At this moment, time was frozen into amber.
The howling wind and snow, the roars of knights, the crackling of flames—everything faded into distant background noise.
In Shen Luolin’s entire world, only two points remained.
One was the tip of the sword pressed against his throat, its cold gleam tempered with runes.
The other was the silver figure pinned firmly into the muddy slush under the snowy sky, struggling to lift her head.
Aila’s sword was steady, without a single tremor, yet that blade—capable of taking a life in an instant—stopped just outside his skin, not advancing an inch.
She was waiting for an explanation.
Or rather, she was waiting for a reason that would allow her to convince herself.
Shen Luolin’s brain worked frantically within a state of extreme calm. Countless dead ends flashed before his eyes, only to be rejected instantly.
The assassination had failed, his identity was exposed, and Moyin had been captured.
The game was lost.
But the match was not over yet.
As long as the pieces remained, there was still a chance to flip the board.
“Aila, put the sword down.”
His voice pierced through the wind and snow, calm and without a ripple of emotion, as if everything before him was merely a harmless exercise.
“The camp was attacked. As an officer, I came to protect His Majesty. Is there a problem with that?”
He forcibly twisted his actions into a matter of duty.
Aila’s face, usually covered in frost, now showed a flicker of nearly cruel mockery.
The sword tip advanced another fraction.
The cold sensation pierced his skin, and a thin line of warm blood trickled down his neck.
“Protection?” She suddenly let out a soft laugh. “Wearing the lowliest infantry armor, sneaking around like a rat in a gutter to avoid all the sentries… Luolin, is this how you ‘protect’ His Majesty?”
“Don’t use such words to insult me, or yourself.”
Every word was like a heavy hammer, smashing the final layer of disguise Shen Luolin had just built.
How did she know my route?
At that moment, a detail Shen Luolin had overlooked exploded in his mind like a flash of lightning.
Earlier in the tent, when Aila was adjusting his collar, her cool fingertips had brushed against his shoulder, bringing a fleeting metallic sensation.
Was it then?
A chill rushed from the soles of his feet to the top of his head—not the anger of being exposed, but the coldness of being completely outmaneuvered.
She hadn’t stumbled upon him by chance; she had been monitoring him from the very beginning!
His self-righteous performance and the illusions he had painstakingly created were, in her eyes, nothing more than a play with a pre-written script.
In the face of absolute physical evidence, any words were hollow and powerless.
“Captain! Major!”
The Knight Commander rushed over out of breath with several personal guards. Seeing the scene before him, shock was written all over his face.
However, he cared more about the credit that was within his grasp, reporting loudly: “We have captured the Dragonborn remnant!”
The Knight Commander sneered, greed and cruelty flickering in his eyes.
To show off his achievement, he hurriedly waved his hand, and two knights roughly dragged Moyin up from the snow.
“Take her down! Break her limbs first to strip her of her ability to resist! Don’t let her die; His Majesty still needs her to open the Dragon Temple! It will allow the Empire’s glory to continue for another five hundred years!”
“Yes, sir!”
Moyin was forced to tilt her head back, the blood at the corner of her mouth exceptionally piercing against her pale face.
She did not struggle or cry out. She only used those silver eyes to stare—to stare fixedly—at Shen Luolin.
There was no longer any affection, no reliance, and not even a hint of her former innocence.
There were only the ashes left after betrayal had burned everything away.
Time was running out.
Shen Luolin knew that saying anything now would be useless.
Since there was no room left for words to turn things around, he would use action to carve out a path.
Only through flesh and pain could he secure a slim chance of survival for Moyin.
At the critical moment, Shen Luolin made a move that caught everyone—including Aila—off guard.
Ignoring the sword Aila held to his throat, Shen Luolin suddenly took a step forward!
Squelch—
The sword tip pierced his neck without obstruction, creating a deeper gash.
Aila’s pupils shrank, and she instinctively tried to withdraw the sword, but Shen Luolin was faster.
With an absolutely dominant posture, he “broke free” from her blade!
Blood stained his front, but he didn’t care.
Under everyone’s suspicious gaze, he walked toward the two knights who were about to strike Moyin, his voice cold enough to freeze the snow.
“Let her go.”
Undoubtedly, Shen Luolin’s action was effective.
The two knights were intimidated by the terrifying aura radiating from him, their movements freezing. Everyone present waited for his next move.
Though he had momentarily stabilized the situation, it was only temporary.
Fortunately, Shen Luolin’s actions were not without a plan.
His gaze suddenly became sharp as he spoke to the bewildered Knight Commander and the suspicious Aila: “A key needs to be polished. Doing this will only break it prematurely.”
