When the army left Hanchuan, the sky was still dark.
Qin Feng stood at the city gates, watching the dark-colored banners disappear into the morning mist.
This time, he did not say any words of farewell. He merely clasped his fists and bowed, then stood there for a long while.
Six thousand Hanchuan Guard soldiers formed ranks outside the city and silently joined the northbound army.
The Northern Frontier First Military City, where they were heading, was the true battlefield.
The wind and snow came from the north, whipping the frozen corners of the banners atop the city walls, like some kind of silent urging.
Xiao Yuan rode on horseback without looking back.
At the front of the army, the Prince Su banner snapped loudly in the cold wind.
On the dark banner, a silver-white wolf’s head held its head proudly toward the north, its golden wolf eyes coldly staring into the distance. Snowflake patterns coiled around the wolf’s head, while an ancient seal-script character “Su” was embroidered in the center.
That was the military banner Xia Lanshi had personally chosen.
It was neither ornate nor ostentatious.
But everyone in the Northern Frontier knew that as long as the Silver Wolf Banner still stood, the Prince Su’s army was still there.
The sound of hooves surged along the official road like a tide, stretching for several miles.
The warhorses’ breath condensed into white mist in the cold air. The clashing of armor plates intertwined with the sound of hooves, like a low, solemn marching song spreading all the way across the gray-white wilderness of the Northern Frontier.
Scouts moved back and forth ahead, repeatedly reporting the conditions of the road and any traces they found to the central army.
After leaving Hanchuan, Xiao Yuan took in troops transferred from the various garrisons along the way. Linzhou Guard and Heguan Guard gradually joined the central army.
The army followed the official road northward, advancing through the snow.
The soldiers did not speak.
There was only the sound of the wind and their footsteps.
On the first day, villages could still be seen by the roadside. There were barely any people in sight, and every face was numb, as though the long winter had frozen away all their emotions.
On the second day, the villages began to grow fewer, and the wind and snow were no longer merely fine and dense.
On the third day, Xiao Yuan reined in his horse and stopped beside the road.
It was a corpse.
It lay curled up in the snow, covered by a layer of frost and snow.
The person wore a worn cotton-padded jacket, and the cloth bag in his hand looked as though it had been searched through many times.
Judging from his posture, he seemed to have been walking toward some destination when he suddenly collapsed.
And then he never stood up again.
A personal guard asked quietly, “Your Highness?”
Xiao Yuan did not answer.
He looked at the corpse, then at the snow-covered road ahead.
On both sides of the road were barren fields. Thick snow had accumulated along the ridges, and there was no trace of crops to be seen.
In the distance stood several low earthen houses. Half of their roofs had collapsed, and the doors hung crookedly from their frames, as though they had been battered by the wind for a long time without anyone coming to repair them.
He ordered the corpse to be buried.
Then he urged his horse forward and continued onward, though his pace had slowed somewhat.
On the fourth day, they encountered a group of refugees.
They were a group of people traveling with their families, heading south along the official road, in the opposite direction from Xiao Yuan’s army.
Their clothing was thin, their cheeks sunken, and their eyes carried a kind of numbness worn dull by the wind and snow.
An old man walked at the very front, leaning on a dead branch as a cane. Behind him followed a woman carrying a child.
Xiao Yuan reined in his horse, and the army came to a stop.
The refugees stopped as well.
They raised their heads and looked at the banner with its dark background and silver markings. Then they looked at the young commander mounted beneath it.
No one knelt.
No one begged for help.
They simply stared in silence, as though waiting for some kind of judgment.
The child in the woman’s arms suddenly cried out, piercing the silence.
The woman hurriedly lowered her head to soothe the child, her movements flustered and clumsy, as though afraid the child’s crying might disturb something.
The child was wrapped in a piece of worn cloth. His cheeks were bright red, his lips cracked and dry, and his eyes were half-closed, as though he had a fever.
Xiao Yuan dismounted.
A personal guard tried to stop him, but Xiao Yuan raised a hand and stopped him.
He walked up to the woman and took a cloth bag from inside his robes. Inside were dried provisions and several packets of medicinal powder.
The woman stared at the cloth bag without immediately accepting it.
She raised her head, and at last, a trace of emotion appeared in her eyes.
It was not gratitude.
It was something more complicated, like disbelief.
“Take it,” Xiao Yuan said.
The woman’s fingers trembled slightly before she finally reached out and accepted it.
