Beneath Lord Jiu’s Blade, No Warmth Remains

She was a blade tempered inside the Wang family’s iron prison. At nine, she hid in a wardrobe and listened as gunshots cut off her parents’ screams. From then on, the whip marks and blood on the training ground became the only thing she knew as “normal.” At twelve, she was ordered to keep an eye on Xie Yuchen. She clutched a poisoned needle hidden in her sleeve, but when he raised his hand, the light flashing off his silver chain distracted her. His pink shirt was so bright, like a spring she had never seen before, forcibly thrust into her otherwise gloomy world.

Xie Yuchen had seen through her loneliness. Half a still-warm osmanthus cake and his words, “She’s one of my people,” when he shielded her from the Wang family’s punishment, turned her into an informant. Later, he would hand her a hand warmer on nights when she passed him information, and clumsily apply medicine to her leg when she injured it in training. She took these things for salvation, never noticing the calculations of a Nine Gates leader lurking deep in his eyes.

On the day of reckoning, the Wang family’s surviving forces set their sights on their “traitor,” shouting that Xie Yuchen owed the Nine Gates an explanation. When a butterfly knife plunged into her abdomen, she saw his knuckles turn white. He had held back, but she knew that only her death could clear him of the suspicion of colluding with the enemy and preserve his reputation as the Ninth Master. She suddenly smiled and threw herself onto the blade. Her blood splashed across his pink shirt like sparks from a dying fire. “This way... the Nine Gates won’t blame you.” Her voice was faint, and her fingertips brushed his cuff one last time, the place embroidered with a hidden pattern that she had once secretly touched.

As she died in his arms, cheers over the Wang family’s downfall still drifted on the wind. Holding her as she grew cold, Xie Yuchen finally understood that his so-called “plans” had already cost him his heart.