17.The Voice Left Unspoken
She wasn't sick.
She was being revealed.
And with every breath,something ancient inside her whispered not in pain,but in remembrance.
---
The world had grown too quiet after the storm and that was the most terrifying part.
Snow had yet to fall in the north,yet winter's breath had already crept into every corner of Tianxu Palace.
The stone walls felt denser,shadows stretched longer behind silk drapes,and the air carried not just cold but a fear that had yet to be named.
Inside the Black Swan Pavilion,Zhenyu did not wake gently,but with a sharp inhale like breath speared through from the inside.
Morning light had yet to fully slip through the chamber,but everything seemed oddly bright,like vision distorted by something not of this world.
Her body felt heavy.
Not the weight of mere exhaustion,but of something that had shifted.
Her chest burned as if it had once been torn open and now sewn shut by unseen hands. The veins beneath her skin pulsed like threads of unfinished magic.
She knew this wasn't simply the aftermath of the third seal this was the echo of Rongxu Jing, and whatever she touched there had yet to finish speaking.
"Consort Qingyin?"Meilan's voice trembled, thick with worry.
The girl had kept vigil for three nights straight,her eyes red,yet refusing to close.
She sat in the corner of the room,watching her mistress like watching the last shard of a world not yet crumbled.
Zhenyu did not answer right away.
She simply stared at the drifting curtains,as if sensing the breath of something withheld.
There was another presence here a shadow not yet returned.
Helian Qingyin lingered still,
not fully gone,
yet not fully one with her either.
"Bring me a mirror," she said at last,voice hoarse and broken.
Meilan quickly fetched the hand mirror from the dressing table.
Zhenyu took it with trembling fingers.
And when her eyes met the reflection what she saw was not herself.
It was another gaze entirely.
Eyes that had once died with wounds left unhealed.
Qingyin's eyes.
She drew in a long breath,
holding down the tremor that spread through her limbs.
"Meilan, do I… look different?"
The maid hesitated,then nodded slowly. "Your aura… it isn't what it was.
The jasmine flowers in the courtyard wilted overnight.
The crows… stopped singing."
Zhenyu set the mirror down with care.
"Then the third seal has opened beyond what it should have."
"Does that mean… Helian Qingyin will take over?"
"Not take over,"Zhenyu whispered."She will demand."
---
Bai Rouxi entered quietly, carrying a bowl of steaming porridge,though her hands trembled as she set it down.
"The Empress Dowager sent word this morning.
Consort Ji Suling wishes to speak with you."
Zhenyu turned, brows arching.
"On what grounds?"
"She said… redemption."Bai Rouxi lowered her gaze,unable to meet Zhenyu's eyes for long.
There was something in those eyes not just awakening, but warning.
Zhenyu gave a soft laugh. It held no warmth. Her voice was cold, nearly frozen.
"Redemption is not a word you speak after trying to kill someone."
But still, she said:
"Tell the gate guardsI will receive her."
---
Time passed slowly.
Mist hung low in the courtyard,cloaking the grass with its silent chill.
The Black Swan Pavilion remained proud amidst an invisible chaos.
When Ji Suling arrived,there were no ceremonial drums,no heralded greetings. She came alone,
clad in pale blue robes,
her hair pinned with silver ornaments.
Her expression was calm,
but her breath carried something still unconfessed.
Zhenyu sat in the outer chamber, surrounded by jasmine tea and soul-cleansing incense.
She did not welcome.
Nor did she dismiss.
"Why are you here,Ji Suling?" Her voice was soft, but cold like a blade freshly sharpened.
Ji Suling stepped closer,
then knelt before her.
"Because you need to know. What lies within your body… can no longer be hidden."
Zhenyu's gaze sharpened."You speak of Qingyin?"
"Not just her,"Ji Suling replied, pulling out a red-sealed scroll."I speak of the fourth seal. Someone is searching for it and that someone is not me."
Zhenyu's breath caught.
In that instant,
the air thickened.
"Who?"
Ji Suling bit her lip."Someone even the Empress Dowager cannot touch.
Someone who once touched the first seal… and never fully returned as themselves."
Zhenyu swirled the tea in her cup."Yuwen Jinhai?"
Silence.
Long and deep.
Then Ji Suling spoke,
barely above a whisper.
"Ask him,before it's too late."
She rose,placing the scroll upon the stone table,and left without another word.
As her steps vanished into the fog,Zhenyu unfurled the scroll and her body froze.
Drawn inside was a symbol:
a single eye within a triangle,
shrouded in mist.
The emblem she once saw in Rongxu Jing beyond a gate that must never be opened.
Meilan approached, her face pale.
"Your Grace… what is that?"
Zhenyu whispered,
"That does not belong to this world.
But it lives in it."
---
Night fell quietly.
The moon hung high,as if the only witness left unbiased.
By the small lake behind the pavilion, Zhenyu stood alone.
The wind carried the scent of half-burned incense,and the shadows of trees danced across the water like fractured paintings.
She waited.
She knew someone would come.
