15. Without a trace

Further down, Xiang and Liu had meanwhile reached the foot of the mountain. They were far away from the palace stairs, where there wasn't a single house and mostly bushes and trees overgrown everything.

Liu's back ached from all the bracing she had to provide for the half-paralyzed peacock. But Xiang's foot didn't feel much better either.

"Take me there." He waved his wing at a stone.

The peahen put him down there. Then he lifted his healthy leg and rubbed the sore sole of his foot. Liu sat down on the grass and looked around.

"What are we looking for?" She asked.

"We?" Xiang grumbled sullenly. "Who says, we're looking?"

Liu sighed. "All right, then just you look for something. But what do you hope to find here?"

Xiang let go of his leg again. "Something that you don't have to know. Now leave."

The peahen raised her head in surprise. "Now?"

The peacock's icy eyes caught her cold. "Do I speak Japanese or what? I said if I want you to go, then you go."

"But... but you still need me."

"Needing you?" Xiang seemed to be extremely surprised. "For what? For feeding? Or bathing? From now on, I can take care of my own!"

Liu cocked her head. "Are you sure? What if something happens to you on your way?"

"I'm not a little child!" The peacock stood up furiously, struggling to stand on one leg only. "And I would advise you to leave, or do you want me to hurt you?!"

Liu would have loved to ask him how he could have hurt her, but she didn't want to provoke him unnecessarily, which is why she got up, bowed again and then slowly walked back the way they had come from. She turned to him again. But Xiang relentlessly folded his wings, and Liu knew he didn't want to be changed. Sadly, she pushed through the bushes to find the way to the outskirts. She had only come a few yards when she caught a few familiar voices.

"She will massacre us!" She heard someone curse.

"Uh, just don't say that," another person begged. "My claws pull up even if I even think about how she will freak out that we have lost her order."

Liu quickly ducked herself behind a bush. She was shocked when she saw three of the geckos from last night strutting across a clearing not far away.

"Don't get so upset now, Tongfu," one of the geckos said to his interlocutor. "He'll show up again. Somebody like him can't hide forever."

Liu didn't want to listen longer. She turned and ran back down the path in a crouched position.

Meanwhile, Xiang had gone to a rock face on the mountain and seemed to be looking for something.

"Watch out!" Liu hissed as quietly as possible, but just enough for the peacock to hear.

"What are you still doing here?" Xiang snapped at her angrily. "Didn't I say you should…?!"

"Yes, yes! I know!" The peahen whispered nervously. "But there are those geckos again. We have to hide."

This caused the peacock to feel the rock face even more hastily. Liu looked at him in amazement. "Aren't you afraid that they could find us here?"

"Pssst!" Xiang hissed without interrupting his search. "You better run away now!"

"But what about you?" Liu asked worriedly.

The peacock let out an exasperated sigh. "For the last time! Just leav...!"

At that moment, a part of the rock wall gave way and Xiang fell backwards into a black hole. Liu was so startled that she almost screamed, but she held her beak shut at the last moment.

"Are you alright?" She asked, rushing to the gap in the rock. Inside, a straight corridor opened up in front of her that led horizontally further into the mountain. No sooner had Liu overcome her amazement, she bent over the peacock, who was lying on the ground, rubbing his wing.

"Are you okay?" Liu asked again and received only a muffled swearing.

Suddenly, the voices could be heard again from outside. Startled, Liu instinctively grabbed the rock face and pushed it back. The door closed again and both peacocks stood in the dark.

"Hey!" Xiang shouted mad with anger. "Are you crazy?!"

"How so?!"

The peacock got up and pressed her against the stone wall. "I didn't allow you to come in here!"

Liu sucked in a sharp breath as his feather fingers dug threateningly through her plumage into her wings.

"I'm not going to tell anyone," she said.

She saw nothing in the dark, but she could feel his piercing gaze.

But then, he let go of her abruptly and she heard him shuffling down the corridor. He was probably leaning against the wall as he hobbled.

"Where do you want to go?"

"Where I go is none of your business," the blue peacock growled in the blackness. "Get out of here."

Liu swallowed. "Can't I stay with you at least a little longer?"

"Damn it! Can't you just get out of here?!" Xiang snapped at her. "You're worse than a tick."

"Only until I can disappear again unobserved," Liu muttered meekly. "If they find me here, then they will surely assume that you are here, too."

This caused the peacock to stop briefly. He actually didn't want this brat anywhere near Mendong City, but at the moment these geckos weren't exactly harmless either.

"Alright," he snorted after a minute's silence. "But only for a short time."

"Should I prop you up...?"

"No," Xiang interrupted her quickly and continued to struggle along the wall.

"Is there anything I need to look out for?" Liu asked after a moment's hesitation.

"No," he hissed. "The corridor is dead straight."

"Where is it going?"

"You don't need to know that. And even if you can, can't you imagine that?"

There was a period of tense silence before Liu suggested anything.

