Chapter 7: The Night Watch Maid

Jingnan Prince Manor – Inner Courtyard

The night was deep, and someone was wearing the most extravagant clothes while doing the most boring job.

Keeping watch was always the most useless and dull task in the entire manor.

It wasn’t just the manor; the entire Royal City was heavily guarded.

Where would a little maidservant be needed for protection? It was merely for show.

Bai Shuangshuang leaned against a corridor pillar.

When the night was quiet, her thoughts would drift.

She touched the inner layer of her clothes.

The Fragment of the Azure Cloud Sword Formation Diagram was still there.

Why had this thing appeared in the Bai Family Ancestral Hall? What was its connection to the Azure Cloud Sword Sect Massacre? This question was like a thorn stuck in her heart.

She recalled everything she had experienced since her rebirth.

She remembered that after her bath earlier, Zhao Qingyue’s innocent and cute face had pressed close to her, teasing her.

It made her heart race a little.

In her past life, Young Hero Bai had also been like this—always frightened by overly enthusiastic junior sisters and running away as if she had seen some demon.

To be honest, she had thought that given Zhao Qingyue’s personality, she would most likely have been assigned as a personal maidservant or a bed-servant.

But who would have guessed that she had been thrown here to keep watch?

Why… was there a faint, inexplicable feeling of… disappointment?

“Pfft! Stop overthinking!”

Bai Shuangshuang stuck out her tongue and patted her own cheeks.

She snapped back to reality.

The urgent matter now was not these romantic entanglements, but to focus on restoring her cultivation.

Seeing that no one was around, Bai Shuangshuang sat cross-legged and began her first meditation session since her rebirth.

The foundation of all cultivation lay in Spiritual Qi.

How to communicate with the Spiritual Qi between heaven and earth and sense its existence was actually the greatest obstacle for mortals stepping onto the path of immortality.

This feeling was very intangible, hard to describe in just a few words.

Thus, among ordinary people, only the wealthy and powerful could hope to glimpse the path of immortality.

Ordinary people simply couldn’t aspire to it.

If the government was like a mountain in the eyes of commoners, then the immortals were the clouds floating above that mountain.

High above, mysterious and profound.

But Bai Shuangshuang was different.

With her past life experience, this so-called “obstacle” was practically nonexistent for her.

She quickly captured the first wisp of Spiritual Qi, then opened her mouth to inhale and exhale.

She absorbed that wisp into her belly, transforming it into Spiritual Sight, allowing her to peer into her own body.

Her gaze fell on her meridians.

Meridians were the key channels for transporting spiritual power from the dantian to the limbs and bones.

But in such an important foundation, a black mist filled her meridians, swirling and refusing to dissipate.

Searching through her memories, Bai Shuangshuang remembered.

Starting from when she was six years old, her parents had obtained a prescription for “Soul-Calming Decoction” from some sorcerer.

It was said to calm the spirit, awaken the mind, and cure stupidity and dementia.

Whenever she drank the “Soul-Calming Decoction,” she did seem to calm down for a while and appeared a bit more lucid.

Over time, her parents, who didn’t understand these things, believed it was effective.

“Centipede grass, nine-tailed needle, dew drop fruit…”

Bai Shuangshuang recalled the formula and was momentarily speechless.

This was no damn “Soul-Calming Decoction”!

It was practically no different from a slow-acting poison.

The calmness after drinking wasn’t because it worked—it was because she was poisoned into unconsciousness…

Thus, over time, so much residual poison had accumulated in her meridians.

If she wanted to tread the path of cultivation again, she had to remove this residual poison.

“Triple Fire Marrow Cleansing Powder…”

Bai Shuangshuang strained her mind to recall a medicinal formula that could purify the residual poison in her body while having a low refining threshold.

But even so, she still needed several precious herbs, which couldn’t be bought at ordinary pharmacies—they could only be cultivated from spirit fields.

Besides that, she also needed a decent alchemy cauldron.

None of these were things she could easily get in a short time…

“Ah—”

Bai Shuangshuang sighed.

She had to put this aside for now and extended her Spiritual Sight to her dantian.

Her pupils suddenly contracted, as if she had seen something unbelievable.

This… This is?!

Red-Gold Flame?!

If it weren’t the dead of night, Bai Shuangshuang would have almost screamed.

What was Red-Gold Flame?

That was something that required the Great Yan Dynasty to expend a massive amount of National Fortune to even activate—a true sacred object!

Even Master, a great power, had been burned to the point of Soul Scattered.

How could this thing be inside her dantian?!

An inexplicable urge drove Bai Shuangshuang to move her Spiritual Sight closer to the direction of the Red-Gold Flame.

Her vision went black.

That wisp of Spiritual Sight, formed from Qi, was instantly incinerated into nothingness.

An excruciating pain began to spread through her limbs and bones.

She bit down hard on her clothes to keep herself from crying out.

Sweat as big as beans poured down her forehead like rain.

In just a few breaths, she was completely exhausted.

The pain slowly faded.

Bai Shuangshuang lay on the ground, eyes vacant, panting softly, her mind blank.

She had seen enough strange things in the past few days.

The mysterious Heiqun Shaonv had already given her a headache.

Now another big shot had appeared?

No one knew how long it took before Bai Shuangshuang somewhat came to her senses.

Someone came to call her for a shift change and led her to the Library Pavilion.

Smelling the faint scent of books wafting from the Library Pavilion, her mood finally calmed a little.

That was right.

For someone to survive the scorching of Red-Gold Flame and still be reincarnated was itself a bizarre thing.

If so, encountering other strange things was only natural, right?

Unable to cultivate for now, and afraid to probe the big shot in her dantian again, a bored Bai Shuangshuang began flipping through books in the Library Pavilion.

She wasn’t the only maidservant on night duty here.

Others also did this.

It was probably tacitly allowed by the manor?

Actually, in her past life, Bai Shuangshuang also loved reading, especially sitting by the mountain gate with Senior Sister Luo Zhiwei, reading romance novels.

If some junior brother or sister came back late from town and was stopped by the disciple guarding the gate, the two of them would often step in to mediate.

But of course, the price was that they had to collect more romance novels from the mortal world for Senior Brother and Senior Sister.

However, this was the Jingnan Prince Manor’s Library Pavilion, so there wouldn’t be any romance novels.

So, after flipping through everything, Bai Shuangshuang didn’t find any book she liked.

In the end, she randomly picked one and found it was a history book.

With the mindset that it was better than being bored, Young Hero Bai listlessly flipped through a few pages.

Suddenly, her finger flipping the page trembled.

“Summer of the 2800th year of the Kindling Calendar. The Great Yan Imperial Army besieged the Qingyun Sword Sect. They burned the mountain with a Crimson Gold Sea of Fire. The Qingyun Sword Sect fell. No survivors.”

With a clatter, the book in Bai Shuangshuang’s hand fell to the ground, the sound jarringly loud in the silent Library Pavilion.

“Hey, new girl! What are you doing?! If you damage the books here, you can die for all I care, but don’t drag us down with you!”

A maidservant of higher status nearby frowned and yelled at Bai Shuangshuang, demanding accountability.

She had already been displeased with this newcomer who had received the Commandery Princess’s favor and been gifted a fine set of clothes.

Now she had an excuse to cause trouble.

“Um… what year is it now in the Kindling Calendar?”

Bai Shuangshuang ignored the accusation and just asked blankly.

“2818. Why?”

Hearing this, Bai Shuangshuang was completely stunned.

All the noises around her faded from her perception.

Eighteen years… had already passed?