replied, her brow furrowing. “He doesn’t strike me as someone working for the Prefect.”
The man was simply too feeble. Whether the objective was gathering intelligence or executing an assassination, the Prefect would have dispatched an operative who was actually physically capable, right?! Could the Prefect really be that incompetent?
Once again, the master and disciple found themselves tangled in a web of confusion.
Initially, they had assumed the man was a plant sent by the Prefect. After all, why else would assassins still be dogging their steps after they had supposedly shaken their pursuers? But now, the pieces of the puzzle weren’t fitting together.
“Forget it. It’s getting dark anyway. Let’s find a place to camp for the night.”
The morning light was pale and dim.
Lu Yunxi and Shen San held a quiet discussion and decided to take a detour back to check on Cui Shishi.
Given that they were constantly being hunted, they worried that Cui Shishi’s location might have been compromised. While the magical barrier would protect her from physical harm, she had never been targeted by assassins before and would likely be terrified. Of course, there was a secondary, more pragmatic reason for their return: Lu Yunxi and her disciple were currently lost in a maze of conflicting clues, and they desperately needed Cui Shishi to help them make sense of the situation.
With their plan set, Shen San hoisted the ailing man onto his back, and they set off.
Less than an hour into their trek, the man regained consciousness.
“You’re awake,” Shen San noted, gently lowering him to the ground. “We didn’t want to wake you because we had to keep moving and you needed the rest. Our plan was to carry you to the nearest town before parting ways. I hope you don’t mind.”
The man shivered, gathering his bearings. “Of course I don’t mind! I have nowhere else to go anyway. I’m truly grateful you allowed me to tag along.”
“No need for thanks, as long as you don’t blame us for dragging you away,” Shen San replied. He then turned to his master and asked loudly, “Master, we just came out of Beizhen. Which direction should we head next?”
Lu Yunxi paused, momentarily confused. Hadn’t they literally just mapped out their route?
Turning around, she caught sight of the rescued man, whose face was suddenly twisted in profound bewilderment. Playing along smoothly, she rubbed her chin. “I’m not entirely sure either. How about we head…”
Before she could finish, the man interrupted, his eyes wide with shock. “Wait! You said you just came from Beizhen?! When exactly were you in Beizhen?!”
“We found you in Beizhen,” Lu Yunxi replied simply.
“That’s impossible! I was nowhere near Beizhen when I passed out! Beizhen is dozens of miles away from the town I was in!”
“What did you say?” Lu Yunxi’s eyes sharpened, her gaze locking onto the man like a hawk.
The rescued man, however, stubbornly stood his ground, swearing up and down that the location they had found him in was absolutely not Beizhen.
Lu Yunxi and Shen San traded a heavy look, the seeds of doubt sprouting rapidly in their minds.
Along their journey, they had asked numerous locals for directions. Was it really possible that every single one of them had intentionally pointed them the wrong way?
Chapter 207: Breaking In
The rescued man stood his ground stubbornly. “My benefactors, you saved my life. I swear to the heavens, if I’m lying to you, may I be struck by lightning and die a miserable death!”
He took a breath, his voice full of absolute certainty. “I might not be a local, but I’ve been stranded around these parts for days and have learned a thing or two. For instance, Beizhen is so incredibly remote and isolated that there isn’t even a proper road leading to it! It’s impossible for an outsider to find it without a trusted local guide to lead the way.”
Seeing that he didn’t appear to be fabricating his words, Lu Yunxi and Shen San fell into deep thought.
The master and disciple exchanged a look. Leaving the man to rest by the roadside, they split up at a fork in the road, each heading toward a different nearby village to ask for directions.
“Excuse me, Uncle, do you happen to know the way to Beizhen?”
“Pardon the interruption, Auntie. I’m traveling to visit some extended family, and I was told they reside in Beizhen. Would you happen to know which path I should take?”
“Hey there, little buddy. If I buy you some candied haws, could you point me toward Beizhen?”