"Is the corridor connected to the palace?"

Xiang didn't answer. He just didn't want to reveal any information that he didn't think was her business anyway.

They followed the corridor, which ended several meters in a cavity. When Xiang felt that the wall ended, he groped for a lantern in the dark and lit it.

Liu shrank back in shock when a wooden frame appeared in the weak light in front of her. It was a kind of platform and wooden bars were built around it, like the scaffolding of a construction site.

The peacock climbed onto the wooden platform, despite his lame leg.

"What is this here?" Liu asked when Xiang did not give her an introduction. But she immediately bowed her head again when the peacock glared at her.

"What do you think, where I want to go?" Xiang asked patronizingly.

Liu's gaze wandered upwards. "Do you want to go to the palace?"

Xiang snorted disparagingly. "You see, you have no knowledge about royal life. Rulers will be carried up or drive up."

Liu raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Drive?"

Xiang didn't elucidate this suggestion and attached the lantern to the wooden facade. Then he leaned back thoughtfully against the facade and looked down at the peahen. After staring for a while, he waved his head towards him.

"Now get in. I want to get to the top today. Provided you refrain from asking stupid questions."

Liu clenched her beak lips and stepped onto the wooden platform. As soon as she was on it, the peacock actuated a lever and released a mechanism that lifted the wooden panel on ropes and carried it upwards. Liu's mouth remained open in amazement as the elevator pulled them up the mountain, but she thought it's best not to comment on it.

Further up, the others had gathered in the room where Yin-Yu had slept. Everyone looked around. But there was no trace of a fight or any other suspicious clues. The room even looked almost untouched, with the exception of the bed that was used and that Yin-Yu had slept in that night. Sighing, Shen stroked the bedspread while Po kneeled down on all fours and sniffed the floor. But his nose couldn't find anything either.

"Maybe we should hire a tracking dog," the panda suggested.

"We'd better go through each room," Shen decided, ignoring Po's suggestion.

"Every room?!" Po felt how the horror crept under his fur.

Wang rubbed his chin. "Well, we have already searched every room..."

"You? Alone?" The panda looked at the Hun with wide eyes. "Every room?"

"With a couple of soldiers, of course. It would be suicide to search through every room alone."

The panda got weak knees again.

"Daddy, look!"

Shen turned to his little daughter, who was holding up a bird doll, her eyes shining.

"Where did you get this?" Shen asked.

The white peacock girl pointed to a box. "In there. And there are more toys."

"Oh yes," Huan said. "Yin-Yu gathered these things for the children a few days ago."

"May I have it?" Shenmi asked excitedly.

Shen sighed. "Alright. I think it was meant for you anyway."

The peacock brooded again. Po noticed how the whole thing was bothering him and scratched his head feverishly.

"Okay, okay," Po tried to make the search easier. "What exactly happened that night?"

He paused for a moment. He'd asked Shen that question over and over again a few years ago, but he had to get back on the subject immediately.

"Was anything conspicuous? A light? A sound? Or the smell of food?"

"How can you dare thinking about eating now?" Shen reprimanded him.

"Well, if it was a burglar, maybe he had a packed lunch," Po knitted the thought further. "Wouldn't be impossible. And maybe he lost it here... "

"No, there was nothing unusual," the old bull Huan said. "All I remember is that I was woken up by a scream in the middle of the night. It was only a very short time, and it stopped abruptly. When I rushed here, nobody was there."

Po scratched his head. "But she can't just have been swallowed by the ground. If so, then she must have been in another room or even been dragged outside."

Huan was less convinced of that. "Mm, everything is locked at night and there is no evidence of a break-in. All doors and windows are completely undamaged."

"Then maybe he had a key... or... or..." Po was slowly getting too hot in the head from the sheer thinking. "Maybe it's in the basement? Yeah, maybe a trapdoor. Every palace must have an escape route. As with you under the dungeon."

King Wang frowned thoughtfully. "That can't be ruled out, although I wouldn't know anything about it."

"But we could take a look," Po urged, hoping to bypass every room search.

"Then come with me," Huan offered. "We take the shortcut through the west hall."

With that, everyone left the room and went down through a jumble of corridors. Shen kept his eyes glued on Shenmi every second, making sure that their hands didn't separate an inch.

At some point they came into a corridor where a lot of pictures were hung.

"Wow," breathed Po in astonishment. "What is that?"

"The family gallery," Huan explained to him. "Over there is the family portrait from the last reign."

The bull led the group to a huge painting. Three people were depicted on it. On the one hand a blue-green peacock, a black-violet peahen and further down between them a small blue peacock.

"This is his father and his mother," Huan introduced the characters. "And the young lord himself. His father was from India. His mother from China. At least a part of her. The others lived somewhere else in Asia."

"And here," the bull led them to the next large painting. "Here the lord again. This picture was painted after he came of age."

Wang didn't change a face. Only Po and Shen shivered at the sight of their former rival a few years ago. Po wondered whether Xiang still looked like this after the accident in Gongmen City. It was practically a miracle that the peacock had even survived it.

