noffsinger Chapter 538
Chapter 538
The sandalwood sword case in her mother's arms was stained with blood, and the words "Stop the War" engraved on the copper clasp fit perfectly with the scabbard. When Dongfang Wan'er rushed over, she saw a piece of fabric hooked between her mother's fingers, with tiny pearl fragments embedded in the intertwined floral pattern stitches—the same pearls found only on the necklaces Ye Jiuchen often wore. A sudden ripple of memory opened up: when she was seven years old, she had found the same fragments in her father's study, mistaking them for fallen book pages. Now she realized they were decorations from the robes Ye Jiuchen wore when he first accompanied his father to the palace.
"Grab that girl!" Dozens of crossbow bolts whistled through the air. As Ye Jiuchen grabbed her waist and leaped onto the plum tree, she smelled the medicinal scent emanating from his collar—a mixture of antidote and blood-activating herbs, exactly the same as the medicinal soup her father used to drink when he was recovering. A gilded compass slid out from his sleeve, its pointer spinning wildly before pointing to Taiye Pond. On the glazed tiles there, the paper-cut double fish she had secretly pasted when she was ten years old still remained. In her father's map, the bottom of Taiye Pond was painted with a pattern of two fish mating in cinnabar, and the four characters "Heaven and Earth Reversed" written beside it were a mirror image of the star map inside the bell.
The bronze bell vibrated so hard it made her sternum ache. The fish-shaped eyes were completely open, revealing a map of the Twenty-Eight Mansions inlaid with extremely fine silver wire. Ye Jiuchen's fingertip touched "Antares," the "Great Fire Star" his father often spoke of, a star associated with conquest and change. "Your father waited twenty years for this moment." His breath, mingled with the scent of ambergris, wafted over. "The fish mirror at the bottom of Taiye Pool can reflect the events of three dynasties." Before he finished speaking, the plum branch snapped with a "crack." In the instant it fell, Dongfang Wan'er saw the bronze mirror revealed in her mother's palm—the fish eyes on the back of the mirror were inlaid with two red agates the same color as Ye Jiuchen's pupils.
"Don't trust the Pisces Eye." The words her father had written in blood on her palm before his death suddenly felt hot. At this moment, the rising sun reflected in the man's eyes was dyeing the red agate translucent, much like the rouge on her mother's makeup box. The Azure Frost Sword had returned to her hand without her noticing, the two characters "Stop the War" on the scabbard seeping dark red, like beads of blood soaked by time. The sound of the night watchman's clapper mingled with the morning bell, the last syllable of "dry weather" lingering long, shattering into dust in the pre-dawn mist, just like everything she had firmly believed in since childhood was crumbling.
Dongfang Wan'er gripped the sword hilt tightly, hearing Ye Jiuchen chuckle softly in her ear. The sound, mingled with the distant drumbeats from beneath the palace walls, was exactly the same tone her father used when reading the Book of Changes. The twin fish bells in her arms gradually quieted down, yet they resonated subtly with her heartbeat, like the gears of fate finally meshing with the inescapable calamity of the past twenty years.
Mirror Image Sinks into the Abyss
In late spring, the Taiye Pond was tinged with the last crimson of autumn. Ye Jiuchen held the hairpin in Dongfang Wan'er's hair between his fingers, the jade tassel shimmering in the night breeze. Before she could discern the dark undercurrents surging in his eyes, her waist was suddenly empty, and her black robe had turned into a broken kite, plummeting straight into the shimmering water.
"Jiuchen!"
The crisp sound of her gold hairpin falling into the water mingled with a gasp of surprise; the warmth of his palm still lingered on Dongfang Wan'er's fingertips. As the water of Taiye Pond overflowed her embroidered shoes, she suddenly remembered the time when she was twelve, when she secretly wore her mother's gold-embroidered ruqun (a type of traditional Chinese dress), and fell into the lotus pond in the same way, her skirt catching half a pond of starlight when she was pulled out. Now, however, only a bone-chilling coldness crept up her sleeves. She bit her tongue the moment she entered the water, and opened her eyes with the stinging pain. She saw Ye Jiuchen's figure, like a fish swimming through the dark blue water, sinking towards the bottom of the three-zhang-deep pond.
