15 A Picture

"Auch," this was the second time she had entered the space within the little black stone as she had cultivated and practised outside of it as there wasn't a difference regarding the amount of energy in both places; thus, she hadn't mastered her entrance and fell to the ground just like the first time.

"Huh?" She spread her soul sense and noticed that she was at paces of the Nine-Layered Pagoda and not in the place where she had appeared before, 'Could it be because I was thinking on it when I entered?' she thought with her head tilted as she looked up to the pagoda.

"Errhg, whatever," she shook her head and stood up before thinking, 'I will have plenty of time to ponder about that later.'

She went to the lake shore that was beside the pagoda and sat there; then, she first took out from her sash the thin and undetectable thing she found at Yu Lanlan's main chamber.

"How beautiful," her eyes were wide open as she looked to a thin yellowish crystal on her left hand; it was of the size of a palm and its shape was that of two isosceles trapezoids joined by their bigger bases.

She took it from a corner with her right-hand fingers and raised her arm to the sky to look it better with the aid of the sunlight of this place.

"A blue orchid?" she blinked in wonder.

She lowered her hand and cleaned the soil on one of the sides of the crystal with her left hand; then, she touched its surface but it was smooth. There was a blue orchid in the middle of the crystal but it wasn't carved on it but inside the thin crystal.

"Interesting, how can this be?" she took the piece of crystal from its corners, each of them with one hand and looked with half open eyes to the thin side. She couldn't see anything; it was thinner than a sheet of paper.

Before long, she threw away such ponder; she wasn't an artefact maker and didn't have such knowledge.

"Now, why I couldn't see it outside but here I can? And, does it have another function aside from being a good looking piece of jewellery? Hmmh..."

She tried all she could think about: infusing her martial energy didn't work, her spirit energy was negligent at the moment and gave no results, and her soul force was as useless in this case as before.

In the end, she gave up and placed it on her lap before taken out from her qiankun bag Yu Lanlan's case. Seeing the case that had a rectangular prism shape with its full colours was pretty different from seeing it outside with her soul perception. She hadn't been able to detect the material it was made of before as the patterns on it forbidden from doing it; even now, she couldn't asses it.

"It looks like some kind of jade but which type of jade could it be? It is light yellow-coloured. Is there a jade of such colour?" She rummaged through the memories of all the books she had read before with furrowed brows, but from all the types of jades she could remember, none was of such colour.

And after also giving a look to her memories of other materials and not finding an accurate answer, she passed to check what decorated the little box. There were many little blue orchids on all the six sides of the little box; they glittered beautifully as they were formed with some type of brilliant blue dust.

"Such an exquisite and smart design, I must say. All the orchids are placed above the patterns on the case that my soul saw with the exception of Yu Lanlan's name which I can't seem to see." She passed her fingers from an orchid on the left upper corner of one of the bigger faces of the box to the right lower corner where she remembered it was the pattern that formed the name.

As her fingers slid on the surface, she felt the roughness of the orchids and the smoothness of the light yellow material; it was an interesting contrast that made her smile. "Hmh?" she stopped her movement, she had felt a slight unevenness as she was passing through another orchid. She touched that orchid again and the feeling was clearer but from her high point of view, she couldn't see it so she raised the box to the level of her eyes and slightly inclined it; there was a little unevenness, indeed but it was so small that couldn't be seen from above.

"This figure… could it be?" she raised her brows and then looked to her lap where the yellowish crystal was before going back to glance over to the figure the unevenness formed, 'It's the same shape and seems to be of the same size. So that it has a blue orchid is not only because of Yu Lanlan's preference of things,' she thought before placing the case on the ground and picking up the crystal to see if matched.

"Heh, it fits but…"

*Clink* *Clack*

Before she could complain that nothing happened, the sound of something connecting came from the box, making her increase her attention.

*Click*

An opening sound was heard and she saw how that face of the box upped a bit, 'It opened? But how? The lock in the middle of one of the mid-sized faces is unlocked… could the five-petal flower lock be a fake lock and the crystal be the right key? Or this little case has many compartments with each having a respective key?' She made various conjectures in a split second; it was a rare box made of unknown materials so she let herself overthink, though she will probably reach no conclusion.

At long last, she put aside those thoughts and proceeded to open the slim lid; it was as thin as its key.

"What do we have here?" She asked herself when the first thing she saw inside was a palm-sized picture. Pictures were something rare as to be taken it was needed the Image Mirror Crystal which was scarce and expensive or the even rarer Reverse Image Mirror Crystal. In her previous Huan Family there were only three pictures, though they weren't this small but head-sized; and in the Huang Imperial Palace, all the Emperors and Empresses had one taken. With this line of thought, she unfocussed her attention and wondered what had happened to hers after that treacherous event.

"Forget it," she shook her head and went back to look at the picture. "And what I'm supposed to think about this? The woman on the left must be Yu Lanlan, I have like sixty per cent of her looks and the baby in the middle must be me but… who is the man on the right? And why do I think I look like him," if she hadn't seen the burly constitution of this body's father before, she could have thought that the man on the picture was the City Lord but the image of the man had a very handsome face and was slim so who was it?

In her ponder, she began a monologue:

"Could it be her brother?"

"No, they don't look alike."

"Her Friend?"

"No, they seem to be more familiar with each other and very very happy at that."

"The City Lord's brother?"

"Wait, does he have a brother?"

"Well, even if he has one, it couldn't be this handsome."

"But if it's not their brother or cousin, how could I share some similarities in the appearance?"

"Could it be… No, it can't be…"

"Did Yu Lanlan cheat on the City Lord?" It wasn't a surprise that she hadn't thought of that possibility first, it was strange for a woman to do such a thing. Moreover, as someone who had been loyal and devoted to her husband, it was something unthinkable.

At length, she put the three people on a love triangle and said, "I can't say I found a fault on it, with a man like the City Lord, I would have preferred the handsome man too."

She gave a nod in approval before adding, "If my assumption is correct, I must thank the heavens." That way, she wouldn't have the need to restrain herself.