Determination

The coldest time of the day is not after sunset or midnight, but around half an hour after sunrise, when the land lost its heat and the sun is yet to add warmth. This also happened to be the coldest time of the year.

One can only imagine what Yue has to endure at this moment. However, if it's not today, then she won't be able to achieve the best result of what she was about to do.

Yue carried her butt off the ground and started to take off her clothing one by one leaving only a cold-resistant wetsuit. And yet, the icy atmosphere is carefully penetrating her bones.

She must be insane, but she had to do at least this much to achieve her goal.

Several glasfleur can be seen near the cliffs. Looking at the actual flower, Yue can't help but fell in awe by its beauty.

Small delicate white flowers looking like blanket of snow, featuring snowflake patterns upon closer inspection. But just as was written, Yue just managed to graze it slightly with her shoes and the whole cluster already withered. She really needs to be careful with it.

There is no exact record of how dye was extracted from glasfleur. Yue had cross-referenced several texts just so she can come up with the most logical method.

Without any practice, she can only simulate the steps she needed to take in her head.

The bad news is, she cannot afford any mistakes since there is an optimal window time for the extraction to succeed. Well, at most one mistake, but the chance of succeeding is reduced by 80%.

It is probably not a coincidence that the Royal Designer scheduled the competition at this time of the year. So cunning.

From here onwards, time is of essence.

Yue took a medicine to prevent frostbite.

She plucked a handful of flowers and immediately run towards the river.

The sudden drop in temperature brought her shivering uncontrollably.

Despite her condition, Yue continued going to the center of the river and looked for the dye vat that she marked the day before.

It was easy to miss since the vat is made of a perfect jade. Due to the refraction of light, it created an illusion of being one with the river. So, unless you try to view it on a certain angle, or bump onto it, it is hard to actually find it. Yue had to spend a couple of hours the day before just to pinpoint its exact location.

She can't believe no one tried to even steal the large jade dye vat that was lying in the middle of the river. It was carved from a single stone and the color is uniform all throughout. It can be considered as national treasure.

Holding the flowers on one hand, Yue used her other hand to lift the jade dye vat from the water. Two thirds of the vat remained submerged because it needed to maintain the cold temperature provided by the river, while the water remain inside.

With no time to wipe her prickly cold sweat, Yue dipped her hand to wet the glasfleur and started crushing the flowers by hand making sure to avoid touching the stones and losing the petals. A single mistake can cause impurities and discoloration of dye. Once the petals started to bleed, that the only time that the extracted dye can touch an inanimate object without triggering a chemical reaction.

The petal dregs will immediately turn brown after full extraction so it should be discarded immediately and not mixed in with the dye.

Yue looked at the water but she barely achieved the ideal color concentration.

She immediately went out of the water to pick another batch of flowers.

She almost stumbled out of the water when she felt another wave of cold wind blowing, slowing her movements, and making her limbs numb.

And yet, this didn't stop her from doing what she needed to do.

It took her two more turns before she was satisfied with the color.

Then she carefully took the dress and submerge it in the dye vat.

Now all she needed to do is to wait for an hour for the color to fully permeate the fabric.

Yue toiled for half an hour but it feels like she worked for days.

While waiting, she immediately started a fire and changed from her wetsuit.

She poured the warm water from the thermos in a basin which she prepared earlier that day and soaked her hands and feet.

Despite the little relief from fire and warm water, Yue can't stop the shivering of her body. She felt so sleepy. The only thing that's keeping her awake right now is the desire to finish her masterpiece.

Yue never thought that she is a reckless person. But eversince she got into her sister's body, she seems to do a lot of careless actions.

Her sister's body is not in ideal condition.

And what she did now might hasten its degradation.

But Yue knew, if given the same condition that her sister would make the same decision as she did. Because it is something that "Yue" always wanted to do when she was still living. To try to do her best, to pour out all her efforts into doing something that she loves.

Kai had been doing his own things for the past few days and weren't able to see Yue.

The truth is, he came to this place for a different reason. The Éclair's family inheritance was hidden in this village.

Their family had been searching for it in years but to no avail. Besides knowing the general location, infiltrating the village is almost impossible.

It may look shabby and simple, but the royal family is strictly guarding the place.

The competition came in just in time creating an opportunity for him to freely roam around the village. Seeing Yue was a surprise for him.

During the time in the academy, he already recognized her talent, but he thought it takes more that talent to join this competition, just like how he managed to do so. He already had an inkling that they were of same origin but he didn't try to dig deeper into her background.

For him, he just wanted to get to know her personally without any bias, just like the way she treated him.

Unfortunately, the situation did not allow him to cater his personal interest.

Kai didn't think that it's going to be easy looking for the inheritance, but he didn't expect not even getting a glimpse of it after four days of searching.

Now the forest near the cliffs is the most suspicious among the places he marked after combing the village.

This is also the last day of the competition, and his last chance to explore.

He started to move under the pretense of gathering dyeing materials for last minute preparation. Good thing the villagers didn't question him that much, maybe because, they were given instructions to only act like a game NPC.

"Sir! Please wait!"

"Huh?" Kai turned to look back and saw a girl running towards him.

She seemed to be the granddaughter of the house Yue was staying in.

For an NPC to act against its role, Kai suddenly had a bad feeling about it.