Yuehwa stared at the silver key lying on Shoya's palm, but just as she was about to reach out and touch it out of curiosity, Shoya wrapped his fingers around it and it disappeared from sight. Straightening himself up, he rummaged around the stacks of paper lying on the librarian's desk for a while, before deciding that what he was looking for was not going to be found here.

"What's the key for?" she asked, looking expectantly toward him. "The fourth librarian is dead, does that mean that you're not going to be able to find that prophecy anymore? Who killed the librarian and all those other people anyway?"

"Too many questions," Shoya remarked. He walked over to the door, peering down the corridor as if waiting for something to happen. Turning around, he suddenly grabbed Yuehwa by the hand and dragged her towards the window at the far end of the room. Lifting a bewildered Yuehwa up onto the window ledge, he turned back and took a final look around the room.

"Shoya, what on earth is going on? There's no one in this compound besides us and the door is that way, why do we have to—"

Before she could finish her sentence, Shoya had given her a shove and she went tumbling out of the window onto the grass outside. Seconds later, he landed classily beside her, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that she was sprawled on the ground in a rather unladylike manner thanks to his abrupt push from behind. Once she had gathered her senses, Yuehwa leapt up to her feet, glaring indignantly at Shoya as she brushed away bits of grass from her clothes.

"What was that—"

This time, Shoya simply clapped his hand around her mouth, much to Yuehwa's surprise. Frowning, he gestured back towards to the room and right on cue they could hear footsteps pounding the corridor, fast approaching in their direction. Taking her by the hand, he began moving quickly away from the librarian's study, making use of the cover of night to stay out of view of whoever it was that was giving chase.

Right now, Yuehwa didn't really know what was going on or where they were headed. All she could do was to follow behind Shoya to wherever he was leading her to. As they wound their way down the maze of corridors, he never once let go of her hand. The warmth radiating from his palm to hers was making her a little more flustered than she would have liked to be; if only he turned around to look at her now, the pink tint in her cheeks would probably not have gone unnoticed. Luckily for Yuehwa, fleeing from a scene of crime did not quite afford one the leisure to notice such things.

It wasn't until they had flipped themselves over one of the library's perimeter walls and were a good couple of streets away from the south library did Shoya finally slow down his pace. When he did, he also casually let go of Yuehwa's hand, saying, "Right, I think we're safely out of range now. They probably won't catch up."

Yuehwa quickly looked down at the ground, hoping that she wasn't still blushing and if she was, that he wouldn't notice. Kicking the gravel beneath her feet, she said, "Who was it back at the library? Was it the royal guards? I thought they had been re-deployed to the palace to put out the fire, how did they get back to the library so quickly?" Based on the sound of the footsteps they had heard, she could be certain that there were at least a dozen or more men who had been headed their way, yet they had seen barely half of that number when they first entered the compound.

"Come on, we'll talk on the way," Shoya said, continuing to walk down the street. As he walked, his eyes continued to scan the surroundings warily, making sure that there were no surprises waiting for them round the corner. "It's not the first time this has happened. All the previous times when I've tried to get in touch with one of the royal librarians, I'd find them already dead and then minutes later the place would be stormed by the guards, as if they had been lying in wait all along."

"Does that mean that it's all a trap? They knew you were coming, so they were just lying in ambush. If they had caught you there and then, then there would be no denying that you were responsible for the murders of the royal librarians! Who would want to pin such a accusation on you?"

"Perhaps someone who thinks I'm after his most prized possessions," Shoya replied.

After walking for a good fifteen minutes or so, Shoya brought them round the back of an inn, where he quickly untied a black horse from its post and leapt up onto its saddle. Looking down at Yuehwa, he said, "As you already know, there's a hefty price that's been placed on my head and things are a lot more complicated than they seem. I don't want to drag you into this mess."

Yuehwa looked up at the man who was seated atop the horse, the soft glow of the moonlight gently illuminating what could be seen of his features, making him look even more dashing than he usually was. At that instance, Yuehwa suddenly thought of Baixun, and of the contrast between these two men. Baixun was like the sun, always confident and ablaze; Shoya was like the moon, mysterious and quietly alluring. Perhaps neither of them was better than the other; they were just... different.

"What if I want to be dragged in?" she replied, looking him straight in the eyes. She had already made up her mind anyway, regardless of what his answer was.

Shoya contemplated her words for a couple of seconds, then he shook his head and reached out his hand to her, a slight smile toying at the left corner of his lips. When she was seated in front of him, he reached out to grab hold of the horse's reins, leaning forwards to whisper three words into her right ear.

