Jing He brushed over the faint carvings and sighed before taking a deep breath. He pulled himself up on the altar’s edge and stood quietly, trying to keep his balance. His body was soaked in cold sweat, shaking from head to toe, and his legs seemed about to collapse beneath him. Without holding onto the altar, he would have fallen. Of course, he couldn’t let that happen. He had achieved his goal but he still needed to make it out without anyone noticing or it might be for naught. He couldn’t rest easy yet.

Jing He raised the hand holding the dagger and slowly placed the weapon on the altar. He took a careful step back, his gaze lingering on the weapon while he tried to stabilize himself. He knew he likely needed more time but he didn’t have any. He had to deal with this now and leave as soon as possible.

Raising his hands, he barely managed to move his spiritual energy. He slowly condensed a pale blue light at his fingertips, using it to draw the lines to reset the array in front of him. For a moment, an afterimage shimmered in the air only to slowly fade.

Jing He took his hands back, smiling faintly as he stepped further back. As soon as he had done so, the array on the ground lit up again, encasing the altar with the soul-engraving dagger while the faint lines illuminated the room, plunging it back into twilight. Now, the array had been restored to its original state. Even the God of Justice should be unable to figure out if anything had happened here.

A smile of satisfaction remained on Jing He’s lips as he slowly turned, looking at the door at the entrance. He still trembled but it was slowly getting better. He waited a few minutes, silently listening for any sounds from outside to make sure that nobody was there.

He couldn’t hear the guards as if they were either still dealing with his illusion or had returned to their post but were staying so motionless that he couldn’t hear even the faintest of sounds.

No matter which of these two it was, nobody had found out so far what was going on inside the repository. They didn’t know he had sneaked inside and they certainly weren’t aware that he had used the soul-engraving dagger. He had also wiped out any traces so even if he stepped outside and was caught, he could simply say that he had hidden in here when he saw the entrance empty. As long as they didn’t examine his soul, they wouldn’t realize the truth.

A light sigh escaped from his lips as he relaxed. Yes, no matter what happened when he opened this door, he could get away with this. He could make it out of here and return to his palace to regain his strength overnight and by tomorrow morning, it would be as if nothing had ever happened. Nobody would find out and his goal had been achieved. Everything was just as he had wished for.

As the tension left his body, he felt like he would collapse the next moment. He had to force himself to keep standing and then took one step toward the door, a second one, and finally crossed the short distance. He stopped in front of the door again, took another deep breath, and forced himself to tense his body again, trying to suppress the remaining tremble in his limbs and breathe normally.

He knew he probably looked horrible. He sure felt that way. But right now, there wasn’t much he could do. He carefully dabbed at his forehead with his sleeve to get rid of the cold sweat and ran his fingers through his hair to straighten out the strands. After straightening his sleeves, he raised his chin, trying to look as elegant and refined as he usually would so that nobody could see any difference or notice the pain he still felt.

Glancing back at the stone altar where the soul-engraving dagger was displayed, Jing He finally opened the door and stepped out of the repository. There were no guards to be seen and he stopped under the canopied corridor that led around the small courtyard, looking around to see if there were traces of anyone else. When he couldn’t find any, his lips curved up again.

He left the courtyard, picking up the bracelet and his necklace on the way. He disabled the illusion he had tied to the latter first while he walked further away from the repository, leaving the other one up so it wouldn’t seem too coincidental.

There were officials running around but everyone seemed busy so he simply searched for a path that was less busy and made his way out of the Court of Justice. There, he finally undid the second illusion. Now, the guards could both go back to keeping the repository and the artifacts inside safe.

As for him, he made his way back to his own palace very slowly, once again choosing a path where he was unlikely to meet many others. He rounded the building from the back, not wanting to alarm Mu Kun and Huang Lan at the entrance, and entered from the door to the garden. Closing it behind him, he directly went into his bedroom, closed the door behind him, and took off his outer robe.

By now, it was late in the afternoon. It was much too early to go to sleep on a regular day but … he could hardly keep on his legs. He had made sure to try and seem normal the whole time while on his way back but with the door closed and the robe off, his body finally started to tremble again.

He would have loved to take a warm bath to relax and wash off the cold sweat but he couldn’t bring himself to walk over to the bath or mobilize his magic again. Instead, he let the outer robe fall to the ground in an uncharacteristic manner and then simply fell onto the bed. He didn’t even bother to pull the blanket over his body and simply closed his eyes in utter exhaustion.

He couldn’t help it. What he had done today had taken too much of his strength. He had known it would be bad but he hadn’t thought that it would be to this degree. The pain alone was almost unbearable and with it came the nerve-wracking feeling of doing a forbidden thing. If it wasn’t for Qiu Ling, he never would have risked this. He felt a bit guilty as well but as long as he thought of the future with Qiu Ling, he got over that very fast. Anyway, sometimes, the law couldn’t accommodate all circumstances. If anyone knew, they might even understand. Not that he’d ever dare to tell anyone.

With that thought, Jing He finally fell asleep, his body slowly recovering to its normal state.