68 "He is my beloved"

Gu Chenghuai knitted his brows deeply, pressing his slender, immaculate fingers against Lin Zhao's soft red lips.

"Zhaozhao!" His voice carried a faint sternness, while his dark eyes welled with an undisguisable, piercing agony. "You are carving out my heart."

He dared not dwell on a single word she uttered; pondering them even for a moment threatened to drive him to excruciating despair.

It felt as though an invisible hand had reached directly into his chest, a chilling presence piercing through, dragging and tearing at his heart back and forth.

Over and over again.

Even more so.

What she said... seemed almost...

With this single battle alone, approximately one hundred and thirty thousand elite soldiers of the Russian Empire were slaughtered. The remaining Russian troops, their morale entirely shattered, could only flee in panicked wretchedness. Had the Russian forces managed to hold out for just half a day longer, they might have lived to see the empire's reinforcements arrive.

Listening to Nangong Li's words, Zhuque and Qinglong nodded in agreement. They believed that Nangong Li's intuition was genuine; after all, having lived for tens of millions of years, they were well aware that there is always someone better, just as there are heavens beyond the heavens, and divine beasts surpassing divine beasts. They were hardly so arrogant as to assume they were the absolute strongest.

"Then do you know where the fruits you eat every day come from?" Cai Jiao asked again.

"It is none other than the mother of Liu Zhengsheng's wife, the biological younger sister of Empress Ji, Ji Xiaoyun," Chu Chenheng said, observing Liu Yan's expression as he spoke.

The timing was calculated to perfection. When they arrived at the agreed-upon location, the sun was just beginning to set.

She earnestly pleaded with Lu Yan, begging him not to step foot into the office. Once inside, no one could possibly predict what might transpire—whether they would secure understanding or be granted their wish remained entirely unknown.

Did she say she had swiftly departed from the other side? Given the current turn of events, had she not already appeared right here, why would he have bothered to wait for her back then? Many matters had long since lost any necessity, and in the days to come, he ought to make things clear as well.

Before Xingkong could crouch down beside him, Chu Chenheng gestured toward Ruoyu instead. Disregarding the instruction this time, Xingkong reached out and grabbed his arm, leveraging a swift upward thrust to reset the dislocated joint.

Sauntering slowly outside the palace and gazing at the sheer cliffs surrounding them, Wu Wuhai recalled the reward granted upon completing half of his soul-form mission.

Pair after pair of eyes stared in utter terror at the horrific, massive ghost. When humans are gripped by extreme panic, their minds freeze, stripping away their capacity to reason—just as it was with them now, forgetting even how to run for their lives.

"Slap—" Her answer to him was a resounding blow, delivered with virtually every ounce of strength she possessed at that moment.

My life returned to tranquility, drifting into a peaceful and serene routine where I thought of nothing else, simply savoring the bliss of having my wife and child by my side.

Su Yun's breath abruptly hitched. Her mind automatically conjured the scene: a delicate, flower-like young man, his face deathly pale, gazing at the evil steward and his guards. Surrounded by those rough, burly men, he was slowly tortured before eventually being cast adrift to end up here. The mere thought made goosebumps erupt all over her body.

A genuine Feng Shui master ought to resemble Master Liu Zuoren—possessing an ethereal, immortal demeanor, eyes flashing with brilliant light, conversing in classical prose while effortlessly discoursing on the Azure Dragon Water-Gathering Formation, the White Tiger Mountain-Guarding Layout, the Prosperity and Descendant-Blessing Array... versed deeply in the Book of Changes and the Five Elements and Eight Trigrams, speaking of them with absolute conviction.

Fortunately, she seemed entirely oblivious to that matter. True to form, she treated me just as she always did, and after a few back-and-forths, my anxiety gradually faded.

Bai Zhuohan held her in his arms for a while, warming his left chest as if embracing a hot water bottle. Afterward, neither of them said anything more. They returned the children and retired to their respective beds to sleep in peace.

Seeing Ning Zini gazing fixedly at Lou Xuan's corpse, a poignant and desolate bitterness surfaced in Su Yun's heart as she smiled and said, "He was originally from this place, a young master of the Lou family. It was only because of the war that his entire family was forced to migrate, but they suffered a betrayal by their own guards and drifted down to Jincheng, where I accidentally saved him."

She had lost count of how many times she had been held at gunpoint like this, until the threat had left her almost numb.