Cloud City’s streets were already desolate, but as night fell, it became a literal city of the dead, its pulse of life seemingly extinguished.
The patrol had only just passed when the manager knocked on the door, his voice hushed and anxious. “Are you two staying or leaving?”
Most of his guests had already checked out, leaving the manager’s heart numb. He asked bluntly, already clutching a handful of loose silver in his palm, waiting for the word to give them their refund.
When no one answered, the manager’s anxiety spiked. After a moment of frantic deliberation, he knocked again.
Inside, the silence remained heavy and still. It seemed the occupants had already departed.
The waiter, standing beside him with a wooden basin, whispered, “Should we… open it and look?”
The manager pushed the door open. His eyes immediately landed on the open window across the room. As he had feared, the chamber was empty.
“Are they coming back?” the waiter asked blankly. “Why didn’t they give us a straight answer?”
The manager only shook his head.
Under the cover of the gathering darkness, the two women were already making their way toward Jade-Fall Heights in the north of the city.
Three miles past the city gates, they found a mountain hollow filled with piles of jagged rocks. Headstones of varying sizes stood scattered across the landscape; from a distance, they looked like a crowd of stunted, motionless silhouettes.
Feng Yun’ai had never been here, but she had heard Feng Rong mention Jade-Fall Heights before.
If a member of the Hantian Alliance died, they were buried here. If they were a villain from outside the alliance, they weren’t even worthy of a headstone; their bodies would be wrapped in a straw mat and tossed into the hollow to rot.
How could anyone find peace in such a place? Feng Rong had always been a woman who cherished cleanliness and solitude. With so many spirits crowded together here, the underworld was bound to be dreadfully noisy.
Feng Yun’ai faltered for a moment, mistaking a headstone for a human figure. In that fleeting second of trance-like grief, she began to search for Feng Rong.
Among all those shadows, could one of them be her?
Sang Chencao picked up a fallen branch and walked forward with unhurried steps. She used the wood to lift a corner of a discarded straw mat, examining what lay beneath.
“This place reeks of death. It’s quite unpleasant,” she remarked. “I remember Wen Lanxin saying her junior sister burned incense every day. Even her clothes were always permeated with the scent.”
It was true. Feng Rong burned incense daily, and her scent was always elegant and refined. It was a sharp contrast to her swordplay, which was fierce and cold, lacking any such gentleness.
Beneath the mats Sang Chencao overturned lay either bleached bones, empty voids, or half-rotted corpses. None of them were Feng Rong.
For the first time, Feng Yun’ai felt as if her feet were made of lead. She longed to find Feng Rong quickly, yet she prayed that Feng Rong was not in this place.
She stood frozen, staring into the distance. The weight hanging over her heart made every breath a struggle.
The woman walking among the headstones, however, seemed perfectly at ease, as if she were picking through goods at a market. She looked back and called out, “I’ve never actually seen Feng Rong. If you don’t come over here, are you just going to let me identify the wrong person?”
Feng Yun’ai pressed her lips together and approached. Just as Sang Chencao lifted another straw mat, a glint of translucent jade caught her eye.
The jade was delicate, its interior marbled with a few threads of blue like drifting silk—clear, yet not entirely pure.
The sight hit Feng Yun’ai like a bolt from the blue. The hair on her arms stood on end, and her heart hammered against her ribs, leaping into her throat.
Sang Chencao gave her a quick look before tossing the straw mat aside completely.
The mat fluttered away easily. Beneath it… there was nothing. No bones, no decaying flesh.
Only that single piece of jade lay in the dirt. The cord attached to it had snapped; it was no wonder it had been left behind.
Sang Chencao leaned over to pick it up, wiped it against her skirt, and held it out. “Here. Is this Feng Rong’s?”
Feng Yun’ai stared at it for a long time. Her fingers were icy as she took it. “This was her personal effect,” she rasped.
Sang Chencao let out a light “oh” and tilted her head to study her companion. Her face lacked its usual mockery, replaced by a touch of genuine curiosity.
She leaned down again, grabbing a corner of the mat and shaking it twice. When nothing else fell out, she said, “It seems Feng Rong’s body was taken.”
Feng Yun’ai felt her soul leave her body. This was entirely different from what she had envisioned. She gripped the jade pendant tightly, as if trying to press it into her very flesh. The heart that had been caught in her throat moments ago plummeted to the depths of her soul, going deathly still.
Despite living together for years, she realized she knew precious little about Feng Rong’s affairs. As Sang Chencao had pointed out, Feng Rong had never revealed everything to her. At this moment, she couldn’t even begin to guess who would have taken the body.
“Could it be Wen Lanxin?” Sang Chencao mused, pulling out her bug whistle and blowing a very soft note.
The sound pulled Feng Yun’ai back to reality. She followed the sudden rustling on the ground with her eyes.
Snakes and insects crawled closer, their forms nearly invisible under the moonlight, identifiable only by the sounds they made.
Sang Chencao shook her sleeve, and the black snake coiled around her wrist immediately poked its head out, coming face-to-face with a green bamboo pit viper that was slithering toward them.
The two snakes stared at each other, both wary. After a moment, the black snake let out a sharp hiss, and the bamboo pit viper turned and fled.
Sang Chencao chuckled, scratching the black snake’s head. “It wasn’t Wen Lanxin,” she said, turning to Feng Yun’ai.
If it wasn’t Wen Lanxin, Feng Yun’ai had no other suspects in mind. She opened her palm and asked, “Then who could it be?”
“Someone who takes a body usually wants to desecrate it, or they were in love with the deceased, or…” Sang Chencao narrowed her eyes. “There’s a secret hidden on the corpse that they can’t easily destroy, so they have to hide the body away.”
Beneath her white veil, Feng Yun’ai’s cold, lifeless eyes suddenly widened. She could not tolerate the thought of anyone desecrating Feng Rong’s remains.
Sang Chencao looked at the jade in Feng Yun’ai’s hand and said casually, “If it were Wen Lanxin, she likely wouldn’t have left a single thing behind, not even this pendant. Anyone who loved Feng Rong would likely have done the same.”
