Long Tian immediately pushed open the door and entered. "Your Highness."
"Go fetch Li Qiongyu and call for a physician."
"Yes."
The people arrived quickly.
As soon as the physician entered the ice chamber, he was so cold he could barely stand.
'Come here.'
The man before the stone coffin was terrifyingly eerie.
The physician's legs trembled with fear, but he was suddenly drawn over by internal energy and ended up prostrate before the ice coffin.
A charred corpse was slammed before his eyes. If it weren't for the ring on the corpse, it would have been entirely black, with no way to tell it was once a person.
"Was this ring attached to the flesh with some special adhesive?"
The man's chilling voice made the physician tremble with fear.
He dared not delay and quickly took the corpse to examine it carefully.
While the physician was examining it, Xiao Chi Zhan looked at the arriving Li Qiongyu, his voice icy.
"Send someone to Zhongzhou and search every jewelry shop. Two months ago, did someone forge a pair of twin rings?"
Li Qiongyu narrowed his eyes, looking at the twin ring. "You mean this ring is fake?"
"Although this ring is a perfect imitation of the twin rings, the real twin rings have extremely fine and small hidden mechanisms below the dragon's eye for launching hidden weapons, making them incredibly difficult to craft. Moreover, it cannot fuse with my ring. This is definitely not the real twin rings."
The colder Xiao Chi Zhan spoke, the more terrifying his aura became.
'She lied to me again, lied to me again!'
After a moment, as he spoke, he suddenly laughed, a somewhat manic laugh.
"She's not dead, she must not be dead."
He seemed to transform in an instant. The bloodthirsty aura of killing gradually dissipated, and the joy in his eyes bloomed like a thousand flowers, full of spring vitality.
"Your Highness, it's off."
At this moment, the physician's voice sounded.
After the special adhesive was removed, the ring fell from the corpse.
Seeing this, Xiao Chi Zhan crouched down, directly throwing the ring into the fire to burn it. Soon, it melted.
The twin rings cannot be removed and do not melt in fire.
This is not the real twin rings!
"Damn, it's really fake! Then Ye Luan definitely isn't dead."
Li Qiongyu's excited voice trembled slightly.
Xiao Chi Zhan looked at the melted ring, his eyes shining like stars, as if a beam of light had enveloped him. The bright moonlight could not rival his radiant smile.
"She's alive, alive."
At this moment, Xiao Chi Zhan didn't know what he was feeling.
The inner ecstasy almost surpassed everything else. The anger from being deceived was completely suppressed, and a violent tremor pulsed in his chest.
His entire demeanor gained a touch of living warmth, no longer the cold, dead stillness.
"Alive, she's alive, she's not dead!"
His voice was low, sounding somewhat shaky.
Seeing this, Li Qiongyu immediately strode out and ordered people to investigate.
Not dead!
That's great, it's good she's not dead.
"Xiao Chi Zhan, she's not dead. Then she must have slipped away during the chaos when the post station was burned. Those assassins might have been there to help her."
Shaken by Li Qiongyu, Xiao Chi Zhan came back to his senses.
He suppressed the excitement in his heart, stood up, and spoke.
"She absolutely wouldn't have forged twin rings under my nose. Someone must have helped her."
As he spoke, a figure flashed through Xiao Chi Zhan's mind. He pressed his thin lips together, suppressing the rising fury. "Go investigate Lu Feibai's whereabouts."
Back in Zhongzhou, only Lu Feibai would have helped her.
"Also, the corpses of those assassins. Go and check if they were Shadow Guards."
Li Qiongyu raised an eyebrow. "You mean all of this could be Lu Feibai helping her?"
Xiao Chi Zhan's eyes flashed with ferocity. "Twin rings are extremely difficult to forge. Besides Lu Feibai, no one around her has the ability to help her find someone to forge them."
"What if it was Xie Beihan?"
"Heh, he wouldn't. Besides, Ye Luan wouldn't accept his help."
Li Qiongyu smiled. "So confident?"
Xiao Chi Zhan strode out, his voice sinister. "The biggest mistake I made in my life was arranging a marriage for her and Lu Feibai."
Daring to help her escape.
Lu Feibai! You're tired of living!
-----
Northern Desert, Yue City.
Ye Luan had just come out of the medical shop and was eating a flatbread bought from a roadside stall when she saw Ji Er waving and shouting from afar.
"Sister Ah Luan, someone came to the pharmacy looking for you."
Ji Er was an orphan she had saved on the road when she first arrived in the Northern Desert.
Not long after she escaped from Zhongzhou, the borders of the thirteen prefectures of the Northern Desert erupted in war, bringing about chaos and devastation.
Ji Er's parents had both died, leaving him with nowhere to go.
As she was also alone, the two of them traveled together to Yue City and settled down.
With Ji Er by her side, she didn't feel so lonely in the distant Northern Desert, and she even learned a lot of the local dialect.
"Who is it?"
"He's very handsome, but sickly. Is he here for medicine?"
Ye Luan's eyes lit up. "Could it be Jing Zhi?"
"Oh, I don't know. Let's hurry back. The pharmacy is empty, what if something gets lost?"
Pulled by her, Ye Luan ran even faster.
After arriving in Yue City and passing the New Year, she had started planning to open a pharmacy.
In those times of war and unrest, Yue City was quite barren, with few pharmacies and clinics in the city. Since she knew medicine, she planned to open a clinic to both save lives and earn money.
However, she was new to the place and hadn't managed to get it fully running yet, only selling some common medicinal herbs here and there. It was already good if she wasn't losing money.
Upon returning to the pharmacy, as soon as she entered, she saw Lu Feibai sitting on a stool drinking tea, his complexion even paler than when they last parted.
"Jing Zhi!"
Lu Feibai looked up and smiled faintly upon seeing her. "Ah Luan."
"Why have you come so suddenly? Did you find the medicine?"
It was Lu Feibai who had secretly helped her leave Zhongzhou smoothly.
After arriving in the Northern Desert, Lu Feibai had gone to search for medicinal herbs in the sandy mountains.
She had intended to accompany him to help, but Lu Feibai didn't want her to, so they parted ways.
Lu Feibai's gentle eyes carefully examined her for a few moments. Her beauty was captivating, her features delicate, and even her simple attire couldn't conceal her radiant charm.
Her demeanor was no longer the coldness of her days in the capital; she now possessed a girl's mischievousness and a smile.
It seemed that away from that person, standing under this vast sky, she was living life to the fullest.
Seeing the remnants of the flatbread on her lips, he smiled faintly and offered a clean handkerchief with his fair, bamboo-like hand. "Wipe your mouth."
His smile was as gentle as a spring breeze.
Ye Luan paused, wiped her mouth with her hand, and said, "It's fine, I'm going to keep eating."
Lu Feibai didn't mind and retracted the handkerchief. "I found it."
"Then what about the Han Dan Zhu, did you find it?"
As long as they had the Han Dan Zhu, they could refine the medicine to slow down the onset of the frost illness, giving her more time to research a cure.
Mentioning the Han Dan Zhu, Lu Feibai shook his head in disappointment.
"I searched many places, but couldn't find it."
Hearing this, Ye Luan took a bite of the flatbread, her brow furrowed. "The Han Dan Zhu grows in extremely yin and extremely cold places. The most yin and cold place in the thirteen prefectures of the Northern Desert is the ice mountain beneath Xuanhan Cave. It's so vast, how can we find it?"
As she spoke, she couldn't help but sigh.