Who said the eldest daughter is crazy? She's clearly a woman of high rank and influence in the

His lips moved slowly from the corner of her lips to the cupid's bow, and then from the cupid's bow to her lower lip, as if he were drawing an outline that he already knew very well but wanted to confirm one more time.

She raised her hand and grasped a corner of his shirt on his shoulder, her knuckles slightly curled, not using any force, just resting there.

As he stepped back, his forehead was still pressed against hers, his voice slightly hoarse at the end: "Got it?"

Xi Yueli's forehead was pressed against his, her nose rubbing against his. The corners of her mouth curved slightly, and her voice was half an octave lower than his, with a deliberately drawn-out slowness, "Didn't Your Highness say you wanted to be the man behind me?"

"That doesn't mean I'll let you get involved yourself." He gently rubbed his thumb against her earlobe. "If you act so recklessly again, I'll personally escort you from the Prince Chen's residence all the way to the palace gates."

Xi Yueli leaned against the car wall, her hand still gripping the fabric of his shoulder.

The carriage turned the corner of Changning Street, and the gate of the Prince Chen's mansion was not far ahead. The Xuanjia Guards were already lined up, and the corridor lights were on, but she remained seated, letting him slowly rub against the back of her ear.

Less than half an hour after the carriage returned to the mansion, the Xuanjia Iron Cavalry of the Tian Shu Division filed out from in front of the Prince Chen's mansion, their hooves shattering the tranquility of Changning Street at night.

Helian Jing, under the pretext that "the Tian Shu Division has discovered clues to treason," issued a warrant to simultaneously target three mansions.

The residence of Zhang Bingwen, the Imperial Censor; the private residence of Liu Chong, the Right Vice Minister of War; and the villa of Xiao Yi'an, a distant cousin of the Empress who was in charge of the grain transport in the capital region.

Three groups of people rushed in at the same time. The secret guards of Tian Shu Si searched through the study, storeroom, and secret room. All letters, account books, seals, and name cards were sealed and stored. Even the hidden compartments under the desk were pried open and inspected.

That night, the secret letters, private accounts, and visiting cards found in the three mansions were piled up to half a person's height. Han Zheng picked out one of the unsent letters and delivered it to Xi Yueli's desk that very night.

It is the draft of a secret report written by Zhang Bingwen to the Empress and the Inner Palace, which mentions that "the case of the imperial edict should be copied based on the old handwriting of the late Empress."

Xi Yueli circled the line of text with a vermilion pen, tucked it into a secret letter in the Prince Chen's residence, and delivered it to the Emperor's desk the following afternoon through a channel that was ostensibly for delivering files from the Tian Shu Division.

Emperor Daying saw the separate page while reviewing the case files submitted by the Tian Shu Division.

After reading it, he remained silent for a long time, his fingertips tracing the edge of the page as if confirming the location of the vermilion annotation. Then he put down the paper, summoned Helian Jing to the palace, and said only one sentence: "Investigate thoroughly. Don't miss a single clue."

When Helian Jing received the order and left the palace, the sun was setting in the west. As he stepped out of the palace gate, he glanced at the direction of the central palace. The lights in the central palace were already on, half an hour earlier than usual.

The Empress only learned that Zhang Bingwen's residence had been searched that night.

She sat on the phoenix throne, while the female official in charge of the seal knelt below the steps. The new female official in charge of the seal, the female official in charge of the guard, had submitted her resignation overnight after being turned against her. The empress had been replaced, but this person didn't even know which way the lock on the hidden compartment on the table was turned.

As the Empress listened to the report, her fingertips slowly closed on the armrest, her nails digging into the folds of her phoenix robe, pressing out a thin crease.

A night breeze blew in, ruffling a few strands of her loose hair that were scattered over her shoulders. She looked at the outline of a house hidden in the night in the south of the city, her fingers slowly gathering on the window frame. Then she turned around and walked to the desk.

She took out an ebony box from a hidden compartment under the table, opened it, and inside were three bone talismans placed side by side, each engraved with the secret seal of a sorcerer family.

Her fingertip paused on one of the tokens. "Give the order to have the sorcerer activate the array."

The female official in charge of the seal received the order and left. The Empress sat alone on the phoenix chair, her fingertips tapping lightly twice on the armrest, as if counting a rhythm she was certain she would complete.

