These words were almost brutally blunt. As long as Adam Harris was that Adam Harris, he would recognize it immediately upon hearing.

Adam Harris had the wine at his lips, but now he was caught—he couldn’t drink, nor could he not drink.

“Something like this—how could there be any set plan right now?” Adam Harris did his best to appear calm as he set down his wine cup. With a slight smile in his eyes, he said, “The tribunal hasn’t even convened yet.”

“Chishui has always advocated strict laws and harsh punishment, and has proposed more than once to abolish the tribunal and swiftly eliminate those villains. As the Holy Son, bearing the will of the Holy Land, you would also want to bring people down from above?” Grace Turner placed a snow-white hand on her knee, her voice as cool as her complexion.

Adam Harris knew he couldn’t hide it from her, but he hadn’t expected her to see through him so quickly.

From the moment he entered until now, the words they’d exchanged could be counted on one hand.

Yet with just a few sentences, she had already cornered him.

Chapter 4

The private room was utterly silent. The fire in the brazier burned bright, its glow flickering like breath.

Grace Turner slowly rose from the table laden with dishes, looking down at Adam Harris from above. Her eyes were beautiful, but when her gaze settled quietly on someone, it gave a chilling sense of pressure along the spine.

Their eyes met, and he seemed to hear her say: Go on, keep pretending.

Adam Harris let out a deep breath, finally giving a wry smile as he raised his hands in surrender. “I knew from the start I couldn’t hide it from you.”

He really couldn’t. Even if Grace Turner hadn’t come to him today, once the tribunal opened in four days, as soon as he tried to protect Brian Clark, she would inevitably notice.

It was an unsolvable deadlock.

Grace Turner had long guessed it would come to this, but when it was confirmed, she still felt a sense of absurd inevitability deep down.

“Don’t ask me—I don’t know what’s going on either.” Before she could speak, Adam Harris spread his hands, a bitter taste in his mouth. “All I did was try to mediate a quarrel, didn’t even lay a hand on anyone, and the next thing I knew, I woke up on the road to Xihe.”

“Don’t doubt me.” He glanced at Grace Turner and continued, “There’s plenty for me to deal with in Chishui. Being stuck here does me no good at all.”

Adam Harris and Brian Clark were sworn friends, so no matter how sincere he sounded, Grace Turner wouldn’t fully believe him. “That day, before I entered the Yunxiao Hall, what did Brian Clark do?” She looked at Adam Harris, questioning him one after another: “Were you with him the whole time?”

She was implying suspicion that Brian Clark had done something behind the scenes.

Everything she asked, Adam Harris had already replayed in his mind a hundred times when he first woke up, confused about the situation.

Indeed, no one is a fool—there’s always a reason for things. They couldn’t have returned to a thousand years ago for no reason at all.

“I was with him the whole time.” Adam Harris tapped his long fingers on the edge of the table, squinting his peach blossom eyes as he recalled, “After the incident in Yedu, he knew he couldn’t hide it from you. He canceled everything that day, went nowhere, and waited for you in Yunxiao Hall.”

“You know what kind of person he is, what kind of character—there’s no need for me to say more, you know it well.” He instinctively spoke up for Brian Clark: “Let alone scheming against someone—before he fought you that day, he even threw away his own life-bound sword first.”

From the moment he learned of the incident in Yedu, to confronting Brian Clark, fighting, and then unexpectedly returning to a thousand years ago, Grace Turner had always remained cool and calm, showing little emotion, as if she had accepted and digested the news overnight. But after Adam Harris finished speaking, she suddenly lifted her chin, as if unable to contain a surge of emotion, and retorted coldly, “What kind of person is he?”

“A notorious criminal, all his meridians severed, his body ruined, surviving only by Yedu’s grace, climbing step by step to a high position. Not to mention repaying kindness, but to repay it with such betrayal—” Her lashes trembled sharply, and she said word by word, “Even if I spent a thousand years raising a dog, it wouldn’t turn out like this.”

Adam Harris had never seen Grace Turner like this.

He got along well with Brian Clark, but his relationship with Grace Turner wasn’t bad either. With their status, it was inevitable they’d take on Heaven’s Mandate Book missions together; after befriending Brian Clark, they’d even teamed up several times. In times of crisis, they could trust each other with their backs, and over time, they’d come to understand one another.

She was the classic cold-outside, warm-inside type—not talkative, but not aggressive or malicious. Just think: anyone who could indulge someone as good-natured as Brian Clark for so long couldn’t have a bad heart.

Her innate upbringing also made it impossible for her to say anything truly harsh.

This was truly a first.

“Grace Turner.” Adam Harris was silent for a while, then said honestly, “After this happened, I thought about how you’d react.”

“I admit, anyone would be angry if this happened to them.”

He paused, choosing his words, and looked up at Grace Turner in confusion. “But I didn’t expect you to react so strongly. You’ve always been calm. By rights, even with the Qiankun Pearl on you, you wouldn’t be reckless enough to go down with Brian Clark.”

“The demons and monsters imprisoned in Yedu are all cold-blooded and lawless, guilty of every crime imaginable—each with blood on their hands. Even if they were all wiped out, it would mean little to you or to Yedu—just clearing out a debt-ridden shell, with barely any impact.”