It was one of those chaotic days that seemed unable to settle even after the worst had already happened.
The room still carried the aftermath of the incident like a second skin. Outside, the inn had not recovered from the scream that had shattered dawn. Footsteps hurried across the corridors, voices rose and fell in frightened whispers, and every now and then someone would stop outside the door, only to scurry away again as if afraid that even standing too close might invite misfortune.
Inside, however, the noise felt strangely distant.
Jiang Yunxian, Xing Yue, and Rong Qi remained where they were, as though the room itself had sealed them away from the rest of the world.
The dead body lay in the center of it all.
One strange mercy was that it had not begun to rot.
There was no stench of decay, no sour heaviness that usually followed death. Instead, an ornamented fragrance lingered in the air, delicate and sweet in a way that felt entirely wrong. It was not merely perfume. It was something richer, almost intoxicating, as though countless flowers had been crushed together and left to steep beneath moonlight. The scent curled through the room and wrapped around the senses with an unnatural softness. It was the kind of fragrance that invited one to breathe deeper, the kind that could make a person linger longer than they should.
And that only made it worse.
Because beneath that beautiful scent was a body so ruined that it no longer resembled the person it had once been.
The face was beyond recognition. Flesh had been distorted until it was impossible to tell what had been torn, what had been crushed, and what had simply been erased. It was the sort of sight that would haunt ordinary people for years. For the merchants downstairs, for the inn workers, for the travelers whose greatest concerns had once been bargaining over room prices or slipping extra coins out of the pockets of the ignorant, this was no longer merely a tragedy. It was a nightmare.
Yet for Jiang Yunxian, Xing Yue, and Rong Qi, horror was not what held them there.
If it came to seeing things that were messy, they had seen messier.
Jiang Yunxian only needed to think of the temple to know that much. Compared to what had happened there, compared to the blood, the shadows, and the grotesque truth that had crawled out of that cursed place, this room was merely another knot waiting to be untangled.
So the three of them stood there, not as frightened witnesses, but as people trying to understand what had happened, and more importantly, how.
The morning light filtered weakly through the half-open lattice window. It did not brighten the room. It only made everything appear colder. Dust drifted in thin golden lines, floating lazily above the stillness of death.
Rong Qi had been perched in Jiang Yunxian's lapel again.
After all his earlier insistence about being cautious and keeping watch from a safer distance, he had eventually drifted back there as naturally as a leaf returning to a stream. His small form remained still for a moment, his feather like body curling lightly.
Then he suddenly let out a quiet sound.
"Eh."
Jiang Yunxian glanced at him. Xing Yue also turned. Rong Qi tilted his head, eyes fixed on the corpse.
"What is that around the wrist?"
Both Jiang Yunxian and Xing Yue followed the direction of his gaze, but neither of them could immediately make out what he meant.
It was too small.
Rong Qi made an impatient noise. Before Jiang Yunxian could say anything, he floated out from the lapel and drifted closer. His tiny figure hovered above the body, his feather tip pointing with unusual seriousness.
"This wrist," he said. "Look properly."
That was when they both saw it. Something blue.
It was so slight that it could easily have been overlooked. A narrow loop resting around the dead person's wrist, no wider than a few strands of thread woven together. Yet the moment their eyes settled on it, the world seemed to narrow.
The color was not ordinary blue.
It was the deep, living blue of ocean water just before dusk. When one looked closely, the color did not remain still. It moved.
Not with any obvious motion, but with a subtle flowing quality, as though there was a tide hidden within it. Like currents folding over one another. Like water caught in crystal.
For a fleeting moment, it almost seemed endless.
Jiang Yunxian stared.
The scent in the room, the cold light, the ruined body—all of it faded at the edges. There was only that blue. It was strangely beautiful.
Dangerously so.
He could not tell whether it had been made from some rare mineral from the sea, or whether a craftsman had somehow trapped the image of moving water inside it.
Whatever it was, it had a charm that was almost alive. It did not merely catch the eye. It held it.