She whispered something.
Her voice was too soft, most of it swallowed by the wind and snow.
Xiao Yuan did not hear clearly, nor did he ask.
The child in the woman’s arms suddenly opened his eyes.
He did not look at Xiao Yuan.
He simply stared fixedly at the food protruding from the cloth bag.
That gaze did not belong to a child.
It was more like that of a beast that had been hungry for far too long.
Xiao Yuan suddenly remembered the palace banquet in the capital.
At the palace banquet, the sounds of silk instruments and zithers lingered through the halls, and there was never any shortage of delicacies on the imperial table.
It was the same Great Sheng.
Yet between the Northern Frontier and the capital, it was as though another world lay between them.
Corpses were buried beneath the snow of the Northern Frontier, while the memorials in the capital simply stated, “The border remains peaceful.”
Xiao Yuan glanced at the refugees, then looked toward the north ahead, covered by wind and snow.
The personal guard asked quietly, “Your Highness, shall we send people to escort them south?”
Xiao Yuan was silent for a moment.
“Leave them two horses and a cart of grain.”
The personal guard did not ask any further questions and immediately carried out the order.
The army set out again.
Xiao Yuan did not look back, but the scenes along the road north remained in his heart.
On the fifth day, they passed through a village.
At the entrance stood a stone stele carved with the village’s name, but the characters had already been worn blurry by the wind and snow.
There were no human voices in the village.
No barking dogs.
No cooking smoke.
Only several earthen houses with roofs half-collapsed, their doors blown open by the wind, revealing the pitch-black interiors.
Xiao Yuan walked into one of the houses.
There was no one inside.
Only corpses.
This time, it was not one corpse.
It was an entire family.
A man, a woman, and a child.
They were curled up together inside the ruined house, huddled into a single mass of skin and bones.
Who knew whether they had frozen to death, starved to death, or died from illness.
Or perhaps all three.
The brazier had long since gone out. The wind and snow outside continued blowing into the room, while icicles hung from the eaves.
This time, he did not order the bodies to be buried.
Because he knew.
If he began burying them, he would have to continue burying them all the way along the road.
This road north was, from the very beginning, a road buried beneath the dead.
The other houses were empty as well, containing only overturned clay jars and scattered clothing.
A thin layer of ash and snow clung to the rims of the bowls on the stove.
Everything remained just as it had been when the owners left, as though they had departed in such a hurry that they had not even had time to put away their pots and bowls.
The personal guards followed behind him and said quietly, “Your Highness, this village looks like it was cleared out.”
Xiao Yuan crouched down and picked up a worn cloth shoe from the ground. The sole had been worn through, and dried mud clung to its edges. Judging by its size, it had probably belonged to a child.
“It wasn’t the Northern Di,” he suddenly said.
The personal guard froze.
Xiao Yuan set the shoe down and stood.
“When the Northern Di kill people, they don’t leave things this clean.” He looked toward the empty village road outside. “They fled. Or they may have starved to death.”
Xia Lanshi lifted the carriage curtain and remained silent for a long while.
Before coughing twice, he said quietly, “Before last year’s autumn harvest, there were still people living here.”
Xiao Yuan said nothing.
He walked outside, his gaze sweeping across the entire village.
Nine out of ten households were empty.
Some doors were half open, while others no longer had doors at all.
The wind slipped through the cracks of the ruined houses, producing a low, mournful whimper, like the last remaining breath of the village before it completely dissipated.
The Northern Frontier was facing more than just foreign unrest.
There were also snow disasters and epidemics.
Xiao Yuan stood at the entrance of the village, looking at the stone stele worn down by wind and snow.
He had read the “disaster situation in the Northern Frontier” described in the reports sent to the capital.
Those words were formal, neat, and restrained, like a document that could simply be filed away.
“Snow disasters, epidemics, famine, refugees.”
He quietly repeated those words.
Then he looked at this empty village.
The reports described disasters.
What he saw were people.
On the sixth day, the scouts brought back a military report from the front line.
The letter had been written personally by Pei Yi. His handwriting was more hurried than usual, as though even the time needed to write had been squeezed out.
The letter contained only a few points: the main forces of the Northern Di had gathered forty li north of the military city, numbering approximately twenty thousand troops. They had already made three probing attacks on the city. The military city’s provisions were running low, more than half of the wounded soldiers were casualties, and one section of the city wall had been smashed open by a catapult and temporarily filled with timber.