Shen Luolin took another step forward, ignoring the deepening sting in his neck, his voice as cold as iron: “Let me do it. I know how to make her lose all resistance and turn her into a truly ‘obedient’ key that His Majesty desires.”
He reached back and pulled out a standard-issue longsword he had pilfered from the armory.
Holding the sword, he walked step by step toward the tightly restrained Moyin.
The snow beneath his feet let out a dull groan. Every step felt like he was treading on his own scalding heart.
Rhinecite’s calm yet sorrowful face before death overlapped with Moyin’s small face—stained with blood and filled with desolation.
Shattering the Dragon Heart; seeking life within death.
Rhinecite had once said this was the most perilous forbidden technique of the Dragonborn race. Scarcely one in a hundred survives; it cannot be endured without great willpower and great hatred.
This was his last and only gamble.
He gambled that she could survive.
He gambled that the light could reignite in those silver eyes.
Moyin looked at him. She looked at this “Master” she had once fully trusted, at this enemy of her clan she had just confirmed, as he approached her with the very sword-wielding hand that had taught her how to fight.
The last trace of light in her eyes finally flickered out completely.
It was just as well.
Dying by your hand is cleaner than dying by the hands of those scumbags.
She slowly closed her eyes. Crystal-like snow clung to her long eyelashes, resembling frozen tears, as she waited for that belated, inevitable liberation.
At the moment her eyelids closed, her cracked lips parted slightly, and a faint breath of sound vanished into the wind.
“Mas…”
Shen Luolin heard that voice.
What exploded in his mind was not Rhinecite’s final entrustment, but the image from the hut in the falling snow—her face turning red as she helped wash his body and looked at his scars, stubbornly turning away because she didn’t want him to see her cry.
[“It’s a gift for you. You’re not allowed to think it’s ugly.”]
The next second, Shen Luolin’s sword fell.
There was no sound of wind; the world was filled with a ringing in his ears.
He only heard a dull and clear “thwack”—the sound of a sharp blade piercing through flesh and bone.
The cold longsword, with unerring precision, drove through the center of her slender back!
There was no scream.
Moyin’s body only jerked violently. That faint tremor traveled through the hilt of the sword and into Shen Luolin’s palm with absolute clarity.
The hand he used to grip the sword tightened imperceptibly at that moment, his knuckles turning a haunting white from the excessive force.
A faint wisp of silver dragon flame escaped from the wound, flickering in the cold air before being completely extinguished.
The power within her, the pride and violence belonging to the Dragonborn, was completely severed by this single strike.
Her entire body slumped forward. If not for the knights holding her up, she would have collapsed onto the ground.
She wasn’t dead.
But in the eyes that opened once more, there was no despair and no questioning. There was only a dead silence colder than the ten-thousand-year permafrost of the North.
And hate.
Shen Luolin could clearly read the final message she sent his way.
Expressionless, he slowly withdrew the longsword.
A drop of blood sliding from his neck happened to fall into his empty palm after he pulled the sword out, mixing with Moyin’s blood.
The warm blood splashed onto the back of his hand, so hot it made his finger bones ache.
He turned to face Aila and the Knight Commander’s stunned faces, speaking in a tone devoid of emotion, like he was explaining military tactics:
“I destroyed her Dragon Heart. The Dragon Heart is the source of a Dragonborn’s power. Now, she is just a defenseless, ordinary girl. She poses no further threat to the Empire.”
Aila looked at the blood continuously seeping from Shen Luolin’s neck, then at the unconscious Moyin who had completely lost her power. The suspicion and killing intent in her eyes finally faded slowly, turning into a deeper, unspeakable complexity.
Shen Luolin’s “self-mutilation” and his “disposal” of Moyin—which could only be described as cruel—perfectly portrayed the image of a loyal officer eager to prove his innocence after being wronged.
Even if His Majesty the Emperor were here personally, he wouldn’t be able to find any fault.
She slowly lowered her shortsword and turned toward the restrained Moyin.
“Take her away and lock her in the solitary confinement cell,” she said, her voice returning to its usual coldness. “Keep her under strict guard. No one is allowed to visit without my orders.”
These words were meant for the surrounding Knight Corps and for Shen Luolin.
Amidst the wind and snow, Aila walked past Shen Luolin. She stopped and whispered in his ear with a voice only the two of them could hear:
“Luolin, I ‘believe’ you this once.”
“This is the last time. If there is ever another… accident,” she cast a meaningful glance at the gruesome wound on his neck, “my sword won’t stop again.”
The longsword that had pierced Moyin’s body was left discarded in the snow. The congealed blood on the blade was the ironclad proof of his “loyalty.”
And the price of that loyalty was a young girl’s shattered world and a soul he had personally pushed into a deeper, colder ice cave.