On the nineteen steps leading up to the judgment platform, several wide ceremonial chairs were arranged. Amid the deliberately drawn-out announcement of the young attendant, Grace Turner and the others took their seats one after another.

Before long, the clanging and clashing of iron chains drifted up from below, as if something heavy was stumbling and trudging forward, each muffled, low thud striking at the heart.

Adam Harris tried to resist, but couldn’t help glancing at Grace Turner’s expression.

There was no change at all.

She controlled her expression so well. There was no trace of softness or reluctance, nor any hint of schadenfreude, as if she and Brian Clark truly did not know each other, as if there had never been that thousand-year bond of mutual admiration, trust, and entanglement between them.

To possess such composure—truly worthy of Grace Turner.

Sixteen people were escorted up the steps one by one.

It was still winter in the sanctuary, thick clouds and mist shrouded the mountaintop, and the long wind brought a biting chill. The sixteen people, forced to kneel on the platform, all hung their heads, their hands and feet bound by iron chains as thick as wrists. Each wore prison garb marked with a number, like slaves to be chosen at will.

Covered in whip marks, barely clinging to life.

A disciple of Xihe, holding a neatly organized booklet, walked in order to the side of several ceremonial chairs on the platform. The disciple behind Grace Turner respectfully presented the booklet and explained in detail, “Your Highness, please take a look. It records the names, portraits, backgrounds, and crimes of the prisoners below.”

Grace Turner had already seen these things in her previous life.

She frowned, did not take the booklet, but instead lifted her chin and said clearly, “Have them raise their heads.”

Those kneeling below had all been stripped of their cultivation and were seriously injured, unable and unwilling to resist. Soon, they all looked up, some high, some low.

Sixteen youths, sixteen distinct faces.

Through the swirling mist, Brian Clark immediately saw Grace Turner. He was in utter disarray, but his back was always straight, showing no sign of desperate pleading.

She looked just as she did in his memory, only softer a thousand years ago, her delicate face still carrying a hint of girlish liveliness, her eyes like the mist on the mountain, hazy and mysterious. Yet when she looked at him, she seemed especially cold.

Especially heartless.

After her gaze moved away, Brian Clark, who hadn’t flinched even under the lash, slowly clenched his fist, an indescribable feeling surging uncontrollably in his heart.

Unlike Adam Harris’s hopeful thought that “lovers just quarrel and make up,” he understood Grace Turner better than anyone—

Grace Turner was very smart and very decisive; she would never make the same mistake twice.

She would never reach out to him again, never show him even a shred of kindness.

She couldn’t wait for him to die.

Seated beside Grace Turner was the Buddhist maiden from the Northern Wastes, named Julia Morgan. Of the six seated, only she read through the booklet thoroughly from beginning to end. After closing it, she turned her head and softly asked the sanctuary disciple, “Which one is Eric Bennett?”

The disciple pointed him out.

Grace Turner, hearing the commotion, looked in that direction.

On this freezing winter day, the youth wore only thin prison clothes, marked with a red “one” on the chest. Blood streaked his brow, and he was forced to kneel by a steward pressing down on his shoulder. Even in such a posture, his whole being seemed bristling with ten thousand thorns and defiance.

Fierce as a wounded wolf cub.

Sensing someone looking at him, the youth raised his eyes. In his deep black pupils, it was as if a cluster of frosty white snow was cradled, chilling and full of hostility.

Grace Turner was momentarily stunned.

He had a strikingly handsome face, not the youthful, high-spirited look of his peers, but a beauty that surpassed even women. Even the sneer tugging at his lips carried a breathtaking, captivating edge.

Grace Turner had seen all kinds of youths; mere looks were not enough to daze her.

She glanced at Jason Morgan beside her, then slowly lowered her head to look at the roster in her hand, her gaze settling on the name “Eric Bennett.”

She was not yet familiar with Jason Morgan, but in her previous life, Jason Morgan became one of the few friends she could truly talk to.

Her deep impression of “Eric Bennett” came from a time when Jason Morgan joined forces with Kunlun to take on a particularly difficult task. Afterward, instead of returning to the Northern Wastes, she went to find Grace Turner.

She still remembered Jason Morgan’s expression then—a complex, inexpressible sorrow stirred by another. That night, she and Jason Morgan sat shoulder to shoulder, listening as she said, word by word, “After more than thirty days of confrontation, we finally captured the resentment of that demon ghost.”

“My Buddhist Heart Sutra broke through to the twenty-seventh level.”

“But I still couldn’t redeem him.”

“I saw his memories.”

“Ah Yu,” Jason Morgan said, “If I had known earlier that a demon ghost would have to endure such malice in this world, I would have attended that trial back then.”

To save even one is still a salvation.

The present Jason Morgan did not know what would happen in a hundred or even a thousand years, but Grace Turner did.

She knew.

But she frowned and said nothing.

Once bitten by a snake, one fears even a well rope for ten years. She had to admit, she was afraid of meeting another Brian Clark.