There was no one in sight. Let alone a donkey cart or a driver, there were not even a few decent wooden planks lying around. A wave of despair washed over Dai Li.
"I can't give up. I have no way back," she murmured.
With no carriages at the mountain pass leading to Ganquan Temple, Dai Li simply set off on foot.
She hiked out of the temple's mountain roads, heading toward the ferry crossing and the main road outside the city. The time it took to cover this distance completely wiped out the head start she had gained by rushing straight down the mountain, and then some.
Fortunately, after walking a fair distance, Dai Li came across another cart heading for the ferry crossing.
It was a donkey cart.
It was the most ordinary of donkey carts—a small donkey harnessed in the front, pulling a two-wheeled flatbed cart that did not even have an awning. The cart was piled high with goods packed in burlap sacks. An old man sat atop the sacks, holding a small leather whip that he cracked every now and then.
Dai Li ran up without hesitation and flagged down the cart. "Old sir, I am heading to the ferry crossing. Could you please give me a ride? I won't ride for free; I will pay you for the fare."
Never expecting to earn extra silver on this trip, the old man had no reason to refuse. He smiled cheerfully and said, "Of course. It's just that my donkey is old and doesn't walk very fast. If you don't mind, hop on."
Naturally, Dai Li did not mind. She thanked him and nimbly climbed onto the cart, taking a seat on a pile of bulging burlap sacks.
The moment she sat down, the invisible thread constricting her heart finally seemed to loosen a little. Dai Li took two deep breaths, trying to calm the violent pounding in her chest.
But it was of little use; her blood still boiled with anxiety.
Dai Li could not help but look back. As the donkey clopped forward, the ancient temple nestled among emerald peaks was gradually left behind. Due to the shifting angle, it was soon obscured by the lush greenery. Slowly, it vanished from sight entirely.
The old man driving the cart was likely bored, so he struck up a conversation with Dai Li. "Miss, are you going to the ferry crossing to meet someone or to travel far? If you're meeting someone, there's actually no need. There are carriages at the ferry, and they can catch a ride into the city themselves."
"Traveling far," Dai Li replied.
"You haven't even brought any luggage. Traveling far like that won't be convenient. Could it be you're heading to the neighboring Jiulu County?" The old man was quite chatty and continued on his own, "Jiulu County is the closest. It only takes the better part of a day by boat to get there. It's early afternoon now; you can rest on the boat for the night and arrive right on time tomorrow morning."
Dai Li asked calmly, "What is further east of Jiulu County?"
"Further east? That would be Xiagu. Xiagu is a larger place, with many merchants coming and going. Oh, you're heading to Xiagu, aren't you..."
Upon hearing that it was a larger place, a glint of light flashed in Dai Li's eyes.
A larger place meant more inns, more places to hide, and relatively convenient transportation.
"No, I am heading to Jiulu County," Dai Li said aloud.
*
Ganquan Temple.
The ceremony was more than halfway over when a person suddenly hurried over to Xiuniang's side and whispered to her, "Xiuniang, the guards at the West Courtyard caught a man sneaking into that lady's room."
Xiuniang was shocked. "What kind of scoundrel dares to act so brazenly in the temple? And specifically during the ceremony, no less!"
The messenger reported, "The man claims to be a subordinate of the Third Young Master. He says he came under his master's orders to deliver a gift and meant no harm."
Xiuniang's expression darkened.
She bore an undeniable responsibility for Dai Li getting entangled with Xie Yuanxiu. If she hadn't carelessly forgotten the master's instructions that day, Madam Dai would never have gone to the gardens.
However, the messenger's next words made Xiuniang's pupils contract, shocking her so much that she nearly cried out.
"Xiuniang, that lady is not in the room. Her whereabouts are unknown, and both of the maids in the room are unconscious."
"Is this true?" Xiuniang could not control her volume.
Standing ahead of her, Diting glanced sideways at the sound. Taking in the sight of the pale-faced Xiuniang and the person beside her, his gaze inevitably darkened.
Xiuniang bit her lip hard. "I need to go back. Go inform Yuping and tell her to come take my place. Hurry!"
The person accepted the order and retreated.
As he withdrew, Xiuniang also stepped down from her position.
She had originally been standing on the high platform alongside the other members of the Green Lotus Sect, arrayed in an inverted V-formation like a flock of flying geese. However, compared to Diting, who stood at the very front as the absolute core, Xiuniang's position was much further back.
