Chapter Eighty-Nine: They Are All Devils

When foes meet on a narrow road, the brave prevail.

When Lin Yichu tried to use the Lu family to threaten Wei Shao Qianyu, he had already shown his lack of confidence. In truth, he was wary that if Lin Rui were not Feng Jinye's son, the boy would not be enough to threaten Feng Jinye...

Wei Shao Qianyu had also noticed that ever since Feng Jinye had seized Hidden Abyss, Night Nine and Night Ten had vanished without a trace. She believed Feng Jinye had made full arrangements. After all, more than half an hour had passed since Lu Liyuan had begun shouting outside the city gates, more than enough time for a careful plan...

The sky darkened little by little, and the clouds at the horizon pressed lower and lower, as though a violent storm were about to break...

Night Eleven ordered the city gates opened...

Wei Shao Qianyu stood firmly before the gates and said sternly, "Those who surrender will not be killed!"

Half an hour would be more than enough to take down that fake emperor, who looked like a dog trying to imitate a man.

Feng Jinye advanced from a hundred paces away, stepping forward with icy resolve toward the bright yellow imperial palanquin...

Just ten paces remained when Lin Yichu clenched his teeth and flung Lin Rui toward the direction of the city wall...

The sight was shocking to the eye. Lu Yanran dashed madly forward...

But Lin Yichu had thrown him so high that Lu Yanran had nowhere to gain leverage. No matter how formidable her lightness skill might be, she could only watch helplessly as the child was about to be dashed to death against the wall...

Wei Shao Qianyu felt her heart tighten and saw Lu Yanran collapse to the ground, drained of every last ounce of strength...

In Lu Yanran's world, time seemed to freeze. All color vanished, and with it, any meaning in living...

Lin Yichu watched coldly, a thrill of revenge surfacing in his eyes, yet he had not expected that he had still grossly underestimated the Battle Prince Manor...

When Dong Nuan had called him "young master" just now, Feng Jinye and Wei Shao Qianyu had not denied it. When Lin Yichu had mocked them several times afterward, Feng Jinye and Wei Shao Qianyu still had not denied it. When Lu Liyuan had said, "your child," Feng Jinye and Wei Shao Qianyu had likewise not denied it...

In the eyes of the shadow guards, Lin Rui was already the young master of the Battle Prince Manor, the master each of them would protect with their lives...

A ring of shadow guards threw themselves into place, using their bodies as stepping stones for Night Eleven. Night Eleven sprang upward, borrowing force from one body after another. At the final moment he leaped, barely catching Lin Rui, and then both came tumbling down from midair...

The shadow guards instantly shifted formation. Night Eleven clutched Lin Rui tightly and rolled down to the ground atop the flesh wall formed by the shadow guards, greatly reducing the force of the fall...

Wei Shao Qianyu stared in stupefaction...

Night Eleven struggled to his feet, placed Lin Rui into Wei Shao Qianyu's arms, and only then did Wei Shao Qianyu recover her senses, looking at that mass of black-clad figures in disbelief...

Night Eleven said with utmost seriousness, "Isn't there an opera in the storybooks about a lord who throws his child and turns him foolish? Over the past two years, the brothers in the Shadow Guard Tower have been rather idle, so we practiced this now and then: if the prince loses his temper and throws the young master, how do we catch him?"

The atmosphere had been grave, but Wei Shao Qianyu suddenly felt like laughing. Then again, Feng Jinye really did seem to have a habit of losing his temper and throwing things...

These shadow guards were truly adorable.

Lu Yanran immediately rushed over and took Lin Rui into her arms. Still shaken, Lin Rui burst into tears with a wail, and Lu Yanran, holding him, also began to cry...

"Th... this really isn't our young master?" Night Eleven asked Xue Chun with a look of disappointment.

Xue Chun, Qing Xia, and Chu Jiu had all been mixed in with the attendants who had earlier delivered the false imperial decree...

Xue Chun turned her head away and ignored Night Eleven completely...

Feng Jinye stood before the imperial palanquin, his gaze already withdrawn from the distance and fixed coldly on Lin Yichu...

Lin Yichu's body trembled, and he suddenly recalled the scene from the past at the Wei Shao General's Manor, where Wei Shao Qianyu had severed the use of his hands and feet...

Wei Shao Qianyu and Feng Jinye were both devils...

Feng Jinye thought of Wei Shao Qianyu's letter from back then, and of the notoriety she had once carried in Yue Capital. Without the slightest change of expression, he swept Hidden Abyss through the air, slicing open the wrist of Lin Yichu's right hand...

With Lin Yichu's scream, dark crimson blood gushed out...

Fear of death once again enveloped him. He had already died once; was he now to die a second time in the very same way?

Terrified, Lin Yichu stumbled backward and fell into the bright yellow imperial seat...

Feng Jinye's anger was clearly not yet spent. He swung Hidden Abyss again, cleaving the imperial seat in two with a single strike. Lin Yichu crawled backward in a panic...

But no matter how fast he crawled, he could not outpace Feng Jinye's sword. Another bloody slash opened the wrist of his left hand...

Even with nowhere to run, Lin Yichu still thought of escaping...

Feng Jinye advanced step by step, his pace slow and measured. No matter how Lin Yichu dodged, he could not evade Feng Jinye's ghostlike shadow...

With another sweep of his sword, Feng Jinye pierced the ankle of Lin Yichu's right foot. Terrified of death, Lin Yichu still dragged himself along, trying to flee...

Wei Shao Qianyu looked down on him in her heart. Could he not at least die with a shred of dignity?

Feng Jinye's final strike pierced the ankle of Lin Yichu's left foot. Then he turned and instructed Night Eleven, "Follow him until he is dead for certain!"

