Chapter 12 — The Poor Bridegroom Is the Supreme One

The next morning, Khinh Vy's convoy departed early, heading to the Ngan family mausoleum located in the western suburbs of the capital. The weather that day was not as clear as usual, a thin layer of fog had begun to linger since early morning, even though it was not yet the annual frost season.

Dịch Thần and Bạt Sương escorted him to the gate of the mausoleum, just as promised. When the convoy stopped in front of the ancient mossy stone gate, Khinh Vy stepped down and turned to look at Dịch Thần with a reassuring smile. "You can rest assured and wait here, I won't be gone long."

"I will wait for you, ma'am," Dịch Thần replied, his eyes still unable to hide the fleeting worry.

Khinh Vy, Vân Nhi and two other maids in the entourage walked through the tomb gate, entering the area reserved only for women in the family. The mausoleum is located in the middle of a small valley, surrounded by tall rows of ancient pine trees. The atmosphere is chillingly quiet, with only the sound of the wind whistling through the leaves and the footsteps of the group echoing on the ground covered with dry leaves.

Khinh Vy's mother's grave is located in the deepest area of the valley, about half a mile from the main gate. When the group went halfway, Vân Nhi suddenly stopped, her face pale. "Miss, the fog thickens so quickly, I... I can't see the road ahead anymore."

Khinh Vy also felt an abnormality. The layer of fog, which was only thin in the early morning, suddenly thickened in a strange way, covering the entire valley in an opaque white blanket that made it impossible to see more than a few steps away. "It's okay, let's just follow this paved road, we won't get lost," she reassured, even though a vague unease arose in her heart.

Vân Nhi tightly grasped the sleeve of a maid walking next to her, both of them tremblingly followed Khinh Vy, their eyes constantly wandering around as if trying to find any familiar landmarks in the sea of milky white mist. The footsteps of the whole group of people sounded strange, as if distorted by the fog that was thickening every moment, each sound echoed with a strange timbre, unlike what the human ear was familiar with.

"Why is the fog so thick today," another maid muttered, her voice trembling, "I've never seen this scene in every year I've visited the tomb."

Khinh Vy also felt something was different, but she tried to remain calm to reassure everyone. "Maybe this year the weather is more erratic, just slow down and stick close together." But in her heart, an uneasy premonition was gradually growing, like a warning bell ringing somewhere whose origin she could not yet clearly determine.

But just a few steps later, one of the two maids suddenly cried out in panic. "Miss, the road... the paved road has disappeared!"

Khinh Vy bent down to look, and sure enough, the ground under her feet was no longer the familiar rocks, but had become an unusually soft and wet layer of soil. She raised her head and realized she was completely disoriented amid the dense fog surrounding her. "This is not good," she thought, her heart beating faster, "this is not natural fog."

"Miss, where are you?" Vân Nhi's panicked call rang out, but it sounded much farther away than the actual distance between the two people, who were only standing a few feet apart.

"Vân Nhi, stay where you are, don't move!" Khinh Vy shouted loudly, trying to determine the direction of the voice, but the fog seemed to distort the sound, making all directions chaotic.

At that moment, she felt a strange wind blowing, not the natural breeze of the valley, but a slight swirl of air, carrying a vague but distinct pulling feeling, as if an invisible force was trying to pull her in a certain direction. She tried to resist, clinging tightly to a nearby tree, but the suction continued to increase.

"This is the vortex that leads into the Black Mist Valley," she realized in horror, memories of folk rumors about this dangerous area suddenly rushing to her mind. But why did the group visiting her grave stray into that dangerous area? This cannot be a coincidence.

She tried to remember the terrain of the tomb area that she had been familiar with since childhood - the path to visit the tomb was not near Black Vụ Cốc, it was at least a few miles away. So how could she get so close to such a dangerous area in just a few steps? There was only one possibility: someone had deliberately led her astray from the beginning, perhaps through swapping or destroying familiar route markers, combined with an unusually created fog to hide the entire plot.

"It's Khinh Tuyết," she gritted her teeth. Even though she was in a dangerous situation, her mind still tried to analyze the situation as calmly as possible. In her previous life, she had never experienced this situation, but the instincts and vigilance honed through months of preparation helped her quickly realize the nature of the danger she was facing.

She tried to remember every detail of this strange swirling wind, even in a dangerous situation - the direction of the wind was from the northwest, the force of attraction gradually increased in a regular rhythm as if there was a law, not random chaos like a natural wind, and especially, the scent wafting in the air, a strange smell like burning spices, completely unlike any smell she had smelled at the mausoleum in previous years. This is definitely a sign of some kind of artificial magic, someone deliberately arranged the battle in advance, not a natural phenomenon of heaven and earth.

"If I survive this," she whispered to herself amid panic, "I must find out who provided this magic to Khinh Tuyết. A noble lady like her could not have the ability to stir up such a vast area of spiritual energy on her own."

The suction from the swirling wind became stronger and stronger, her hand began to slip from the tree she was clinging to. She tried to shout loudly for Vân Nhi, for the other maids, but it seemed that the fog had completely swallowed the sound, and no one responded to her call.

"It's impossible," she thought in despair, clearly feeling her hands gradually losing their grip as the invisible suction grew stronger. Could it be that, no matter how carefully she tried to prepare, in the end she still couldn't escape the tragic fate of her previous life, just this time through a different death method?

In that moment of life and death, memories of the fateful wedding night in her previous life suddenly rushed back into her mind - the cold blade of the knife, Âu Thế Khang's cold eyes, her father's abandonment, and above all, the painful and helpless eyes of the man standing in the corner of the room. She once thought that she had prepared carefully enough to avoid that fate, had learned how to be vigilant, how to collect evidence, and how to see through people's hearts. But it turns out, faced with a completely new plot, a way of harm that had never happened in her previous life, all preparations based on her old memories became meaningless.

"No," she gritted her teeth, a fierce determination bursting through the despair, "I will not die so easily a second time." She tried to reach out and grab a protruding tree root nearby, even though she knew that it was just a hopeless action before the power of the increasingly intense vortex. Her hands were bleeding from trying to hold on, but her body was still being pulled gradually towards the dark crack.

The sound of the wind whistling around her grew louder, mixed with a strange deep sound echoing from deep underground, like the breathing of a giant sleeping creature suddenly awakened. Khinh Vy felt a bone-chilling cold air spreading from the crack, different from the coldness of ordinary fog, but like the breath of death waiting to swallow her into eternal darkness.

Right at the most desperate moment, when her hands finally slipped completely from the tree, her body began to be swept towards the invisible vortex, a scream rang out through the thick fog, a familiar voice that she had never heard with such volume and urgency.

"Khinh Vy!"

That is Tạ Dịch Thần's voice.

Through the thick fog roaring hysterically around her, Khinh Vy caught a glimpse of a dim golden halo of light rushing at an unimaginable speed, tearing through the opaque white mist wall like a flash of lightning in the middle of a dark night. She no longer had the strength to think about anything else, her hands had completely lost feeling, her body was slowly drifting into the cold darkness of the crack, she could only cling to the last fragile belief that call would come to her before everything plunged into darkness forever.