“…”
They spent hours investigating. Lu Yunxi didn’t just question the residents of the surrounding settlements; she even made a stealthy detour back to check on Cui Shishi.
“Miss Lu, you’re back!” Cui Shishi rushed forward anxiously the moment she saw her. When she realized Lu Yunxi was alone, her heart skipped a beat. “Where… where is Mr. Shen?!”
“Relax, he’s fine. He just went to double-check our directions,” Lu Yunxi replied, waving a hand dismissively. “As for your family, we’ve stumbled onto a few clues, but we can’t verify if they’re real yet. We need to do more digging… By the way, do you and your relatives share any family secret codes or phrases? Without one, I have no way of knowing if the people we track down are actually your family.”
“A secret code?” Cui Shishi blinked, her brow furrowing in confusion.
Who would randomly establish a secret code within a peaceful household?
She racked her brains for a long time but ultimately came up empty. “No, we don’t have anything like that. Miss Lu, if you spot anyone who resembles the portraits, just let me know. I’ll go see them myself; I’ll recognize my own mother the moment I lay eyes on her.”
With no other choice, Lu Yunxi refreshed the protective barrier around her and hurried back to regroup with Shen San.
The two crossed paths just before reaching the fork in the road where they had initially parted.
“Master, how did it go on your end?” Shen San asked immediately.
“Every single person I asked told me that Beizhen is located further down the road we were taking. What about you?”
“Same here. They all pointed in the exact same direction.”
Lu Yunxi’s expression darkened. She lowered her gaze, her mind racing.
When they had first set out for Beizhen, they had only questioned two or three travelers and simply followed the route provided. Back then, it would have been understandable if they had just gotten lucky with a small sample size. But now, they had interrogated dozens of random people, and every single one—regardless of background—could perfectly describe the way to Beizhen. It was far too convenient.
If a precocious four or five-year-old child could answer, they might be a prodigy. But if every four or five-year-old child across multiple villages could instantly point out the path to a supposedly top-secret exile town, was the entire region populated by geniuses? Furthermore, there were elderly villagers who could barely recognize their own children, yet they could explicitly map out the precise route to Beizhen… What a joke.
A cold, sharp smile curled the corners of Lu Yunxi’s lips.
“It seems we’ve marched right into a trap. This ‘Beizhen’ we visited isn’t a town at all—it’s a calculated setup, just waiting for us to waltz in so they can catch us red-handed!”
The master and disciple looked increasingly grim.
After a moment’s consideration, Lu Yunxi pulled out another Mantra Pill. She bypassed the regular crowds, cornered a lone villager, and forced the medicine down his throat.
Lu Yunxi asked coldly, “Where is Beizhen?”
The villager broke out into a frantic sweat, the drug compelling his tongue. “Once you leave the village, head due west… you’ll see a path…”
Lu Yunxi pressed, “Why did you lie to us before? Why did you point us in the wrong direction?”
The villager looked terrified, his voice trembling. “The Prefect… the Prefect issued an order! He said if anyone accidentally leaks the real location of Beizhen to outsiders, our entire village will be slaughtered and buried with them!”
Lu Yunxi frowned. “Then what is that town you pointed us toward earlier?”
The villager looked on the verge of tears. “It’s a nameless settlement. The people living there are all the impoverished, deadbeat relatives of the officials working under the Wuzhou Prefect. They’re all incredibly arrogant and unpleasant…”
“…”
She fired off a few more questions, but the villager truly didn’t know the exact coordinates of the real Beizhen.
Lu Yunxi and Shen San finally understood the scope of the deception. The man they had rescued hadn’t been lying to them. They had been fed misinformation from the very beginning of their journey, deliberately funneled into a fake settlement.
Aside from a few prominent trading hubs, most small border towns didn’t have their names carved onto stones or gates. They weren’t major cities and completely lacked defensive walls; even if someone wanted to hang a sign displaying the town’s name, they wouldn’t know where to put it.
