A Plum Blossom

Chapter 42

It was a quiet night. The once full trees were now barren, as autumn has ended and the once clear paths were filled by snow.

Winter was upon them.

Running through these grounds without notice was Ning. He wore black robes and a mask incase anyone were to see his face.

As ordered from His Highness, he was going to that place Lady Li Mei once was.

The building that was built just a few months before the Ha Family tragedy, stood before him. The man didn't know why but he felt shivers run down his spine.

This place reeked of devastation.

At the entrance of the building, he found the door to be locked. Pulling out a rather fairly small and thin blade of his, he nudged the lock until it opened.

Pushing the door, a faint foul odor touched his nose even through the cloth that covered his face. His brows scrunched in discomfort at the smell.

"It's like rotten flesh but worse."

Carefully shutting the door behind him, he crept down the stone steps. With every step he took, he felt as if he were leading himself to his demise.

At the bottom, there were two rooms. One was clean and the other stained with red. Retracting back on what he heard from his Lady, he decided to go through the stained door first to collect the possible torn pages and inspect the draining room.

Opening the door, he stepped in. Documents loitered the floor and tables, while the room beyond has yet to remain untouched at the moment.

Walking along the tables, he found the page his Lady has read before in this same place. Grabbing the paper, he folded it before placing it into his pocket.

With so many documents, he only paid attention to the ones that seemed important. Picking up another, he read it.

"With the drained blood, the doer is to drench themself in it completely. The blood of the vessel is to touch the white butterfly on the doer's body. Once this is done, the ceremony begins and the enchanter shall read the lines in order for the wished spirit to wander in."

His brow raised as he quietly muttered to himself. "Does that mean Lady Li Mei was there at the beginning of the ceremony?"

"Also there's another person involved in this."

He also folded this one away into his pocket and made his march towards the draining room that lied behind the clean door.

Inside, it seemed to have been cleaned but the stench had not gone away. The walls seemed to be less of blood along with the table that held the poor maidens, and the once blood-filled buckets were now empty.

"Seems like there'll be nothing today."

Leaving that room, he then remembered how the room behind the red stained door had a desk. Seeing so he decided to go back in.

His hand on the handle, he clicked open the door and set foot in.

Once again, his brow raised at the different contrast in both rooms.

Approaching the study, there was of course  countless documents, but other than that it had a fairly thick board.

Then, he noticed something. Here one would have to look intently in order to see it.