Amidst the crimson-hued Forbidden City, Feng Jianxue darted swiftly through the buildings, occasionally avoiding patrolling squads while leaving marks for Hestia to follow.
He had a rough idea of the divine sword’s location, but the guards along the way were a major obstacle.
Not good. The noise over there has stopped. Could the battle have ended already? Feng Jianxue felt the mounting pressure.
Another patrol squad passed by, accompanied by several floating autonomous reconnaissance units scanning back and forth.
Seeing such a configuration, Feng Jianxue instinctively shrank back into a corner, refraining from any rash actions. He suppressed his body heat as much as possible, lowering his external temperature to avoid detection.
Fortunately, many devices in Thousand Towers City were relatively outdated. If it had been one of the Federation’s newer scanning detectors, they could have easily spotted him even through walls.
While Feng Jianxue was momentarily stuck, dealing with his predicament, Hestia encountered her own problem elsewhere.
“You are the Second Miss, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
In front of her stood an elderly man, his face filled with excitement. He raised both hands as if about to cheer loudly.
She had been following the marks Feng Jianxue left, but while passing by a secluded pavilion, a shadow suddenly leapt out, blocking her path.
“I don’t know who this ‘Second Miss’ is, but it might be my mother,” Hestia said, relieved to see no one else rushing over. She decided to first try calming the person in front of her.
“Your mother? So, the Second Miss had children outside the city? How could this be? That beautiful Second Miss, giving birth for a man? No! This is… this is simply unacceptable. Why? Why did this happen? Why wouldn’t she return even if she’s alive?” The man clutched his head, overwhelmed with despair.
“She must have been forced, wasn’t she? Yes, someone must have deceived her. She was so kind, too easily tricked. If only… if only I had stopped her back then…”
“Though it’s a bit awkward, this isn’t the place to talk. Is there somewhere quiet and private nearby?” Hestia asked, thinking quickly.
“Oh, yes, yes, this place isn’t safe. Come with me.” The old man led her into a nearby pavilion and carefully shut the door.
The interior was peaceful, seemingly his solitary residence. A painting of a phoenix taking flight hung on the wall opposite the main door.
“This is better.” He invited Hestia to sit in the hall and brought over a pot of cool tea.
“I don’t have anything warm here, only cool tea for you.”
“That’s fine. I don’t like overly hot drinks anyway,” Hestia said, shaking her head. She glanced around and noticed there was no trace of electrical appliances—everything seemed old-fashioned.
After sitting for a while, the old man began scrutinizing Hestia closely, nodding and shaking his head alternately.
“Have you figured something out?” she asked softly.
“Are you the Second Miss’s daughter?” he asked.
“Probably. But my mother never mentioned Thousand Towers City. I only recently learned of its existence and came here,” Hestia replied.
“Did she ever tell you her name?”
“She said her surname was Gu, and her name was Yongtian.”
“That’s her. She once said she didn’t like the word ‘Yongrong’—too grand and distant.”
“My name is Ge Lianfeng. I suppose you could call me a distant uncle. Most of the elders in this city are related in some way—it’s nothing worth mentioning.” His emotions gradually calmed.
“Did you come here to retrieve the sword for your mother?” he continued.
“No. In fact, my mother has already passed away. She never mentioned this place to me,” Hestia said, shaking her head sorrowfully.
“What? She… she’s gone?” The old man’s disbelief was palpable.
“How did she die?” he asked, gritting his teeth.
“She fell ill. My father sought many doctors and tried everything, but it was no use,” Hestia sighed.
The old man fell silent, his teeth audibly grinding.
“If it weren’t for Qianlou and their argument…” He stopped mid-sentence, shaking his head.
“Ah, those matters are too complicated to untangle now. Best not to bring them up. And you? How are you doing?”
“I live alone now, but I’m doing okay,” she said, wary of revealing too much and risking being detained.
“Heh, are you afraid I’ll keep you here? Don’t worry—I disagreed with your uncle back then and was one of your mother’s supporters. I wouldn’t do something so petty.”
“Living well out there is enough; not returning might even be a good thing,” he sighed.
