As Nastasia continued looking in the mirror, trying to decide if she was really seeing her younger-self staring back at her, a figure materialized behind her. She saw a man adorned similarly to the one who threw the head soldier over his shoulder within the mirror. They looked the same, even in the face and hair, except this one had green flecked eyes that glowed in the low candlelight.

He was watching her with a tray in hand a moment before moving toward the table beside the bed to set the tray down. Atop it was a porcelain bowl and beside it was a spoon.

After he sat it down, Nastasia asked even though she figured he wouldn't understand. "Where is that guy with the devilish looks?" Filling the silence made her feel a bit better.

His brow furrowed at her words and it was no surprise for Nastasia to see the complete lack of comprehension in his eyes. The man said a few words to her. His tone was measured and deliberate as if he were testing something. Thus, she responded to him in the same way he responded to her words.

The man's eyes widened by a very slight margin, but it was enough to notice. He then seemed to come to a conclusion after a bit of thought. He walked toward her and carefully lifted her into his arms. The action threw her off, so she didn't react right away.

That changed when his forward step jostled her from her stunned state. Alarmed, her gaze flew to his face. "What do you think you're doing!? Put me down!" She demanded. Nastasia then tried to get herself down only to find that she couldn't move.

How was this possible? It wasn't like this guy had put any strength into the arms that held her. In fact, she barely felt the pressure of his arms at all. This notice filled her chest with a fair amount of anxiety. However, Nastasia was not one to succumb to fear and so firmly swallowed down her rising panic.

Since there was nothing she could do about it, she calmly waited to see what he would do with her. From the time she struggled to the time she stilled, he never drew to a pause, therefore after this thought came she was already being carefully placed back into bed.

Her heart calmed marginally.

The man took the bowl from the tray and placed it in her hands. When she took it and then looked up at him, he gestured with a hand to his mouth to let her know he wanted her to drink it.

Nastasia arched a brow as she looked from the nauseating concoction to the man's imploring face. The greenish-brown mixture, a bit bumpy here and there, was so grotesque in smell and appearance that it brought bile to her throat. The thought of that going in her mouth and to her stomach... had her shuddering in disgust.

The eyes that shot toward him Nastasia made as expressive as she could to get her point across without words. 'You want me to drink this? Not on your life!' Those blue eyes of hers narrowed and a bit of mistrust wound its way in. 'Something this disgusting has to be poison. Do you think I'll fall for your trap just because I can't understand you?'

She wasn't sure how much of her meaning he grasped, but the man reached over the tray for the spoon. He dipped it into the bowl and brought it to his lips, swallowing the spoonful without a change in expression. How could he eat that nasty stuff so nonchalant-like?

Honestly, she really didn't suspect it of poison. Who would kill a person they took efforts to heal? None-the-less, she wasn't going to put something that smelled that putrid into her body. She wasn't a picky eater and understood that some medicines were extremely bitter. However, this bowl looked like a witches brew and stank worse than a landfill. What if it had insects, or liver, or who knows what horrific and lurid ingredients inside? She paled at the thought.

The man's face darkened impatiently as he reached for the bowl in her hands. From look in his eyes and from how he was able to render her powerless earlier, a shiver ran down her spine. Swiftly and in one fluid motion, Nastasia drank horrid concoction in one long swallow.

There was no way she'd suffer the humiliation of being force-fed.

Having gotten to the last drop her body was overcome with a bone-deep tiredness. The man took the bowl from her hands before she dropped it and help her head down to the pillow.

It was instantaneous. Her mind shut off and she was in a deep, restful, slumber.

Lu Se Ying placed the bowl back on to the tray. With a wave of his hand, they disappeared from sight. With another wave of his hand, the room shifted back into its original state. When he had left to prepare this pain relieving and spirit poison detoxifying medicine he feared that she would wake and leave the room while he was gone. Thus, he put an illusion upon the room to make leaving difficult.

Before Lu Se Ying faded from view he cast one last probing look toward the odd young woman upon the bed. There was something strange, otherworldly, about the spirit energy forced into her body. It felt like spirit poisoning, yet there was something underlying it that lead him to consider otherwise.

