“I also know that two years ago, outside the pass, the pack of wolves that hunted me down didn’t come on their own—they were summoned by someone. You were warning me that I can’t escape, that you have countless ways to kill me, isn’t that right?” Charles said quietly. “Only the barbarians know how to control those beasts. After you arrived in Yanhui Town, you’ve been in contact with those barbarians—I’m guessing you’re a barbarian woman too. When I was a child, you locked me in the cabinet, and I saw a man come in and tear open your clothes. There was a wolf’s head on your chest.”

Grace let out a low laugh. “Barbarians, you actually call us barbarians…”

Her laughter grew louder and louder, until she was almost out of breath.

Suddenly, Grace’s sharp laughter came to an abrupt halt. She clutched her chest and began to cough violently. Charles instinctively raised his hand, as if to support her, but then caught himself, jerkily pulling his hand back and gripping his own knuckles.

A thin trickle of blood seeped from between Grace’s fingers, falling onto the pale yellow hem of her dress, carrying a shocking purplish-black hue.

Charles was startled and finally took a step forward. “You…”

Grace grabbed his arm, struggling to straighten herself up, trembling like a withered leaf in a cold wind. She gasped for breath, then fumbled under the bottom of her dressing case and pulled out half of a double mandarin duck jade pendant, her bloodstained hand shoving it into Charles’s palm.

Her face was as white as snow, her bloodstained lips even more striking than rouge, and her bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at Charles. “My name isn’t Grace, that’s a name for women of the Central Plains. My name is Samuel Hill, which means the purple flowing gold at the heart of the earth…”

She choked on her own words, and after another bout of racking coughs, spat out a mouthful of blood, staining the front of Charles’s robe.

“Un…lucky purple flowing gold.” The woman’s voice took on a strange, sobbing tone, her breathing growing more and more rapid, her chest heaving like a broken bellows. “My elder sister is the goddess of the Eternal Heaven, even the Wolf God must kneel and worship her. You…”

“You’re the little monster I raised with my own hands,” she laughed weakly, her breath as thin as gossamer. “No one loves you, no one truly cares for you…”

She struggled to grip Charles’s wrist, her sharp nails digging into his flesh, clutching the iron wrist clasp on the boy’s hand. “This is a Xuan-iron light armor cloud-disk wrist clasp—specially made by the black devils of the Xuan-iron Battalion. Who gave it to you? Hmm?”

Charles recoiled as if burned, shoving her away hard.

The woman collapsed onto the dressing table, curling up and convulsing. Her alluring phoenix eyes widened, revealing the whites in a grimace.

“You have the ‘Uergu’ I placed on you. I even gave it a Han name, also called ‘Charles’, does it… sound nice?” Her cheeks twitched violently, white foam and blood mingling at the corners of her mouth, her words growing slurred, but Charles could still hear her clearly. “A peerless Uergu, no one can detect it, no one can break it… One day, you’ll become the mightiest warrior in the world, but you’ll also lose the ability to distinguish nightmare from reality… You’ll become a powerful madman—”

Charles stood there woodenly, feeling those half-understood words drift past his ears, easily filling the seams of his bones with icy shards.

“The blood of the goddess also flows in my chest. With the infinite divine power of my Eternal Heaven, I bless you. You… for your whole life, your heart will hold only hatred and suspicion, destined to be violent and bloodthirsty, leaving carnage and bloodshed wherever you go, doomed to drag everyone down with you to a miserable… miserable… end…”

The word “death” stumbled from her throat. The woman’s body convulsed violently, then, as if sensing something, she slowly turned her head to look at the small sachet hanging from the bed canopy. Inside was a peace charm, which John Foster had once brought home from a temple outside the city while on duty.

The woman’s eyelashes fluttered gently, and suddenly her eyes seemed to fill with tears, the tears washing away the malice in her gaze, leaving it incomparably gentle—though that gentleness lasted only a moment.

Her contracted pupils finally went dim and lifeless, like a candle snuffed out. The woman in her finery drew her last breath amid the world’s most venomous curse, and then, with the last of her warmth, collapsed heavily.

No one loves you, no one truly cares for you. For your whole life, your heart will hold only hatred and suspicion, destined to be violent and bloodthirsty, leaving carnage and bloodshed wherever you go, doomed to drag everyone down with you to a miserable end.

On the stifling summer night, heavy with the air of death, Charles stared blankly at the dressed-up corpse on the dressing table, clutching the bloodstained iron wrist clasp in a daze.

Why did she kill herself?

Why did she hate him so much? And why did she raise him all these years?

…And what was the story behind the Xuan-iron Battalion’s wrist clasp?

Who exactly is William Sullivan?

It seemed as if Grace’s curse had already taken effect. For a child, the first trust and affection for the world comes from the unconditional care of their parents, but Charles had never received it.

No matter how kind and gentle his nature, with his heart forced to be constantly tense with suspicion and vigilance, he would always be like a stray dog with its tail between its legs. Even if he longed desperately for a shred of human warmth, he would still, trembling with fear, push it away again and again.