kvmb Chapter 537
Chapter 537
At the third quarter of the hour of Xu (7:45 PM), the drumbeat at Xuanwu Gate startled the crows from the eaves. Dongfang Wan'er huddled behind a pillar of the Nine-Bend Bridge, her fingertips tracing the pattern of two fish with intertwined necks on the bronze bell. Autumn frost clung to the bluestone drainage ditch, and withered lotus stems pierced the thin ice, much like the painting "Crane Shadow in a Cold Pond" in her father's study—a painting containing a hidden compartment, the secret she had glimpsed when she was seven years old.
The bronze bell of Jingyang Palace suddenly roared, the first sound making her ears ache. The twelve chimes struck her heart like twelve heavy hammer blows. As the lingering sound spread across the palace walls, the silver plate at the mouth of the bell's twin fish finally snapped open with a "click," and a page, carrying the scent of aged incense ash, slid onto the embroidered lotus flower on her shoe. The Sogdian script gleamed bluish-gray in the moonlight, much like the blood that spilled from her father's lips as he breathed his last—that year, she had hidden behind the bookcase and seen the blood droplets fall onto the secret letter, the shape of the smear exactly matching the scorch marks on the edge of the page before her.
"Has Wan'er ever seen the painting of two fish biting each other's tails?"
The wind whipped up by the dark cloak carried shards of moonlight like shattered jade, and Ye Jiuchen's fingertips coiled like snakes around her wrist, which held the sword. His thumb pressed against her wrist, the rhythm of her pulse eerily coinciding with the dripping of a water clock in the distance. Dongfang Wan'er abruptly pulled her hand away, the Qing Shuang sword emerging three inches from its sheath, its blade reflecting the dark clouds churning in the man's eyes—the same look she had seen through the silken curtain at the Ghost Market last month, when he had raised his bidding paddle to purchase the bronze sword stained with the blood of a Persian scimitar.
The parrot stand suddenly shook violently, startling the golden-feathered bird into flight. A fragment of a talisman fell beneath its wing; the stroke of the character "Yin" still bore the traces of undried cinnabar. Three days earlier, she had disguised herself as a servant and infiltrated the ghost market, witnessing the old eunuch in his fox-fur coat stuff half a fish-shaped talisman into a brocade box. The corner of the box was embroidered with the same intertwined floral pattern as Ye Jiuchen's cloak. Now, the man's knuckles struck the empty stand, producing a hollow echo, much like the sound of a craftsman hammering the nails into his father's coffin as it was lowered into the ground.
"When the two fish bite each other's tails..." The pages rustled in her palm, and suddenly she smelled the rusty scent of night dew. The sound of hooves coming from the direction of Xiefang Courtyard was not an illusion; it was the rapid hoofbeats unique to sixteen fine horses from the Western Regions. As her mother's scream pierced the night sky, Dongfang Wan'er saw a flash of eerie blue on the jade pendant at Ye Jiuchen's waist—it was the "Blood-Weeping Blue" presented by the Kingdom of Khotan, said to be able to see into the depths of the human heart and the underworld. Her father had clutched the same gemstone before his death, and the blood that seeped into its patterns was exactly the same as the ice-crack pattern on the jade pendant of the man before her.
The two characters "Zhi Ge" (止戈, meaning "Stop the War") on the scabbard suddenly felt burning hot, like her father's hand holding the sword resting on the back of her hand. Memories flooded back: at her twelfth birthday banquet, she sneaked into the study and saw her father weeping over the double fish bells, his dark robes brushing against her toes hidden behind the bookshelf, the scent of sandalwood mixed with the smell of rust filling her nostrils. Now, the same scent, mingled with ambergris, wafted over, and she suddenly remembered the Western Region fragrant cakes the Empress had given to Ye Jiuchen at the palace banquet—it was exactly that cloyingly sweet, almost bitter taste.
"They've come to collect the bell." Ye Jiuchen's fingertip pressed three inches below her collarbone, where there was a light brown birthmark, which her mother said she had been there since birth. "Your father used this move to paralyze my pressure points back then, but alas..." Her words were cut off by the bone-piercing nails that pierced through the air. Three hidden weapons, tempered with peacock gall, grazed her earlobes and embedded themselves in the pillars. The gold dust on the tail feathers fell in a flurry onto her sleeves, exactly the same as the gold dust in the secret compartment of her father's study.
The Azure Frost Sword spun a silver arc, and suddenly, the double fish embroidered with gold thread on the Shu brocade that Ye Jiuchen had thrown out began to swim. The brocade, carrying the hidden weapon, flew into the night sky, blooming like fireworks during the Lantern Festival—that year, she had leaned on her father's shoulder to watch the lanterns, and he had pointed to the double fish lanterns in the sky and said, "Wan'er, the most terrifying thing in this world is not ghosts, but the net woven by people's hearts." Now, the brocade shattered into dust, falling and covering her mother's plain white skirt, just like the mourning banner that had covered her father's coffin.