“Immortal Lady Jiang has helped me a great deal. How could I have improper thoughts toward you? Miss, don’t joke like that.”

Xiao Mo smiled helplessly.

“It’s just that it’s late at night now. Outside my sleeping palace, palace maids come and go. I’m worried it would affect your reputation.”

“I’m a woman and I’m not worried. What is Your Majesty worried about?” Jiang Qingyi shot Xiao Mo a white-eyed look.

“Let’s go!”

As she spoke, Jiang Qingyi strode out of the Altar of the Dao of Heaven.

With her back to Xiao Mo, Jiang Qingyi could not help pressing her lips together, her expression seeming somewhat displeased.

“Not even daring to set your heart on me, coward!”

The woman murmured softly, only she herself able to hear it.

After two quarters of an hour, Jiang Qingyi arrived at Xiao Mo’s sleeping palace.

Jiang Qingyi lifted her fine nose and sniffed.

Inside the sleeping palace was Xiao Mo’s scent, and there was no other person’s aura.

It seemed no other woman had stayed here overnight.

Which made sense.

The Empress Dowager’s precious “granddaughter” still had not conceived Xiao Mo’s dragon heir, so how could she possibly allow Xiao Mo to sneak a bite from palace maids?

“Dragon heir...”

Thinking of the two words she had just said in her mind, Jiang Qingyi could not help letting out a cold laugh.

It really was a dragon heir!

“Is there anything improper about my sleeping palace?” Xiao Mo watched Jiang Qingyi size up his room. That serious expression of hers was like she was appraising some important ancient ruin.

“Nothing. I just think Your Majesty’s room is different from what I imagined. It’s very plain.” Jiang Qingyi found a casual excuse to cover it up.

But Jiang Qingyi was not wrong. Xiao Mo’s room really was plain.

Inside the sleeping palace were mostly Daoist books, yin-yang fish diagrams, Eight Trigrams diagrams, and other Daoist things, with not much luxurious decoration.

Jiang Qingyi could not help thinking of that small wooden hut three thousand years ago.

Although he was a sect elder, inside the wooden hut there had only been a bed and a table.

“I live alone. I don’t have any hobbies. How many things could I have?” Xiao Mo replied.

Jiang Qingyi glanced at Xiao Mo. “Right now you live alone, but before long, two peerlessly beautiful royal consorts will enter the palace. When the long night stretches on, with beauties at your side, won’t Your Majesty be happy? Just don’t let it delay your cultivation when the time comes.”

Xiao Mo let out a soft sigh. “If it were possible, I would rather be alone. Compared to women, cultivation is more interesting.”

“Heh heh.” Jiang Qingyi gave a few cold laughs, very clearly not believing Xiao Mo’s nonsense. “Cultivation is Your Majesty’s own matter. It’s enough that you know it in your heart.”

Jiang Qingyi gathered her thoughts and took out nine longswords from her storage pouch.

At a glance, the grade of those nine longswords was not ordinary.

Each sword was carved with obscure runes.

“Drop!”

Jiang Qingyi swept her hand, and the nine longswords flew out, each stabbing into the ground at one of nine directions in the sleeping palace.

Jiang Qingyi took out another scroll.

After she spread the scroll open, she pinched and chanted a spell. The formation diagram within the scroll peeled out, covered the entire sleeping palace, and vanished together with the nine longswords.

“This formation is my own creation. Within the formation is a wisp of my sword intent and nine strands of sword qi. It is like a whetstone for swords. When Your Majesty rests at night, this formation will activate on its own and can hone Your Majesty’s sword qi and sword intent.

“Your Majesty can also carefully comprehend the sword intent I left behind.

“Perhaps over time, you will gain something. It will also be of no small ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) help to Your Majesty’s later Foundation Establishment.”

Jiang Qingyi explained to Xiao Mo.

“So that’s how it is.” Xiao Mo cupped his hands in salute. “Many thanks, Immortal Lady Jiang.”

“Your Majesty need not thank me. Foundation Establishment still relies on yourself in the end. External help is only icing on the cake. If Your Majesty truly succeeds in entering Foundation Establishment, that will also be Your Majesty’s own capability.”

“Even so, these days, Immortal Lady Jiang has helped far too much.”

Xiao Mo was rather moved, and what he said was the truth.

If not for Immortal Lady Jiang’s guidance, Xiao Mo felt his cultivation definitely would not have been this fast.

He might still be stumbling around somewhere.

“Too much?”

A trace of remembrance flashed through Jiang Qingyi’s eyes.

“Perhaps it’s because a long time ago, someone also helped me like this. If not for him, let alone stepping onto the path of cultivation, I’m afraid I would have already starved to death somewhere.”

“The senior who helped Miss Jiang must have been a kind-hearted person.” Xiao Mo complimented. “If there is a chance, I would like to meet that senior.”

As Xiao Mo’s words fell, Jiang Qingyi’s beautiful eyes stared straight at Xiao Mo.

“Immortal Lady Jiang, what is it?” Xiao Mo asked, puzzled.

Could it be he said something wrong?

“Nothing.” Jiang Qingyi turned her head away, her tone cold. “What’s there to meet in a person like that? Only an idiot would want to meet him.”

“...”

For a moment, Xiao Mo was speechless, not knowing how to continue the topic.

And just as the two of them fell into silence in the sleeping palace, a mosquito that had long been watching in the dark spread its wings and flew toward Xiao Mo.

The horned mosquito landed on the back of Xiao Mo’s hand. Its mosquito legs hugged that extremely thin silver needle and were about to stab down into the back of Xiao Mo’s hand.

Just as the horned mosquito was about to succeed, Jiang Qingyi abruptly turned her head.

The instant Jiang Qingyi’s gaze fell on that mosquito, the sword qi around her condensed into a thin thread and directly pierced through the mosquito’s body.

The horned mosquito did not even have time to react. Its eyes went black, and it fell from the back of Xiao Mo’s hand, dropping onto the ground.

Its thin legs twitched a few times, and very quickly, it went still.

“Immortal Lady Jiang?”

Even though Xiao Mo did not know what had happened, he could sense the intense killing intent from her.

Jiang Qingyi walked past Xiao Mo, brushed her skirt, slowly crouched down, and pinched up the horned mosquito’s corpse.

“It’s nothing.”

Jiang Qingyi examined the horned mosquito carefully, then turned her head. Her gaze passed beyond the window, her eyes tightening.

“It’s just that a few ‘mosquitoes’ entered the ‘house.’”

At the same time, in a separate courtyard somewhere in the inner palace, the palace maids who had trained all day were all asleep.

Sili lay on the bed, carefully examining the pearl in her hand.

After continuously absorbing Zhou’s ruler’s blood for five days, this soul pearl was red like a blood moon.

So long as she collected tonight’s and tomorrow night’s blood, Sili would be able to know Zhou’s ruler’s identity.

Lifting her head, Sili looked at the moonlight outside the window and felt it was about time to go.

But just as Sili turned to get out of bed, and her fair, jade-like foot had just slipped into her embroidered shoe—

Sili’s mind suddenly shook.

She abruptly raised her head and looked toward Zhou’s ruler’s sleeping palace.

She could feel it clearly.

Her horned mosquito had died.

If the horned mosquito died, then it died.

Sili did not care.

But the sword qi that killed the horned mosquito made Sili feel as if she were facing a great enemy.

“It really is her!”

Recalling that night when that crazy woman had chased her and Wangxin, Sili clenched her delicate fist tight, her heart sensing something very bad.

“How is that crazy woman in the palace?”