The road reeked of blood. A muffled peal of thunder sounded, and torrential rain poured from the heavens, just in time to wash the filthy blood away from the earth...

Seeing the blood drip one drop at a time from the tip of Hidden Abyss, the imperial city guards all threw down their weapons and surrendered...

Feng Jinye let the rain rinse Hidden Abyss clean before walking toward Wei Shao Qianyu...

Wei Shao Qianyu stood beneath the city tower, where she could barely avoid the rain. Feng Jinye stood before her, drenched as he was...

Wei Shao Qianyu could not tell what he was feeling.

After a long silence, tears welled in her eyes, and she stepped forward to embrace Feng Jinye...

A heavy rainstorm came fast and passed just as quickly...

A sudden upheaval had finally ended without disaster.

Feng Jinye held Wei Shao Qianyu in his arms, then suddenly glanced toward the corner of the tower and saw a tall, slender figure vanish atop the wall.

Feng Jinye frowned.

Within the Duskhaze Pavilion, darkness always reigned. There was almost no sound, and even less of any human warmth...

With a heavy crash, the sound of something massive hitting the floor echoed through the Duskhaze Pavilion, startlingly abrupt. Yet the countless assassins within acted as though they had heard nothing...

After the shrill sound faded, deathly silence returned.

At the top floor of the Duskhaze Pavilion, Huangfu Chen stood upright, taking the fury of the pavilion mistress seated high above him...

"What have you done?" she demanded in a bewitching voice, and another heap of heavy objects came crashing down onto Huangfu Chen's body.

Huangfu Chen's expression remained unchanged. The woman on the high seat asked again, "Was it you who sent word to the Battle Prince Manor?"

Before Huangfu Chen could answer, the woman murmured to herself, "It must have been you. Otherwise, how could Wei Shao Qianyu alone possibly have escaped five thousand imperial city guards?"

At last, Huangfu Chen reacted. "It was me. And what of it?"

With that single sentence, his thoughts drifted far away...

Four years ago, Huangfu Chen had awakened on a sickbed in the Marquis Qinbo's residence. A woman had stood before him and said, "Remember this: I saved your life. You will repay it."

"Repay it."

Thinking of it now, those words were as ironic as could be, as absurd as could be...

Back in the Battle Prince Manor, Feng Jinye had brought Wei Shao Qianyu back to the As-You-Wish Tower...

After the turmoil, the Battle Prince Manor stood empty and desolate...

Yet that very emptiness served as a reminder that the upheaval of the past two days had indeed taken place.

Feng Qingxuan had vanished, and Yunming was dead...

"Yunming..." Wei Shao Qianyu choked out, her voice breaking.

Feng Jinye drew her into his arms, though many doubts still remained in his heart unsaid.

Wei Shao Qianyu suddenly lifted her head. "I don't believe Yunming is dead!"

The moment she said it, she could no longer hold back her grief and burst into sobs.

Feng Jinye stroked her hair, and at last could not bear to keep the truth from her any longer. "Yunming had a tear mole at the corner of his eye. It could only be seen when his eyes were closed. The corpse had none."

Wei Shao Qianyu suddenly pushed herself up from Feng Jinye's arms and stared at him wide-eyed.

Half a month earlier, when Feng Jinye had reached the outskirts of Guanlin City and seen Yunming's corpse, he had indeed been startled. But he quickly discovered that the body was not truly Yunming.

Soon after, Lu Liyuan arrived. Feng Jinye guessed that Yunming and Lu Liyuan might have conspired together, so he had Night Eleven arrange for the body to be buried.

Feng Jinye explained everything to Wei Shao Qianyu one point at a time. Wei Shao Qianyu listened in utter astonishment.

Feng Jinye patted her head and went on, "A few days later, I felt that the fake corpse looked too much like Yunming. Uneasy, I went back outside the city to take another look. Then I thought of Qingxuan and sensed that Yue Capital might be on the verge of great upheaval, so I hurried back..."

Wei Shao Qianyu nodded. Feng Qingxuan had been made to wear a different face, and now there was also a fake corpse identical to Yunming, along with the counterfeit emperor Lin Yichu, whose appearance had been altered as well...

Wei Shao Qianyu immediately thought of the Fox Lady...

It seemed beyond doubt that Yunming and Feng Qingxuan had been taken by the Fox Lady.

Feng Jinye lightly stroked her hair. "Qianqian, the Fox Lady may be of the Xuanyuan family."

Wei Shao Qianyu froze, trying hard to grasp the implication in Feng Jinye's words: Was the Fox Lady his maternal aunt? Was she the one who had harmed his parents? Was she the murderer who had slain her own mother all those years ago?

Wei Shao Qianyu shook her head, plainly unwilling to believe it.

During that less-than-a-day spent together in the bamboo grove, Wei Shao Qianyu had felt that the Fox Lady did not seem like a person of great evil. Yet in the very next instant she recalled how much the Fox Lady had cared about Hidden Abyss, and her brows drew tight once more...

Seeing Wei Shao Qianyu struggle and think aloud without end, Feng Jinye's lips curved faintly in amusement...

"Then why did she take Qingxuan and Yunming away?" Wei Shao Qianyu could not understand.

If the Fox Lady were the one behind all this, would it not have been more advantageous to kill Yunming and Qingxuan outright rather than take them away?

Feng Jinye nodded. It seemed the little girl had noticed the strange part...

"No," Wei Shao Qianyu suddenly said. "That day she broke into the Battle Prince Manor, you said she feared Hidden Abyss. If she were your maternal aunt, then she should have known Hidden Abyss was in your hands!"

Wei Shao Qianyu paused, then said, "I understand now..."

"That day in the Qinglan Courtyard, the one holding Hidden Abyss was me..."

Feng Jinye's eyes deepened, and a different emotion stirred in their depths...