The feeling fled as he tried to grasp it, so Lu Se Ying could only set it aside as himself overthinking it.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

______________________

Within Jingshen Yansei Continent there were five countries and in each of these countries, there was a location that housed four gates into the Spirit Realm. These locations, each ruled by a different spiritual element, was guarded by an elemental spirit master. This wasn't something that one could, ordinarily, by giving it their all work toward. It was something inherited from father to son. Once placed into the Palace of the Four Gates, the said person was removed from the mortal world and became a denizen of the spiritual world.

Because of this, the Gate Guardian -or Elemental Spirit Master- could not enter into the mortal world unless by way of special circumstance. For instance, to hunt down an escaped Spirit Realm resident, to find a wife, and to answer an imperial summons are a few such reasons.

However, Li Yu Rong was not bound -at least entirely- by these rules. His position wasn't from an inheritance. His father had not been the previous Gate Guardian. Jin Ang Country's Elemental Spirit Master had vanished without a trace, leaving behind no heir to shoulder his place. For half a century Jin Ang Country had been raided and ravaged by demons, beasts, and wandering ghosts that had escaped from the four gates left unprotected. So, desperate and weary, the Emperor decided to try a suggested option regardless of any backlash that might occur.

Li Yu Rong had merely been tossed here due to his one red eye, however, the power that eye afforded him was enough to bind him as the master.

The man that sired him, the Emperor, fancied his beautifully innocent mother. He snatched her up for himself and housed her among his many beauties, never knowing that he had taken in a demon. Then again, how could he have known? Only the Gate Guardian could tell a Spirit Realm resident from a normal human once they hid under a human guise. His mother was strong, the spirit energy within her unfathomable, and so was able to hide her origins deeply. Honestly, even an Elemental Spirit Master would have a time of it finding out her true self.

However, his mother was a terribly innocent sort. She didn't know how to scheme and couldn't understand why one would want to hurt another when there were so many wonderful things to occupy one's self with. She was entirely unsuited to the inner court. Thus, when she was pregnant with him, she fell prey to an insidious plot. She died with him still in the womb.

Within the room she had been lain to wait while the servants prepared her and other things for her funeral, Li Yu Rong had been born. As he took his first breath of air, a shrill cry erupted from his lungs.

The servants had been scared witless from the sudden sound. When their eyes came upon the one who made it, they could only stare dumb-faced at the crying, wriggling infant. Finally, a male servant that had scrapped together some courage, went forward to pick up the baby boy.

The infant immediately stopped crying upon being held and wrinkled his nose cutely. Even the male servant was moved by the lovely baby's cuteness. However, that changed once the baby opened his eyes to look up at the servant.

Upon seeing that one red eye looking up at him, the servant let out a shrill scream to rival the infant's first cry as he dropped the baby boy and backed up a few steps. One of the spirit creatures that had been mourning beside his mother's body jumped forward to catch the infant before he fell to the hard floor.

To the humans who did not have an eye that could discern supernatural creatures, it appeared as if the baby halted mid-descent and then floated over to his mother's corpse. The reality was, however, that the spiritual creature brought the baby boy over to meet his mother and then to send her off. It knew, with how these humans were, the baby would likely never get the chance to do so.

Rumors flew after that incident. It was widely believed that Li Yu Rong was possessed by death and held a disastrous omen for the country. He had been abandoned to the Cold Palace and left forgotten until the age of five. The only reason he could survive those long, grueling years was due to the care of the escaped Spirit Realm creatures. Even his name came from them; or at least, it came from what his mother told them she wished to name her child.

Somehow the emperor got wind of Li Yu Rong's ability to see what could not be seen by normal eyes and so decided to forcibly make him guardian to the Palace of the Four Gates.

Li Yu Rong's Lips curled bitterly as he thought back to these events. Most of which had been told to him by the spirit creatures who had been at his mother's side. He did not know why his mind wandered over them. Perhaps it was merely an unfortunate result of the strange girl's reaction upon seeing his red eye.

Either way, his mood plummeted even further. The spirit creatures he passed on his way to the eastern gate gave him a wide breadth for fear of attracting his ire. Even with the distance they kept, they could feel the cold aura radiating from his person enough to freeze through flesh to the bone.

"Poor Paoxiao," they couldn't help but pity, "he really picked a terrible time to challenge the Gate Guardian."