Thinking about how much precious time they had wasted navigating a town populated entirely by actors and corrupt officials’ relatives, Lu Yunxi ground her teeth.
Unbelievable!
She had known something was off the moment she saw that fake “Mrs. Cui.” Her eyes had been a perfect match to Cui Shishi’s, meaning the Prefect must have gone to immense trouble to scout an actress with that exact physical trait. Recalling how the woman had staged her dramatic, suffocating collapse right in front of her, Lu Yunxi shook her head in dark amusement.
She had to hand it to the woman; she was certainly committed to the role to push her body that far for a scam.
The master and disciple stood in grim silence for a long time before turning on their heels and walking back to the fork in the road.
The man waiting by the wayside let out a massive sigh of relief when they emerged from the brush, rushing forward to greet them. “Benefactors! You… you’re finally back!” He had been wringing his hands in anxiety, terrified that something had happened to them.
“Sir, we have urgent matters to attend to and must depart immediately,” Lu Yunxi said, her tone softening considerably now that she knew he was innocent. “I was wondering if you intended to remain here, or…”
Before she could finish her sentence, the man interrupted eagerly, “My surname is Cui. You can just call me Little Cui! I have absolutely nowhere else to go. Would it be alright if I traveled with you?”
“Cui?!” Lu Yunxi blurted out, her eyes widening.
At this point, hearing that specific surname triggered an automatic, defensive reflex.
Shen San froze as well. Were there really this many people named Cui running around the province?
He swung his gaze toward the man, his eyes narrowing like a pair of scanners as he analyzed him from head to toe.
Being subjected to such an intense, predatory glare by both travelers made Little Cui feel like he was being sized up by a pair of wild beasts. He instinctively shrank back, pulling his head into his collar. “W-what’s wrong?”
“Our next destination is Wuzhou City. Are you certain you want to accompany us?” Lu Yunxi’s eyes flashed dangerously. “Before we agree, you need to tell us exactly what your background is. What did you do for a living? If you’ve committed crimes or have dangerous enemies, wouldn’t you just end up dragging us down with you?”
Having just been thoroughly deceived by a whole town of actors, her tone was decidedly hostile.
Little Cui looked thoroughly intimidated, trembling slightly. “My background? Of course, I can tell you everything.”
Without hesitation, he began detailing his life story.
As Shen San listened to the narrative unfold, his brows knit tightly together. “Master… this story sounds incredibly familiar.”
“Of course it’s familiar,” Lu Yunxi muttered under her breath, her eye twitching violently. “It’s practically a carbon copy of what Cui Shishi told us.”
The same Cui clan, the same fall from grace, the exact same incident of getting hit with a sudden stomachache during the exile march, slipping into the bushes to use the restroom, encountering a wild beast, and being abandoned by the panicked guards… The details were identical, right down to the protagonist simply being a different person.
The master and disciple exchanged a dark look. They had been played from the very beginning. The moment they had crossed paths with Cui Shishi, they had likely already stepped directly into a carefully orchestrated conspiracy.
As the silence stretched, the air grew incredibly heavy. Watching them, Little Cui became increasingly frantic.
“Benefactors… I…” Sweat poured down his face. He scrambled to offer an explanation, but the words caught in his throat.
Suddenly, a shadow loomed over him, and his vision crashed into darkness.
Lu Yunxi maintained a completely expressionless face as she sheathed her blade, watching Little Cui’s limp body slump onto the grass.
“Master, do we really have to drag this guy along with us?” Shen San groaned, looking thoroughly miserable at the prospect of playing pack mule yet again.
“Bring him,” she ordered, a cold, mocking smirk playing at the corners of her lips. “I don’t know the full scope of this plot yet, but it’s clear we were targeted the second we stepped into this province. This man was almost certainly planted by the Prefect of Wuzhou. Once we get into the city, we’ll deliver him right to the Prefect’s doorstep. I want to see how the man explains this himself.”
