"Sorry for making you worry," Li Ban said softly, holding Little Cat's soft body.
Cat Girl slapped his shoulder and pulled away. She held up the Silver Kingfisher he had given her. "This bird of yours is useless!"
Her face was still flushed bright red.
Just moments ago, her hands and feet had been ice-cold with panic. Now, she felt a burning heat rush from her head down through her entire body.
Her heart fluttered, bubbling with warmth.
To shake off this strange feeling, she waved her arms and started rambling. "You told me to pretend to leave, then use the bird to track your location. When you suddenly returned from outside the city, I knew something had gone wrong. But when I told those priests, they couldn't find you either! It made me so mad—aren't they supposed to be priests? I tried to use the Silver Kingfisher to find you, but it just spun in circles and couldn't locate you! I was furious! Isn't it your bird?"
Cat Girl babbled incoherently. By the end, even she didn't know what she was saying.
Amused and helpless, Li Ban stepped forward to rescue his Silver Kingfisher from her grasp.
The little bird looked wilted. It opened its beak and mimicked Cat Girl's voice.
Cat Girl snapped her mouth shut, her face flushing violently again.
"I was just worried about you! If something happened to you, who would take me up to the sky?"
Li Ban smiled. "Are you still planning to leave? Why not come with me to the Unreturning Place? If you want to get stronger, you don't necessarily have to rely on the Art of Awakening Life. I have a lot of pull now—turning a little cat into a fierce tiger would be a piece of cake."
Cat Girl scratched her cheek with a clawed forefinger and lowered her head. "I will definitely come find you at the Unreturning Place."
Li Ban sighed inwardly. Once Cat Girl made up her mind, she rarely changed it.
"Alright then. But first, come meet someone with me."
He reached out and grabbed her hand, and the two of them vanished simultaneously.
After a few flashes of movement, they reappeared near Zichen Hall.
It wasn't Cat Girl's first time being teleported by someone else, but her state of mind was entirely different this time.
"You learned how to teleport with another person?"
Li Ban blinked, only just realizing it himself. "Oh. I was in such a hurry to introduce you to someone that I pulled it off without thinking."
By now, the other priests had left. Only one man remained waiting outside.
Priest Hunyou walked over. He shot Cat Girl an irrepressible look of curiosity before smiling at Li Ban.
"Priest Ban, you asked me to wait before you left. Was it for her?"
Li Ban nodded quickly. "Yes, Priest Hunyou. I have a favor to ask."
Priest Hunyou waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, there's no need for such formalities between us. Just say the word."
"When you return to Yingzhou, could you take my friend Cat Girl with you along the way?"
Cat Girl needed to go near Mist Valley, located on the outer fringes of Yingzhou.
But the region was a rugged expanse of towering mountains, steep ridges, and untamed forests.
The mountain outskirts were relatively safe, but the deeper areas were riddled with danger, crawling with high-tier elemental beasts.
Since Cat Girl would be making such a long and hazardous journey alone, Li Ban wanted to ask Priest Hunyou to give her a lift.
It would be safe and much faster.
That way, once she finished her business, she could come find him sooner.
Priest Hunyou couldn't resist glancing at Cat Girl again. He nodded cheerfully. "Not a problem at all. However, I still need to remain in the Capital City for a day or two. Can Miss Cat wait?"
Cat Girl naturally agreed, understanding Li Ban's good intentions. She nodded repeatedly. "I can certainly wait. Thank you, Lord Priest."
She cupped her hands and bowed deeply.
After agreeing on a time and place to meet, Priest Hunyou excused himself to attend to his business.
Li Ban didn't need to handle any of the aftermath. He only had to wait for the carriage to bring Li Fu back, then pick a day to head north.
As a result, the two of them suddenly found themselves with nothing to do.
Since Cat Girl was leaving soon, Li Ban wanted to spend this free time with her.
It felt just like their time in the Death Prison, when the two of them were the only ones who could talk to each other.
They walked side by side between the vermilion walls of the Imperial Palace, with Cat Girl quietly listening as Li Ban recounted the day's events.
After expressing her lingering shock and relief, Cat Girl brought up Li Yan.
"When the Second Prince asked you to take Yan Jiu in, he must have already decided to take her place. His trades and pleas were all for his own sake."
Li Ban nodded. "I just don't know if Li Fu killed her or locked her away."
Cat Girl's eyes darkened. "If he wanted to avoid exposure, killing her would be the cleanest solution."
"Let's go find out." Li Ban took her hand, and the two vanished from the long palace corridor.
A moment later, they materialized in the courtyard of Shunyi Palace.
Li Ban noticed that all the servants were gathered in the courtyard, seemingly having been kicked out of the main hall.
"Where is your master?" Li Ban asked a random servant.
A palace maid curtsied hurriedly. "Lord Priest, after the Ninth Princess left, His Highness locked himself in his room. He hasn't allowed anyone inside to serve him."
Li Ban walked straight toward the room with several palace maids trailing behind. They wouldn't dare stop him, but they hoped to use the opportunity to check on their master. After all, he hadn't eaten or drunk anything in three days; even a Spirit Practitioner would be feeling the strain by now.
The main door was bolted from the inside. Li Ban shattered the lock with a single palm strike.
Cat Girl slipped inside first. She glanced around, her delicate nose twitching. "I smell blood over here."
Her sense of smell was incredibly sharp. Even though the room appeared empty, she followed the scent deeper inside.
Li Ban followed close behind as they entered the western study.
Cat Girl felt around the study for a moment before stopping beside a stone floor tile beneath a long pearwood table.
"Here!" she said, pointing at the floor.