The elder of the sorcerer family had written in the scroll he had given her three years ago that once a fragment of the soul is separated from its host body and returns to its original form, the separated body will suffer irreversible damage. At best, the person will be paralyzed and bedridden; at worst, they will wither away and die within seven days.

That old booklet is still pressed in the third compartment of her dressing table, the edges of the pages are yellowed, but she remembers every word on it clearly.

He Qingshuang is still alive. She manages the business and accounts in the He family mansion in Tingzi. Just a few days ago, someone saw her personally inspecting goods at the dock. It's impossible for someone whose soul fragments have been removed to still be so lively and energetic.

Even though Huajianzui is still alive, people in the teahouses and taverns of the capital are still spreading new stories about the flower thief. It is said that three days ago, a young master from a family in the south of the city had a crabapple branch left in his study, with a note that reads "Ten miles of spring breeze are not as good as you".

That movement, that handwriting, that dashing demeanor—a person whose body has been detached from its core wouldn't have such skills.

Master Xuanji hid the person at Mufeng Cliff, and in the letter he wrote himself, he clearly stated that "she was poisoned, her foundation was damaged, and she could not withstand the separation of her soul fragments."

The Empress's men intercepted a copy of the letter before it reached the Prince Chen's residence. Ye Lan was alive, but without Shi Xuanji's protection, he could hardly move an inch.

All three fragments are still in the world.

Everyone in the capital knew what she looked like when she had a dissociative identity disorder attack: she couldn't recognize people, couldn't remember things, talked nonsense, and couldn't even remember her own surname.

How can someone who can't even hold onto their own soul gather the three scattered fragments?

Xi Yueli's dazed and confused state when she entered the palace last time was also genuine. When she pinched her wrist and said, "You have the smell of a formation on you," it was clearly the kind of incoherent speech that only occurs when one is experiencing a dissociative disorder.

The Empress leaned back in her chair, picked up the now-cold teacup, and took another sip, the bitterness of the tea dissolving on her tongue.

The foundation of the array, which the sorcerer family sacrificed an entire city for three years, is enough to tear a person's soul to shreds and turn those shreds into dust.

She closed her eyes with relief, tapped the armrest one last time with her fingertips, and in the night, a dark red light began to illuminate the basement of the mansion in the south of the city.

At midnight, candlelight suddenly blazed in the underground chamber of the mansion in the south of the city. Three sorcerers sat cross-legged around a black jade altar, the surface of which was engraved with the remnants of the Soul Splitting Array.

The main formation was sacrificed eighteen years ago, but its roots are still alive, like a vine that has been cut off but is still spreading in the dark. They thought that as long as the formation base was still there, they could extract the fragments from Xi Yueli's body and break her up again.

The array patterns slowly lit up on the black jade tabletop, and the dark red light spread along the veins of those sacrifices from eighteen years ago, like an old scar being awakened, climbing from the tabletop to the four walls.

Dark currents began to surge from the center of the formation, like countless invisible hands reaching out towards Xi Yueli's location, trying to find the cracks in her soul and tear her apart.

Then the undercurrent crashed into the iron wall.

Xi Yueli sat under the lamp in the east wing of the Prince Chen's mansion, flipping through a scroll of case files copied by the Tian Shu Division.

When the undercurrent of the formation touched her, she felt a very slight throbbing in the vein at the back of her neck, like a fish tentatively touching the ice floe on the water's surface.

Then the Nine Heavens Hairpin in her hair shone slightly, and the warm jade texture emanated a layer of gentle luster from within, flowing along the hairpin to the end, like a drop of water being slowly reversed.

The dark current recoiled abruptly the moment it touched the light, as if its tentacles had been burned.

On the dark jade table at the center of the array, the dark red light suddenly brightened and then dimmed. The three sorcerers opened their eyes at the same time. The leader of the sorcerers stood up abruptly, and the bone talisman in his hand, which served as the core of the array, began to heat up in his palm.

He looked down at the reddening bone talisman in his palm, opened his mouth to shout, and then the bone talisman exploded from his palm, scattering dark red fragments that embedded themselves in his face, throat, and heart.

He fell backward, his back hitting the stone ground, and he didn't move again.