Shortly after Yelü Lie stormed out of the villa in a fury, Dong Yin quietly pushed open the door to the chieftain’s room. She gasped at the sight of the devastation within, then cried out upon seeing Jun Qiluo unconscious on the bed, her wrists bound and bleeding.
"Miss! Miss..."
She hurriedly grabbed a pair of scissors and cut through the fabric binding Jun Qiluo’s wrists. The pain brought Jun Qiluo back to consciousness.
"Dong Yin... I hate him!" she murmured.
Dong Yin steadied her by the shoulders, her eyes filled with resolve.
"Miss! Change into Han clothing and escape! Once you reach Youzhou and enter Han territory, you’ll be safe. You can go home, and you can give birth to your child in peace..." She opened a bundle she had brought with her, revealing several plain cloth garments and a few gold ingots.
"Dong Yin?" Jun Qiluo looked at her in astonishment.
Dong Yin quickly began helping her change clothes, tears streaming down her face. "You are a good person, and you don’t deserve this! There are people who want to kill you, people who want to hurt you. And the young lord, he treats you this way—I can’t stand it any longer. I’ve drugged the guards outside, so you must flee now! Go as far as you can."
Where could she go? How could she face her family again?
But one thing was certain: she never wanted to see him again! Not even in death! Gripping Dong Yin’s hand, she spoke sincerely, "Thank you, Dong Yin. I will repay your kindness in my next life!"
"Don’t say that! Come, Miss, there’s a horse waiting at the back gate!" Dong Yin guided Jun Qiluo to the back door.
As Jun Qiluo mounted the horse, she took one last deep look at the villa.
Goodbye to everything!
Relying on her memory, she spurred the horse eastward.
Dong Yin watched her figure disappear into the night before closing the door. She clasped her hands together and looked up at the sky. She knew she was doing the right thing, but why did she feel a shadow of foreboding in her heart? She couldn’t bring herself to kill her mistress, but if Miss returned to the tribe, she would surely be assassinated by others. And after the young lord took a wife, he would only treat Miss even worse! Truly, she couldn’t bear to see someone else suffer the same fate as herself.
She ran back to the kitchen, looked at the drugged cook, and then scooped a ladle of water from a bucket to drink herself. She quickly fell unconscious as well. Everyone in the villa had been drugged, so the young lord’s first thought upon returning would be that Miss had been abducted. He would have no idea it was a setup. This would mislead him, and he wouldn’t know that Miss had escaped south on her own. She would be safe, wouldn’t she?
Miss, I hope you can return home safely...
What Dong Yin didn’t know was that after she closed the back door, a gray horse that had been waiting in the woods galloped out, following the direction Jun Qiluo had taken. On its back was a red-haired man with a large knife strapped to his side, grinning wickedly, his eyes locked on the prey he had long desired. In his mind, he was already gloating over what it would be like to taste this woman!
* * *
Yelü Lie raced back to the villa, immediately sensing something was wrong. The place was eerily silent, not even a gatekeeper in sight; the twelve riders and the clan soldiers were camping outside the Imperial City, but there should still have been at least twenty servants and Duo Luo Qi guarding the villa! He kicked open the gate and instantly saw the unconscious gatekeepers, checked their breathing, and confirmed that they had been drugged! He dashed toward the western wing, no longer stopping to check on the other fallen servants along the way. Qiluo! She was the only thing on his mind at that moment!
Inside the room, besides the mess he had created, there were only bloodstained strips of cloth scattered on the bed.
She had been abducted! But by whom? Why was there blood on the fabric? Yelü Lie felt his heart nearly shatter with dread.
No! It couldn’t be! Whoever took her wouldn’t have been so cruel as to sever her hands, and there wasn’t enough blood on the bed to suggest such a thing...
Though fury raged within him, he wasted no time in acting. Even in moments of extreme anger, he could maintain a clear head. He would hold on to his anger until he found whoever had kidnapped Qiluo! Thankfully, the snow had stopped; otherwise, tracking someone would have been even harder.
Unsurprisingly, he found hoofprints in the snow at the back gate. He knelt to examine them and noticed they were very light—there was only one set of prints, so light that it seemed as if the horse wasn’t carrying a rider at all.
Qiluo had escaped on her own?
He shifted his gaze, temporarily putting aside his doubts; about fifty feet away, he noticed the hoofprints of another horse. Clearly, someone had been following her—or perhaps they had come to meet her? And it was a man!
Yelü Lie’s eyes turned an icy blue, his face shifting from rage to a terrifying calm. A storm was brewing beneath the placid surface.
"No matter who you are, you’ve reignited my desire to wield a blade!" His voice was as cold as frost, chilling to the bone. He pulled a curved sword from his saddlebag and leapt onto his horse.
The black stallion shot off like an arrow, disappearing in an instant, following the trail of hoofprints.
* * *
"Come with me quietly, little beauty!"
