"If you know that much, why provoke her?" He was curious about her answer. Within minutes of stepping into the palace, this little girl already wanted to fight head-on with the Empress herself. Did she already have some kind of plan set out?

Hongyue's lips curled up in amus.e.m.e.nt.

"My hands were itchy."

Simple and straight to the point.

With that, Jiayi fell silent. What more was he to say to that?

On the other hand, Hongyue didn't plan to add anything else to her comment. So what if she did have things planned? She didn't trust him. Other than the little snake on her left arm, she trusted no one else.

However, even in Qingyu, she held distrust. It was just enough to fight by his side but not enough to fight back to back.

As if Qingyu knew she was thinking of him, he gently tucked his head into her hand. With her sleeves hanging down, the little troublemaker was kept out of view.

Hongyue froze.

At least she wasn't alone.

"Since the Empress took the opportunity to send me into the garden, I might as well give something back to her in return. It's only polite if I do so, don't you think?" Hongyue noted lazily.

Jiayi found himself frowning. As expected, he could never follow her train of thoughts, "What are you going to do?"

Hongyue turned her head, providing no answer. However, she suddenly gave him the flower in her hand. Jiayi could only receive the item without the option of refusing. Walking forward, the eldest miss moved to another section of flowers as if she held no worries in the heart.

Hm, where is it?

Suddenly she beamed. Reaching out her fingers, she attempted to grab another flower that was the color of blood-red. However, as her finger brushed against the bud, the eldest miss screamed out in pain. She held her fingers to her lips, her hand covered in spots of blood. Hongyue's face turned red, and she abruptly reached out and furiously ripped out the petals.

All that was left was a swirl of red petals that floated listlessly in the air as the breeze carried them away. Hongyue stood in the middle of the mess, fuming.

Everything had occurred so fast, Jiayi was bewildered at the sudden change. However, he quickly realized something wrong. He hadn't discerned it before, but there were other people other than just the two of them. His eyes clouded.

She must have already known.

Then, this must be her acting.

Truly admirable speed, but what was she doing?

Hongyue proceeded to destroy the section of the royal garden, her eyes focused on the flowers before her. Her fingers moved quickly as she continued to act in anger. Every petal she touched was imprinted with a drop of her blood— a blood hex.

When she was 'admiring' the purple flower in her hand, she was actually keeping her eyes on the dewdrop on the curve of the petals. Whatever the water was able to reflect within the surface was like information fed into Hongyue's mind. From that, she was able to spot two shadowy figures in the trees, one behind the lower wall of the entrance, and three behind 2 different sections of the garden around her.

In the beginning, they started off quite far away. Each was keeping their eyes on her, and their stances were quite lax. It didn't appear like their motives were to kill, their goal was probably to keep their eye on her possible weakness. It would be possible these rats were following their first set of given instructions.

However, as she talked with Jiayi, she could see something wrong at once. Near the bushes of flowers, one of the dark figures moved extremely close to the other one. With a quick movement, the second one was overwhelmed and fell out of perception.

Danger.

As she continued talking, it seemed to be happening to all of the figures in their hiding spots. As she continued to keep her eyes concentrated on the commotion, her breath stopped. On the back on the newly arrived attackers' left ears, there was a black dot. She almost didn't see it.

Her eyes narrowed at once.

They were getting replaced.

Her heart jumped.

Oh, it appears like there was a crow in this palace after all. Her story was not told in vain. Most likely, the crow who wanted to get rid of her.

This quickly? She must be a larger threat than she originally thought.

Since everything was s.h.i.+fting so fast before her eyes, just how can she play quietly in an event like this?

Hongyue sighed inwardly.

Looks like she needed to make a different move than planned just in case. Feigning anger, she was working to set up another entanglement trap for her safety.

As Hongyue released another handful of petals in her hand, she concentrated on the air around her. Breathing in, she cleared her mind. Pulling the movement of the air toward her, her lips moved.

The flow of the wind was instantly changed. Just like the first batch of petals, these petals floated about as if at random. However, the ones with the markings of her blood hovered closely to the hidden figures in the garden.

Turning her head to Jiayi, Hongyue suddenly grinned, "Want to dance?"