Shen San nodded resignedly and hoisted the unconscious man onto his shoulders.
The two channeled their Qinggong, moving like ghosts through the night as they sped toward Wuzhou. Before entering the city proper, they bound Little Cui tightly with heavy ropes and dumped him in a secluded patch of wilderness. To ensure he didn’t get eaten by wild animals before they could use him, Lu Yunxi cast a protective barrier over him.
With that handled, the two slipped over the city walls under the cover of darkness and infiltrated the Prefect’s estate.
At that exact moment, the Prefect was ensconced in his concubine’s lavish quarters, lounging in bed and laughing merrily as he held her in his arms.
Fwip!
A sudden, violent gust of wind sliced through the bedchambers. A longsword, gleaming with a deadly silver light, tore through the air and embedded itself deeply into the headboard right between their faces, shearing off several strands of their hair.
“Ahhh!” The concubine stared at the vibrating blade inches from her cheek. Her face drained of all color, and she shrieked in terror, frantically wrapping the silk duvet around her trembling body.
“Who goes there?! Guards! Someone get in here right now!” The Prefect of Wuzhou panicked, his face contorting in sheer horror as he began to bellow at the top of his lungs. He thrashed wildly, attempting to scramble out of bed, but his massive, bloated belly—resembling that of a woman six or seven months pregnant—anchored him to the mattress, rendering him utterly incapable of a quick escape.
Lu Yunxi stepped out of the shadows, staring down at him with a chilling, detached expression.
Seeing that she didn’t immediately move to finish him off, the Prefect gradually managed to reassemble his shattered composure. “Who are you?! Do you have any idea what kind of capital offense it is to infiltrate a Prefect’s private residence?! If you drop your weapon and leave this instant, I… I will overlook this transgression!”
Chapter 208: Brother-in-Law
Did the Prefect really take her for a fool? If she had actually just dropped her weapon and walked out the door, he would have undoubtedly ordered his guards to surround and slaughter her on the spot.
Lu Yunxi’s lips curled into a razor-sharp, mocking smile. “My Lord, let me ask you a question. Have our paths ever crossed before? Why did you send your men to hunt us down—”
Bang!
Before she could finish her sentence, the bolted doors were violently smashed open. A dozen masked men in black surged into the bedchambers, the naked steel of their swords flashing coldly in the candlelight.
Lu Yunxi’s expression hardened.
Where on earth was Shen San? With a commotion this massive, how had he still not noticed anything?!
“Quickly! Kill her! Slaughter her where she stands!” the Prefect of Wuzhou bellowed from his safe haven in the corner, pointing a trembling, fat finger at her.
Reacting instantly, Lu Yunxi yanked her sword from the headboard and threw herself into a frantic clash with the assassins.
However, the moment steel met steel, she realized something was deeply wrong.
The regular guards stationed around the Prefect’s estate were entirely ordinary; she and Shen San had infiltrated the grounds without leaving a trace because those sentries were only around level ten—barely the standard of someone who had just stepped out of a novice village. Naturally, they lacked the perception to detect high-level players.
But this specific group of masked assassins were all sitting at level 60. On this continent, they were comfortably among the elite.
Lu Yunxi’s face darkened as she parried a lethal thrust. Her suspicions regarding the Prefect of Wuzhou deepened. For a standard regional prefect, managing to recruit even one or two level 50 or 60 experts into his personal retinue would be considered an astronomical stroke of luck. Yet here was an entire squad.
While Lu Yunxi possessed immense personal power, she was severely outnumbered. Just as a massive swarm of ants could eventually bring down an elephant, the relentless wave of assassins began to wear her down. Fighting a defensive retreat, she tried to maneuver her way out of the bedchambers.
The room was far too confined for a full-scale battle. As she dodged, she collided with heavy iron candlesticks and ornate wooden tables. Porcelain cups and decorative plates shattered into a million jagged shards across the floor, and the heavy silk curtains were ripped to shreds. The cramped quarters severely restricted her movements, preventing her from unleashing her full strength.
