Time stopped.
The roar of the crowd, the rustle of silk, the distant clang of a city bell—it all faded into a dull, meaningless hum. The world shrank to the space between her and Mo Ran. To the casual, dismissive flick of his two fingers.
It wasn't just a signal. It was a signature. A brand.
The image of her mother's face, streaked with silent tears as she clutched a small, wooden bird, flashed in Yingluo's mind. The story her father had finally confessed, his voice breaking—the raid, the flames, the men with the same dead eyes and the same silent, lethal hand signals.
This man. This quiet, unassuming archer, was a ghost from her family's past. A ghost that Li Jian had deliberately raised from the dead to be his champion. He wasn't just here to beat her. He was here to taunt her. To enjoy her public failure, knowing he was the man who had helped set her entire tragedy in motion.
A cold, white-hot rage, pure and absolute, flooded her veins. It was a fire that wanted to burn the world down. Her vision swam, red and black at the edges. Her fingers trembled on the bowstring. She wanted to scream. She wanted to loose the arrow not at the target, but directly into his smug, heartless face.
Do it, a voice in her head snarled. Kill him. End it now.
But she was no longer that girl, ruled by passion. She was the phoenix, reborn from ash. And fire, she now understood, was a tool. It could be a wildfire that destroyed everything, or it could be the focused, controlled flame of a forge, used to shape a weapon.
She took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing the rage down, channeling it, compressing it into a single, diamond-hard point of focus in her soul.
*Commander Bao's words echoed in her mind. "Aim through it."
She wasn't aiming at a target anymore. She was aiming at the past. She was aiming at the man who had murdered her mother's family. She was aiming at the brother who had hired him.
Her hand steadied. The trembling stopped. The world came rushing back, but it was different now. It was sharper, clearer. She could see the individual threads in the Emperor's pavilion silk. She could see the faint sheen of sweat on Mo Ran's brow. He thought he had won. He thought she was broken.
Oh, you have no idea.
She drew the string back, the movement smooth as flowing water. The world narrowed to the tip of her arrow. She didn't see the four arrows already in the target. She saw Mo Ran's heart. She remembered the feel of her mother's cold hand as she lay dying from a broken heart, the true cause of her final illness.
This arrow was not for the crowd. It was not for the Emperor. It was not for Li Jian.
This arrow was for her mother.
She released.
There was no whistle. There was only a whisper, a sound like a ghost sighing in the wind. The arrow flew, a black streak of pure, concentrated will. It didn't just fly toward the target; it seemed to bend the very air around it.
It hit.
The crowd gasped. A collective, unified sound of pure shock.
Her arrow hadn't just split the cluster in the center. It had flown so true that it had grazed the shaft of Mo Ran's last arrow, shaving off a paper-thin sliver of wood before embedding itself a fraction of an inch deeper, the absolute, undeniable dead center. It was a shot that was physically impossible. It was less archery and more magic. It was a message.
A tie. An impossible, miraculous tie.
For a moment, there was dead silence. Then, the crowd erupted. It was a deafening roar of applause and cheers. They had come to see a spectacle, and they had witnessed a legend. The Duke of Zhenning's daughter had not just held her own; she had performed a miracle.
Through the noise, Yingluo's eyes were locked on Mo Ran. His face was no longer calm and dismissive. It was a canvas of shock, confusion, and then, slowly, dawning horror. He looked from the target to her, and he understood. He understood that she knew. He understood that the impossible shot was not a fluke. It was a promise. The look on his face said it all: What are you?
She gave him a slow, cold smile. A smile that didn't reach her eyes. A smile that said, I am the ghost you should be afraid of.
The tournament was over. Declared a draw. The Emperor was immensely pleased, bestowing lavish gifts on both houses. Li Jian's expression was thunderous, his plan to humiliate the Wei clan exploding in his face. Wei Ruyan looked like she had swallowed a lemon.
But Yingluo paid them no mind. She accepted the crowd's adulation with a demure smile, bowed to the pavilions, and gracefully exited the stage, her heart a cold, steady drumbeat of purpose.
Later that night, she slipped away from the celebrations. She didn't go to her rooms. She went to the one place she knew she would find him.
The Crown Prince's study was dark, save for a single lamp. Li Xun was sitting at his Go board, as if he had been waiting for her.
"I heard you performed a miracle today," he said, not looking up from the board.
"It wasn't a miracle," Yingluo said, her voice flat and cold. She walked into the room, the crimson gown a slash of color in the dim light. "It was a message."
He finally looked up, his eyes questioning.
She stopped in front of his desk, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. The events of the day, the shock, the rage, the cold, hard calculus of it all, had stripped her bare. There was no more room for games.
She looked him directly in the eye, her voice low and intense, each word a drop of ice.
"I know who killed my mother."
Li Xun's face went still.
She leaned forward, her gaze burning into his.
"And he works for my brother."