Keli Han leered as he slowly advanced toward Jun Qiluo. In the moonlight, the scar on his face twisted with his sneer, making him even more grotesque.
Jun Qiluo stared at him without fear; behind her lay a deep abyss, a fall into which would leave her body shattered, with not even a single piece of flesh intact. If someone were to pass by the bottom of the valley in the future, they wouldn’t even recognize that the remains belonged to a member of the Jun family.
This was the place she had intended to come to all along, though Keli Han thought she had taken a wrong turn. He stood blocking her retreat, approaching with the confidence of a hunter who believed his prey had nowhere to run. He relished his advantage, taking his time before seizing her.
"Do you know how I’ll cherish you? Once I’ve had my fill of you, I’ll carve up your face, chop off your delicate fingers one by one, and then I’ll—"
He rambled on about the cruel tortures he imagined, the bloodthirsty gleam in his eyes revealing the horrors he was about to inflict.
Jun Qiluo gently patted the horse beside her, sending it away on its own; then, she walked toward the cliff's edge.
"Hey! You... you don’t have the guts, stop pretending!" Keli Han called out nervously, not believing she would actually jump.
Though there was a stream below, the hundreds of feet of sharp rocks protruding from the cliff would pierce her body before she ever reached the water.
Jun Qiluo smiled faintly, her beauty momentarily stunning Keli Han.
"Do you think I came here by accident? Do you think I don’t know this is the way to Death Cliff?"
"You..."
Suddenly, her gaze shifted beyond Keli Han, toward the sound of urgent hoofbeats approaching from the woods.
It’s him! She knew it was him! Only he could ride with such decisive, rapid urgency!
She smiled again, and as Yelü Lie burst out of the woods and saw her face, she gave him one last look, telling him with her eyes: she hated him!
Then she leaped off the cliff...
So quickly that Keli Han didn’t even have time to grab her!
"No!" Yelü Lie screamed in terror! How could she do this to him? How could she say goodbye in such a way? How could she be so cruel as to treat him like this? After he had fallen so deeply in love with her, her final act of revenge was to die before his eyes, without even giving him a chance to stop her!
Seeing Yelü Lie’s reaction, Keli Han panicked and tried to flee, but before he could take a step, he felt a cold slash across his neck. In the next instant, he saw the ground rushing up to meet him as his vision lowered, and then he saw his headless body fall apart in pieces! In that fleeting moment, he didn’t even have time to comprehend his death before he saw his body dismembered, his skin shredded by the blade!
What death could be more terrifying than this? His posthumous face was frozen in an expression of wide-eyed fear and despair...
"Qiluo! Qiluo..." Yelü Lie knelt at the edge of the cliff, straining to see below: in the darkness, there was nothing to be seen!
She’s dead? She’s dead? How could she be so heartless as to take revenge on him in this way? He had given her everything, yet she still repaid him with hatred, choosing death to show her true feelings.
No! She couldn’t escape him, not even in death! If she went to the Yellow Springs, he would follow her there! If her soul went to the heavens, he would chase her to the heavens! Life after life, in life and in death, she would be his! As long as he didn’t allow it, she would never escape him! Whether in the highest heavens or the deepest underworld, nothing could stop him!
In his crazed determination to follow her to the underworld and reclaim his woman, he forgot everything around him. So, when he stood up to leap after her, the heavy blow to the back of his neck caught him completely off guard, and he fell unconscious.
Shortly after the young lord stormed out, Dahe Jiyao carefully placed him into the carriage and instructed the twelve riders, "Return to the Imperial City and inform the Emperor immediately!"
"Yes, sir!"
Fortunately, Dahe Jiyao had something urgent to report to the young lord, which brought him to the villa; otherwise, it might have been too late this time!
Miss Jun—has she really died?
Such a strong-willed woman… What will the young lord do now?
Dahe Jiyao sighed deeply as he looked up at the sky.
Miss Jun, you’re ruthless! Is destroying everything the way you express your love?
Sigh! What does it mean now that you’re separated by life and death? It only brings pain to your loved ones and satisfaction to your enemies! There’s no point dwelling on it.
For now, taking care of the young lord is the top priority.
Jun Qiluo—is she really gone?
* * *
"Mother, is she dead?" a childish, clear voice asked, full of curiosity and confusion.
"No, now be quiet and go practice your writing!" another youthful, lively voice responded, its tone so sweet that one might want to see if the owner’s appearance was as charming as her voice.
In a warm room, there were two women and a man. One of the women was none other than Jun Qiluo, who had leaped off Death Cliff.
At the moment, she lay on the bed, her face as pale as paper; she had been unconscious for over ten days, remaining in a deep sleep.
The other two—a man and a woman—were the pair of sparrows who had been chattering away in the room since dawn! The man was actually a boy, about six or seven years old, with a handsome and endearing face. His bright black eyes sparkled with mischief, as sharp as they were clever! And by coincidence, the woman, a beautiful lady of about twenty-three or twenty-four, had the same large eyes as the boy.
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