The palace maids, having also searched the room for the Second Prince to no avail, felt a sudden surge of dread when they saw her pointing at the stone tile.
"This servant will fetch someone to pry the tile open!"
"No need. I'll do it," Li Ban said, raising a hand to stop her. He was about to step forward when Cat Girl extended all ten of her razor-sharp claws.
She slashed downward. The heavy stone slab instantly shattered into pieces, revealing a hidden trapdoor underneath.
Cat Girl grabbed the handle and heaved it upward.
The lock snapped under her immense strength, and the trapdoor swung open.
"Ahhh!"
The palace maids screamed in horror at the sight inside.
Just as Li Ban and Cat Girl had expected, the person locked inside the hidden compartment was Yan Jiu.
But it was a dead Yan Jiu.
A dagger was plunged straight into her heart, her hands gripping the hilt in a death grip. Her fingertips were battered and torn, with several fingernails completely ripped off.
Her eyes were wide and bloodshot, staring out in unresigned fury.
Cat Girl pursed her lips. She reached down to check Yan Jiu's pulse, then examined her eyes.
"It's a suicide. She only died a few hours ago."
"A few hours ago?" Li Ban frowned. "Wasn't that right when we were fighting the Black Robe?"
"Yes," Cat Girl said, standing up to join him. "Which means Li Fu deceived Yan Jiu and stole her identity to escape, but he couldn't bring himself to kill her. When the palace maids couldn't find Li Fu after a few days, they would have eventually come in searching. This hidden compartment isn't completely soundproof; they would have heard her banging and screaming."
"Yet she killed herself right before we found her." Li Ban shook his head in weary resignation.
He had no love for Yan Jiu—in fact, there was bad blood between them—but learning that she had taken her own life just hours before they arrived filled him with a sense of the sheer unpredictability of fate.
It was always darkest before the dawn.
A formidable 6th Tier Spirit Practitioner and the master of the Assassin Hall hadn't been able to hold on.
Cat Girl, however, disagreed. "It wasn't that she couldn't endure it. We assassins have survived far worse conditions than this. She just felt that there was no hope left."
She had believed her second brother was the last shred of warmth left in the royal family, only to realize that everything he did was a ploy to steal her only chance at escape.
Combined with Li Yan's crippled body, her ruined cultivation path, and a world filled with nothing but greed and betrayal, she had lost all will to live.
When she was first locked inside, she might have still fantasized about being rescued.
But she must have realized that a life on the outside wouldn't be much different from being locked in a cage. So, what was the point?
Cat Girl scoffed, angered by the woman's weakness. "Hmph. If it had been me, I would never have killed myself."
Cat Girl herself had once been nearly crippled and thrown into the Death Prison for years. She had survived on rats and bugs, fought to the death in the Beast Arena, and returned covered in gruesome wounds every time.
But she had never once considered suicide.
Even when she was on the brink of being condemned to the Second Floor of the Death Prison, she hadn't given up.
The melancholy vanished from her face. She turned around and patted Li Ban. "Go search her. Waste not, want not. She still had quite a few good elements on her."
Li Ban crouched down and carefully checked the spots on Yan Jiu's body where elements might be stored.
[Detected Good-grade mental element "Charming Visage." Do you wish to fuse?]
"No."
To think it was a rare Good-grade mental element!
However, Li Ban didn't absorb it right away. Instead, he tucked it into his Cubic Space.
Soon after, he pulled out a waste element, the "Sin Bell."
It was the bell Yan Jiu used to carry everywhere.
According to Cat Girl, the bell could completely throw off a person's balance during combat. She had suffered through its effects a few times when she fought Yan Jiu back in the Myriad Ancient Pagoda.
Sadly, this incredibly useful element had likely been destroyed by the Black Robe, Xiao Suo.
Externally manifested elements like this were much easier to forcefully strip away. Since Xiao Suo hadn't taken it with him, it must have been ruined during the extraction.
Li Ban simply absorbed the waste element directly.
Nobody else would be able to tell whether he had absorbed it or stored it away in his Cubic Heaven and Earth anyway.
With that done, Li Ban reached down to pull Yan Jiu's body out of the hole.
However, Cat Girl beat him to it, effortlessly lifting Yan Jiu's corpse and laying it out on the study's low couch.
"Notify your Crown Prince," Cat Girl told the maids. "Tell him to come deal with his ninth sister's body."
One of the palace maids immediately ran off to obey.
Another palace maid remained, looking deeply unsettled. "But... what about the Second Prince?"
"Him?" Li Ban scoffed. "He'll be back shortly."
Before Priest Zhu Yao could even return with the captured Li Fu, Li Ban received a summons from Priest Chu Zhan.
A group of royal attendants hurried over and bowed respectfully. "Priest Ban, the Realm Emperor requests your presence at Zichen Hall."
"The Realm Emperor?" Li Ban paused for a second before realizing they must mean Priest Chu Zhan, who was now disguised as the Realm Emperor.
He hadn't expected the man to slip into character so quickly.
Li Ban was about to take Cat Girl with him, but she gently pushed his hand away. "The Realm Emperor summoned you specifically. It must be something important, so I'll stay out of it. I'll just wait here for Shi Ming and the others to get back."
Cat Girl covered her mouth with a light chuckle. "I bet Shi Ming is going to be absolutely furious."
Li Ban nodded, and his figure faded away.
Once Li Ban was gone, Cat Girl turned back to the corpse resting on the low couch.
One of the palace maids had already draped a thin blanket over Yan Jiu to cover her up.
Cat Girl ground her teeth, clenching her jaw tight.
"Coward!"