Many young men secretly admired her—they just didn’t dare admit it.
And at least… no one had ever lost their head because of her.
Su Lingxi frowned. She didn’t like looking at the faces of the Ministers in court, but even if she didn’t try, she could recall them. Nothing about the Wei family seemed amiss.
She glanced at Xiliu, who shook her head.
Mountain spirits and river ghosts usually dwell far from human settlements.
Their essence is fragile, easy to destroy. Here in the capital, under the emperor’s feet, if they came, they’d vanish.
Even with special circumstances, once the city’s protective arrays were activated, they’d be obliterated instantly.
A demon?
It was still unclear whether it was something unclean… or someone unclean.
Su Lingxi rested her elbow on the armrest…
Su Lingxi glanced at him, rose from her chair, and brushed past him like a drifting cloud.
The next moment, Wei Shixian felt slender yet powerful fingers touch his shoulders and upper back—just a brief, dragonfly-like contact that vanished immediately.
Seeing he had no idea what to do, Su Lingxi made the decision for him:
“These are demon-suppressing talismans from the Bureau. I’ve made some modifications—they’re enough to handle ordinary evil entities.”
“Let’s go.”
She walked ahead and said, “I’ll give you a ride back. I also want to take a look at the Minister’s residence.”
Wei Shixian let out a long breath, as if he’d found an anchor, and followed her outside.
The Minister’s residence wasn’t far from the Imperial Preceptor’s manor, nor from the Demon Suppression Bureau.
Each was separated by about three streets.
At the third watch of the night, silence hung heavy.
Dim light flickered, shadows stretched thin and long.
In the northern courtyard of the Bureau, two intertwined steel trees silently grew taller and longer—like bamboo shoots beneath layers of thick earth, ready to burst forth after a few spring thunders and rains, having drawn in some mysterious force, surging wildly with unrestrained growth.
Encased in a barrier, they were invisible to the ordinary eye.
Their branches spread outward as their trunks rose like coiled dragons, writhing and surging.
Leaves continuously sprouted, brushing against newly formed branches, making a cold metallic sound.
Amid these sounds, more than a dozen silver sword shields formed of sword light descended rather roughly over the people lying sprawled across the trees.
Several pairs of eyes snapped open alertly; others, still unaware, simply rolled over in their sleep.
Ye Zhuxu stepped up one steel branch after another, climbing higher, until the entire Imperial City lay beneath his feet.
When golden light began to glimmer and pulse from the palace—bristling with discontent and rejection, a subtle warning against his presence—he remained still.
Throughout, his hands hung quietly at his sides.
Jingmie, his sword, hovered nearby, while the wind blew freely at his robes, outlining a lean, upright figure.
There were too many people in Chang’an—too mixed, too noisy, too many different energies.
Unlike before, he couldn’t pinpoint Su Lingxi’s location immediately.
He had to search patiently, from noble residences to marketplaces, from music-filled pleasure districts to the silent outskirts of the capital.
Not long after—
Ye Zhuxu opened his eyes, his gaze slowly shifting to a part of the city. Su Lingxi had dismounted, speaking with a refined, ethereal man beneath a swaying red lantern.
Her posture was casual, dressed in loose, comfortable riding clothes, making no attempt to hide from spying eyes. She pointed toward a residence, and the man followed her gesture.
Then, watching her, his lips pressed together, face flushing and paling by turns. Su Lingxi seemed amused by the reaction and smiled.
Whether out of genuine amusement or to comfort the young man, it was hard to say.
Ye Zhuxu’s eyes lingered on her face for a long time.
She had lost weight.
And changed a lot.
In his dreams, her face had never been so clear—never so vivid or soft.
He could never quite see her features, only the lips bitten with tooth marks, the resolute turn of her back, and that fleeting corner of deep-blue fabric that always slipped away.
Now, he sensed her presence—on that young man, around the shoulders and spine.
Her spells and aura were unmistakable.
They smelled sweet, like rich gardenia.
Fourteen years ago, she wasn’t like this.
She had known his nature, known what he cared about.
She loved to play, but she also knew how to keep her distance from others.
No matter how wild things got, whenever he caught her, she was always spotless and whole.
Ye Zhuxu’s dark lashes lowered.
He forced his eyes closed for a moment, then reached out to grasp the hilt of Jingmie.
A gentle hum of sword energy rippled beside his ear.
And then, his first strike fell—right over Chang’an.
Thunder tore the sky apart.
In a blink, storm clouds surged and swallowed stars and moon.
A violent gale rose from the ground, sending dust and debris shrieking through the air.
This beam of sword light targeted every direction in the city.