And when the soft steps arrived behind her, she did not turn because she already knew who it was.
Yuwen Jinhai stood by the lakeside,his black robes damp with dew.
His eyes no longer held their old calm.
There was a quiet fire inside them now the fire of someone who had seen truth… and could no longer look away.
"You know of the fourth seal,"Zhenyu said.
Jinhai was silent a moment.
"I know… because I once opened the first."
Zhenyu turned to him slowly. "And what did you see?"
"Something no human should ever witness." His voice was flat.
"Something that made me lose a part of myself."
"I saw Qingyin,"Zhenyu whispered."And she no longer wants to sleep."
Jinhai stepped closer.
"Qingyin never truly left.
She was sealed not erased.
And now… through your body,
she will try to return.
But not as herself.
As a key."
Zhenyu closed her eyes.
The night wind stirred.
"A key to open what?"
Jinhai looked at her,and for the first time,his voice nearly cracked.
"The door between Langyao… and its shadowed twin."
"Rongxu Jing."
"Yes."He drew a long breath.
"And if you unlock the fourth seal, you will not only lose this body.
You will lose yourself."
Zhenyu gazed at the moon.
Her face was still. But her heart… had shattered.
"Then you must choose,Zhenyu,"Jinhai said.
"Let Qingyin live again… or let her die with you."
And as the night deepened,and the lake fell into sacred silence, Zhenyu knew:
This was not a question of life or death.
It was a question of who truly owned this body now.
---
Night crept further,as if the earth itself held its breath.
After Yuwen Jinhai left, only the wind remained. Yet even the wind now carried a sound the world had never known a sigh, like a woman weeping from a place unseen.
Zhenyu remained there,cold but not trembling.
This cold came not from without,but from within.
From the space between her soul…
and something rising slowly,
taking form…
remembering more than she ever permitted.
"Qingyin…"she murmured not as a calling, but as confession.
"What are you seeing through my eyes?"
No answer came.
But the voice that had long lived in her blood and bone began to whisper again.
Not as it once did not angry,
not demanding.
But aching.
Am I truly evil… for simply wanting to return?
Zhenyu shut her eyes.
But the visions did not fade.
She saw old corridors,
stone stairways spiraling into the deep.
She saw the black gate,marked with the very same symbol from Ji Suling's letter a single eye,encircled in smoke.
She saw Qingyin standing before that gate. Her face was young.
But her eyes…
had already witnessed death, more than once.
And the voice dream or not whispered:
If you had to choose between yourself…
and everything you love…
which would you surrender first?
Zhenyu's body gave out.
She collapsed beside the lake,
hands clutching damp earth.
Veins at her wrist turned blue.
The skin near her heart pulsed with a faint mark a peeling circle,as if something beneath it was about to rise.
The fourth seal.
Still unopened,yet already breathing.
Meilan and Bai Rouxi,searching frantically, found her collapsed in the grass,her face pale as the moon.
"Call the physician!"Meilan screamed, shaking her mistress's shoulders,while Bai Rouxi rushed to cover her with a cloak.
But Zhenyu's eyes slowly opened
And the voice that emerged from her lips… was no longer solely hers.
"I'm not sick. I'm... being revealed."
**
The Next Morning
The imperial physicians came and went, none daring to stay too long.
There were no wounds, no visible cause for concern.
And yet Zhenyu's spiritual rhythm was no longer human.
The monks at the Temple of Heaven reported something stranger:
The incense burned in Consort Qingyin's name had turned pitch black.
The Empress Dowager received the news in silence.
Her fingers tightened around an old pendant passed down from her ancestors.
Her gaze was steady.
But in her heart,she called out a name
A name that hadn't been spoken for a hundred years.
"Langyao Xian,"she whispered.
"If that spirit has awakened...
then blood alone won't be enough to keep Rongxu Jing sealed."
That night,beneath a hidden altar in the eastern palace,
The Empress Dowager broke open a seal buried deep in ancient wax.
Inside
A fragment of a mirror.
Something not of this world.
Once used to silence the spirit that called herself… Helian Qingyin.
---
The Thirtieth Night
Zhenyu hadn't slept since the day of the banquet.
Inside her pavilion, every mirror was covered with black cloth.
She no longer looked at her reflection.
No longer allowed light to touch her face.
On the eastern wall, strange markings appeared on their own
Script older than any living tongue.
Even Bai Rouxi had started whispering to Meilan:
"Is she… still human?"
Meilan looked up at the ceiling and replied,
"She's still Zhenyu.
But a part of her…
is fighting something she never asked for."
And just before the thirty-first dawn,
As the first snow of the season fell like a breath across the palace roofs,
Zhenyu opened her eyes and spoke to the empty wall:
"I know who you are, Qingyin.
I know who I am.
But if this body must become a battlefield…
Then I won't give it up without a fight."
And from deep within her
The voice that had always whispered… finally spoke.
"Then let's talk,"
"as two souls who once loved this world."
---
Then let us speak...
as two souls who once loved this world.
The mirror had cracked.
The veil had lifted.
And the war within her had finally spoken its name.