On the second floor of the teahouse, in a private room, a man in dark robes sat by the window, toying with a white jade teacup in his hands.
It was none other than the disgraced Prince Jing, Xiao Jue.
“Your Highness… did I just… see things?”
Xuan Feng, standing behind him, hesitated, his voice tinged with uncertainty.
Down below, the teahouse bustled with people, yet all he could picture were those vines that had suddenly sprung from the ground.
They looked like ghostly hands rising from the earth.
Xiao Jue lightly traced the warm surface of his jade cup with his fingertip, saying nothing.
His gaze had already crossed the streets and fallen on the distant, grayish Longji Mountain.
See things?
The commander of the Xuan Armor Guards, a master tracker—would he see things wrongly?
Xuan Feng couldn’t be sure, and neither could he.
That day in the forest, he had rescued the pair by chance, while passing through. He had casually left some medicine and food, and had paid it no further mind. A pawn discarded by her family, surviving was already a luxury—hardly worth his attention.
Yet who could have expected…
They had not only survived in that abandoned Taoist temple, but seemed to thrive there.
Even more surprising was that the seemingly foolish girl possessed such strange abilities.
Those vines were neither weapons nor traps.
They appeared without warning, filled with a raw vitality that even he had failed to detect.
This was… intriguing.
“Fool?” Xiao Jue finally spoke, his voice low, as if asking Xuan Feng, and perhaps also himself.
“Yes, Your Highness… the whole capital knows Su Jinse is a fool…” Xuan Feng instinctively began, but abruptly stopped midway.
It was inappropriate to discuss a woman, especially one the prince had saved, in front of him.
Xiao Jue, however, seemed to ignore the slip of the tongue and drank the cold, slightly bitter tea in the cup.
Setting down the cup with a soft sound, he said:
“Investigate.”
“Everything about her, and that temple—turn it inside out. I want every detail.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Xuan Feng bowed deeply, and in a flash, disappeared from the room.
Silence returned.
Xiao Jue rose slowly and paced to the window.
The biting north wind squeezed through the cracks, ruffling his robes.
This place—harsh winds, poor soil, and harder hearts.
Local gentry and noble families outwardly respected him, the prince from the capital, but secretly set traps for him one after another.
He had not come here for leisure—he had come to endure.
A single imperial decree had cast him from clouds into the mud, testing how he would survive in this barren land, exhausting every last bit of his spirit.
He refused to submit.
But the biggest immediate challenge was supplies.
The grain and funds allocated by the court were diminished at every step—by the time they reached him, barely a tenth remained.
His three hundred elite guards were his last ace, his only hope to return to the capital.
Each of them had survived fire and blade with him—brothers bound by life and death.
Yet now, he could barely even feed them.
Xiao Jue clenched his fists silently under his sleeves, a surge of suppressed anger boiling within.
A breakthrough.
He needed a breakthrough to tear open this seemingly unyielding predicament.
His gaze, almost involuntarily, drifted again toward Longji Mountain.
In his mind, he recalled the vegetables he had seen at the market: vivid green, fresh, glistening with droplets, surpassing even the offerings of the imperial kitchens in the capital.
A faint relaxation appeared at the corner of his tightly pressed lips.
A “fool” who could sprout vines from nothing, and now grow off-season vegetables—it no longer seemed impossible.
Perhaps… she was the breakthrough he needed.
…
Su Jinse returned to the temple, unaware she was being watched.
She set aside the incident with the young master, focusing entirely on her enterprise.
With the money from selling vegetables, she bought more seeds—rice, wheat, and saplings for fruit trees.
She expanded the vegetable field further. The Dragon Scale Grass, under her careful nurturing, had sprouted a second scale-like leaf, its fragrance growing stronger.
She could feel the energy of this spiritual plant subtly transforming her body, aiding faster recovery and steadily replenishing her abilities.
That day, she was inspecting the growth of the rice in her field—planted just ten days prior, they had already begun to sprout.
Suddenly, she paused and lifted her gaze toward the temple entrance.
“Who’s there?”
Huamei ran out from the house. “Miss, what is it?”
Before her words finished, the temple’s worn wooden door was pushed open from outside.
A tall, imposing figure entered, backlit by the sunlight.
Dressed in black with a dark iron mask—it was none other than Prince Jing, Xiao Jue.
Behind him, Xuan Feng followed.
Huamei froze in shock and hurriedly knelt: “I… I pay my respects, Your Highness!”
Su Jinse slowly stood, meeting Xiao Jue’s gaze with calm eyes.
How had he come here?