"It is pretty," Jiang Yunxian said at last.
That was all. Xing Yue nodded.
"It is," she said quietly.
Her voice carried more thought than admiration. Beautiful. Charming. Alluring.
And precisely because of that, it was the sort of thing that could pull greed out of a human heart as easily as a fisherman pulling a net from water.
Xing Yue had lived in the palace for most of her life. Before becoming what she was now, she had known halls lined with gold, jeweled crowns, tribute from distant lands, treasures that had crossed mountains and oceans to reach imperial hands. She had seen ornaments made to dazzle emperors.
Yet even she could tell that this was not ordinary.
Rong Qi had seen countless accessories in his life as well. Bracelets, anklets, jade pendants, ceremonial clasps, firestones polished to a shine brighter than blood. He had seen treasures from Cloud Peak Sect and from places even farther away.
And yet this was otherworldly.
If someone were to sell it, they could probably sell it for a million taels of gold.
The thought made Rong Qi's expression twist into something wry.
Once, at Cloud Peak Sect, Peng Yang and Luo Zhu had tried to ruin him. Back then, he had been worth less than a rumor.
Now, looking at the bracelet, he could not help thinking how ironic fate was.
From a monarch to a beautiful, expensive feather.
Jiang Yunxian, meanwhile, remained perfectly unimpressed by such thoughts.
To him, nothing in the world was more beautiful than alcohol. Yes, this bracelet was beautiful. He could admit that much. But a warm cup of good liquor on a cold night still held more poetry.
His gaze sharpened.
But this was not about beauty. Who had dropped this here? That was the question.
The Hu guests were the first possibility that came to mind.
But why would they leave something like this behind?
It was too precious. Too rare. Too expensive.
No one abandoned an object like this by accident.
Jiang Yunxian crouched slightly, his eyes moving from the bracelet to the ruined corpse and then around the room.
He had learned enough from ugly situations like this to know that crimes usually followed a simple pattern.
There were three roles. The instigator. The doer. And the receiver.
The instigator planned. The doer carried out the act. And the receiver was Baozai—the one who ultimately profited, directly or indirectly, from whatever blood had been spilled.
Simple. At least in theory.
But if the Hu guests were involved, then were they working alone?
If they were, did that mean they were both instigator and doer?
It could make sense. And yet it also did not.
His thoughts folded over themselves.
There was logic in it. There was also none.
Sometimes crimes were neat. Sometimes they were absurd. Sometimes the truth was so tangled that any explanation sounded reasonable until one tugged at it hard enough.
Jiang Yunxian exhaled slowly.
If he could, he would question every person in the inn.
The owner first. Then the workers. Then the guests. He would pull every thread until something broke.
But he could not.
Not now.
The inn below was full of people whose nerves were stretched thin. The cleaners were pale. The workers looked as though they might collapse if anyone raised their voice. The guests were already frightened enough to see ghosts in shadows.
If he went around forcing questions into people who had just seen this, he might not get answers at all.
He might only tear open fresh fear.
And fear had a way of distorting memory until truth became useless. The room fell silent again.
Only the faint sweetness of that unnatural fragrance remained.
Jiang Yunxian looked once more at the blue bracelet.
Morning light touched it, and for the briefest moment it seemed to ripple like a piece of sea caught in death.
Something about it felt wrong. Not merely suspicious. Wrong.
As though it did not belong in this room.
As though it had been left there not by accident, but as a quiet, deliberate thing.
A trace.
Or perhaps a warning.
___
At first, Xing Yue's sneeze sounded harmless.
A small, sudden sound that barely disturbed the oppressive stillness of the room.
She lifted a hand to her nose, frowned faintly, and blinked as though dust had simply drifted too close.
Then she sneezed again.
And again.
The third time was sharper, enough to make her shoulders tense. Her breathing changed. It was not dramatic yet, but Jiang Yunxian noticed it immediately. He had spent too long around strange places, strange deaths, and stranger poisons not to notice when something ordinary stopped being ordinary.