Yet Ye Zhuxu’s eyes never strayed from one place.
As he gathered force to strike, he spoke one word:
“Seal.”
Countless streaks of sword light followed a strange ripple outward.
As the word fell, sword-light cages formed—cutting into the night like skin being peeled from something hidden.
Harsh, venomous screeches echoed from several directions.
Even before Ye Zhuxu unsheathed his sword, Su Lingxi had already sensed the boiling, barely restrained killing intent.
She turned her head immediately—and saw the man standing above, watching from the shadows.
Her “great calamity.”
But that strike had come too fast.
Floating Jade’s sword technique was nothing like her sect’s.
As the strike landed, her mind buzzed with the aftershock.
She had hoped he would suppress demons, hoped he would act.
But she never expected it to happen so suddenly, so violently—as if, after dinner and washing up, he had nothing better to do and casually decided to stir up trouble.
No reason.
Just acted.
None of the scenarios she had imagined—evacuating civilians, reporting to the Emperor, Gold Guards and Imperial troops sealing off the area, execution squads standing by—none of them happened.
Hearing the demon’s shrieks, Su Lingxi’s expression turned cold.
She flicked three golden threads from her sleeve—they scattered with the sword light and vanished into the air.
Wei Shixian was dumbstruck.
He had just worked up the courage to step into the Minister’s residence when the skies suddenly churned black, demonic screeches filled the air, and blinding lights flashed one after another.
His feet froze like they’d been nailed to the ground.
His body stiffened like a pole—completely out of his control.
Meanwhile, everyone on the steel tree had fully awakened.
Sang Chu sat up first, finding himself surrounded by sword light, the cold gleam pulsing like breath.
Seeing Ye Zhuxu’s disregard, as if he would tear Chang’an apart single-handedly, his temples throbbed with pain.
“What the hell is going on!”
A drowsy voice came from between two branches nearby:
“Did something just… break out in the middle of the night? Why the hell didn’t anyone tell us?”
Lin’an Yu silently held his head and howled in collapse toward the side:
“Don’t just stand there watching! Where are the puppet art practitioners? Hurry up and tear the tree open! It’s still attacking! The State-Suppressing Seal is about to suppress us into the tree!!”
In the darkness, someone urgently responded in a muddled and panicked voice:
“I’m working on it, working on it, it’s being solved!”
More people were muttering curses.
Damn it.
What the hell is going on?
At this moment, Ye Zhuxu struck with his second sword.
He said:
“Lock.”
As the word fell, it was as if something relatively weak had been forcibly anchored in place.
That thing was clever—it quickly reacted and hid in the bright lights of the surrounding houses.
Su Lingxi looked behind her. She slowly put back a stick of incense she had drawn from her sleeve, her expression grave.
Because behind her, countless golden beast-like eyes lit up in the darkness.
Even Xi Liu and Wei Shixian stood along the same line, one in front, one behind, both struggling in expression.
A strange golden shimmer flowed in their eyes, eerie and unnatural.
That thing had activated a domain.
Everyone within the domain was under its control.
Once a domain was activated, it could only be forcibly broken.
But the current situation wasn’t like when they dealt with the ghost-faced skull—back then, the real body was in her hands, and killing it was straightforward.
But now, in the dark, they didn’t even know what this thing was or where its true body was.
If they forced a kill, the four neighborhood blocks and two streets behind them—at least tens of thousands of people—would be buried along with it.
That loss would be too great, no one could bear it.
Su Lingxi looked toward the imperial palace.
There, a golden beam of light hung in the air, aimed at Ye Zhuxu and the two steel giant trees.
She knew all too well what that was.
The State-Suppressing Seal.
All things in the world are governed by mutual restraint.
Floating Jade Sect is bound by responsibility to assist the royal family, but to prevent the mortal realm from becoming its puppet, the State-Suppressing Seal also carries karmic weight, serving to suppress those from Floating Jade.
That’s what people like Sang Chu feared most.
If those tens of thousands died—no matter the reason—the relationship between the mortal realm and Floating Jade would be completely severed.
And just then, Ye Zhuxu was also looking at her.
He looked much like when they had first met a few days ago—lightly smiling, the corners of his eyes curving.
Beautiful to the extreme, but also wicked to the core.
With a gentle slash, Jingmie (Extinction) trembled in dozens of stunned pupils, carrying a tangible murderous aura that instantly tore through everything.
It surged in waves, locking onto what seemed to be the entire area behind them.
He truly didn’t care—once he locked on, he meant to destroy completely.
Ye Zhuxu brought his sword down and said another word:
“Kill.”
