After Gu Fangchen left, the east wing courtyard returned to quiet, but inside the adjoining room, the Xiyin Attendant Qingjian still sat stunned in the bath.
She was a Xiyin Attendant, one who listens to the world's sufferings and guides the faithful. Apart from serving Princess Prajna, she would not normally take on others' pain.
Yet Qingjian had reached her current cultivation in only sixteen short years.
This was because the Xiyin Attendant's talent is that whenever she hears the heavenly tone of suffering striking the void, she can empathize with those pains and take the world's sorrow into herself.
It was a talent, and also a curse.
Unlike other followers who devote themselves to the Buddha Mother through single-minded practice, the Xiyin Attendant's gift is innate.
Like the lotus in her eyes that bloomed ever more bizarrely.
Thus, when the Tara Sect proselytized, they paid attention to find children with inexplicable full-body ulcerations or grievous injuries and bring them into the sect to be raised.
If not adopted by the Tara Sect, most of these Xiyin Attendants would die before their first year.
This horrific appearance was treated as a monstrous illness and abandoned by ordinary people.
Qingjian lowered her head and lifted a hand. Without the bandages, she was ugly to behold: her body covered with countless overlapping, grotesque scars.
Droplets slid from her skin, leaving red streaks that sank into the already murky bathwater.
The newly made one hundred and eight blood-holes still seemed to retain that soul-deep pain.
Each of those demon-sealing pins had been pushed into flesh by Gu Fangchen little by little, breaking through obstructions, as if Gu Fangchen had nailed them into her himself.
Thinking back to the experience made Qingjian's breathing heavier; her nostrils quivered.
This sensation was different.
The pain brought by the heavenly tone was a macro pain: countless small sufferings accumulated into a great dull ache that persisted.
But the pain she had just received from Gu Fangchen was sharp, intense, and swift.
It pierced the body instantly and forced an unbearable, dreadful agony.
It made even her, a proper fourth-grade Shendao practitioner, momentarily lose control.
Moreover, the magnitude of that pain loosened her fourth-grade cultivation!
Qingjian's body shuddered involuntarily; concentric ripples spread across the bathwater.
She was frightened, truly frightened, but more than that, she felt a secret anticipation.
"This fellow said his method requires five refinements of body and mind in total..."
Qingjian's eyes glazed; she licked her lips. Under dim lamplight, dark hair shrouding her features, she displayed a few degrees of strange allure.
In other words, there were four more trials of the same intensity to come.
She already had an inkling that she might break through; one more such trial and she could leap to the third grade.
"And besides, this fellow's situation now means he will suffer many injuries in the future."
Qingjian rose from the tub and wrapped fresh bandages around herself.
She stood before the bronze mirror and reached out to touch the face staring back at her, expression unreadable.
If one only saw that blurred silhouette, one might think it the body of a beautiful young woman.
If she were not a Xiyin Attendant, if she were a healthy, free, ordinary person, at sixteen what would she be like?
For so many years, she dared not look in a mirror.
Nor did she dare compare herself to Princess Prajna's flawless face.
She feared that one day she would see jealousy in her own eyes, and something even more terrifying than jealousy.
So... she had been furtively searching for the Jade Refining Pill's whereabouts.
The Jade Refining Pill was a long-lost second-grade elixir, only recorded in fragments from the ancient Zhou two thousand years ago.
It could revive the dead and regrow flesh on white bones.
In even earlier primordial times, it had another name: the Elixir of Immortality.
But in truth, the Jade Refining Pill could not grant immortality; its effect was merely to enable a body's flesh to regenerate almost indefinitely.
This regeneration consumed qi and blood as its price.
Shortly after ingestion, a person could see white hair return to black and regain youth.
When the qi and blood were exhausted and the interior hollowed out, the Jade Refining Pill would begin multiplying that decayed flesh, and the final result would be the body reduced to blocks of rot like dead wood.
It once caused countless massacres. After later generations understood its true effect, they renamed it Jade Refining Pill to avoid repeating tragedy.
Eventually, it was classified as a forbidden drug and lost in the river of history.
However, the side effects of the Jade Refining Pill for a Xiyin Attendant were almost negligible.
With the Buddha Mother's blessing, a Xiyin Attendant's body could continuously generate qi and blood.
And the suffering brought by the heavenly tone could precisely offset the pill's endless regeneration.
For Qingjian, this was the hope of becoming normal again.
But she also understood that finding a long-lost second-grade pill formula was almost a chimera.
Still, the small thread of refusal to accept fate made her persist.
Even if, in the eyes of some Tara Sect elders, such actions were tantamount to apostasy.
Until that wastrel who had been completely outside her considerations plucked that fragile hope from the sky and placed it in her hands.
"Gu Fangchen..."
Qingjian murmured, lotus pupils obscure. She bit her lip.
"If the Jade Refining Pill formula is real..."
She did not finish the sentence. After a long silence, she donned her cloak and stepped out.
Huangtian City was vast.
It was divided into the outer city, the inner city, and the imperial city.
The Northern Garrison Prince's residence lay in the inner city, home to nobles and high officials. Drop a brick and you might hit three officials above fifth grade.
The outer city was for commoners.
The imperial city, naturally, housed the emperor. The central Purple Extremity Hall was the emperor's office.
Whether court or imperial banquets, they convened there.
Gu Fangchen was not new to the palace.
Emperor Yong'an did not care to receive that wastrel, but Gu Fangchen often visited the palace.
The Empress and Ning Caiyong were on good terms; the Empress once called Ning Caiyong "a pity to see" and often summoned her for company.
Ning Caiyong would bring Gu Fangchen along.
However, that was when Gu Fangchen was a child. After his dantian was destroyed, Ning Caiyong felt guilty and gave up almost all social activity to care for him.
The Empress then came even less frequently.
For the player Gu Fangchen, the palace felt like home.
In one ending, he had even overthrown Emperor Yong'an and established a new era, though the cost was the character he controlled sacrificing himself.
Gu Fangchen followed Xiao Qiu and, from a distance, saw an adolescent in blue battle attire stride toward them with a fierce expression.
He raised an eyebrow.
That was the Sixth Prince, an old acquaintance.