“Can you tell me what exactly happened back then? All I’ve ever gotten are fragments, never the full story.”
“What happened back then? It would take days to explain it all, but I’ll give you a brief overview,” he said.
“Your mother represented the lineage of the Sword Guardians. They decided to abandon Thousand Towers City and have everyone disperse into other cities within the Verdant Veil, believing this would spare people from struggling in such a barren, inhospitable place.
“But your uncle disagreed. In fact, the older generation strongly opposed this idea. To them, it was a betrayal—a betrayal of the millennia-old vow. The Divine Generals had escorted the direct bloodline of their sect across the stars, enduring immense casualties before finally settling here in the Verdant Veil. And now they were supposed to scatter? What would that make of their sacrifices?”
“The citizens gathered here are descendants of those refugees. If they were to disperse, they might never gather again. Here, at least, we have autonomy. But in other cities, we’d be powerless, reduced to the lowest ranks, at the mercy of others. Sooner or later, we’d be swallowed up and vanish without a trace.”
“The Sword Guardians felt deeply ashamed about this, but they had no choice. The ancient records and secret techniques had gradually been lost over time. Clinging to this way of life no longer held meaning, and they didn’t even want their descendants to inherit this duty.”
He shook his head, admitting that he had been one of the Sword Guardians himself back then.
“And then? How did my mother end up leaving?” Hestia pressed.
“That’s a more complicated story. At the time, Thousand Towers City’s T2-grade AI, ‘Mirage,’ was nearing its breakdown phase. The ruling elders decided to trade the city’s treasures with an external faction for a black-market T2-grade AI. During this transaction, however, some of the elders regretted the decision and opposed it, leading to internal conflict. Your mother got caught up in it.”
“Your mother was injured by Qianlou and imprisoned. Later, the agent responsible for delivering the AI core realized something was off and tried to take the goods back, but we stopped him. In the end, he took your mother hostage as leverage.”
“Your mother was the direct heir of the Sword Guardians, the most gifted successor in generations, and many of the elders pinned their hopes on her. They hesitated, unsure whether to hand over the AI core.”
“But for various reasons, the deal fell through, and the two sides clashed again. In the chaos, we saw your mother shot in the chest, collapsing in a pool of blood. Her body was consumed by fire shortly afterward.”
He shook his head, his voice heavy with regret.
“Looking back, your mother probably didn’t die. It must have been a staged death. I should’ve known—they wouldn’t have been willing to kill someone so beautiful.”
Although she survived, she likely sustained internal injuries during the conflict. Later, when she became pregnant, she was unable to bear two children at once. So, she had one of us frozen first. Hestia pieced together the events in her mind, sighing as understanding dawned.
The estrangement between her and her sister stemmed from this displacement. If they had grown up together, many tragedies could have been avoided.
Time slipped by as Hestia sat in the quiet, almost pitch-black hall for what felt like an eternity. Suddenly, Feng Jianxue’s voice came through her earpiece again.
“Where are you? I’m about to reach the ancestral hall where the divine sword is kept.”
In the darkness, his faint voice was particularly striking.
The old man across from her reacted, his expression changing, but then he seemed to remember something and let out a bitter laugh, remaining seated.
“That divine sword… it’s not worth mentioning. Honestly, there’s nothing worth fighting over. Even the faction we traded with back then didn’t care for it.”
“If you want to take it, go ahead. At most, I’ll turn a blind eye, but don’t expect any help from me.”
“Actually, I don’t care much about the divine sword,” Hestia said, standing and glancing around.
“But what about you all? Do you truly want to stay here forever?”
Her gray hair gradually turned black, and her eyes began to glow faintly with an azure light, like a Thilan flower blooming in the dark.
Her appearance was almost identical to that of Gu Yongrong back then—brilliant and unparalleled, yet surpassing her in every way. The aura emanating from this young girl, the shimmering blue magical particles floating around her, and the ancient cyan-glowing sword slowly forming before her gave the old man an unprecedented sense of awe and shock.
“Am I… am I truly witnessing the revival of the Azure Lotus’s long-lost secret technique in my lifetime?”