Su Lingxi hadn’t gone all out in a very long time—after all, she had little power left.
Yet at that moment, driven by some kind of instinct, her face turned cold as she hurled Wei Shixian aside by the shoulder with unimaginable force.
The well-mannered young noble, having lived by the rules for seventeen years, was flung dozens of meters away, landing across the street with his nose and eyes just a finger’s width from the wooden storefront of a shop.
But that wasn’t the end.
The snow-white sword light descended in that instant, originally about to pierce through flesh and bone in a deadly strike—but thanks to Su Lingxi’s perfectly-timed throw, it shifted in trajectory, sweeping through the side of Wei Shixian’s robe, looping around, and expertly knocking off the three talismans Su Lingxi had placed on him.
They clanged into the side of the doorframe, nailed in tightly.
After flinging him away, Su Lingxi no longer paid attention to Wei Shixian.
Her movement technique was incredibly fast. She leapt onto the steel tree from the rooftop, then stepped along the branches like a silk ribbon in the wind, whirling upward.
She brushed past that man who stood as if above the clouds, above the wind, gazing down on all beings with cold amusement.
Ye Zhuxu merely watched.
He didn’t dodge.
His pitch-black pupils followed her movements slowly, unreadable in expression.
Amid sword light and rushing wind, Su Lingxi firmly grabbed the hand holding Jingmie.
It was effortless, like grasping the wrist of a doll.
Then, like arm-wrestling, she twisted it aside—diverting the blow that might’ve otherwise unleashed a destructive force.
And then she froze.
There was no strength in Ye Zhuxu’s hand.
Despite the killing intent that filled the moment, Jingmie had no force behind it.
There was no next strike.
He knew he couldn’t unleash it—and he had never intended to.
His earlier sword strike seemed only to scare people.
Or rather, the malice itself had been aimed solely at her.
Su Lingxi’s expression darkened.
By logic, she knew he wouldn’t truly unleash a massacre in Chang’an.
Yet she had rushed here anyway—because she couldn’t trust that a madman, however playful, would stay rational when it mattered.
The tearing feeling between reason and instinct was deeply unsettling.
Sang Chu and the others had come out as well.
Lin’an Yu rushed over, panting heavily, repeating at Ye Zhuxu’s side:
“Don’t do this, don’t do this—calm down, calm down, don’t be reckless.”
In full view of everyone, Su Lingxi slowly let go of Ye Zhuxu’s hand.
Reason returned.
She could see clearly that tonight, Ye Zhuxu had drawn his sword three times, and each time had forced out a hidden demon—creatures that the demon-slaying patrols had missed.
This was crucial to purging Chang’an.
Even if the strikes had come suddenly and alarmed everyone, leaving hearts pounding, the results were undeniable.
Could she really expect perfection in everything?
Sang Chu looked just as grim-faced as Su Lingxi.
He suppressed his anger and said:
“Commander, can you please consult with us next time before you act? We’re a team. If something happens, it’s not just your responsibility.”
Ye Zhuxu didn’t look at him.
His voice was slightly low:
“Order from the Gate.”
Sang Chu fell silent instantly.
Su Lingxi adjusted her emotions, lowered her gaze to look at her hand, then turned slightly to look at Ye Zhuxu.
When she had grabbed that hand, her thoughts were simple: control Jingmie.
But once she realized it hadn’t been charged with power, other sensations emerged.
It was cold.
Shockingly cold.
Every finger bone seemed carved of ice, frozen for years.
It was hard to imagine that such explosive, terrifying destructive power could come from this hand—because in her grasp, it had felt obedient.
Ye Zhuxu had not sheathed his sword.
His wide sleeve couldn’t hide much now.
The jutting wrist bone, the long fingers resting casually on the hilt—each line brimming with force.
Yet, due to long absence from sunlight, his skin was pale.
On closer inspection, it bore fine, intricate cracks—like a shattered but not fully broken porcelain cup, held together by flesh and sinew.
The sight was eerie.
Nothing covered it—everything was exposed.
Noticing the subtle change in Su Lingxi’s gaze, Ye Zhuxu looked at his own hand too.
His index and middle fingers curled slightly, then slowly returned to place.
His eyes were as if soaked in ink, the dark pupils making his dazzling features even more striking.
He curled his lips as if he wanted to smile:
“Ugly, isn’t it?”
As his words fell—
Su Lingxi saw Lin’an Yu behind him shaking his head frantically, each eye rolling in a different direction, practically drawing her an outline of disapproval.
That other one who’d wanted to see exotic dancers—Tian Jiang—said nothing, merely coughed against his lips like his lungs were tearing apart.