The Last Dahlia

017

Looking Baixun straight in the eyes, Yuehwa asked, "So are you going to go after Jin, or are you going to go after the real mastermind?"

His facial expression remained placidly calm, and he reached out to take a sip of water from his cup. Setting the cup back down on the table gently, he said, "Since someone wants to create an excuse for me to take up arms against Jin, then I'll go for Jin first, and the real mastermind later. There's no hurry in taking revenge. Considering that Naying is to be my wife, I will no doubt ensure that whoever put her in this situation gets what he deserves."

Yuehwa studied Baixun carefully, her own thoughts quickly formulating within her mind. The man sitting in front of her, for all his charm and easy-going manner, had a mind that was far sharper and more shrewd than she had thought. It had only been a short while since the attempt on their lives, yet Baixun had already weighed the pros and cons and decided on the path that he would take. To him, seeking petty revenge for this assassination attempt was not even on the cards; what he was more concerned about was turning this into an opportunity to bring him one step closer to his goal. It was no wonder so many people viewed him as a threat, for if he kept going the way he did, who was to say when the day would come when his dream of uniting the five kingdoms would come true? Yuehwa believed that day would be here sooner rather than later.

"How long before the poison's effects become debilitating?" Baixun asked, shifting the focus of the conversation back onto Naying.

Yuehwa stuck out three fingers. "Three months. From now till then, the poison will slowly weaken her, up until the point when it invades her nerves—that's when the pain will begin." She sighed, not knowing what she could do to help her friend. There was no known cure for Hell's Water, but she couldn't possibly just sit back and watch as Naying slowly withered away, not when she knew that their situations could have been reversed.

Had Baixun not been paying more attention to her than to Naying, perhaps the princess might not have been the one afflicted by the poison right now.

"You should have saved her, not me," Yuehwa murmured, a tinge of guilt seeping into her mind. "I could have saved myself."

Baixun reached across the table and took hold of her hand, saying, "It's not your fault. It's no one's fault. Even if I hadn't stepped in to block that dart for you, I might not have noticed the second one. But if I had to choose again, I would still have chosen to save you. Yuehwa, all these things that I've told you about my decisions and my ambitions, I've never ever told anyone else, not even Maroo. The reason why I've told you is because I want you to be the one standing by my side as I achieve all of this, one step at a time."

Yuehwa quickly retracted her hand, a scowl appearing on her face. "Your Highness, your wife-to-be is lying upstairs after having been poisoned by an incurable poison," she said coldly. "If I were you I would be thinking of ways to save her and not be saying things like these to another woman."

"You're right," Baixun conceded. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Are you sure there's no cure for this poison? If it comes from Jin, then perhaps someone in Jin might know of a cure."

"Because of its insidious nature, the manufacture of Hell's Water has been banned in Jin for years, although evidently someone out there has still been making it on the sly. We could search the whole of Jin for a possible cure, but given the vast expanse of land, the search could take months and we haven't got that much time on our hands," Yuehwa replied. "But there might be one person who might know something."

A familiar silhouette appeared in her mind—a man dressed in white, his face always half-obscured by the white mask he wore across it. There had been many a time when she had dreamt of him in the night, but each time she came close to removing that mask to reveal the face beneath, he would suddenly disappear, just like he had disappeared in real life.