Chapter 2: White Clothes

Gu Yanfei felt a sweetness in her throat and coughed up a mouthful of blood. Her forehead had long been covered in beads of sweat, which trickled down along her temples.

She wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth with her sleeve and muttered to herself, "No spiritual energy... it really is restrictive."

Every world has its own laws. If she were in the Yaoling Realm, saving a mortal would be effortless for her. But the spiritual energy in this world was too faint, and she was bound by the laws of the Heavenly Dao, rendering many of her methods unusable.

In this world, bringing the dead back to life was an act against the heavens, and she had to pay a certain price for it.

Juanbi slowly opened her eyes, her gaze dazed and unfocused, until the moment she met Gu Yanfei’s eyes. Her pupils suddenly widened, and she called out weakly, "Mis...tress..."

Juanbi tried to lift her right hand, but Gu Yanfei caught it firmly.

"I'm here." Gu Yanfei unobtrusively checked Juanbi’s pulse again and said with relief, "You will be fine."

Gu Yanfei curled her lips into a smile, her blood-stained cherry lips as vibrant as a peony.

From Juanbi’s current angle, she could not see the swollen, bleeding wound on Gu Yanfei’s left forehead, only the unblemished right side of her face.

Her hair was like ink, her lips like vermilion, and her skin shone brighter than snow.

The young girl in the prime of her youth was like a lotus rising from clear ripples—her posture elegant and enchanting, her beauty so radiant that one wished to pile every magnificent adjective in the world upon her.

This smile was enough to topple cities and kingdoms.

Juanbi was stunned, breaking into a silly, simple-minded grin. Deep down, she vaguely felt that this quiet and introverted Second Miss seemed to have become somewhat different.

A cool breeze suddenly swept by, fluttering the tattered window curtains and blowing away the talisman ash that had been clinging to Juanbi’s temples. In the blink of an eye, it vanished into thin air, leaving only a faint, lingering scent of burning in the atmosphere.

Juanbi’s nose twitched, and just as she was about to say something, she heard Gu Yanfei say, "Juanbi, we must leave here immediately."

Gu Yanfei held Juanbi’s cold hand tightly, her eyes as firm as a rock.

In her past life, everyone else had died. She had survived by sheer luck, but had fallen unconscious due to the violent impact; her final memory of that carriage was nothing but blood and corpses.

She had developed a high fever and remained delirious; by the time she woke up, she was already in Danyang City.

The events of this day had become an inescapable nightmare for the rest of her life.

Fortunately—

The current her was no longer the her from that past life.

"Mistress is right, it’s too dangerous here, we must leave at once!" Juanbi nodded repeatedly without a second thought.

She packed a bundle as quickly as she could, feeling somewhat uneasy. Today, she and her mistress had gone to Daxing Temple in the western suburbs to offer incense, never expecting to encounter a landslide on the return journey. This area was too remote; there wasn't a soul to be seen for miles...

"Creak..."

Gu Yanfei pushed open the rickety door of the carriage and stepped down.

Outside the carriage, dust swirled, forming a thick gray fog. Boulders of all sizes were visible everywhere, and scattered rocks continued to roll down from the high cliffs from time to time. The scene was one of utter devastation.

The air was filled with the stench of blood, lingering and nauseating.

The horse pulling the carriage was dead, and the coachman and the elderly maid were dead as well. Their bodies lay beside the carriage, the ground stained red with pools of blood, leaving almost nowhere to step.

Looking at this tragic scene, Gu Yanfei’s eyes deepened like a bottomless pool. She leaned down, personally closed the eyes of the coachman and the maid who had died with lingering resentment, and silently recited the Rebirth Mantra.

Several living lives had been sacrificed just for the sake of Fang Mingfeng’s selfishness!

And this was only the beginning...

Memories that had become somewhat blurred across two lifetimes began to surface in her mind again. Gu Yanfei’s gaze grew cold; under the setting sun, the corners of her eyes were slightly red, as if stained with blood.

The elegant and beautiful girl stood in stark contrast to the carnage around her.

Just as Gu Yanfei finished the Rebirth Mantra, Juanbi, having finished packing the bundle, also stepped out of the carriage.

Seeing the brutally dead coachman and maid, Juanbi couldn't help but gasp, feeling the fragility of human life for the first time.

"Mistress..." Juanbi leaned toward Gu Yanfei in distress, her small face deathly pale.

Gu Yanfei quietly calculated a divination in her sleeve, then raised her hand to point in the direction of the setting sun. "We go that way."

According to the divination, her opportunity lay in the west.

Juanbi hurriedly draped a cloak over Gu Yanfei and supported her as they walked westward. Because the ground was covered in rubble and the path was rugged and uneven, the mistress and servant walked very slowly.

Mountain winds blew in gusts, catching Gu Yanfei’s cloak and making it billow and snap in the air.

The sun slanted westward, casting golden-red light across the mountains and fields.

After walking for the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, they finally circled out of the rock-strewn valley. When Juanbi looked back, the carriage was no longer in sight.

Gu Yanfei stopped and touched her abdomen nonchalantly. She felt a dull ache and an indescribable discomfort within. *Could it be that I sustained some internal injuries?* she wondered.

Should she find some herbs nearby...

Just as the thought arose, she heard a high-pitched, adolescent voice from not far ahead

"I really didn't see it wrong, something fell from the mountain, it must have been a carriage."

"Xiaoshi, perhaps it was just a landslide," a steady, masculine voice followed. "If a carriage had fallen from such a height, it would likely be a grim situation."

The sound of hooves approached along with their conversation, accompanied by the rattling of wheels and the jingling of horse bells.

Soon, a simple green-canopied carriage came into the view of Gu Yanfei and Juanbi, slowly driving toward them, the bells on the horse's neck jingling.

Driving the carriage was a plain-looking young man in his early twenties, dressed in gray, with a boy of thirteen or fourteen with dark skin sitting beside him.

They also spotted the mistress and servant, and the carriage stopped two zhang away.

"How did you two young ladies end up here?" the boy called Xiaoshi asked in a gravelly voice, looking at Gu Yanfei with curiosity.

"My carriage encountered a landslide and fell from the cliff over there. Only my maid and I were lucky enough to survive; the others..." As she spoke, Gu Yanfei pointed in the direction she had come from and sighed softly.

"The young lady is truly blessed," Xiaoshi remarked with emotion, giving the young man beside him a triumphant look, as if to say he had been right about the carriage falling from the mountain.

"Gurgle..."

A strange sound suddenly rang out, exceptionally loud in the quiet bottom of the cliff.

The eyes of the other three turned toward Gu Yanfei in unison.

Gu Yanfei: "..."

*This sound? Could it be...* Her expression was one of astonishment, mixed with a strange sense of novelty.

The next moment, a strange, cold, and pleasant male voice came from inside the green-canopied carriage

"I have some food here. If the young lady does not mind, please have some to settle your stomach."

The young man’s voice was unhurried, like the strings of an ancient zither being plucked, or a clear mountain spring flowing by.

As he spoke, Xiaoshi opened the carriage door. A leaf, caught by the mountain breeze, drifted into the carriage, spinning slowly before landing on a short boot embroidered with silver cloud patterns.

Inside the carriage sat a young nobleman, not yet twenty.

His eyes were like bright stars, his nose straight and refined, his lips red and teeth white, his dark hair like ink.

Those exquisite features and sharp, defined lines formed a face of peerless handsomeness—beautiful, elegant, and possessing an extraordinary nobility that captivated the soul.

He wore a frost-white cloak trimmed with white fox fur, his slender frame appearing slightly thin, as if he might topple over with a gust of wind.