Rising Phoenix

“Be good and go.” Feng Zhiwei put a fake smile on her face and moved away. “You have to.”

“Why?” Young Master Gu demanded, never willing to move without reason.

“Because.” Feng Zhiwei placed her hands on his shoulder and pushed him out the door, replying very seriously. “You are mine.”

Finally, Gu Nanyi picked Shao Ning and up left, breaking through layer after layer of encirclement. Feng Zhiwei retreated into the room to await his return, thinking that Young Master Gu had changed somewhat after the Crown Prince’s death — before, he almost never strayed more than a step away from her, and now he was even willing to leave her alone.

Though at the moment the real target was Shao Ning, so when Gu Nanyi took her away, all of the assailants immediately followed.

Feng Zhiwei was not worried for Gu Nanyi’s safety. They were basically at the Emperor’s feet, very close to the Imperial Palace; after his first attack missed, Ning Yi would not force the kill.

Hopefully Princess Shao Ning had learnt her lesson, and in the future would not so recklessly summon her to meet.

She groped around in the dark for the candle, the corpse on the ground with its eyes still open wide, as if still in disbelief at its sudden sacrifice. Feng Zhiwei looked down at him, sighing. “You appeared too quickly… a spy needs to be more patient.¹”

 If he were not a spy, how could he have rushed in so quickly? If he were not a spy, why would he try to locate Shao Ning by calling her name?

Shao Ning had failed to understand, but these thoughts had immediately flashed through Feng Zhiwei’s mind. In this world, there were few people who could have reacted as quickly as she had.

The bustle around the room faded, and the smell of blood seemed to silently waft and congeal. Feng Zhiwei clutched the candle in her hand, the creamy, cold wax slippery as a snake — suddenly, Feng Zhiwei felt something disturb the silence of the darkness, looming as it moved towards her.

She reached for where the flint had been placed, but found nothing as she groped in the dark. Luckily, she had a backup stone in her pocket, and with a strike, had her candle lit.

The flame bloomed.

But before she had time to look into the room, the little fire was extinguished.

Feng Zhiwei was shocked, her hand reflexively touching the candle nib, checking the residual heat to make certain that the light had not just been an illusion.

But the candle did seem to have shrunk — had someone used an extremely fast sword Qi to cut the burning candle?

At this point, Feng Zhiwei did not dare to run for the door — if someone was inside the room, she would be turning her back to them. If someone was outside, she would be delivering herself onto their sword.

She pursed her lips and lit the candle once more.

The flame flickered, then vanished.

As the light flashed, Feng Zhiwei threw the candle into the southwest corner of the room and quickly darted backwards.

With a thud, she collided, but not with the wood of the door. The hard surface that she had hit gave a little, and seemed to be elastic. When she tensed, she was already clutched within a grasp.

The grasp did not smother her, but she could not move even the slightest. The faint musk of masculinity pressed down on her; the person held her in their arms; her ears rubbing against their shoulder; their breath on the back of her ears, soft, warm, and wet; and suddenly she felt a thin sheen of sweat on her skin, sticking to her hair, faintly tingling.

Feng Zhiwei could not struggle, so she immediately relaxed, her fingers flexing, grabbing the dagger that silently fell down her arm and into her palm.

She had been inspired by Ning Ji’s hidden knife that day, and had returned home to design one herself, a hidden chain attached to a leaf-thin dagger that would silently fall downwards when she pulled.

With dagger in hand, she could pierce her attacker’s vitals with a simple flick of her finger.

The person behind her quietly sighed.

The sigh was long and deep, like wind brushing through branches and leaves, silently breaking upon the foliage, at once almost too faint to hear, yet like thunder blasting by her ear. Feng Zhiwei was startled, and the dagger between her fingers froze as her whole body seemed to stiffen.

As she stiffened, the person’s warm hand reached down and accurately pinched the dagger in her palm, their grasp almost intimate as they enveloped her slender fingers, kneading the length of the dagger with the pulp of their finger, gently snapping the metal.

The metal broke with a clear snap, and a small smile crossed the person’s face as they flicked their finger, shooting the broken dagger forward to stop up the spear hole on the wall, shutting out the last faint beam of light.

The dagger flew forward, but he did not remove his hand, taking her finger and gently massaging it again and again. His palm was smooth and soft, with only a thin layer of calluses on the sides of his fingers. The rough, toughness of his hand met her tenderness, like a fine sandpaper gently moving over a warm, soft heart, and with it came a light tingling accompanied by a small, cold pain.

She looked down without speech or movement, in no mood for the intimate moment — as he held her, he kept his finger pressed just above a fatal acupuncture point on her chest.

The man seemed to pay no mind to the deadliness of his gentle hand, his slightly lowered head bringing him almost cheek to cheek with, entangling their breaths, their hair twining together, clinging to her face and his neck, just as soft and cold as the emotion in his heart.

At that moment, he tilted his head slightly.

One slight movement touching the side of his chin to her cheek.

His cold and smooth lips brushed her jade cheeks, like a lively green leaf landing on brilliant, pearly water, touching off the barest of ripples that quietly faded away.

Both standing figures shook in place.

The man seemed to calm himself in the darkness, and after a few disturbed breaths, evened out before quietly pulling away.

The faint touch was like the sheer wings of a dragonfly, unable to bear the heavy cold of the darkness.

A faint sadness suddenly rose up from within Feng Zhiwei’s heart, and she felt as if she had seen a magnificent range of mountains and rivers stretching before her, only for it all to be shattered in an instant.

The tantalizing moment seemed to bite with a freezing edge, like heavy snow pouring down from the heavens, apathetic to the broken butterfly quivering in the snow.

The room was dark and silent, with hearts and minds quietly moving until a sudden series of hurried footfalls broke in.

“Brother Wei! Brother Wei!” Yan Huaishi’s voice called out. “Are you still here?”

Feng Zhiwei shuffled in place, at a loss for words when the man behind her quietly chuckled and suddenly pushed her. Feng Zhiwei turned as she fell and a soft, cold sleeve brushed over her cheek, bringing with it a light, clear fragrance. She reached forward with her hand, and the sleeve flowed out of her fingers like spring water.

The wooden door opened with a whisper, with Yan Huaishi standing in the sudden light.

Feng Zhiwei unconsciously looked back. The room and the bed, couch, and table within were covered in a grey, hazy dimness, and the cups and plates were scattered around across the ground, around the body lying quietly in its pooling blood. Everything that had happened seemed a dream.

The weather slowly warmed, and the rays of sun began to feel like flowing streams of fire. The magnificent Imperial Palace seemed to be trapped by waves of heat.