Suddenly, just as she backed past the threshold of the broken doorway, a hand clamped firmly onto her right arm.
Lu Yunxi’s eyes flared with cold fury. She drove her left elbow backward in a vicious counterstrike, only for her arm to be deftly caught mid-air.
“Master, it’s me! Let’s get out of here first!” Shen San’s urgent voice hissed from behind her.
Without a word, she let him pull her along, and the two vanished into the night, rapidly evacuating the Prefect’s estate.
Fortunately, once they cleared the outer perimeter of the residence, the masked assassins abandoned the chase. The master and disciple took a convoluted route through the city’s alleyways, circling back several times to ensure they had entirely shaken any tails before finally slipping into a secluded spot to rest.
“Master, you’re not hurt, are you?” Shen San asked immediately, his breathing ragged.
“I’m fine. What about you?” Lu Yunxi quickly cast a detection spell over him. Only when the system confirmed he hadn’t sustained any damage did she let out a sigh of relief. “Did you manage to find any clues about why he’s so obsessed with killing us?”
“No, I…” Shen San hesitated, looking at her sheepishly. “Master, I managed to infiltrate his private study, but the room was completely bizarre. There was absolutely nothing in it.”
“What do you mean, nothing?” she asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.
“It was just empty of substance. Even though there was a massive bookshelf and plenty of high-quality brushes, inkstones, and parchment, every single item looked brand new. It was obvious no one actually used the room, let alone kept secret correspondence or ledgers there.” If he hadn’t mapped out the entire estate beforehand, he would have assumed he had wandered into a guest room by mistake.
Lu Yunxi paused, falling into deep thought.
Lost in their own deductions, the two walked aimlessly through the darkness, unwittingly arriving at the secluded wilderness where they had stashed Little Cui.
The young man had just regained consciousness. He was currently staring through the shimmering blue protective barrier at a massive wild wolf lurking mere inches from his face. He clearly wanted to shriek at the top of his lungs, but terror had completely paralyzed his vocal cords. He could only huddle on the grass, his eyes wide and his mouth agape, frozen in sheer horror as the sleek predator paced around him.
Lu Yunxi and Shen San paused for a fraction of a second before springing forward to intervene.
Shen San was faster; his weapon was already drawn and ready, whereas Lu Yunxi had dropped the sword she had pilfered from the Prefect’s bedboard during their escape.
Fresh blood splattered across the grass.
The moment the beast collapsed, Little Cui’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he promptly fainted from the shock.
Lu Yunxi wordlessly dispelled the protective barrier. She knelt beside him, checking his pulse thoroughly before letting out a breath.
“I never expected a grown man to be so fragile that he’d faint from a bit of excitement,” she murmured. A man this genuinely terrified and physically weak didn’t fit the profile of a hardened spy deployed by a corrupt Prefect.
The master and disciple debated the issue for a long time without reaching a conclusion. Ultimately, they decided to hoist the unconscious man up and bring him back to Cui Shishi’s camp.
The moment they stepped into the tent and Cui Shishi caught sight of the man’s face, she gasped in absolute shock. “Second Brother?!”
“Second Brother?” Lu Yunxi repeated, utterly taken aback. Was reality truly this full of coincidences? They had randomly picked up her actual sibling?!
Cui Shishi nodded frantically. “He’s my biological second brother! Miss Lu, where on earth did you find him?”
Lu Yunxi remained silent for a moment. Then, with a fluid flick of her wrist, she snapped a Mantra Pill directly into Cui Shishi’s mouth.
“Ah! Miss Lu, what did you just feed me—” Cui Shishi’s voice trailed off, her gaze instantly turning vacant and glassy.
Lu Yunxi took the opportunity to rigorously interrogate her about the inconsistencies she had noticed. Surprisingly, every single one of Cui Shishi’s answers remained entirely consistent with her original story; she wasn’t lying, and she was genuinely oblivious to the fact that the Prefect of Wuzhou was actively trying to exterminate her family.