At the end of the letter was a single sentence:
“The city still stands. Pei Yi still stands. Please come quickly, Your Highness.”
Xiao Yuan finished reading the letter, folded it, and tucked it into his robes.
His expression did not change much.
But his personal guard noticed that his fingers gripping the reins had tightened slightly.
That day, they increased their marching speed.
On the seventh day, the scouts once again brought back a military report.
There were bloodstains on the paper, and the handwriting was even more hurried. There were only a few sentences:
“Fourth assault on the city. The Northern Di are using fire oil. The breach has widened. This subordinate has enlisted the able-bodied young men within the city into the defense forces. All medicinal supplies have been exhausted.”
After reading the letter, Xiao Yuan said nothing.
He raised his head and looked toward the northern sky.
The clouds hung very low, leaden gray, pressing down between the mountains and plains like a wall that could collapse at any moment.
“All troops, accelerate!” he ordered.
After the military command was passed down, the entire army visibly quickened its pace.
Horse hooves shattered the accumulated snow as the icy northern wind swept toward them head-on.
And that military city besieged for seven days was already not far away.
Everyone knew that with every step they lost, another person inside the military city might die.
On the evening of the eighth day, they finally saw the First Military City of the Northern Frontier in the distance.
The city walls looked extremely old amid the wind and snow, with cracks of varying depths running across their surface, as though they had been repeatedly repaired.
Several lamps hung atop the walls. Their flames were faint, swaying unsteadily in the wind.
The city gates were tightly shut. The moat before them had already frozen over, with scattered rocks and charred pieces of timber strewn across the ice.
Figures moved along the city walls.
Their steps were slow, their armor battered and torn.
One figure stood at the breach.
He was not wearing a commander’s armor, only a gray battle robe stained all over with blood.
It was Pei Yi.
He stood there like a flag planted in the ruins.
He had not fallen.
The wound on his left arm had not been bandaged. It had merely been wrapped once with a strip of cloth.
The cloth had already been soaked through with blood and frozen into a layer of dark ice in the cold wind.
There was blood on his face as well. A wound across his brow gaped open, flesh exposed, yet he looked as though he had not even had time to treat it.
The wind passed through, and his figure swayed slightly.
Below the city, the Northern Di campfires stretched into one continuous sea of light.
The outlines of the tents rose and fell in the darkness like a pack of lurking beasts.
Horsemen patrolled back and forth along the front of the camp. Occasionally, a fire would be lit and then extinguished again, like some kind of signal.
Xiao Yuan reined in his horse and watched the besieged city from afar.
The personal guard said quietly, “Your Highness, there are at least ten thousand men in the Northern Di camp. If we want to force our way through, we must launch a night raid.”
Xiao Yuan did not answer immediately.
He looked at that blood-stained figure on the city wall, then at the silent fires within the Northern Di camp.
“We won’t break through,” he said.
The personal guard froze.
Xiao Yuan said, “They think we’ll attack from the front.”
He pointed toward the western side of the military city.
There was a stretch of hills covered in snow there. The terrain was uneven, and visibility was limited.
“Go around from there.”
The personal guard followed the direction of his finger and immediately understood.
“Pei Yi held out for so many days. He wasn’t waiting for us to charge straight in and throw our lives away.”
Xiao Yuan’s voice was low and solemn, causing all the surrounding commanders to fall silent.
“He’s waiting for us to tear them open from behind.”
The personal guard was silent for a moment, then clasped his fists.
“This subordinate receives the order.”
Xiao Yuan mounted his horse and glanced toward the military city.
Amid the wind and snow, that gray figure still stood atop the city wall.
He withdrew his gaze and said quietly,
“Pei Yi, hold on.”
◇◆◇◆◇
That night, Xiao Yuan led the army around the hills and launched a surprise attack from the western side of the Northern Di camp.
There were no war drums.
No horns.
Only the sound of hooves and blades cutting through the air.
The Prince Su banner unfurled in the darkness, like a shadow silently closing in.
The sentries on the western side of the Northern Di camp were the first to notice something was wrong.
By the time the alarm sounded, it was already too late.
Xiao Yuan’s cavalry was like a blade, cutting into the camp from the side.
Torches were lit, and cries of slaughter tore through the silence of the snowy night.
The Northern Di camp descended into chaos. Some tried to organize a counterattack, but they were scattered by the pounding hooves and charging spears.