"Look, Grandfather!" Shenmi exclaimed excitedly and pointed to Xiang's picture.

"That's not grandfather!" Shen rebuked her, glaring at the painted lord on the wall.

"But he's blue like grandfather," Shenmi insisted on her statement.

Frowned, Po looked at the picture more closely. "Mm, I mean, he really looks like your father," Po mumbled thoughtfully. "When I last saw a picture of your parents, I also thought..."

Shen let out an angry snort. "Do I look like my father?!"

"Well, okay, maybe not, but he looks like your father, doesn't he?"

"There are many blue peacocks in the world!"

Po noticed how Shen was starting to get annoyed by talking about Xiang and tried to quickly change the subject by moving on to another picture.

"And who is that?"

Huan followed his pointer. Another painting showed two peahens standing side by side in a well-mannered posture. One of them was from the family portrait, but the other one was new to Po. She had also purple-black feathers, but with a slight blue around the neck. And she had more black in her plumage than the peahen next to her.

"Oh, them?" Huan joined the panda. "This is Xiang's mother with her sister Chiwa. A nice lady. Like her sister. In contrast to Xiang's father."

"Indeed," Wang agreed. "We had the most trouble with Xiang's father."

Po looked at him questioningly. "Why?"

"Oh, because of an old argument. This had made the lord so angry that he wanted to start a war against me. But when he died surprisingly, it was quiet for the time being. Xiang's mother was not that interested in her husband's political arguments. But when she disappeared, all the trouble started all over again. You know the rest from back then."

Po still vaguely remembered Xiang trying to overthrow Wang, and the fact that they almost died was not a pleasant memory either.

"Well, yes," Huan muttered, looking up at the painting again. "The two sisters have always been inseparable and have done a lot together. But she has not shown up here since Xiang's mother disappeared. Well, let's move on."

So the small group started moving again. Only Po threw another look at the picture of the two siblings. He couldn't explain it, but somehow an ice-cold shiver ran down his spine. A shiver as cold as if death were caressing his fur with its cold claws.

The elevator stopped with a hard jerk. Liu looked around searchingly. In the light of the lantern, she only saw bare stone walls all around, only a corridor led out of this upper cavity. Xiang was the first who got off, taking the lantern from the bracket and heading for the exit. Liu followed him with a few feet distance between them. Xiang braced himself on the wall again and a new walk followed, but it wasn't long. After a short time, the corridor forked in two directions.

"Where are we now?" Liu asked, who couldn't hold back her curiosity any longer.

"Under the basement," Xiang replied curtly. "From here various hidden corridors lead to the rooms." He turned his head back to her. "I hope that will keep you in tune for the next few hours."

Liu looked down, which made Xiang satisfied at least.

But then both of them raised their heads when they heard dull voices.

"This is just one of the many basement rooms," an elderly man explained. "But it should take a long time to tap all the walls for a hiding place."

This sentence electrified Xiang like an electric shock. He hobbled quickly up the passage to the right and felt the wall. Liu was forced to follow him.

At one point the peacock set the lantern on the ground and leaned against the wall. Liu didn't dare to ask questions and kept quiet.

"But she has to be somewhere," a younger voice insisted, which made the peacock hold its breath for a moment.

"I'll do a quick run-through."

Loud footsteps and knocking noises could be heard immediately. Xiang leaned tighter against the wall convulsively. Liu watched him uncertainly as the knocking sound seemed to come somehow closer. She gave a start when it rumbled right behind Xiang. There was a short jolt behind the peacock. Xiang braced himself against the wall, then it was over and the knocking noises faded away.

Xiang should have breathed a sigh of relief, but the other voices hit him like a blow.

"Dad, I'm hungry."

"Well, all right. We will go up. Panda, let it be. We'll continue later."

The peacock couldn't hear the rest of the words. He fell to the right and pushed a board on the wall to the side, where he could see through two slits into the basement.

"As far as I know," another voice grumbled. "The kitchen is in the east of the building."

"Oh no!" Liu shouted, who still knew Wang's voice. "The king is here, too?"

She crouched fearfully on the floor, in contrast to Xiang, who continued to stare into the room, where he saw his worst enemy.

"Oh, yes!" Po cried enthusiastically. "I'm really hungry."

The blue peacock's eyes narrowed even more as the panda appeared in his field of vision and the panda ran up the cellar stairs. Shortly afterwards, a small white figure appeared, pulling another larger white figure behind it.

Xiang's eyes narrowed drastically and remained on the white lord in disgust. Shen stopped on the stairs and looked back. Unconsciously, their eyes met that only Xiang could see.

"Daddy, come on!" Shenmi urged.

The white peacock followed her, but kept turning around. He couldn't see anyone, but he felt that someone was gazing right at him. It was no wonder, because Xiang directed all his hatred and anger into it.

You will die for my humiliation.