"Don't regret it."

#

The horse galloped down the empty gravel streets, taking them further and further away from the heart of the city. All through the journey, Shoya didn't utter a single word, and neither did Yuehwa. She had a dozen questions in her mind that she was dying to ask him, but something told her that now wasn't the right time. She could feel his warmth against her back, his steady, rhythmic breathing against her cheeks, yet her instincts told her that there seemed to be something weighing heavily on his mind.

Right now, he needed the silence to be able to hear his own thoughts, and so she gave it to him.

The capital city of Feng, Anyang, was geographically larger than that of Gi or Dahai, and it took them almost half an hour before they finally came to a stop somewhere near the western fringe of the city. Not far from their current position, they could see the city walls towering overhead, with a lone soldier patrolling above. They had stopped in front of what looked to be an old temple with ornate carvings of gods and mythical creatures lining its roof and pillars. Yuehwa waited for Shoya to tie their horse to a wooden post in the nearby alleyway, before following him inside.

"I know the priest of this temple," Shoya said, as if predicting the question that was now running through Yuehwa's mind. "The temple is fairly small and there aren't very many people who come here to pray, so it's a good place to lie low in. It's also in one of the more shoddy areas of the city, so you don't get many officials or soldiers patrolling these streets."

"So is this where you've been all this while? Ever since you left Dahai?" Yuehwa asked, following behind as he led her towards the rooms at the back of the temple. She brushed a couple of spiderwebs away from her shoulders as they walked, thinking that it was no wonder there were so few people coming here these days.

Shoya pushed open the doors to one of the rooms, leading the way in. Once the doors were shut behind them, he poured them both a cup of water and sat himself down at the square, wooden table in the centre of the room. Looking across at her, he asked, "So what are you doing in Feng?"

"Ah," Yuehwa suddenly recalled her true purpose for being here, "it's like this—I was escorting Princess Naying to Gi and the entourage was ambushed in the middle of the night. In the midst of all the confusion, Naying was hit by a poisoned dart. The poison that was used was Hell's Water, you must have heard of it, right?"

Nodding his head, Shoya replied, "If you're hoping that I have a cure, then you'd be right and wrong at the same time. I know of the cure, but I don't have it, nor do I have the means of making it right now."

"But she only has three months! If you know of the cure then you must be able to make it. What do you need? I can help you find whatever it is, anything!"

"You never struck me as the sort who would be so anxious about saving the life of someone else," Shoya remarked, observing her curiously. Seeing her lower her gaze with somewhat of a guilty conscience, the corners of his lips tilted upwards in a slight smile. "Hell's Water contains not just the white mountain laurel, which gives it its poisonous nature, but also an extract from the hyssop plant which is known to evaporate fairly quickly. It's fairly simple to counter the effects of white mountain laurel in itself, but when the two extracts are combined, that's when its potency increases tenfold. In order to remove the poison entirely from a person's bloodstream, you need the extract of an extremely rare flower—they call it the golden chrysanthemum. The golden chrysanthemum is supposedly able to cure any poison in existence."

"Normal chrysanthemums are already gold, who are you trying to kid!"

Shaking his head, Shoya replied patronisingly, " That's because you haven't actually seen a true golden chrysanthemum before. There's a difference between yellow and gold. Under normal daylight, the golden chrysanthemum could well pass off as just any other ordinary chrysanthemum, but once night falls, that's when you can see the difference—because its petals supposedly give off light in the dark."

"That's impossible," Yuehwa scoffed.

"As impossible as suits of bronze armour with no one inside."

Narrowing her eyes, Yuehwa studied Shoya's expression carefully, watching for any sign that would suggest that he was lying to her about all this. She admitted that her imagination allowed her to conjure up impossible ideas on a regular basis, but thinking of a golden flower that gave off light in the dark was almost too incredulous even for her wild imagination. Still, Shoya looked perfectly serious about what he was saying.

"Let's assume this miraculous chrysanthemum does exist and it's the cure to Hell's Water. Where can we find it then?" she asked hesitantly.

"The good thing is that the golden chrysanthemum is supposedly right here in the capital of Feng," Shoya said.

"And the bad thing is..."

"The bad thing is that it might not even exist."

Right now, Yuehwa felt like throwing a chair at Shoya's head. He had sort of given her the answer that she was searching for—the knowledge that there was a cure for Naying—but just when she was beginning to think that there was hope, he had gone and snuffed it out once again. "If it doesn't exist then how am I supposed to find it?" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation. "If you know that the golden chrysanthemum is here in the capital then you must have some inkling of where it could be."