Xing Yue pressed the back of her wrist lightly against her nose, but the sneezing only worsened. Her eyes watered. A faint flush rose across her pale face.
Rong Qi, who had been hovering near the corpse, suddenly jerked backward and let out a startled sound.
Then he sneezed too.
Unlike Xing Yue's, his was small and almost absurdly delicate, but the second one came so quickly after the first that even he looked offended by it.
Jiang Yunxian's expression darkened.
The fragrance.
He had been half-aware of it before, the strange sweetness woven through the room like silk. Now, with the two of them reacting at nearly the same moment, the thought snapped into place.
"This is bad," he said immediately, his voice low but firm. "We need to get out. Now."
Neither Xing Yue nor Rong Qi argued.
That alone said enough. The three of them left at once.
The moment they stepped out into the corridor, the air felt different, though only slightly. The scent still clung to their clothes, to their hair, to the back of the throat, but at least it no longer pressed against them from every side.
They moved quickly through the brothel.
The place had dissolved into a feverish chaos. Servants hurried with pale faces, whispering to one another in frightened bursts. Guests who had not yet fled stood gathered in uneasy knots, eyes darting toward the upper floor as though expecting another scream at any moment.
No one stopped Jiang Yunxian.
No one even really looked at them. Fear had turned everyone inward. Within minutes, they were outside.
The morning had fully broken by then.
Sunlight spilled across the street in long bands of gold, warming tiled roofs and wooden eaves. Vendors were setting up their stalls, though more than a few were already abandoning their work to exchange rumors. A butcher with half his knives still laid out was leaning across the street to question a noodle seller. A woman carrying fresh vegetables had stopped in the middle of the road just to listen.
The whole district was alive with the restless pulse of gossip.
And somehow, despite all of it, the open air felt almost clean.
Jiang Yunxian took a deeper breath and felt the tightness in his chest ease just slightly.
Only then did he realize how heavy that fragrance had truly been. They walked for some time without speaking.
The streets of the morning town stretched around them in their usual familiar life. The scent of frying dough drifted from one corner. Steam rose from bamboo baskets. Somewhere a child laughed, entirely untouched by whatever darkness had unfolded only streets away.
At last they settled at a tea house.
It stood at the edge of a narrower lane, its wooden sign creaking gently in the faint breeze. The place was crowded, though not with the easy leisure of ordinary mornings. Every table was alive with murmurs.
The incident had reached here already.
Of course it had.
Tea houses were temples of news.
They took a table near an open window where sunlight slanted across the polished wood. A server came and left tea before them, though Jiang Yunxian barely glanced at it.
He stared at the pale liquid in the pot with a faint, almost offended dissatisfaction.
Tea.
Of all places.
Rong Qi had returned to his usual place in Jiang Yunxian's lapel, his small feathered body tucked there with deceptive comfort. Only his golden hue remained sharp and alert.
He tilted his head.
"What do you think that fragrance was all about?"
Jiang Yunxian rested one arm on the table.
"You probably were not affected much," he began, his voice quieter now, made thoughtful by distance from the corpse. "You are an immortal. And a phoenix. Most toxins would have a difficult time settling into your body."
Rong Qi puffed slightly, as though pleased by the reminder, though he said nothing.
Jiang Yunxian continued.
"But I think I know what was wrong." Xing Yue turned toward him.
His gaze drifted briefly to the tea house around them. Men at nearby tables were leaning in close, speaking in hushed excitement. One insisted he had heard the dead woman had been murdered by a jealous lover. Another claimed a demon had visited the brothel in the night. None of them knew anything.
And yet somehow, their idle speculation only sharpened his thoughts.
"That fragrance," Jiang Yunxian said slowly, "was not just perfume. It should be able to affect humans."
Xing Yue's brows drew together. "You mean… poison?"
"I do."
He paused, searching for the cleanest way to lay out the thought.
