Chapter 28 - Striking at the Soul
As Ke Tingfeng spoke those words, a memory unspooled in his mind, vivid and sharp as a blade. He could still see her—Yin Biwu—not as the legendary figure the world remembered, but as a woman broken by the road, her clothes stained with the dust of a thousand miles and the copper tang of blood.
"I am a lost cause," she had whispered then, her voice a ragged thread of its former strength, yet anchored by a fierce, maternal desperation. "But you must save the one inside me. Let at least one of us live, Ke Tingfeng. Let it not be that the Yin family’s final struggle ends in a nameless ditch after all this flight."
The memory was a jagged shard in his heart, even after all these years. He looked at the woman standing before him now—Yin Zhuli—who carried that same fire, though tempered by a much colder iron.
His expression remained as frigid as a winter morning, masking the turmoil within. "As a daughter, your failure to seek vengeance is already a transgression against your blood. And yet, you truly intend to go? To kneel before the ancestral tablets of the Shen family? To offer incense to the very lineage that hunted your mother like a beast?"
He turned away, unable to bear the sight of her composure. "When you stand in the Shen family’s imperial graveyard, Yin Zhuli, I hope you think of her. I hope you think of Yin Biwu, who gave her life so you could breathe. If you can truly prostrate yourself there without a tremor of shame, you will surely earn the cold contempt of the entire world."
Yin Zhuli didn't flinch. Instead, she stepped closer, her gaze roaming over his face with a terrifyingly sharp intuition. A slow, knowing smile spread across her lips, her eyes dancing with a sudden, wicked realization.
"You loved her, didn't you?"
The words were spoken with absolute certainty, cutting through his defenses.
Ke Tingfeng stiffened, a cold snort escaping him. It was a reflexive defense, yet he did not deny it—a rare occurrence for a man so guarded. He looked toward the shadows of the room, pointedly avoiding her scrutiny.
Zhuli placed her hands on his shoulders, her touch light yet heavy with the weight of her discovery. Her laughter was soft, bubbling up from a place of dark amusement. "So that’s why you’ve lingered in the Yin household for all these years. My word... it seems my mother left behind quite a few romantic debts for me to stumble upon."
The resemblance was too much for him to handle. In the dim light, with her hand beneath his chin, forcing him to look at her, she was a specter of the woman he had lost. Her eyes were bright with a wicked, predatory intelligence that Yin Biwu had never quite possessed, yet the shape of them was identical.
"Ke Tingfeng, do not mistake my patience for weakness," she whispered, her voice sliding over his skin like silk. "You think I lack the power to kill him? Even if I had the blade at his throat this very second, I wouldn't strike. Do you know why?"
He remained silent, his jaw set against the surge of emotion.
"Because a quick death is a mercy," she said, her smile widening into something truly sinister. "I want to strike at the soul. *Shārén Zhūxīn*. I want to dismantle everything he holds dear before I let him slip into the void. Now, go and prepare the medicine. Do not fret—when I reach the imperial tombs, I will bow. I, Yin Zhuli, will bow so perfectly that even the ghosts of the Shen family will believe I am their most loyal servant. Hahaha!"
Her laughter echoed through the halls as she turned and walked away, her stride confident and unburdened. Ke Tingfeng stood frozen, watching her retreating figure. The years had been too long, so long that the boundaries of his memory had frayed, leaving him unable to distinguish between the woman who had died and the one who now lived in her image.