Her stepping down now was hardly conspicuous, especially since the mass of believers below currently had their eyes tightly shut and were prostrating on the ground.
Xiuniang briskly descended from the high platform and entered a secret passage to the side, signaling a few sect members to follow her along the way. The group took the shortest route, rushing hurriedly toward the West Courtyard.
Just as they approached the West Courtyard, while still a short distance away, Xiuniang spotted a man bound tightly with ropes, flanked by two armored guards.
She jogged over, her breathing growing ragged. But without sparing a moment to catch her breath, Xiuniang quickly stepped into the room.
The doors were wide open, and the interior was a complete mess. The desk and small chairs were overturned on the floor, the vase in the corner was smashed to pieces, and a plump, oval incense burner had rolled to the side of the door, completely ignored.
One glance at the scene was enough to tell that the guards had likely heard a commotion, rushed over, and engaged in a struggle with the intruder right inside the room.
In the outer room, on a cushioned chair by the window, the maid Meixiang lay with her eyes tightly shut, looking as if she were sleeping peacefully.
"Wake her up," Xiuniang ordered briefly before heading further in.
Upon entering the inner chamber, she saw that the two panels of the outward-facing window were thrown wide open. Someone lay quietly on the bed, covered by a smoky-purple dress. A portion of the hem had slipped down to the foot of the bed, its subtle peony patterns catching the sunlight from the window and shimmering with a luxurious, costly luster.
The person on the bed was Caoxiang.
Or, more accurately, it was Caoxiang stripped of her outer garments.
Xiuniang stepped forward and patted Caoxiang's cheek. Seeing no reaction, she pinched hard at the girl's philtrum.
Caoxiang remained completely motionless.
"Xiuniang, it doesn't look like she was knocked out. It looks more like she swallowed a sleeping pill," someone beside her noted. "Did you ever give that lady any sleeping pills?"
"No, why would I ever give her something like that?!" Xiuniang flatly denied it.
Qi Yu had only asked casually, not truly believing Xiuniang would be so careless. However, there was another possibility. "Did you store the sleeping pills securely? Is it possible they were stolen?"
"I have always kept them in a cabinet, and she has never even seen them..." Xiuniang, who was checking Caoxiang's pulse, suddenly broke off mid-sentence.
She suddenly recalled that Dai Li had, in fact, seen the bottle containing the sleeping pills.
Back on the boat, when they were intercepted by government officials, Madam Dai had to be hidden. Hiding her wasn't enough; she absolutely could not make a sound. Left with no other choice, Xiuniang had given Madam Dai a sleeping pill.
She had watched her pour out that sleeping pill—the lady had seen that bottle!
Xiuniang withdrew her hand from Caoxiang's wrist and stood up abruptly. "Come with me."
Leaving behind only those words, she swiftly exited Dai Li's room and returned to her own. From a small cabinet, she took out a medicine bottle. "These are waking pills. Take them over and feed them to the maids. Once they wake up, I have questions for them."
Qi Yu took the medicine and turned to leave, but Xiuniang called out to stop him. "Qi Yu," she said, "send a team of men to search the mountain."
Qi Yu was a messenger within the cult, not some marginal figure. "The ceremony is already halfway through. It's hard to say, but she might have already descended the mountain. We might as well send people directly into the city... Right, does she have a pass?"
Xiuniang remained silent for a moment before finally squeezing out the word, "Yes."
Qi Yu rubbed his forehead. "What were you thinking? How could you give her a pass! With a pass, she can enter the city and go to the ferry to take a boat. If she leaves Si Province by boat, tracking her down will be a nightmare."
"Take that up with the mister. That pass was given to her under Diting's personal instruction," Xiuniang said coldly. "Let's search the mountain first. Who knows, she might still be hiding here. There is one of her dresses in the next room. Cut a piece off and let the hounds sniff it to see which way she went."
Qi Yu was left speechless by her earlier words. Finally, he simply said, "Fine, I will arrange the mountain search."
After he left, Xiuniang shifted her gaze back to the cabinet, an unresolvable doubt lingering in her eyes.
When Madam Dai appeared in her room that day, she was likely trying to steal the sleeping pills; the stuffed rabbit was nothing but a decoy. But Xiuniang had clearly checked the medicine bottles at the time, and not just one—she had checked every single bottle in the entire cabinet. They were packed full of sleeping pills, not a single one missing.
How could this be?
Where did Madam Dai get the sleeping pills?
Refusing to give up, Xiuniang took out all the small medicine bottles containing the sleeping pills, opened them all, and counted them again.