Next, Lu Yunxi administered a truth pill to the waking sibling. The results were the same: he wasn’t a plant.
It turned out he and Cui Shishi had been separated on the exact same day during the chaos of the exile march. However, because the prisoner transports were heavily spaced out, they had been too far apart to see one another clearly. Cui Shishi had mistakenly assumed her entire family had been forced into the lead carriages, leaving her behind, when in reality, her brother had been separated as well. Being a young man, he was faster on his feet and had managed to reach the border region ahead of her, scoping out the local factions before the Prefect could tighten his net.
Once the interrogation was complete, Lu Yunxi fed them both an amnesia pill to erase the memory of the forced questioning, allowing them to drift into a peaceful, natural sleep.
“What?! Why would the Prefect of Wuzhou want us dead?!”
Having forgotten the events of the past few hours, the Cui siblings listened wide-eyed as Lu Yunxi and Shen San fabricated a plausible excuse to bring up the Prefect’s hostility.
“We’re telling you this so you can rack your brains,” Lu Yunxi said, observing their sheer, unadulterated shock. “Does your family harbor a blood feud with this Prefect? Or perhaps your clan has another powerful enemy pulling the strings from the capital?”
“Our father and uncles were high-ranking officials, so it’s only natural we crossed paths with people who disliked us,” the young man muttered, scratching his head. Suddenly, his eyes flared. “Wait… if we’re talking about genuine hatred… there is one person. The man who almost became my eldest brother-in-law.”
Cui Shishi gasped as the memory clicked. “Yes! Back when our family was looking for a suitor for our eldest sister, our parents meticulously vetted the candidates and finally selected the eldest son of the Zhuang family. But shortly before the wedding, we discovered he had a secret concubine hidden away outside, and she had already borne him a son. Naturally, our parents refused to let our sister marry into such a deceitful household, so we broke off the engagement immediately.”
The problem was that even though the Zhuang family’s son was entirely at fault, he played the victim, maliciously spreading toxic rumors throughout the capital. He claimed the eldest daughter of the Cui family possessed a cursed fate that would bring ruin and death to any husband she wed.
Because the slander was circulated through the underbelly of the city, the Cui family didn’t catch wind of it initially. By the time they discovered the source, the malicious rumors had already taken firm root in public perception.
The Cui family had always been a tight-knit, harmonious clan. When the siblings and elders uncovered the slander, they were pushed into an absolute fury. The brothers cornered the man in an alley, threw a sack over his head, and beat him within an inch of his life, while the family elders used their political leverage to thoroughly humiliate the man’s father. At the time, Lord Zhuang was on the cusp of a major political advancement; because of the Cui family’s intervention, he was not only denied the promotion but was demoted a full rank.
From that day forward, the Cui and Zhuang families were locked in an bitter, unyielding feud. While they avoided outright murder to keep the peace with the throne, they spared absolutely no effort in sabotaging and tripping one another up at every turn.
Hearing the tale, Lu Yunxi and Shen San exchanged a meaningful look.
“So, it’s highly probable that your former fiancé used his family’s influence to pull strings with the Prefect of Wuzhou, ordering him to intercept and execute you during your exile?”
The Cui siblings looked at each other and nodded hesitantly. “That has to be it. Aside from the Zhuang family, we don’t have any enemies who would want to wipe us out entirely. Any other political friction was minor at best.”
“What is the name of this former fiancé?”
“His name is Zhuang Lu,” the young man replied, his expression turning grim. “His father currently serves as the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Personnel. Although he hasn’t achieved the rank of Minister yet, the current Minister is elderly and rumored to be retiring within the next few years, and the successor is traditionally chosen from the Vice Ministers. If the Zhuang family is truly behind this…” He let out a long, ragged breath, his shoulders slumping with an overwhelming fatigue. “With our family currently broken and exiled, we have absolutely no power to fight back.”
