But her assailant smoothly anticipated the move, catching her elbow and pinning both of her arms securely against her sides.

"Cease this foolishness immediately," Xiao Yichen’s voice hissed directly into her ear, his breath hot against her neck.

The smog inside the carriage was beginning to clear, sucked out through the shattered door by the wind.

Ji’an blinked the stinging tears from her eyes, looking down to see Yichen’s long, pale fingers locked in an inescapable grip around her waist.

He had her pinned flush against him. His legs were bracketed around hers, anchoring her to the bench.

The position was an absolute, unmitigated disaster.

Ji’an was currently disguised as a young man. But being held this tightly, struggling this violently against another man, the sheer biological reality of her female anatomy was perilously close to being discovered.

She could feel the heavy, steady thumping of Yichen’s heart against her shoulder blade. She could feel the hard lines of his thighs pressing against her hips.

The sheer intimacy of the restraint sent a violent, panicked jolt of electricity straight to her brain.

’He is too close! This sociopath bastard is too close!’ Ji’an’s mind shrieked, the panic of the kidnapping momentarily warring with the absolute, visceral terror of being physically overpowered by the Second Prince. ’If he feels the binder, if he realizes I am soft in the wrong places, he is going to know! I have to get out of this hold!’

"Unhand me, Yichen!" Ji’an snarled, thrashing her shoulders, completely abandoning her royal honorifics in her panic. "They took Xuan! They took my brother! I have to go after them! Release me!"

"I will do no such thing," Yichen replied, his voice maddeningly calm, entirely unbothered by her struggling.

He didn’t loosen his grip a fraction of an inch.

In fact, he pulled her slightly tighter against his chest, completely ignoring the societal taboo of two ’men’ engaging in such prolonged, intimate physical contact.

"If you charge blindly into that forest, you will trigger every defensive array they have laid," Yichen lectured, his tone smooth, dark, and utterly patronizing. "They are not common thieves, Ji’an. They are rogue cultivators. They want you to chase them in a blind panic. If you do, you will die, and your brother will be sold to the highest bidder."

Ji’an stopped thrashing. Not because she agreed with him, but because the sheer, chilling lack of urgency in his voice finally registered over the roar of her own adrenaline.

Outside, the sounds of combat were dying down. The clash of steel against steel ceased.

Commander Mo and the shadow guards were standing in a defensive perimeter around the carriage, their swords drawn, but they weren’t pursuing the fleeing bandits into the woods.

They were holding their ground and waiting for orders.

Ji’an’s eyes narrowed. The panic in her chest suddenly crystallized into a cold, sharp, razor-edged suspicion.

"Let go of me," Ji’an said. Her voice wasn’t a frantic shriek anymore.

It was a low, terrifyingly flat demand that carried the absolute, freezing authority of a Head Chef staring down a sabotaged kitchen line.

Yichen felt the shift in her aura, the thrashing stopped, and her panic was gone.

He slowly, deliberately released his grip on her waist and her wrists, though he didn’t move away.

He stayed entirely within her personal space, his dark eyes locked onto the back of her head, savoring the lingering warmth of her body against his chest.

Ji’an scrambled forward, practically throwing herself off the bench to put distance between them.

She stood up in the center of the ruined carriage, her boots crunching on the shattered glass. She whirled around, pointing her spatula directly at the Prince’s face.

Xiao Yichen remained seated.

He casually brushed a shard of glass off the sleeve of his dark sapphire robes, adjusting his cuffs with meticulous, infuriating elegance.

He didn’t look like a man whose royal caravan had just been ambushed by terrorists. He looked like a man waiting for his tea to cool.

"You knew," Ji’an breathed, her chest heaving as the horrifying realization fully assembled itself in her mind.

She looked at the shattered windows. She looked at the perfectly intact shadow guards outside. She looked at the Prince’s placid, smiling face.

"You didn’t deploy your guards to stop the smog," Ji’an accused, her voice trembling with rising, unadulterated fury. "Commander Mo is a Golden Core expert. He could have deflected that alchemical bomb with a sneeze. Your perimeter was intentionally weak. You let them hit the carriage. You let them take Xuan."

The Commander of the Shadow Guards was speechless by JI’an’s interrogations, not daring to speak up.

Yichen snapped his folding fan open with a sharp, elegant flick of his wrist. He didn’t deny it.

"You possess a remarkably sharp mind, Royal Uncle," Yichen smiled, his eyes curving into dark, delighted crescents. He sounded genuinely proud of her deduction. "It is one of your most attractive qualities."

"Do not flirt with me while my little brother is currently in a burlap sack, you absolute psychopath!" Ji’an roared, stepping forward, the tip of her spatula hovering a millimeter from his perfect nose. "Explain! Now! Why did you let them kidnap a thirteen-year-old boy?!"

Yichen didn’t flinch from the spatula. He merely tilted his head, looking past the cast-iron weapon to meet her blazing, furious eyes.

"Because, my dear little uncle, we needed an invitation," Yichen explained smoothly, adopting the tone of a tutor lecturing a particularly slow student. "The individuals who just attacked us belong to the Blood-Iron Syndicate. They are a highly organized, heavily fortified faction of rogue cultivators who specialize in abduction, extortion, and the trafficking of rare physical constitutions."

He stood up, towering over her in the confined space of the carriage, completely ignoring the weapon pointed at him.

"When the Sect Leader announced the Official Sect Martial Ranking," Yichen continued, his voice dropping into that dark, hypnotic register, "I immediately claimed the highest-yield bounty on the board. The total eradication of the Blood-Iron Syndicate."