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I curled up inside the gauzy tent, counting the hours as the dual-petaled ice lotus on the Xuan Bing brick began to fade.
Last night, the cries of the baby in the arms of the Maternity Nurse pierced through the barrier, and the Ice Crystal Curse Seal formed by my touch with Fingertip still felt warm against my skin.
“Young Mistress, Second Young Master last night…” The maid held a medicine cup, hesitating to speak as steam rose from the bowl, forming a dark-colored phoenix unique to Xuanjie.
I pressed down on the Heart spirit butterfly mark; the backlash from forcibly activating the spirit illusion technique caused Fingertip to seep out Gold Dust.
Xuan Yu’s Xuan Crystal Hairpin was still slanted in the makeup box, and suddenly, the scales of Xuan snake entwined at the end of the hairpin emitted a crackling sound. A wisp of dark golden mist escaped from the Serpent Eye, coalescing into the shape of a hehuan flower in midair.
“Is it Wang Xuan’s hehuan lure?” I knocked over the medicine cup in shock, and the spilled potion corroded the Xuan Bing floor into a double happiness pattern.
Three months ago, on the night of our wedding, when Xuan Yu lifted my veil with this very pin, the scent of hehuan mingled with his ethereal aura had frostbitten my brow flower.
As the maid knelt in panic, my spirit butterfly suddenly fluttered out from my wrist.
The gold and blue Ice Butterfly swept past Xuan Yu’s Outer Robe hanging on the screen, and a sword mark suddenly appeared on the lapels stained with Rouge—it was unmistakably from Wang Xuan’s willow leaf sword technique.
Last night at midnight, he clearly said he would go to reinforce the barrier at the border of Xuanjie, but this lingering scent of hehuan…
“Young Mistress, be careful!”
At that moment when the spirit butterfly shattered the glass lamp, I formed a seal to summon my escape technique.
The ivy from the spirit illusion gate grew wildly through cracks in the floor tiles but was ground to dust upon touching the threshold by the Xuan Snake Curse Seal.
Outside, snow suddenly swirled back, and an ice crystal fell against my neck, encasing half a hehuan petal within it.
“Are you trying to escape?” Xuan Ang’s voice crashed through like wind and snow as he burst through the intricately carved door. His palm ignited with spirit fire as he retrieved a Xuanbing Core from within an Infant Swaddling. “Last night when my brother trapped Wang Xuan with the Xuan Snake Curse, do you know what he saw on her Glabella?”
I stumbled and steadied myself against a gilded crane candlestick; tears from the candle dripped onto my wrist, forming a spirit butterfly-shaped mark.
Three months ago during our toast with Heavenly Wine, Xuan Yu had used this candlestick to burn through my waist silk ties, yet when he touched my Heart spirit butterfly mark, his flame had suddenly extinguished.
“Step aside.” I traced my fingers across my Glabella, and suddenly, my spirit butterfly mark erupted with an Azure Light.
The sleeves of Xuan Ang’s garment hissed as they coiled around my ankle but turned to ashes upon touching my skin. The lingering scent of mandala from last night’s ice lotus spell mixed with blood in a stinging assault on my nostrils.
In that instant when I activated my escape technique, I heard the crisp sound of Xuan Crystal Hairpin hitting the ground.
Three hundred miles of spiritual mist surged beneath me as my Heart spirit butterfly guided me eastward.
As I passed by the Xuanming River, an image from that wedding night suddenly surfaced in its reflection—Xuan Yu, using Xuan Bing to form a Joyful Scale, lifted my veil but froze in shock upon seeing my brow adorned with cinnabar.
"Do the women of the Ling Huan Xian Pavilion all love to play with this thing?" He froze the flower mark on my forehead with his spiritual energy, and the Heavenly Wedding Wine crystallized into icicles in the Jade Cup. "Do you really think Xuanjie is your sanctuary?"
Suddenly, a giant wave surged from the river, and as I waved my sleeve to shatter the curtain of water, countless ice crystals reflected Wang Xuan's brows and eyes.
That woman, always dressed in a rouge skirt, had sent me a congratulatory gift last month. The red snake inside the brocade box had bitten my fingertip, and the wound had yet to heal.
"Do you really think Xuan Yu cares about the spirit butterfly recognizing its master?" In my memory, Wang Xuan's earrings jingled as her fingertip brushed against the collar of my wedding gown. "When he planted the hehuan flower for me back then, he carved the Xuan Snake Curse into..."
