“Smash it!” Zhang Mu stood at the top of the steps before Shengyue Temple in Linhan Palace and shouted down to the packed crowd below.
The elite soldiers had eaten and drunk their fill, and they destroyed things without hesitation. Many low buildings and pavilions had already collapsed. Even the two rooms where Mu Xueshi and Su Ruhan once stayed were reduced to burned ruins in moments.
Linhan Palace, usually cold and silent, became deafeningly noisy. Hammering, splintering, and shouting mixed together. Smoke and dust filled the air. Some soldiers used the chaos to slip anything valuable-looking into their sleeves. Worthless objects were ignored or smashed outright with heavy hammers.
Standing outside the Third Prince’s bedchamber, Su Ruhan could clearly hear the destruction from Linhan Palace. Something inside him seemed to tear slowly apart.
Ever since the Third Prince demoted him, Linhan Palace had been Su Ruhan’s place to stay. There he had one bed, one table, and one chair. The open ground beside the thatched shelter was where he practiced martial arts. Mu Xueshi had even made a straw dummy there, and the large water vat had been dry for many days.
Zhang Mu led Princess Wenyang out of Linhan Palace by another path. She looked at him with open boredom and complaint.
“Take me around the courtyard. Do you know what interesting things there are inside the Third Prince’s residence?”
Zhang Mu shook his head. “This subordinate does not know. Normally even His Majesty cannot enter the Third Prince’s courtyard casually. I am only a guard. How could I know what is inside?”
Wenyang slapped him. “Useless. You don’t even know anything about such a famous place. What good are you?”
Zhang Mu’s face darkened. He swallowed his anger and said, “The princess is correct to reprimand me.”
Wenyang gave him a sidelong look, a flirtatious smile appearing on her pretty face. “Then… you at least know how to get from here to the Third Prince’s bedchamber, don’t you?”
Zhang Mu’s expression changed. “Princess, Master specifically ordered me not to let you wander. The Third Prince’s courtyard is unlike anywhere else. It is full of hidden mechanisms and heavily guarded. If the princess were to…”
“Bastard!” Wenyang snapped. “I will be half the master of this place in the future. Am I not even allowed to look around now? I’ll be the person sharing the Third Prince’s bed. Do you think he’ll hold something like this against me?”
Hearing her blurt something so explicit in anger, Zhang Mu cursed inwardly. He was one of Shangchuan Hong’s trusted men, efficient and straightforward, and even Hao Lin treated him differently from ordinary subordinates. Yet he had spent the whole day being insulted by this arrogant princess.
“If the princess does not mind the danger, then this subordinate can only accompany you.” Zhang Mu’s face became expressionless.
Wenyang’s mood improved immediately.
“However…” Zhang Mu looked at her again. “I still need to return to Linhan Palace to issue some orders and find someone to supervise the workers for me. Please wait here for a moment. I will return shortly.”
Before Wenyang could finish the first word of another insult, Zhang Mu disappeared like a streak of light. She nearly jumped in fury.
Linhan Palace had never been architecturally complicated, and its decorations were plain. With hundreds of elite soldiers working at once, everything that could be broken or looted was soon destroyed. No one paid attention to the low, lonely grave in the middle until an order was given to start burning what remained. Then one soldier shouted, “There seems to be a grave here.”
Zhang Mu arrived just in time to hear him. He walked over, pinched some earth from the mound, and examined it. Without carefully noticing the slight difference in color from the surrounding soil, anyone could have mistaken it for a low hill.
“No wonder we couldn’t dig up any treasure around here. Maybe it’s all buried in this grave,” someone said excitedly.
Royal graves often contained valuable burial goods. Zhang Mu considered the possibility. Since the Third Prince had already given up Linhan Palace, everything here now belonged to King Lin.
“Why don’t we open the grave?” several soldiers suggested at once, all hoping to steal something valuable from inside.
The closer Zhang Mu stood to the grave, the colder his body felt. And if this really belonged to someone of royal blood, why was there no visible grave marker?
Should we open it? Zhang Mu frowned. Even if they left the grave alone now, new construction would flatten the area later. And if this was to become Princess Wenyang’s inner residence, leaving a grave in the middle would be extremely unlucky.
“Dig.”
At Zhang Mu’s order, the soldiers began clearing the earth. Years of martial training made Zhang Mu sense something wrong in his body. He slowly backed away and stood farther from the grave in case corpse poison or some other danger escaped.
