Chu Xuanhe looked up at his aunt.
Chu Xinlan sighed helplessly, “The Crown Princess will return on the day of her coming-of-age ceremony. The Emperor has already issued an order for the entire kingdom to celebrate for three days.”
Chu Xuanhe showed no surprise, his tone calm and indifferent. “Aunt, I’ll head back first.”
“How did you know we don’t need to accompany the Crown Princess?” Chu Xinlan wasn’t surprised by her nephew’s sharpness and intelligence—after all, no one had been able to fool him since he was very young.
But she was curious. Curious about how he knew without even asking that they didn’t need to accompany the Crown Princess.
“His Majesty would never entrust her protection to anyone else. The only ones the Crown Princess can trust are her own shadow guards.”
Chu Xuanhe’s voice was actually quite pleasant, but his words were so mature they were startling.
He was only nineteen, yet he seemed like he was ninety.
Chu Xinlan recalled Murong Chao’s indifferent and detached demeanor toward everything. Honestly, it was quite similar to her nephew’s.
Thinking about how Murong Chao showed no emotional reaction even when she learned that the Bloodline Stone was the shadow guard token, a sudden thought crossed Chu Xinlan’s mind: Murong Chao wouldn’t use the shadow guards.
Chu Xuanhe said nothing more and headed toward the gate.
Chu Xinlan actually wanted her nephew to spend these nine days with Murong Chao to nurture their relationship, but the words died on her lips.
Forget it. Her nephew cultivated the Path of Emotionlessness. It wouldn’t be easy for him to develop feelings for anyone, and he disdained pretending.
Their fate wasn’t something she could decide either. The Red Thread Matchmaker had tied them together the moment Murong Chao was born. Whether they could become a couple was up to them.
Most importantly, her nephew wouldn’t listen to her arrangements anyway. She already had too many things to worry about, so she decided not to interfere in this matter.
After tidying up, she left Fengyun Kingdom and returned to Chiyue before the city gates closed. Arranging the Crown Princess’s coming-of-age ceremony in nine days was no easy task.
This wasn’t just any ordinary girl’s coming-of-age ceremony—it was the Crown Princess’s, and also her welcome ceremony upon returning to Chiyue. A three-day nationwide celebration, on par with the Emperor’s wedding ceremony.
There could be no negligence whatsoever.
This was the Emperor’s way of showing everyone the status the Crown Princess held in her heart.
No one knew that on this day, in an inconspicuous small courtyard in Fengyun Kingdom, from the moment Murong Chao opened her eyes, winds rose and clouds swirled, altering the fates of some people and changing the fortunes of both Fengyun and Chiyue kingdoms.
As night fell, Murong Chao finished her dinner and returned to her room. It was time to deal with Jiang Anya.
However, her current cultivation level was only at the mid Foundation Establishment stage, incomparable to her future self as a genius girl a hundred years later. After all, when Wei Xiangyuan dug out her spiritual roots, she had already reached the great perfection of Core Formation stage. The gap between her cultivation levels in these two lifetimes was not insignificant.
With her current cultivation level, she couldn’t enter the heavily guarded Protector-General’s Estate unnoticed. But she was a Porcelain Refiner.
Murong Chao sat cross-legged on the bed, her hands spread open. The power of her spiritual sense grew stronger between her palms.
In a short while, a vivid Porcelain Person appeared in her hands, still porcelain-white and identical to her.
However, this Porcelain Person was different from the one she had refined for Qi Shujin—it was soft, its limbs moved freely, and it seemed almost alive.
The reason this Porcelain Person was like this was that it hadn’t undergone the final refining process. Precisely because of this, she could use her spiritual sense to control it and make it do whatever she wanted.
“Go.”
As soon as Murong Chao finished speaking, the porcelain person bounced out of her room. Under the cover of night, the small porcelain person scaled walls and leaped over rooftops, arriving outside the Protector-General’s Estate.
The soul aura emanating from the tiny porcelain person was extremely faint, and it was only half the size of her palm. Its small form drew no attention from any hidden guards, allowing it to enter the Protector-General’s Estate with ease.
Murong Chao curled the corner of her lips. Jiang Anya, I’m coming for you.
Although Murong Chao’s eyes were closed, her spiritual sense allowed her to clearly see the situation inside the Protector-General’s Estate through the porcelain person’s eyes.
However, she had never been to the Protector-General’s Estate before and didn’t know which courtyard Jiang Anya lived in. She had only determined the estate’s location earlier that day.
The Jiang family’s title of Protector-General was not earned for nothing. There were actually hidden guards with Core Formation cultivation levels guarding the estate in secret. Only the porcelain person could move about without alerting anyone. If she had come in person, she would have been discovered as soon as she approached the estate, with no chance of entering at all.
Murong Chao’s gaze followed the small porcelain person as it observed the Protector-General’s Estate. After quite some time, she still hadn’t found Jiang Anya’s courtyard, but she did locate the estate’s small kitchen—a place where snacks were prepared for the masters of the estate.
Murong Chao smiled. She had two tasks to accomplish at the general’s estate, and either could be done first.
Using her spiritual sense, she directed the porcelain person to retrieve the snacks Jiang Anya had personally made—the ones she had tampered with—from her own spatial storage.
Only a Porcelain Refiner could control an unfinished porcelain person to such an extent, because at this moment, the porcelain person was her, and she was the porcelain person. As long as she permitted it, the porcelain person could do everything she was capable of.
Of course, this also required the Porcelain Refiner’s spiritual sense to be strong enough to sustain the porcelain person’s actions for an extended period.
Even among those with All-Element Spirit Roots, the strength of spiritual sense varied, which was also the primary factor distinguishing the power of Porcelain Refiners.
The small porcelain person entered the kitchen, where two chefs were still busy.
The process of making snacks was complex and time-consuming, so they had already begun preparing the snacks the masters would eat the next morning.
The small porcelain person hopped onto a table and placed the snacks one by one into different snack boxes.
Jiang Anya had made ten snacks in total. Murong Chao had eaten one laced with the Spirit-Destroying Pill, leaving nine. There weren’t many snacks—it all depended on which member of the Jiang family had the best luck.
After placing the snacks, the small porcelain person left the kitchen and continued searching for Jiang Anya’s courtyard.
A quarter of an hour later, it finally found it.
Jiang Anya’s courtyard was extremely quiet, with not a single servant in sight. Murong Chao sensed that Jiang Anya was inside her bedroom.
The small porcelain person turned its head to look into the night. Murong Chao sensed a presence heading toward Jiang Anya’s courtyard. Although it was well concealed, her spiritual sense was strong enough to detect it.
Murong Chao immediately manipulated the porcelain person to squeeze through the crack in the door into Jiang Anya’s room and hide in a corner.
The porcelain person could come and go without alerting the hidden guards of the Protector-General’s Estate, mainly because the soul aura required to refine it was so weak it was almost negligible, making it undetectable to them. However, she wasn’t sure whether it would be discovered in the presence of a powerful cultivator with high cultivation levels.
Just as the small porcelain person entered and hid, a man in a black robe and a bamboo hat appeared in Jiang Anya’s room.
Jiang Anya breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing the man appear. She had thought he wouldn’t come.
“She’s dead. Now give me the Core Formation Pill,” Jiang Anya said urgently.
The black-robed man snorted coldly, “Jiang Anya, don’t make it sound as if I owe you something. Between you and me, it’s just a transaction. You want her dead even more than I do. You’re the one benefiting from this deal.”