The men dressed in black were on their knees as they provided a detailed report of what transpired in the mountain. The leader was shaking terribly as he felt the air turned cold as he felt the piercing stare on his person.
The young lady was dressed in a grand robe, with ornaments befitting of her status. Her face was like a sculptured jade, breathtaking. But her face as of this moment was contorted in anger as her whole body shook as she tried to repress her rage.
"You imbeciles! What am I paying you for? A simple task but you can't fulfill?" Bai Xiang'er sputtered in rage.
"Your Highness, someone got there and saved him from the arrow. This servant was also caught by surprise." The leader also never expected that at the last moment they would fail.
Throwing the teacup to the leader's head she yelled. "Then is it my fault? You are truly useless! The bastard even made it back to his residence without any fatal wounds!"
The prince made it back to the capital this morning wounded. This alerted the emperor and he even handled the matter himself. Now they could only cover their tracks airtight, not leaking anything that might lead back to her.
"Get out of here! Make sure nothing would be found out! Idiots!"
When the black-robed men left, Bai Xiang'er narrowed her eyes. That stupid prince was truly a bane that was hard to kill. But one day, she would. She just needed more patience.
On the fourth prince's residence, everyone was tensed and busy. The prince came back to the residence all battered and worn. Although he was not critically injured, his wounds were numerous that it was a frightening sight.
An old doctor came over and handed the steward a recipe so they could brew tonics to help the prince recuperate. The second prince was also there overseeing the matters concerning his brother.
"How is this prince's royal brother?" He asked in a gloomy voice. First, it was them and now it was the fourth prince. Someone was becoming restless.
"Your highness, this servant was able to stabilize the fourth prince's condition. It was lucky that he was treated beforehand so the prince's wounds weren't infected. The person who treated his highness was very skilled."
With that, the second prince finally put his heart at rest. Dismissing the doctor, he sat beside the bed musing.
A rustling sound was heard a moment after indicating that the person on the bed was waking up. As the prince opened his eyes, he looked disoriented.
He looked around the familiar room, confirming that he made it back alright. As if a dam opened, a surge of memory bombarded his head.
Remembering the lady who saved her, he bore through the pain to sit up and call for his subordinates who rescued him. From start to finish, he seemed to not notice the second prince sitting at a corner watching his every move.
"Your highness!" Li Bo went inside and made his salute.
"Where is the girl who saved me? Did you bring her back?" His voice was hoarse but the care and excitement that was never heard from him before were overflowing in that series of questions.
Shocked, Li Bo tried to think back on the moment they saved the prince. Wasn't he all alone inside the cave? "Your highness, this servant wasn't able to see anyone when we got there. However, we did find these." Walking towards the bed, Li Bo placed a small bag with a lot of salves and medicines inside.
Looking at the things on his bed, his mind drifted off to the gentle and beautiful girl. A smile unconsciously made its way to his face scaring the second prince and Li Bo who was observing him.
Perceiving the strange reaction, he pulled his usual emotionless face back on and ordered, "Find her, search every corner of the capital and the mountain. Leave no stone unturned." Looking back at the medicine and the salves he murmured, "Don't hurt her."
When Li Bo left to fulfill his task, the second prince finally made his presence known. "A little girl saved you in the mountain?" He asked mysteriously.
"Yes, she suddenly came out of nowhere then took an arrow for me. She must be hurt right now." His heart hurt as he said this. He was safe and was getting well but the little girl might've hurt more badly than him since she even used her body to cushion their fall.
"Ah, so she was still there after all." The second prince muttered to himself.
Long Xiongwei had a sharp hearing so he heard this loud and clear. "What do you mean?"
"Do you remember when me and Ah'feng were assassinated? She was the one who helped us. She even beat up Ah'feng before that because we hunted down her tiger." The second prince still remembered that scene vividly. He tried looking for her all these years but was still unable to. It felt like she didn't exist at all.
"So she has stayed in that place for so long? Did you find anything about her?" Thinking that the girl might have been alone all these while made his heart hurt even more.
"No, she seemed like she just popped out of nowhere. It's like she never really existed. If you do find her do let me know. I still haven't thanked that girl properly."
With that the second prince left the residence, leaving behind the fourth prince wallowing in thoughts and yearning in his soul.
As the second prince said, she really seemed to never exist. His subordinates scoured the entire land with not a single hint or even a breath of information.