The double-fish mirror was embedded in the mouth of a dragon's head made of white marble. The mirror's surface was covered with millennia-old water stains, but it suddenly shimmered with a silvery-mercury luster when they approached. The moment Dongfang Wan'er's fingertips touched the cool edge of the mirror, countless spots of light suddenly burst forth from the surface, like shattered galaxies flowing in water. The first image was the candlelight in her father's study. The man who always rubbed his temples and studied maps before dawn was now holding a wolf-hair brush, outlining the contours of the mountains on silk. Candle wax piled up on the table, forming a mountain of wax tears, and the moon outside the window was slanting across the newly added frost at his temples.
The second image made her throat tighten—her mother weeping over her dressing case, her pearl earrings damp with water, and the screen reflected in the mirror displaying the peacock embroidery in gold thread that her father had sent from Persia last year. When the third image unfolded, Dongfang Wan'er felt her blood rush to her head: Ye Jiuchen, clad in black armor, knelt in her father's study, the very "Map of the Nine Provinces of Yu" that the current emperor was searching for placed on the desk. Their hushed voices were mingled with the scent of agarwood from the golden beast-shaped incense burner, and the bamboo shadows outside the window wove an impenetrable net in the moonlight.
"So that's how it is..." Water seeped between her teeth, salty and bitter with a metallic taste. The images in the mirror flashed by like a revolving lantern. She saw herself on her coming-of-age ceremony, Ye Jiuchen personally placing this jade hairpin in her hair. The dragon tattoo peeking out from her cuff matched the military talisman pattern in the hidden compartment of her father's study. The water plants of Taiye Pond entwined her skirt like countless silent, accusing hands. It turned out that from the day she was brought to the capital, she was destined to be a pawn on the chessboard, and she had foolishly thought that those times of admiring the starry night and sipping new tea together were the true warmth of a fireplace in the cold night.
Ye Jiuchen pressed his palm against the Pisces Mirror, and the mirror suddenly trembled like a dragon's roar. Dongfang Wan'er saw the veins bulging on his forehead, his usually handsome brows furrowed into iron-forged knives, and his knuckles turning bluish-white from excessive force. Those gazes she had once thought were gentle now seemed like calculations shrouded in layers of mist. But when he suddenly turned to look at her, a fleeting trace of pain flickered in the dark currents surging in his eyes.
Suddenly, tiny glittering fragments of light burst open on the water's surface.
Dozens of dark figures pierced the water like arrows, their waist ornaments jingling in the water—the Nine-Phoenix Golden Bells unique to the Imperial Guard. Dongfang Wan'er's soft sword unfurled in the water, its blade slicing through the throat of the first man in black, blood scattering in the water like a poignant crimson peony. Ye Jiuchen, having removed his double-fish mirror at some point, his black robes billowing like sails in the water, swatted away three assassins with a flick of his sleeve. But when he saw her ankle entangled in water plants, he suddenly turned back and pulled her into his arms.
"Hold your breath."
His voice, mingled with the bursting bubbles, his warm breath brushed against her ear. Dongfang Wan'er saw that the jade pendant around his neck was shattered in two; it was the twin lotus she had given him. It turned out that from the very beginning, only she had been trapped in her own self-imposed confinement. The sword light drew a cold arc in the water. As the blood of the last assassin stained half the pool red, even more chaotic footsteps approached from afar. Ye Jiuchen suddenly grabbed her waist and swam towards the dark cave at the bottom of the pool.
The Pisces Mirror burned in his palm. The last image that flashed in the mirror was his father's vermilion seal on the secret edict. Dongfang Wan'er closed her eyes in a dizzying, oxygen-deprived state, letting him lead her into deeper darkness. She didn't know if this journey led to an even deeper game, or... something she dared not think about, perhaps a genuine feeling that had once existed.