"The golden chrysanthemum is an old wives' tale passed down the generations. The story has it that one of the old kings of Feng discovered it by chance when he was travelling across a remote part of the kingdom and had it brought back to the palace as a gift for his queen. Since then, the insignia of the queen of Feng has been the chrysanthemum and you can see it embroidered in gold thread on the queen's royal outfits. Some say that the golden chrysanthemum can still be found somewhere within the royal palace, although no one has actually ever seen it before, so for all we know it might not even exist anymore."

Yuehwa sighed, placing her chin on the table as she pondered over what she could do. The only option she was left with was to search the royal palace of Feng in hope that the rumours were true and that the flower was indeed hidden away somewhere within the palace walls. If the golden chrysanthemum was no more, that would also mean that all hope was lost for Naying. At the thought of that, the guilt began gnawing away at the back of her mind again.

Across the table, Shoya reached into his pocket and fished out the silver key that the librarian had given to him, studying it carefully under the candlelight. Yuehwa peered over and asked, "Do you know what this key is for?"

It looked terribly ordinary—there wasn't even any inscription or engraving on it, just a plain, old, silver key.

"The key must lead to where the prophecy is kept, but the question is, where's that? In the astrologer's vault?" Shoya murmured to himself. With the four librarians dead, the trail had gone cold.

"Are you going to tell me more about what is going on? Why are you searching for this prophecy?"

Raising his cup to his lips, Shoya took a gulp of water and sighed. "Remember I told you about the day I was born—when there was a solar eclipse and the moon, sun and earth were in perfect alignment?" Yuehwa quickly nodded her head. "Because of that one prophecy, I had to be sent away from Feng, yet the circumstances surrounding it are questionable in so many ways."

"You mean to say that the prophecy could have been false?"

"I don't know, that's why I need to find it and verify it for myself. It's no secret that the people of Feng are superstitious—that's why the royal astrologers are held in such high regard here compared to any of the other kingdoms. Even so, there are countless prophecies that have been discarded and countless more that have never come to fruition. Why is it that this particular one was taken seriously enough to warrant the death of a—" Shoya suddenly shut his mouth, his lips setting themselves in a tight, uncomfortable line.

"The death of a prince?" Yuehwa decided to help him finish what he couldn't bring himself to say.

Sighing once more, Shoya leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. "The death of a son," he said. "What kind of a father would have sentenced his own son to death—and a newborn no less?" Listening to Shoya's words, Yuehwa could sense the slightest hint of disappointment in his usually calm voice, and she felt a pang of sympathy for what he had been going through.

"What about your mother?" she asked. "She must have loved you very much, to have gone through so much to send you away to Dahai where she thought you would be safe... Wait a minute, if she sent you to the Dahai palace, then how is it you ended up becoming the White Scorpion instead?" She thought of the white snowflake pendant that both Shoya and Naying had, yet how different their fates had turned out to be. Something didn't quite seem to add up.

Chuckling wryly, Shoya wrapped his fingers around the crystal hilt of his sword, staring at it pensively. "Let's just say things often don't work out as planned. When faced with a choice between power and kinship, many would choose to forsake the latter in favour of the former." Shaking his head, he looked across the table at Yuehwa and gave her a resigned smile. "No matter, perhaps things worked out better this way—for me at least, can't say the same about all those poor souls that I've crossed swords with in my lifetime."

"If the king and everyone else in the palace thinks that you're already dead, why is it that they're trying so hard to catch you?"

Shrugging his shoulders, Shoya replied, "Before I went to look for the four librarians, I tried breaking into the royal astrologers' vault—that's what alerted them to my presence. The vault is located underground, beneath the royal astrology building which is located at the heart of the palace and that's where all the original copies of the prophecies are kept. I managed to get in but it's a maze down there, you wouldn't even know where to begin searching."

"Oh..." Yuehwa mused, trying to get her mind around everything that she was being told. "What next then? I mean, what happens after you find the prophecy? What if it's real, and what if it's not? Are you planning on taking back your rightful place?"

She carefully observed the man sitting in front of her, a man whose face she still didn't know. When they had first met, she had thought that he was just like her, a carefree soul who wanted nothing more than to go wherever the wind would take him; the more she got to know him, the more she came to realise that what she knew was merely the tip of an iceberg. While he was telling her all this, his face was still perfectly calm, like the still surface of a lake, so much so that she couldn't see what was hidden beneath the surface.