Tents collapsed. Flames spread, illuminating the snow-covered ground in a sea of dancing red.
At the same time, a responding horn sounded from the direction of the military city.
The city gates were pushed open from within, and Pei Yi led the last soldiers still capable of moving out.
He was not riding a horse.
His steps were unsteady, yet he still held that long spear in his hand.
The tip of the spear was already badly worn, but the hand gripping it did not tremble.
It remained steady.
The two armies converged in the center of the Northern Di camp.
Xiao Yuan reined in his horse and looked down at Pei Yi.
The latter’s face was covered in blood. Blood still seeped from his left ear, and the wound across his brow looked especially savage in the firelight. Clearly, he had been struck by a catapult stone.
He raised his head and looked at Xiao Yuan on horseback.
His lips moved, as though he wanted to say something.
But he smiled first.
That smile was as fleeting as a flash of firelight.
“Your Highness.”
Xiao Yuan glanced at him and said nothing more. He merely tilted his chin toward the front.
“Can you still fight?”
Pei Yi tightened his grip on the long spear.
“Yes.”
Then he added,
“If Your Highness had arrived half a day later, I might not have been able to.”
“That is why I wasn’t late,” Xiao Yuan said.
The two exchanged a smile, as though they had returned to the days many years ago when they had fought side by side.
◇◆◇◆◇
Inside the main tent of the Cangyuan Khanate, the atmosphere was as oppressive as air frozen before a storm.
One military report after another arrived.
With every letter opened, the expressions of the generals in the tent grew heavier.
Finally, the last messenger stumbled inside. His voice was so hoarse that it was barely comprehensible.
“The western camp has fallen. The fire-oil depot has been burned, and the flames have spread to the central army’s grain tents. Great Sheng has already broken into the central army. The banner is—the Dark Banner with the Silver Wolf!”
Several generals instinctively tightened their grips around the hilts of their weapons, their knuckles turning white.
Yet no one spoke.
They all knew whom that banner belonged to.
That man was not coming to the Northern Frontier for the first time.
At this moment, everyone’s eyes fell upon the man seated in the center of the tent—
Helian Cang, the Wolf King’s son.
He sat in a wooden chair covered with animal hide, his black hair casually draped over his shoulders, somewhat disheveled, as though he had only just removed his helmet and had not yet had time to comb it.
A dark-gray wolf-fur cloak hung over his shoulders. The fur along its edges was damp with the moisture of the wind and snow. At the collar, a section of coarse cloth stained with blood was exposed.
It was not his blood.
But it had already dried and turned black.
His face looked as though it had been carved by knives and axes. His cheekbones were high, his jawline sharp, like a rock weathered by years of wind and snow.
Most striking was the old knife scar beneath his left eye, slanting from the corner of his eye toward his cheekbone, its color a shade lighter than the surrounding skin.
After hearing the messenger’s report, he did not become angry.
He merely sat there in silence, his fingertips unconsciously touching that scar, as though brushing against a distant memory.
The generals in the tent held their breaths, waiting for his decision.
He lowered his hand and slowly raised his head.
His light-brown eyes reflected two flickering points of firelight, but his gaze was colder than the wind and snow outside the tent.
There was no panic.
Only a sharpness that had sunk to the deepest depths.
“Xiao Yuan has arrived. Faster than expected.”
At most, he would need no more than half a day to take this city.
Xiao Yuan had arrived at a very unfortunate time.
At midnight.
Gui Chen House had long since turned off its lights.
The old wooden curtains on the first floor were drawn tightly shut, and not a sliver of light could seep through the gaps.
There was not the slightest movement upstairs either. Even sounds had been swallowed by the thickness of the night.
Changning Alley was quieter than usual.
The rain had only just stopped, and the stone-paved road still gleamed with dampness.
The black business van at the entrance of the alley was still parked there. Its windows were pitch-black, making it impossible to tell whether anyone was inside.
Two black shadows silently vaulted over the back wall of Gui Chen House, their toes landing on the wet mud of the backyard without making almost any sound.
They wore dark, tight-fitting clothes, their faces covered with black cloth. Their movements were crisp and practiced. Clearly, they had received professional training.
One of them crouched in the corner and swept his gaze across the backyard.
A stone vat, an old well, a withered osmanthus tree, and several half-dead plants.
After confirming there were no surveillance cameras or motion-sensor lights in the backyard, he slightly tilted his head and gestured to the person behind him.
