Xie Yu gripped her blade and looked up at the seven-story temple. She inhaled deeply and entered.
The smell inside surprised her.
This temple—where young women's blood was drained daily to make pills—did not smell of iron or blood at all. Instead, a thick herbal fragrance filled the air. Not bitter—sweet, almost enticing, sweet enough to make one want to swallow their own tongue.
Xie Yu said nothing, frowning as she searched.
The priestesses had already been captured and taken away. The building was empty. She inspected floor after floor.
The first level was the living quarters. Their rooms were filled with countless texts and jars of herbs. When Xie Yu flipped through a random book, she found records on things like "possession rituals" and "spirit-parasite harmonization."
The second, third, and fourth floors were used for blood-based refining. Strangely, they didn't look eerie at first glance—more like the workstations of a tech company she remembered from her previous life, wide halls divided into countless cubicles. Each priestess was assigned a cubicle and spent every day refining pills in an identical furnace.
The hall had three windows on one side: one for collecting fresh blood, one for collecting medicinal herbs, and the last for submitting finished pills.
She reached into the blood-collection window and pulled out a ledger. Inside it recorded entries like: "On such-and-such year, month, day, at such-and-such time, a certain Taoist took however many bottles of Scarlet Sand Dew with a voucher."
They actually referred to human blood as Scarlet Sand Dew.
She then reached into the pill-submission window and took out another ledger. This one recorded how many pills each Taoist handed in, what the quality rate was, and—based on those two indicators—how many bottles of Scarlet Sand Dew she would be allowed to collect next time, and whether she would be issued a voucher.
She knew everything here was cruel—inhumane, even—but she still felt a dark sense of humor rising in her.
KPI truly existed everywhere.
She continued upward.
The fifth and sixth floors finally matched the stereotypical atmosphere of a cult more closely.
The ground was again divided into wide squares. In each square, incomprehensible formations were drawn with cinnabar mixed with donkey blood. Next to each formation lay a notebook recording the "iteration and refinement process" of each ritual circle, as if these people were engineers documenting version updates.
The seventh floor was still dedicated to formations, but here there was only one stone-carved formation about three meters long and three meters wide. She crouched down, tracing the carved grooves with her fingertips, and soon found a circular opening. Blood poured into this opening could flow evenly through every channel of the formation.
Compelled by something she couldn't explain, she stepped into the center of the stone formation and sat down.
Instantly, a sense of calm washed over her—profound, enveloping, almost sacred—so strong she felt she had been born to sit here.
Too strange.
So strange it made even a "devout atheist" like her feel her scalp prickle. She scrambled out of the formation, nearly tripping over herself in the hurry.
—
The next morning, Xie Yu left seventy percent of the army in place to guard the site, then used the remaining thirty percent to escort the evidence collected overnight back to the capital.
She herself rushed back to Princess Jin's residence.
As soon as she entered the gates, she was greeted by Little Flower and Little Wan. She hugged the child, then hugged the dog, and then suddenly noticed that the blossoms on the courtyard trees had all fallen; new buds had sprouted, and tender green blanketed the branches.
Putting Little Flower down, she walked toward the rear courtyard. The moment she stepped through the gate, she saw Shen Changyin quietly standing at the threshold, waiting for her.
"Congratulations on your victorious return, Your Highness the Third Princess."
It was a rest day, and Shen Changyin wore a three-layered gown of pale gauze. The light fabric draped and gathered like clouds around her skirt.
Unusually, she wore a necklace today—a clear, bright blue sapphire resting quietly atop the mist-like layers at her chest.
Xie Yu blinked, momentarily dazzled, then said, "Do you know what was in that town?"
Shen Changyin's expression tightened. She glanced around and lowered her voice. "Come inside."
"The army arrived slightly faster than you did. They reached the northern outskirts half an hour ago and delivered the intelligence to me. I only received it moments before you entered the residence."
Shen Changyin sat behind the desk; Xie Yu stood beside her, leaning in to look at the thick stack of documents. They recorded the night's battle results, the population distribution in the town, the nature of the guards, and of course the thirty mysterious buildings and that uncanny Taoist temple.
"I've gone through some of it. I can make a preliminary assessment," Shen Changyin said, turning her head toward her.
"I'll go first," Xie Yu replied.
"That town is divided into three main sections. The first is Old Li's death-soldier camp. It's relatively independent; their training grounds and living quarters are at the outer perimeter, and they're never allowed into the inner part of the town. I inspected them—their training and overall capabilities far exceed average standards."
"The second section is the guard troops. They're stationed closer to the center and manage the daily patrols and defenses. They definitely aren't official soldiers—more likely a private army raised by whoever is behind all this. They have full equipment, rations, and pay. Their combat power is higher than some lax official units, but nowhere near that of the Mighty Martial Army."
"As for the third section… I'm not sure what to call it. Let's go with the Blood Camp. This includes twenty-seven small buildings, three larger compounds, and one Taoist temple—the temple is the core. Every month, the people behind all this bring kidnapped young women from outside the town into the small buildings and compounds. Their blood is harvested and sent to the Taoist temple. The Taoists refine the blood into pills, sending out a new batch every ten days."