"What is my rightful place?" he laughed. "I told you before, all I want is an answer. When I have that answer, then perhaps I'll decide what should be my rightful place in life." Standing up, he pointed to the bed and said, "There's only one room here, the only other room is used by the temple priest. You can have the bed. It's not the first time we're staying in the same room so I'm assuming it's alright."

Yuehwa rolled her eyes at his presumptuous attitude, though she didn't say anything in retaliation. She watched him leap up and land on the wooden beam overhead, lying down in his favourite position as usual, hands propping up his head from behind.

Since he was volunteering to sleep in the uncomfortable position, Yuehwa walked over to the bed and flopped down, exhausted from a day's activity and their rather exhilarating visit to the south library. Just as she was about to doze off into dreamland, she murmured, "So what do we do next? Can we go look for the golden chrysanthemum..."

Up on the beam, Shoya held out the silver key once more—the key that likely held the answer he was searching for, if only he knew where to look. He opened his mouth to answer her question, but the sounds of gentle snoring reached his ears and he glanced down to find that Yuehwa was already fast asleep.

Shaking his head, he slipped the key back into his pocket and closed his eyes. "Goodnight, Yuehwa," he whispered.

#

The people of Feng were one of the most superstitious across all the five kingdoms, and with the growth of the various different religious schools of thought came the corresponding flourishing of religious art and culture. At the very centre of this spiritual hub stood the royal astrology building, a glittering spectacle that housed some of the most revered individuals in the entire kingdom—the royal astrologers—communicators to the gods, readers of the stars and voices of the heavens. Beneath this roof of gold, the astrologers conveyed the will of the heavens to the king and his royal court, often playing a more influential role in the king's decision-making than all of his advisers put together.

That night, the chief astrologer—a woman with jet black hair and skin as pale as the moon—stood in the central courtyard of the astrology building, gazing up at the skies above with a slight frown etched across her porcelain forehead.

"Is something the matter, Madam?" her lone disciple, a girl of barely fifteen, looked up at her and asked.

Sheng Yun pointed an index finger at the rightmost star she could see in the sky, tracing the positions of the stars from right to left, until there was nothing left to be seen. It was unusual.

"The star of the golden dragon is getting brighter, and as it does, it will make the others in its vicinity fade away," she murmured to herself, turning her gaze back to that single, rightmost star she had started off with. "But over there," she pointed all the way left, "can you see it, Xin'ai?"

Her young disciple squinted up at the sky, trying to locate the position at which her teacher was pointing. Sure enough, it was just the tiniest of flecks in the sky, one that you would easily miss in the blink of an eye—but there it was.

"What is that, Madam?" the girl asked.

"A star. One that hasn't been seen in almost twenty-five years..." the chief astrologer replied, the hint of excitement in her voice also tainted with slight worry.

"But what does it mean?"

"It means, my dear, that he is alive. And that his star will rise once more. What is meant to be is meant to be."

Xin'ai looked up at her mentor, confused by the way the latter was speaking in riddles. When she turned her gaze back to the heavens, the young girl spotted something that neither of them had noticed was there before.

A faint red speck in the night sky, hanging just midway between the two stars that Sheng Yun had just pointed out. Against the dark backdrop, it wasn't quite as visible as some of its surrounding counterparts, but once you knew where to look you simply couldn't miss it. Pointing her finger up towards the sky, Xin'ai said, "Madam, look over there. Is that not the Star of the Phoenix? But the Star of the Phoenix is supposed to be found within the eastern constellation, isn't it?"

A look of alarm flashed across Sheng Yun's eyes when she verified that what her disciple had told her was true. It was indeed the Star of the Phoenix, named for its unique reddish hue that set it apart from all the other stars in the night sky, like the blazing tail of its namesake.

But this was not the eastern constellation.

"The phoenix has moved," she murmured softly, brows furrowing tightly as she contemplated upon the signs from the heavens. "The golden dragon is increasing in brightness, the white tiger that was lost has re-appeared, and in between them now lies the phoenix..."

"What does this all mean, Madam?"

"This means," Sheng Yun took one final look at the strange phenomenon taking place overhead, a tiny smile crossing her lips, "that the winds of change are brewing, and perhaps the time has finally come for things to fall back into their rightful place." Turning on her heels, she marched straight back towards the building.

"Xin'ai, come, we need to get ready for our guest."

There was no time to waste.