The other person nodded, took a small jammer from his waist pouch, and stuck it beside the back-door lock.
The green light flashed twice before going dark again, as if nothing had happened.
They had been observing the place for four whole days.
Every night, a little after eleven, the lights in the shop would gradually go out.
Around midnight, the entire Gui Chen House would fall completely silent.
No customers, no delivery vans, no abnormalities of any kind.
It was almost unnaturally quiet.
The two exchanged glances.
The electronic lock on the back door had already been disabled.
One of them pried open the back door, moving extremely lightly. The hinges gave a barely audible click, like wood contracting on its own in the night.
The door opened.
The interior was pitch-black.
One of them switched on a miniature flashlight.
The beam was very narrow and deliberately kept low, illuminating only a small area.
He swept it over the old objects on the shelves, sachets, tea tins, paper umbrellas, then over the counter and the old calligraphy and paintings on the walls.
Finally, it stopped on the tightly closed wooden door deep in the corridor.
That door did not look particularly different from the others in Gui Chen House.
Its cinnabar-red paint was old, with some wear along the edges. The door knocker was made of copper and engraved with intricate cloud-and-water patterns.
But for some reason, when the beam fell upon it, both men felt that the door seemed somewhat darker than everything around it, as if some of the light were being absorbed by something as it approached.
One of them whispered something.
The other nodded.
Together, they walked toward the door.
Just then—
“Men sent by President Sheng?”
A voice came from behind them, like night wind passing through a crack in the window, yet enough to make both men’s movements freeze instantly.
One of them spun around.
The flashlight beam swept across the front hall of Gui Chen House, across the shelves, across the counter—
Then he saw him.
Behind the counter, a man wearing thin-framed glasses was sitting there.
Black shirt, black trousers, concealed within the darkness of the night.
In his hand was a cup of steaming coffee.
As though he had been waiting there for a long time.
Or perhaps more like he had been sitting there from the very beginning.
It was only now that he had decided to let himself be seen.
“What are you looking for?”
Xiao smiled.
His smile was gentle, as though he were asking a customer who had visited Gui Chen House late at night.
The two men did not answer.
One instinctively reached toward his waist, where a stun device was concealed.
The other quickly stepped backward, trying to widen the distance.
They were fast.
Xiao was faster.
A black shadow flashed.
Before anyone could see how he moved, he had already appeared beside the man closest to him. One hand firmly covered the man’s mouth and nose, while the other lightly pressed a certain spot beside his neck.
The man did not even have time to struggle before his body went limp.
The other man’s pupils contracted sharply.
He turned and tried to flee.
His foot had barely lifted when a faint sting came from the side of his neck, like the bite of a mosquito.
He reached out to touch it.
His fingertips encountered an extremely fine metal needle.
The needle tip had sunk into his skin, like a piece of ice melting into his bloodstream.
He did not even have time to make a sound before he lost consciousness.
The entire process took less than ten seconds.
Gui Chen House returned to silence.
Xiao lowered his head and looked at the two men lying on the floor, his expression calm, as though he were dealing with two bags of garbage that had accidentally wandered into his home.
He kicked one man’s foot back slightly, arranging the two of them side by side.
Only then did he pick up the coffee sitting on the counter and slowly take a sip.
The coffee was still hot.
No one knew how much time had passed.
When the two men awoke again, they discovered that they were tied up.
Their hands were bound behind their backs, the ropes pulled tight, precisely enough to prevent them from breaking free without causing obvious external injuries.
Their mouths were sealed shut with tape, tightly enough that even their muffled whimpers were trapped in their throats.
Everything before their eyes was dim. Only a single lamp was lit.
It was an old-fashioned oil lamp. A thin layer of dust had accumulated on its shade, and the flame flickered faintly inside the glass, pushing the surrounding darkness back in a small circle before allowing it to gather again farther away.
Xiao stood within the lamplight.
He was still wearing that black shirt, the sleeves casually rolled to his elbows. In his hand was an extremely thin folding knife.
The blade was not long. It gleamed coldly as he spun it once between his fingers before casually placing it on the counter.
“Awake?” His tone was gentle, as though he were entertaining guests. “A little faster than I expected. Good constitution.”
The two struggled desperately, but the ropes did not budge.
One tried to push against the floor with his feet to move.
The instant he moved, Xiao’s gaze fell upon him.