The count was still correct. Not a single pill was missing.
And yet, Caoxiang and Meixiang outside were unconscious. Could it be that they hadn't taken the sleeping pills, but consumed some other drug?
Could someone from the North have come and taken Madam Dai away unnoticed during the ceremony?
But the two guards were still alive. If Caoxiang and Meixiang inside the room had seen a stranger, there was no reason the two girls wouldn't have called out for the guards. Moreover, if someone from the North really had come, there would be no need for the madam to take off her lavish dress...
Xiuniang felt as if she were surrounded by a thick fog, unable to see clearly where exactly things had gone wrong.
An unknown amount of time passed before she was snapped out of her daze.
"They're awake. Go ask them immediately."
Caoxiang and Meixiang had awoken. Looking at the room full of people and hearing them ask when Dai Li had disappeared, the two girls were instantly frightened out of their wits.
"I-I don't know. After I drank the madam's summer cooling soup, I inexplicably felt exhausted and fell asleep without realizing it. When I woke up again, it was just now..."
"Right, the summer cooling soup. I also fell asleep after drinking it."
The small table in the room had been knocked over, and the pot that had previously rested on it was shattered into pieces.
Xiuniang crouched down, picked out a relatively large shard from the pile of broken pot pieces, and used her finger to dab a little of the soup from the inner wall.
As soon as her fingertip touched her lips, the confusion in Xiuniang's eyes deepened. She murmured, "It tastes like the sleeping pills. Someone put medicine in the pot."
"That's impossible. The madam drank it too, two bowls in a row," Meixiang blurted out subconsciously.
"She drank it too? Did she drink it first, or later?" Xiuniang asked.
Caoxiang chimed in, "After the summer cooling soup was ready, the madam drank two bowls in one breath. Later, she ordered us to take two bowls out for the two guards. After scooping out those four bowls, the remaining two were given to us."
Qi Yu's expression was grave. "Where did she get the medicine? Who gave it to her?"
There was one thought he left unsaid: Could there be a traitor within the cult?
Xiuniang read the unspoken implication in his eyes and immediately shook her head. "No one could have given it to her. When she spent nearly half a month on the boat, I was the one taking care of her personally. Besides me, she hardly spoke to anyone else."
Qi Yu pressed, "What about after arriving in Tianshui Commandery?"
Xiuniang continued, "Besides me, Caoxiang and Meixiang were added to attend to her personally. And during these days at the residence, she only went out to visit the market once. We followed her the whole time. She had no contact with anyone else, nor did she act unusually."
"That's strange, then. Where did she get the medicine?" Qi Yu muttered.
When he joined the cult, Xiuniang was already a member. Her seniority was deeper than his, and she had always been highly valued by Diting. If not for that, he would have suspected Xiuniang of defecting to the enemy.
Xiuniang pursed her lips, choosing not to tell him about the time Dai Li had entered her room alone.
Qi Yu was merely her subordinate; there was no need to explain this matter to him.
Xiuniang asked Caoxiang, "When was that pot of summer cooling soup brought over?"
Caoxiang answered honestly, "Exactly at noon, right when the ceremony started."
Xiuniang did a quick calculation on her fingers. The soup was ready exactly at noon, and the time spent drinking it definitely wouldn't have exceeded half an hour. In other words, it had been roughly three hours since Madam Dai left.
Three hours was more than enough time for her to descend the mountain...
Dong, dong, dong—
Suddenly, the sound of a bell chimed.
Both of them were startled.
The ceremony began with the tolling of the bell, and it was supposed to conclude with the tolling of the bell. According to the original plan, the ceremony was scheduled to end in a little over half an hour, definitely not now.
It seemed this matter had already alarmed Diting.
About fifteen minutes later, Diting, dressed in a white Daoist robe and wearing a silver-white mask, rushed over.
He already had a premonition that something major had happened on his way here; otherwise, given Xiuniang's composed nature, she would absolutely not have spoken up during the ceremony while on the high platform.
"...She's gone?" Diting's voice suddenly spiked in pitch.
It was a good thing he was still wearing his silver-white mask, or else his loss of composure would have been seen by everyone.
"Tell me everything, leave no detail out. Hurry," Diting's voice lacked its usual unhurried calm.
Caoxiang and Meixiang started from the beginning. They explained that Dai Li had gone out for a stroll this morning and, upon returning, complained about the unbearable heat. She had them stew a pot of ginseng and poria root soup. They shared the soup, and after drinking it, the two of them lost consciousness.