As the mound opened, the sight inside made everyone hold their breath. At the center lay a coffin made entirely of white jade, obviously precious at a glance. Yet even the beautiful coffin drew less attention than the horrifying remains arranged around it.
Anyone with eyes could see that the dried corpses around the coffin had been nailed flat to wooden boards beneath them. Countless iron spikes fixed every body in the same posture, kneeling toward the center as though begging forgiveness.
The area fell so quiet that even a falling leaf could be heard. These soldiers were strong men who had seen battlefield horrors, yet the grave chilled them. Every dried corpse had a designated place. Several nearer the center still wore clothing that marked them as people of high status, while the more exposed bodies farther out appeared to have been ordinary servants buried with them.
Every corpse, regardless of clothing or rank, occupied the same posture. More disturbing still, there were empty spaces among the bodies, including positions that appeared to be waiting for future occupants. Some of those spaces had even been marked with birth information.
Servants being buried with masters was hardly unheard of, but no one had ever seen a burial arranged this way. They also noticed the soil changed color layer by layer from shallow to deep. That meant the grave had been reopened repeatedly, new bodies added from time to time, then buried again.
One large soldier deep inside the excavation finally lost his nerve and shouted. The sound broke the long silence, and everyone around him seemed to recover at once, slowly scattering away from the grave.
A smaller soldier lost his footing in the crowd and fell back into the grave, landing hard on the coffin. A heavy impact rang out, followed by the dull grinding sound of something shifting.
The soldier went pale. He was normally fearless in battle, yet the feel of cold jade beneath him made his entire body shake.
No one had realized the coffin lid was not sealed. Under the terrified gazes around it, the lid slowly moved, revealing first the hem of a white skirt.
“A corpse is rising!” Two inexperienced soldiers went weak in the knees and dropped to the ground screaming.
Zhang Mu saw the crowd surging in the distance and knew something had happened. Retreating now would disgrace the Lubei forces. He shouted, “No one move! If you aren’t afraid of the living, what are you afraid of from the dead?”
He walked steadily toward the grave. He was uneasy but not truly terrified. At worst, he thought, perhaps some strange preserved corpse had shifted. Nothing could be as frightening as everyone imagined.
Before Zhang Mu reached the grave, the coffin opened fully. The lid pinned the fallen soldier beneath it without disturbing any of the dried bodies around the coffin.
A woman in white suddenly leapt upward. Light seemed to fill the area around her. She looked nothing like a ghost. If anything, she resembled a celestial maiden descending from heaven. Her graceful figure and airborne posture alone were breathtaking.
Everything about her was white, even the hairpin holding up her cloud-like hair. A strip of white gauze covered half her face, leaving only a pair of bright, living eyes gleaming beneath it.
The soldiers who had been fleeing moments earlier now stood frozen. Their expressions made it obvious they had not stopped because of Zhang Mu’s order.
“You dug up my younger sister’s grave. Are you tired of living?” The woman’s voice was soft as water, yet the words fell over the soldiers like a spell, leaving them entranced and despairing at once.
Younger sister? Zhang Mu was almost the only person still capable of thinking. The instant he met the woman’s gaze, however, he felt his internal energy drain away. Through the haze he saw her remove the bright jeweled hairpin from her head. The world spun. In an instant, every one of the hundreds of soldiers who had been shouting moments ago collapsed to the ground, and Linhan Palace became deathly quiet.
Su Ruhan suddenly felt a violent shock in his chest. For an instant his blood seemed to flow backward, all the strength in his body gathering painfully around his heart until he almost could not breathe.
“Yue Lingchai…” Surprise flashed through Su Ruhan’s eyes as he instinctively looked toward Linhan Palace.
Princess Wenyang grew impatient waiting for Zhang Mu. Looking at the two maids beside her, she said firmly, “We aren’t waiting anymore. We’ll look around by ourselves. If there’s nothing interesting nearby, we can simply go back the way we came.”
The maids naturally dared not object and followed anxiously. Wenyang herself felt no fear. The road was dark and uneven, but how large could the Third Prince’s courtyard really be? Even if she got lost, once Zhang Mu reported it, the Third Prince would surely come rescue her.
Imagining the Third Prince searching for her with a worried face actually made Wenyang want to get lost. If casually running into him was unlikely, perhaps causing a little trouble would win her his personal attention instead.
With that playful idea in mind, Wenyang deliberately headed toward rougher ground. She had taken only a few steps when the earth beneath her suddenly shifted. She stumbled and rolled down a steep slope covered in thorny grass.