A sudden gust of wind swept through, cutting off my memories as I dove through the thunderous canyon.
The spirit butterfly mark began to heat up, and I saw before me the scene of my mother sending me off on my wedding day.
As she inserted the Jade Sky Hairpin into my hair, a copper bell at the eaves suddenly shook loose snow. The silver-threaded cranes on my wedding gown were reduced to ashes by the wind and snow of Xuanjie.
"Yao'er, it will hurt when the spirit butterfly recognizes its master." My mother's silver strands fell over my shoulder as her fingertip brushed against my heart. "But if the mark turns dark gold..."
Thunder exploded in my ear as I crashed through the last barrier of mystical fog.
The glazed roof of Ling Huan Xian Pavilion flickered in and out of sight among the sea of clouds, and the bronze bell hanging at the eaves looked just like the one my mother had given me on that day.
When my fingertip touched the barrier of the pavilion, my heart's spirit butterfly suddenly emitted a sharp buzzing sound, and dark gold patterns crawled across the entire mark like poisonous vines.
As I stumbled into Ling Huan Xian Pavilion, thirty-six layers of Liuli Tiles lit up with soft light simultaneously.
The thousand-year spirit spring gushed in the White Jade Pool, and Star Sand floated on the surface, forming the shape of the Big Dipper.
Just as my fingertip grazed the edge of Azure Jadeite by the pool, those lustrous stones suddenly transformed into fireflies, condensing frost at the silver-threaded cranes embroidered on my wedding gown.
"Young Mistress, beware of cold marrow backlash." The white-bearded Old Immortal Envoy guarding the pavilion appeared with his Peach Wood Staff. The black iron bell tied around his waist bore a striking resemblance to the one my mother had gifted me.
I gazed at the mottled lightning patterns on its surface and suddenly recalled how Xuan Yu had used Xuan Huo to forge this bell on our wedding night; sparks had splattered onto my hand, burning a Plum Blossom Mark into my skin.
The Old Immortal Envoy lightly tapped his staff on the pool's water, causing Star Sand to suddenly coalesce into a mirror-like surface.
I caught sight of my spirit butterfly mark on my glabella now covered in dark gold patterns, resembling Wang Xuan's earrings entwined with a red snake.
Last night, when Xuan Yu untied my inner garment with Xuan Crystal Hairpin, that snake scale had grazed my collarbone, leaving a burning mark that now throbbed faintly in Azure Light.
"This is a cleansing mirror." The Old Immortal Envoy's sigh startled the koi in the pond. "The heart-wrenching pain when a spirit butterfly recognizes its master is far worse than Xuan Snake Curse..."
Before he finished speaking, ripples suddenly spread across the mirror's surface.
I saw Xuan Yu's dark robe torn by a willow leaf sword; that wound which should have been stained with frost and snow at Xuanjie’s border was now smeared with rouge from hehuan flower pollen.
Three months ago, when he taught me how to cast an ice lotus spell, my fingertip had accidentally been cut by Xuan snake ’s scales; the blood pearl that dripped onto the ice had bloomed into this same enchanting rouge.
"Young Mistress!"
Amid the exclamations of the Old Immortal Envoy, the Spirit Butterfly on my wrist suddenly darted towards the pool where Star Sand lay. The fragmented starlight trembled beneath the Ice Butterfly, rearranging itself to form the outline of the Xuanjie Forbidden Land.
The sound of the midnight hour from last night seemed to pierce through time and space, and I saw my Ice Lotus Curse Seal cracking inch by inch under Wang Xuan's coaxing, while Xuan Yu's Xuan Crystal Hairpin was embedded in her cloud-like hair—a hairpin that should have belonged to the bride.
The water in the pool suddenly boiled like lava, and as I stumbled back, I crushed the Frost Flowers scattered across the ground. The pain from the Spirit Butterfly mark pierced through me; the dark golden patterns had spread to my neck, eerily overlapping with the Azure Purple marks left by the Crimson Serpent's poison when Wang Xuan had last sent her congratulatory gift.
The Old Immortal Envoy's Peach Wood Staff struck heavily against the ground, extinguishing all seventy-two glass lanterns at once, yet Star Sand in the pool stubbornly continued piecing together an unfinished image—within the Frost and Snow at the border of Xuanjie, a blood-stained petal of a hehuan flower lay distinctly visible.
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