Shen Changyin raised her hand and circled a number on one of the documents. "These pills are produced in quantities far too large for a single household to consume. They must be sold. But right now, we have no idea where they're going after leaving the town."
"Then we split up," Xie Yu said. "The investigation in the town continues as normal; once we find the mastermind, we'll know exactly who purchased these blood pills."
"At the same time, we should plant spies in the residences of nobles across the capital. Blood pills are difficult to produce and extremely expensive—if anyone bought them, it would definitely be that crowd."
Then she looked down, suddenly serious. "Give me your hand."
Shen Changyin paused. "May I know why Your Highness is asking for my hand?"
"Just give it to me."
So Shen Changyin raised her right hand, offering it forward. The gauzy sleeve slid down her forearm and pooled softly at her elbow, highlighting the slender, pale lines of her arm.
Xie Yu gently held Shen Changyin's two front fingertips, turning them over as she examined the hand.
It was a beautiful hand—white skin, faint pink at the joints, elegant in shape—but not untouched by life.
There were marks: heavier ones from writing, lighter ones from archery.
But those weren't what she was looking for.
After examining the right hand, she caught Shen Changyin's left hand. Shen Changyin lifted it obediently, allowing her fingertips to be pulled and positioned.
Once she checked both hands, Xie Yu saw that Shen Changyin's palm lines were shallow, and her wrist was smooth—no overlapping scars.
She had noticed these features before when she "read her fortune," but today she wanted to confirm.
There were no scars from repeated bloodletting.
A quiet relief washed over her chest—it felt as though her heart had slowly returned to its place. Her shoulders loosened.
But she still had questions. And perhaps today was the day to finally ask them.
"Shen Changyin," she said solemnly.
"Yes?" Shen Changyin gathered the fallen gauze of her sleeves layer by layer, her long lashes lifting as she glanced up.
"What exactly did the Xie family do to you?"
The question struck like a thrown dagger. Shen Changyin froze for a moment. "Why does Your Highness ask that all of a sudden?"
"You hate the Xie family. Naturally, I want to know why."
A near-perfect smile formed on Shen Changyin's face—a flawless mask. "Who said I hate the Xie family? I'm already engaged to Your Highness. Why would I hate my future kin?"
"You're afraid I'll take it personally?"
"How could I? If I don't hate the Xie family, why would you have such concerns?"
Xie Yu pretended not to hear. "You've never hidden your intention to seize power from my mother and sisters. You even forced a palace crisis once, and I never complained. Even that didn't give you enough security to admit your hatred?"
"Power is something all people desire. Your ancestors fought among themselves for it generation after generation. Naturally you, of all people, would understand why I did what I did."
"But I'm not allowed to understand hatred?"
"There is no hatred in my heart," Shen Changyin repeated, her expression flawless.
Xie Yu couldn't understand why she insisted on denying it—why she insisted on denying it to her.
Everyone else could see the resentment behind Shen Changyin's actions. Why lie only to Xie Yu?
Another question flickered through her mind.
She had always assumed the "Xie family" had wronged Shen Changyin.
But she herself was now part of the Xie family.
Could it be possible that she, the former Third Princess—before Xie Yu's soul arrived—had wronged Shen Changyin?
She tapped her own forehead, trying to dig through the fragments of memory lingering from before she transmigrated. She searched for anything connecting the original Third Princess and Shen Changyin.
But nothing came.
If she couldn't make sense of it now, she decided not to chase the thought further.
Maybe it was simply her imagination. Maybe she was wrong.
She returned her attention to the matters in Hidden Night Town.
"We didn't find much documentation about the Blood Camp. We still don't know who delivered the captives, or which faction collected the refined blood pills. But there was progress with the death-soldier camp."
She pulled out several sheets from the stack of intelligence papers.
"The guard troops and the death-soldier camp receive their salaries by cart every month. There are no ledgers, no source to trace who pays them."
"But the death-soldier camp still needs to receive missions and orders. They operate frequently, and their intelligence updates quickly. That means their communication channel with the mastermind is stable."
"We followed that lead. The death-soldier camp sends a designated contact to a tavern in a nearby small city. That contact receives the orders and sends them back."
Shen Changyin immediately understood. "Give me the tavern's address. I'll send people to uncover its true owner."
Her spies moved quickly; by nightfall the same day, they returned with news.
When the report arrived, Xie Yu was eating with Shen Changyin.
She lifted a chopstick full of bean sprouts, chewing quietly while watching Shen Changyin read through the two thin sheets of paper.
Shen Changyin put the papers down and looked at her.
Xie Yu said, "Is she a princess?"
Shen Changyin nodded. "The real owner behind this restaurant is indeed a royal princess."
Xie Yu lowered her chopsticks. "Which number?"
"The Fifth Princess."
The Fifth Princess.
Daughter of the Imperial Consort, granddaughter of the current Prime Minister, born with every privilege, elegant and gifted, and skilled in all six noble arts.
And apparently, also the hidden owner behind the famous teahouse in the capital.
The same Fifth Princess who refused to eat during political meetings just because there was no medical elixir available.
—
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