Jade of Another World

Chapter 176 A Fight to the Death

Inside the Taiji Hall, the golden bricks were soaked with Nangong Jin's black blood. When Wanyan Qing stepped through the broken pieces and rushed in, twelve bronze cauldrons were spewing eerie blue flames. Hanging at her waist was the Xuan Tie Phoenix Pattern Sword, a gift from Nangong Jin, its tip still dripping with the blood of the guards.

Wanyan Qing pressed her sword against Lin Ning's throat: "You vixen! How dare you murder a king!"

She suddenly ripped the jade hairpin from Lin Ning's hair, and the jade pendant rolled out a winding path in the pool of blood.

Lin Ning looked up at the emperor, who was lying on the dragon throne with his eyes closed and unconscious. She tasted the sweetness of peacock gall on her tongue: "The princess has come at the right time. I was just worried that there would be no one to witness this." She used her fingertips to cut her palm and dripped the blood onto the core of the jade pendant.

"Watch how this tyrant dies from the backlash of his own star orbit!"

Suddenly, the jade pendant emitted a piercing shriek, and Wanyan Qing's phoenix-patterned sword shattered. Taking advantage of the chaos, Lin Ning kicked over the incense burner, and the rising smoke, carrying droplets of her blood, rushed towards Wanyan Qing. Suddenly, the roar of a strange beast echoed outside the hall, and twelve dark figures burst through the window—the spirits of Ning family assassins wearing bronze masks.

The "Death Souls of the Ning Family" knelt on one knee, presenting a blood-stained secret report: "The patriarch has ordered that if the princess is in danger, we will spare no effort even if it means our annihilation." Then he threw out a poisoned hidden arrow, turning Wanyan Qing's guards into pincushions.

Wanyan Qing trembled violently, staggering backward and crushing half of Nangong Jin's jade pendant. "You...you colluded with the Ning family!"

Lin Ning laughed heartily: "It's not that I'm colluding with the Ning family—it's that I am a member of the Ning family."

Amidst the whistling sound of the silver shuttle cutting through the air, Wanyan Qing's phoenix hairpin was severed—a karmic retribution!

A spacetime rift suddenly opened on the roof of the palace, and Lin Ning saw herself waking up in a modern hospital. She wrapped a strand of Nangong Jin's hair around the silver shuttle and aimed it at the last remaining spacetime node in the jade core.

Lin Ning chuckled softly at the void: "In this life, I will let you watch as your Great Yu Dynasty vanishes into nothingness in the cracks of time and space!"

太极殿开始崩塌，林宁最后回头望向南宫瑾。他心口的星耀正在消散，而现代病房的电子钟显示 2025 年 3 月 7 日 15:00—— 正是她穿越来到大渝的这一时刻。

Lin Ning stuffed the blood-stained jade fragments into Wanyan Qing's hand: "Take your emperor and go where you belong." With that, she leaped into the spatial rift, hearing Wanyan Qing's scream and Nangong Jin's final murmur behind her.

Lin Ning sat bolt upright as the electrocardiogram monitor emitted a piercing alarm. She gazed at the icy blue star trails on her palm and suddenly chuckled softly. In the family photo on the bedside table, her father was pointing at a period drama on television, saying, "The actress playing the imperial concubine looks just like you."

Lin Ning curled up in the corner of the sofa, her fingertips unconsciously tracing the edge of the remote control. Her father was watching a period drama; the emperor, wearing a heavy crown, was reprimanding his ministers, and the bright yellow hue stung her eyes. The glass fruit bowl on the coffee table reflected the blue star trails below her collarbone, strikingly similar to the patterns on the jade pendant worn by the emperor in the drama.

"Dad," she suddenly spoke, her voice hoarse and unlike her own, "Do you believe that a person can live in two different times at the same time?"

The father put down his teacup, his gaze behind his glasses probing: "Why are you suddenly asking this?" He pointed to the television. "Are you engrossed in a show?"

Lin Ning looked down at her hands, modern fingerprints and ancient calluses overlapping beneath her skin. Suddenly, her phone on the coffee table vibrated; it was a payment reminder from the hospital. She instinctively touched her neck, where an oxygen tube should have been inserted, but it was empty, only the faint ache from the teeth marks left by Nangong Jin.

"I... had a very long dream." She buried her face in her knees, smelling a faint scent of ambergris. Her father's reading glasses slid down to the tip of his nose, and the reflection of the emperor on television—it was clearly Nangong Jin's face.

"Ningning?" Her father's call mingled with the buzzing of the temporal turbulence. Lin Ning suddenly looked up and found herself sitting in a wheelchair, wearing a hospital gown, while a nurse adjusted the IV drip rate. In another timeline, she was plunging a poisoned silver shuttle into Wanyan Qing's throat.

"It's another hallucination." She shook her head at the nurse with a bitter smile, her fingertips touching the jade shard under the pillow. The shard suddenly became hot, reflecting Nangong Jin's manic smile in the space-time rift. Lin Ning slammed the shard against the wall, only to see it pierce through the plasterboard and embed itself in the beams of the imperial study in another timeline.

"Miss Lin, your father has come to see you." The nurse's voice pulled her back to reality. At the door of the ward, her father stood in the light, holding a bouquet of white chrysanthemums, the stems wrapped with blood-stained silk ribbons—the very weapon she used to strangle Ouyang Qingchuan in ancient times.

"Dad," Lin Ning suddenly grabbed his hand, touching the familiar dragon-patterned soft armor, "If I told you I was in another world..."

Her father gently patted the back of her hand and took out a sandalwood box from the inside pocket of his suit. The moment he opened it, Lin Ning's pupils dilated—inside was half a blood-stained jade pendant, a strand of imperial black hair, and a yellowed star map, on which were written in the elegant, slender script: "Xuanji Star Orbit, Ning'er, please open this."

&34；这些东西今天突然出现在你病房。&34； 父亲推了推眼镜，&34；医生说你昏迷时一直在念 &39； 南宫瑾 &39； 这个名字。&34；

Lin Ning trembled as she stroked the star map, and suddenly, blood seeped from the ink, outlining the territory of the Great Yu Dynasty in the blank space. She looked up at the window, where the glass curtain wall of the hospital reflected the eaves and brackets of the Taiji Hall. In the gap where time and space overlapped, she saw Nangong Jin standing on a cloud, throwing half a jade pendant down to earth.

"Ningning," her father's voice came from afar, "It's time to take your medicine."

Lin Ning took the pills and suddenly chuckled. She dissolved the pills in a glass of water, and Nangong Jin's reflection appeared on the surface. The moment her father turned around, she splashed the entire glass of water onto the television screen, and the emperor's image shattered into a temporal turbulence in the splash.

"Nangong Jin," she murmured to the void, "In this life, I want you to look at me..."

Before reality and illusion simultaneously plunged into darkness, Lin Ning heard the heartbeats of two different timelines overlap. Within the green lines of the hospital's electrocardiogram monitor, and within the star trails of the Great Yu Dynasty, their fates were intertwined forever in the cruelest way.