With his mind a razor-sharp weapon and his plan of deceit fully formed, Wang Jian began to move the pieces on his chessboard. The time for quiet scheming was over. The time for a grand, bloody performance had arrived.
His first stop was Liu Ruyan's makeshift alchemy lab. He found her surrounded by a faint, almost invisible haze of spiritual energy, her delicate hands moving with a hypnotizing grace as she performed the final refining steps on her forbidden concoctions. The air was clean, but it carried a strange, heavy stillness, a testament to the odorless, colorless nature of the poisons she had created.
She looked up as he entered, her eyes, even from behind her veil, shining with a mixture of pride and a deep, devoted adoration. She presented him with two items.