"I think that scent was what enhanced whatever happened last night. It did not simply perfume the room. It fed something. Heightened something. If we had remained in there longer, I am almost certain it would have begun to take form inside the body."
Rong Qi's skin blared. "Take form?"
Jiang Yunxian nodded.
"Yes. Settle into the flesh. Root itself. If my guess is correct…" He exhaled quietly.
"Then it may be Soul-Eating Poison."
The words seemed to cool the air around the table.
Even the ordinary clatter of cups from nearby tables suddenly felt distant.
"Soul-Eating Poison?" Xing Yue repeated, her voice lower.
Jiang Yunxian gave a slight nod.
"The more the victim indulges, the more active the poison becomes. Excitement. Heightened pulse. Desire. Movement. It feeds on those things."
He stopped there for half a heartbeat, then added with the faintest trace of awkward bluntness:
"That is why we did not end up like that woman. We were not… engaged in that kind of activity."
Rong Qi made a strange choking sound that might have been laughter.
Xing Yue looked away for a brief second, though she said nothing.
And then— The blue bracelet moved.
There had been no warning.
One moment it was resting in Xing Yue's palm.The next, it rose. All three of them froze.
The bracelet lifted from her hand as lightly as a strand of smoke. It floated above the table, blue light shimmering faintly along its surface. In the daylight of the tea house, it looked even stranger than before. The deep ocean color inside it was moving again, not wildly, but with quiet currents that folded endlessly into themselves.
For a moment, every sound in Jiang Yunxian's ears seemed to dull.
The bracelet turned. Then held still. It was pointing.
"What…" Xing Yue breathed.
Jiang Yunxian rose slightly in his seat.
Rong Qi flew out from his lapel, hovering closer with obvious fascination.
"I think," Jiang Yunxian said slowly, "it is trying to show us something."
"Perhaps a direction," Xing Yue murmured.
They followed its line.
It was pointing East. Not vaguely. Not uncertainly.
East.
Rong Qi drifted closer until his tiny feathered body nearly touched it. He reached out with a cautious poke, then immediately withdrew.
"What is this thing?"
His voice carried far less mockery now.
Xing Yue kept staring at it.
"I think…" she said, speaking more to herself than to them, "it looks like it is trying to tell us something."
"Something?" Rong Qi repeated.
"Yes," Xing Yue said, still watching the slow living blue inside the bracelet. "Something. A clue. Information. Maybe… a place."
Jiang Yunxian heard them. But only faintly.
His attention had drifted somewhere else entirely. He looked down at the steaming cup before him.
Tea.
Why in heaven's name had they come to a tea house? At another time, he might have laughed at himself. There was a dead body. A poison that could eat souls. A mysterious bracelet floating in broad daylight.
And yet what truly irritated him at that exact moment was the simple fact that there was tea in front of him instead of wine.
Damn it.
He knew perfectly well that it was irrational.
He was not a fool. He knew emotions did not ask permission before turning absurd. Still, the irritation sat there stubbornly, sharp as a pebble in his shoe.
Maybe it was the lingering scent.
Maybe some trace of the poison still clung to his senses. Or maybe it was simply one of those mornings when the world tilted just enough to make even a reasonable man feel unreasonable.
But Jiang Yunxian knew one thing about himself. He knew when his mood shifted.
He knew the exact moment his thoughts stopped flowing cleanly and began dragging through invisible mud.
And more importantly, he knew that was the moment he had to be careful. His fingers curled loosely around the edge of the table.
The bracelet still hovered in the air, unwavering, pointing east like a silent finger.
His instincts told him to follow it. His mind told him to think first.
And somewhere beneath both, that strange irrational agitation kept circling, refusing to let him settle. The tea house hummed around them.
Voices rose. Cups clinked.
The scent of boiled leaves drifted through the sunlight.
And at the center of it all, suspended above a simple wooden table, the blue bracelet gleamed like a captured fragment of sea, quietly pointing them toward whatever waited in the east.