18.When the Mirror Held a Shadow
The night sky above Tianxu held its breath, as if even the stars feared to witness what would unfold in the shadows of the palace.
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There was no rain that night, yet the skies above Tianxu seemed to hold their breath. A dense, heavy air wrapped around the stone corridors connecting the inner pavilions, creating an eerie echo as the wind slipped through half-opened silk curtains.
Helian Zhenyu stood at the edge of the Silver Pavilion's veranda,dressed in an ash-grey night robe embroidered with faint silver threads along the sleeves and back like moonlight stitched into cloth.
In her hand, she held an ancient scroll, its edges crumbling with age.
Behind her,Meilan stood silently,holding a blue jade lotus lantern that swayed gently in her grasp.
"The Southern Library is still sealed, Princess.
The night sentries won't break the seal until the third watch."
Zhenyu didn't turn.
Her voice was barely a whisper,like a breath drawn in sleep.
"That's why we need to enter before the second watch ends."
Meilan bowed slightly,
not daring to argue,
though her tone was laced with concern.
"If we're discovered…
entering a forbidden chamber could mean punishment.
Even for a concubine princess."
Zhenyu finally turned,
her gaze sharp yet dim with resolve.
"If we don't find it tonight…
then the blood spilled tomorrow may not only be mine."
Meilan's face paled,but she nodded.
They moved swiftly,following a hidden path known only to the palace's oldest guards.
Bai Rouxi was already waiting near the blackwood gate of the Southern Library, disguised as a night attendant.
She gave a quick signal,unlocking the door with a white metal key tucked beneath her belt.
The moment the door creaked open,old air burst forth thick with the scent of ashes, ink, and the untouched dust of history.
Zhenyu entered first.
Her footsteps made no sound.
The Southern Library felt more like an underground vault than a hall of knowledge.
Towering stone shelves leaned precariously, reinforced with chains and wrought iron.
The lantern's glow in Meilan's hand flickered against the walls,casting shifting shadows of ancient characters that no longer fully made sense.
They searched in silence.
Meilan moved east.
Bai Rouxi took the west.
Zhenyu walked to the center toward a sunken circle resembling an altar, surrounded by curved stone pillars.
At the heart of the altar stood a stone chest, waist-high,covered in webs and thick dust.
The dragon carvings on its sides had long been eroded by time.
But one thing remained intact:
the inscription on its lid
"A shadow is never gone.
It only waits to be seen again."
Zhenyu laid her palm atop the characters.
At once,the air shifted cold as the end of a season,and still as Rongxu before the souls awaken.
The lid began to open on its own.
From within, an old mirror emerged no larger than a human face,its silver frame tarnished,a single thin crack crossing its center.
But its surface… did not reflect the world.
What Zhenyu saw wasn't her own reflection.
It was someone she had tried desperately to forget.
Helian Qingyin.
Her hair fell like mist torn from the night sky. Her eyes the same eyes Zhenyu once glimpsed from a body not her own gazed back,piercing and gleaming with unshed grief.
Zhenyu held her breath.
But the shadow inside the mirror spoke first.
"You've come at last.
We are nearly out of time."
Zhenyu's face went pale.
She looked around no sound,no movement. The world had frozen.
Meilan and Bai Rouxi were gone.
There was only her,the mirror,and Qingyin.
"Are you still alive…
inside this body?"she whispered.
"Not alive.
But not dead either.
I am the shadow that never left its home."
"What do you want to show me?"
The reflection gave a bitter smile.
"What they took from me.
And what they're now taking from you.
Your blood will speak but only if your soul refuses to remain silent."
Zhenyu trembled.
Slowly,she reached out,fingertips brushing the mirror's surface.
In an instant,the world shattered.
Wind howled from the ceiling.
Books flew from their shelves like startled birds roused from a centuries-long slumber. The lantern's light died.
And from the mirror's depths,a pale hand neither spirit nor flesh gripped hers and pulled her in.
Rongxu Jing greeted her not with light…
But with shadows.
Mist consumed everything.
The sky was formless.
From far away came trembling voices cries, laughter,unfinished prayers.
Zhenyu stood at the center of a shattered jade altar.
Around her, vague silhouettes whispered, encircling her like the hush of ghosts.
And through the fog,Helian Qingyin emerged not a reflection now, but a spirit half-alive.
Her face was the same as the one Zhenyu wore,but her presence carried the dignity of a queen erased by history.
"Listen to me,Zhenyu.
Tomorrow's Blood Test isn't about lineage.
It's about the truth they want to erase.
About who they once killed,
and who they are trying to replace."
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The fog in Rongxu Jing was no mere mist.
It moved the wrong way—circling, clinging, seeping into thought and memory.
And in the heart of that fog, Helian Qingyin's voice echoed inside Zhenyu's chest.
"They thought burning my body would destroy my name and legacy.
But blood does not vanish so easily.
And the body they reused to contain you still carries my wounds."
Zhenyu stared at the woman herself,
and not herself.
A mirror of what could have been. Her real body, somewhere deep inside, began to shiver.
"I know I live inside a body not mine,"she whispered,
"But I won't be a walking grave for your rage."
Qingyin laughed softly,
though her eyes bore the weight of centuries.
"I don't hate you, Zhenyu.
You are the last pure soul in a world of masks.
But I won't let them use you.
Tomorrow's trial is no mere ritual.
It is the final nail they wish to drive into our name."
Suddenly, the fog parted.
Around the shattered altar,visions formed like mirror shards projecting fragments through time:
A young Qingyin dragged down Tianxu's halls.
The Empress Dowager upon the Moonstone Throne,declaring her name erased.
A young Ji Suling slipping a talisman into a corpse's chest.
Then… fire.
But the soul remained,trapped.
Zhenyu stumbled back.
"You mean…
this body…
was once your corpse…
reused?"
Qingyin nodded.
"Yes.
This body was mine.
They summoned your soul from beyond this world and made you an eternal guest within my bones."
"Why me?"Zhenyu's voice cracked.
"Because you are pure.
Because your soul has no blood-ties to Langyao's heavens.
They thought you'd be passive
the perfect puppet.
But souls like yours…
can't be silenced forever."
Zhenyu fell quiet.
Inside her,the world felt like a mirror cracking from its center.
She remembered Meilan's warm presence.
Bai Rouxi's unwavering voice.
Yuwen Jinhai's searching eyes
eyes that seemed to see something even she could not.
And she knew if she stayed silent,
she would be complicit in allowing this world to keep chiseling lies onto the bones of the dead.
"What can I do?"
"You must break the third seal."
A seal?
Qingyin raised her hand.
Three fingers.
"The first seal was memory.
You unlocked it when you relived my dream on the eve of the autumn banquet."
"The second was voice.
You shattered it when you challenged Ji Suling before the Empress Dowager."
"But the third…
can only break if you are willing to bear a death you never lived."
Zhenyu shook her head slowly.
"You mean…
merge with you?"
"No.
I will not take my body back.
I only want it to speak for both of us with blood that can no longer remain silent."
And with that,Qingyin stretched out her arms.
Rongxu Jing began to tremble.
The mist lifted.
The sky twisted into a vortex of deep violet, and from beneath the altar, a small silver stone rose shaped like a frozen drop of blood.
"Let your blood fall here,and unlock the mirror's seal.
Then truth will speak…
before the entire court."
Zhenyu looked at the drop.
Then at herself.
And she knew this path could never be undone.
She pressed her nail deep into the tip of her finger… and drew blood.
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As Zhenyu's blood fell upon the frozen silver stone,she knew this was not the end of a secret,but the beginning of a reckoning.