There was no anger in that look, no threat, not even much emotion.
He simply looked at him calmly.
The man stopped struggling.
That gaze was simply too cold.
When Xiao looked at him, it was as though he were looking at a dead object.
Xiao smiled.
“Weren’t you curious about the secret of Gui Chen House?”
He turned and walked toward the door deep in the corridor.
His footsteps were light, making almost no sound.
The door stood there quietly, looking exactly as it had before.
Xiao extended his right hand and gently pressed his palm against the door.
At that instant, the surface of the door seemed to tremble slightly.
Extremely faintly, like something that had slept for a very long time had been awakened, slowly opening its eyes in the darkness.
“Don’t rush.” Xiao’s voice was as gentle as if he were coaxing a child, or soothing something even more ancient. “I’ll show you.”
His slender fingertips traced the cloud-and-water patterns on the door, moving from top to bottom, as though touching a silent pulse.
Following his movement, light began to seep through the crack beneath the door.
It was not cold white.
It was a dark, heavy red, like blood diffusing into water, or the last trace of sunset remaining on the horizon after the sun had gone down.
The red light grew increasingly intense.
It slowly flowed out from beneath the door, spreading downward along the doorframe before gathering into a small, rippling halo of light on the wooden floor.
The light was not dazzling, yet it instinctively made one uneasy.
As if something that should never be looked at was looking back.
The cloud-and-water patterns on the door began to twist.
The patterns that had originally been motionless seemed to come alive, writhing and intertwining one by one before converging.
Finally, they condensed into clusters of half-open flowers.
—Flowers of the Other Shore.
Flowers spread across the entire door.
The petals overlapped layer upon layer, each one trembling slightly as though breathing.
As if the door itself were a living creature.
Upon seeing such a bizarre scene, the two spies began struggling frantically, muffled whimpers coming from their throats.
Their lips moved desperately beneath the tape, as though drowning men trying to grasp at air.
Xiao bent down, grabbed one man by the shoulder, and dragged him up from the floor.
The man’s legs scraped against the stone floor, making chaotic sounds, like a fish being dragged toward a chopping block.
“The door is actually quite picky about its food.”
Xiao’s tone was light, as though he were making casual conversation while feeding something.
“But it’s been a little hungry lately.”
The man’s eyes filled completely with terror.
Tears slid from the corners of his eyes, soaking the edges of the tape covering his face.
Xiao grabbed his hair and pressed him against the door.
The instant they made contact, the ancient patterns on the door suddenly lit up.
Red light burst forth from deep within the patterns, like blood being squeezed from veins.
The petals of the Flowers of the Other Shore suddenly opened.
Thin red blood vessels extended from the centers of the flowers, densely wrapping around the man’s body.
His face, his neck, his hands, his torso.
The red tubes writhed like living creatures, binding him firmly to the door.
His body convulsed violently, as though something were gripping him tightly.
He opened his mouth to scream, but his voice was simultaneously suppressed by the tape and some even more powerful force, leaving only a series of muffled, broken breaths.
The light in his eyes gradually dimmed, little by little, as though something were being drawn out of the depths of his body by the door.
The red light beneath the door grew noticeably brighter.
The petals of the Flowers of the Other Shore spread slightly, blooming more vividly and eerily.
Like something that had been starving for a long time had finally tasted its first bite of food.
Before long, the door finally released him.
He fell heavily to the floor, his eyes wide open, but no longer able to focus.
He was still breathing.
But his soul seemed to have been drawn away.
All that remained was an empty shell that had once been called a “person.”
The other man completely broke down.
He watched what had happened to his companion, his body trembling violently.
Tears and mucus flowed down together, gathering into a small wet patch along the edge of the tape. His entire body shook like a sheet of paper trembling in the wind.
Xiao quietly looked at him.
The red light remaining in the crack of the door was reflected in his lenses, making his eyes appear somewhat blurred.
There was no emotion in those eyes.
No sympathy.
Only a bottomless silence and coldness.
Xiao leaned slightly forward, his voice cold as ice.
As though issuing a warning.
“Gui Chen House is not a place you can touch. Neither is Su Muchen.”
He turned and walked toward the second man, who was struggling to retreat but was trapped in place by the ropes.
“I actually don’t like dealing with this sort of thing either, so don’t come again.”
He bent down and reached out to press the man’s shoulder.
The instant his fingertips touched the fabric, the man’s body went rigid like a string about to snap.