The prince was devastated but he never stopped looking. He felt like if he did so, then she would truly be gone for good, forever separated from him.
This search continued for five years with no actual results. Everyone around him had given up but his heart and soul were far from it. In his mind, he knows she was still here.
As years have gone by, his memory of her voice and her face faded along with time. But those eyes and the emotions they evoked seemed to seep from the core of his soul.
He moved from the capital to the border, drowning himself with works and war. But every night the same dream seemed to torment him. That moment when the young woman threw herself to protect him. Those golden eyes that spoke to his soul.
He would always wake up with a feeling of dread and grief each time.
A subordinate's knock on the door broke the stillness of the night. He came to report a piece of very important news. The leader of the ghost mercenary was found and was detained in his residence in the capital. Upon hearing this, he hastily made preparation. This time, he will get to the bottom of all this.
Once he reached his residence after the few days of travel, he did not go to his quarters immediately to wash up and rest but he made his way towards the torture chamber where the prisoner was at.
The soldiers saw him and led him to the dark and dirty cell. Sitting down, his eyes landed on the person who was kneeling with chains and cloth wrapped around his hands, feet, and mouth.
His body was mangled, loitered with deep and shallow cuts. It could be seen that he was under tremendous torture for the past few days.
"Who do you work for?" A cold and authoritative voice resounded inside the room.
The other person seemed to hear the inquiry as he lifted his bloody head slowly. A crazed look appeared behind those bloody visage, the torture seemed to have snapped his sanity.
Laughing hard like a lunatic he said, "How was the pain of the poison?"
Upon hearing this, the emotionless face of the prince cracked as a dreadful feeling rose inside his heart.
"Looking as you are still here, I take it that you weren't the one hit by that arrow." He seemed to have remembered something funny, the guy laughed once more. "Oh right, it was that girl who saved you. You sure are lucky." He mocked the prince with no hints of fear. If he was to die, he might as well inflict chaos before he did so.
The prince trembled in anger. So after all these years, he didn't even know that that person was poisoned?
"What poison are you talking about?" He asked hoarsely through gritted teeth.
The assassin probably found it very entertaining as he gloatingly taunted, "The poison I created was the best and was incomparable to the ones this empire has. It was simply a mix of five lethal poisons that would make a person wish for death as an amnesty. Imagine, an endless torment like your bones are being snapped into a million pieces, the blood would also boil like a magma but I wasn't that cruel after all, I added the frost poison to level out the heat. It was just, the effect would be like knives piercing each vital organs like tofu!" Laughing so hard to the point his internal organs ached, he continued, "At least even though she suffered a lot, the poison might have liberated her by now! She's dead!"
The emotionless face of the prince at that moment contorted in hatred. How could they do this? So all this time he was looking for a dead person?
His heart that finally learned to feel warmth suddenly froze as cracks appeared, finally breaking into pieces.
Looking at the other guy like a dead person, he ordered his people to feed him all kinds of poisons available.
"Make sure he doesn't die easily."
As he made his way towards his own courtyard, he summoned a poison expert amongst his subordinate.
"Tell this prince the effect of the five lethal poisons that the prisoner said." His voice was very cold that it poses no problem freezing the other person on the spot.
"Your highness, it was as the prisoner said. This subordinate tested out the theory to others in the torture chamber. After two days, they all died." The moment he said the last word, the temperature seemed to have dropped into a freezing point.
The prince, for the first time, felt how it was to lose everything. It was devastatingly painful. He was even tempted to drown himself in poison to accompany the girl to reincarnation.
After dismissing everyone, he took a poison out of his cupboard, pouring it over in a glass. As the cup came near his mouth, a sudden memory flitted past him. He seemed to have heard the voice he yearned for the past years.
"Would you believe that I have helped you because you looked like someone who could make a huge difference to this world?"
The girl held his hand in between those two small hands of hers then continued, "You might not think so, and this might just be my wishful thinking, but deep in my heart I know you will come out of this strong and turn things around. This servant would be humbly watching on the side as you achieve all your heart's desires."
Laughing self-deprecatingly, he smashed the cup into smithereens, "So you wouldn't even let me accompany you to the other side." His tears welled up and fell down. All those years he never even shed a tear but now, it was the only way he could vent all these emotions he had.
After that night, he knew, his heart had died. It died along with her.