“Princess!”
Rulan was already moving before the second call came.
Her mind, trained by ten years of unpredictable violence, bypassed surprise entirely.
She swept past the breakfast table, her cloak billowing behind her as she stepped out of her bedchamber and into the primary corridor.
Lian’er hurried after her, her hands nervously clutching her clothes, her face pale with rising dread.
In the hallway, two junior guards were rushing toward the outer courtyard, their hands resting on their sword hilts, their faces flushed and beaded with cold sweat.
“What happened?” Rulan asked, her voice cutting through the morning air with flat, unyielding authority.
Neither answered immediately.
They froze mid-stride, looking at her with wide, hesitant eyes, exchanging a rapid, uncertain glance under the pale light of the paper lanterns.
That brief silence was enough to make Rulan stop dead in her tracks.
Their hesitation told her enough.
Whatever had happened, it was unexpected—and the guards clearly had no idea how to contain it.
The younger guard looked nervously toward the courtyard before finally finding his voice.
“Your Highness… there has been an incident at the stables.”
Rulan’s eyes narrowed.
“What kind of incident?”
“The horses,” the young guard swallowed hard, his throat working violently as the color drained completely from his face.
“They are dead.”
Rulan didn’t wait for a detailed briefing.
She set off toward the lower terrace, ignoring Lian’er’s anxious murmurs and the junior guards who scrambled to fall into step behind her.
As she rounded the corner of the main scripture hall, the lower courtyard was already descending into low, panicked chaos.
Dozens of temple servants stood clustered near the carved wooden railings, whispering frantically.
Armored soldiers were actively pushing curious onlookers back with the shafts of their spears, creating a wide, tense perimeter around the long, tile-roofed stable complex.
Near the stone archway, a young noblewoman was weeping quietly into her silk handkerchief, flanked by two frantic elderly matriarchs demanding immediate answers from a stone-faced sergeant.
Rulan bypassed the crowd, her steps grounded and deliberate.
Her robes swept past the trembling servants as she stepped past the guard line and looked into the main stable yard.
Her instincts, honed by years of scanning battlefields for anomaly signatures, kicked in instantly.
There are too many bodies.
This was not a case of two or three delicate animals falling ill from bad fodder or contaminated local spring water.
The broad cobblestone aisle between the wooden stalls was strewn with massive, dark shapes.
Riding horses, carriage teams, and military mounts lay collapsed in the stalls, their bodies stiff and motionless.
Almost every single wooden stall was occupied by a lifeless form.
Heavy, frantic footfalls echoed against the stone pavers as General Meng strode into the yard.
His silver armor caught the pale morning light, his heavy black cloak swishing behind him, his right hand resting firmly on the pommel of his drawn saber.
His face had hardened into a grim, unreadable mask.
He didn’t yell. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
He didn’t lose his composure.
He walked directly up to the head stablemaster, who was kneeling on the cold dirt, shaking violently with his hands pressed against his face.
“How many?” General Meng asked, his deep voice carrying a cold, quiet weight that silenced the surrounding chatter instantly.
The stablemaster looked up, his lips trembling, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on his cheeks.
“Twenty-seven confirmed, General. We… we are still checking the outer mountain stalls near the grain shed.”
General Meng’s jaw set into a rigid iron line.
“How?”
“Poison, it seems. Their morning mash was poisoned, sir.” the stablemaster stammered, pointing a shaking finger toward the large wooden feeding troughs running along the central aisle.
“Fast-acting. They… they collapsed within minutes of the morning feed. None of them even made it to the water troughs.”
A senior lieutenant stepped forward, his expression grave.
“The imperial carriage horses as well?”
“All of them,” the stablemaster sobbed out, wringing his hands.
“The four matched bays for the Fourth Princess’s carriage… dead in their stalls.”
A low, horrified gasp rippled through the gathering crowd of noble attendants standing behind the guard line.
“The visiting nobles’ horses too?” a servant called out, his voice cracking with sudden, rising panic.
“My lord’s four thoroughbreds?”
“Every horse in the main stables,” the lieutenant confirmed grimly.
“Draft animals, riding horses, carriage teams. None were spared.”
The realization spread through the crowd.
The horses weren’t just the imperial carriage teams.
Almost every horse in the temple had been killed.
Someone hadn’t come for one carriage.
They had crippled the entire mountain’s transport.
Then, a junior guard standing near the paddock gate raised a hesitant, uncertain voice.
“General… what about your horse?”
General Meng turned his head slightly toward the open courtyard.
Standing tethered near the stone mounting block beside the main guard pavilion was General Meng’s personal warhorse—a massive, dark-bay stallion with broad shoulders and a scarred flank.
The stallion was stamping its hoof against the cobblestones, tossing its dark mane, perfectly healthy and completely untouched.
Rulan glanced from the dead horses to General Meng’s warhorse.
It was alive.
Of course it was.
General Meng had kept his personal mount near his own quarters rather than in the communal stable.
Whoever had poisoned the feed hadn’t needed to hunt down every horse on the mountain.
It was efficient.
It was calculated.
It required zero risk of hunting down isolated mounts.
General Meng turned back to his lieutenants, his voice dropping into a series of rapid commands that left no room for hesitation or debate.
“Seal the stables immediately. No one enters. No one touches the bodies. Station guards at every archway.”
He turned to another lieutenant.
“Lock down all three mountain gates. No one leaves the temple grounds.”
His gaze moved toward the stablemaster.
“Gather everyone who had access to the grain stores. Keep them under guard. Question them later.”
“Inspect the remaining food and water supplies. Nothing is to be consumed until it has been tested.”
The guards moved quickly, pushing the shocked, murmuring crowd of nobles and servants back toward the inner pavilions.
Amid the sudden, chaotic movement, a senior court official, his face pale with rising panic, stepped toward General Meng, his hands trembling within his sleeves.
“General… if the carriages cannot move and the horses are dead…” the official swallowed hard, looking out toward the steep, winding mountain road stretching down into the mist.
“General… how are we supposed to leave?”
General Meng didn’t look at the official.
His eyes remained fixed on the winding, isolated mountain path cutting through the dark pine trees below.
“We aren’t.”
The declaration hung in the cold morning air, heavy and absolute.
Rulan stood motionless near the red-painted pillar of the terrace, watching the soldiers push the frantic nobles back toward their quarters.
Rulan watched the soldiers push the nobles back toward their quarters.
No horses.
No carriages.
Three sealed mountain gates.
An entire collection of nobles, officials, servants, and one imperial princess was now stranded on the mountain.
Whoever had planned this had turned White Cloud Temple into a sealed compound full of people who suddenly had nowhere to go.
She looked past the chaotic courtyard, her eyes turning toward the dark, quiet ridge of the eastern woods where Master Lu Zhen’s medicinal garden lay hidden.
The immediate departure was canceled.
The carriages were useless.
General Meng’s lockdown was absolute, and no one was going anywhere for days.
A slow, unreadable expression crossed Rulan’s face as she pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders.
The escape route was gone.
Rulan’s gaze settled on the eastern ridge.
But the mountain had just bought her time.
She turned on her heel, leaving the panic of the lower stables behind, and walked back toward her pavilion.