Upon hearing this, Diting asked the same question Xiuniang had asked earlier: when was the soup served?
After receiving the answer, Diting fell silent for a moment. "Three hours. That's enough time for her to get down the mountain. If she was lucky enough to run into a carriage, it's also enough time to enter the city or reach the ferry crossing."
"Sir!" Someone hurried in from outside.
The person leading the way was the captain Qi Yu had sent out earlier to conduct the search.
"We've searched the perimeter of Ganquan Temple, but there's no sign of Madam Dai," the captain reported.
Unwilling to give up, Xiuniang asked, "What about the mountain range in the back?"
The captain replied, "We brought the hounds there just now, but they didn't react to the back mountain. On the contrary, at the front of the mountain, they kept pulling toward the bushes, heading straight down the mountain in a straight line."
Diting closed his eyes. "She went down the mountain."
Not only did she go down the mountain, but she took a straight path, which saved much more time than following the winding mountain trail.
The young man suddenly opened his eyes. Under everyone's gaze, he walked over to the tied-up gift bearer.
A cold glint of steel flashed, startling the man so much that his face turned deathly pale. He repeatedly pleaded, "Don't kill me! I'm the Third Young Master's man. I was only acting on orders this time!"
However, the agonizing pain he expected never came. Instead, the ropes binding him suddenly loosened.
The man froze in stunned disbelief.
Diting sheathed his blade, personally helped the man to his feet, and even smoothed out his collar. "Take a message to Xie San for me. When I said earlier that my older sister was married, it was true, but I only told half the story. My brother-in-law has perished, and she is now all alone. If the Third Young Master can help me find my sister, who threw a fit and ran away from home, then as her younger brother, I would not object to her making a new friend."
The man nodded profusely.
Once the man had left, Diting turned to Qi Yu. "Take your men and ride for the ferry crossing at once. Do your best to intercept all departing boats. Stop any donkey carts lingering at the docks or making their return journeys, and ask the drivers if they gave a ride to a young woman traveling alone. If they did, use whatever means necessary to make them reveal every detail."
He then singled out another person. "Fanyin, hurry back to the city and find Old Zeng. Tell him to keep a close watch for any movements involving the travel pass under the name 'He Hua'. If anyone uses it to check into an inn, detain them immediately."
Once these orders were methodically issued, a group of men withdrew from the small courtyard.
Diting looked toward Xiuniang. "She has only been in contact with a few of you these past few days, and among you, only you possess the sleeping pellets."
This matter had to be thoroughly investigated, as it concerned whether there was a mole within their sect.
His gaze grew increasingly sharp. Xiuniang no longer dared to hide the truth as she had earlier. She was forced to admit that Dai Li had entered her room one day, but added that she had carefully checked afterward and found none of the sleeping pellets in her cabinet missing.
Hearing this, Diting fell silent for a moment before stepping toward her room. He needed to see for himself.
Xiuniang immediately followed.
Back in her room, she took out all the medicine bottles containing the sleeping pellets from the cabinet and lined them up on the table.
Diting instructed her to bring over several small dishes and sort the pellets into them. Dish by dish, the small plates soon covered the table. With a single glance, the exact number of little black pellets in each dish was glaringly obvious.
Looking at it this way, not a single one appeared to be missing.
However, Diting did not let Xiuniang put them back right away. He reached out, picked up one of the small dishes, and used his slender fingers to pinch the pellets one by one, inspecting them meticulously.
The room was dead silent. Neither of them spoke; there was only the occasional soft clink of a ceramic dish being set down.
Suddenly, Diting let out a questioning hum. He pressed down hard, and the little black pellet between his fingers crumbled instantly, leaving a conspicuous smear of black on the man's fair fingertips.
Xiuniang's face drained of color.
Diting, however, revealed a relieved smile.
Excellent. This meant the sect was clean; there was no traitor among them.
The ferry crossing.
Dai Li stepped down from the donkey cart. Just as she was preparing to pay the fare, the faint ringing of bells drifted over from the distance.
By the time the chimes reached the docks, they were barely discernible, and many pedestrians turned a deaf ear to them.
To Dai Li's ears, however, the sound was like a mountain collapsing or a towering tsunami crashing down. It shook her to the core, terrifying her out of her wits and leaving her face completely ashen. "How can this be..."
The festival was over.
The festival had ended early. This meant that someone must have discovered her absence.