Spring is the season when all things grow.

Looking at the lush greenery, Ye Zhen felt the vibrant life force of nature and had the urge to go outside the village for a walk.

Xie Tingzhou followed so openly that Ye Zhen quickly noticed.

He stamped his foot and turned around, asking, "Why is my brother following me?"

"I would like to ask you to make another mask."

Xie Tingzhou took out a stack of silver notes and handed them to her, "Can you expedite this?"

Ye Zhen didn't answer. "How urgent?"

"Within ten days."

Time isn't a problem; we can figure out a way to do it.

but.

"Will this cause me trouble?"

Previously, Ye Zhen made the mask for Xie Tingzhou as part of a transaction, but now he vaguely senses that Xie Tingzhou's identity is unusual.

She later thought back to the day they first met. Xie Tingzhou was standing on a slope, looking towards the palace. After that, he went into the palace to kill people and obtained the position of Commander of the Martial Virtue Division.

All these connections suggest that he has a grudge against the royal family.

Ye Zhen wanted to make money, but didn't want to cause trouble for himself.

"No, it's necessary for the case."

Xie Tingzhou placed the silver note directly into her hand and assured her, "You are a member of the Marquis's mansion, and so am I. It will not implicate the Marquis's mansion or you. You can trust me."

Ye Zhen looked up at him, trying to see the expression on his face through the mask.

Whether it was her imagination or not, she felt that Xie Tingzhou's tone was somewhat gentle.

Xie Tingzhou didn't give her a chance to think it over, and asked with considerable distress, "If there are differences in body shape, is there any way to fix it?"

Ye Zhen wanted to say that in this situation, people with similar body types are usually sought out.

Xie Tingzhou spoke first, "Give the mask to Xing Ze. There are some things I, the young master, cannot trust outsiders to do."

But Xing Ze was shorter and thinner than that man.

This gave Ye Zhen a reason.

Having accepted the money, Ye Zhen felt obligated to help him resolve his worries. "Brother, tell me what the differences are, and I'll come up with a solution."

A hint of a smile played in Xie Tingzhou's eyes, and his voice softened slightly. "Whether or not someone will notice anything amiss is of great importance to this young master."

In Ye Zhen's heart, the person she had saved was already dead. She never imagined that the person would be standing alive in front of her, testing her.

He said seriously, "No."

She underwent numerous tests, but no one noticed anything unusual about her.

The smile in Xie Tingzhou's eyes deepened.

The person he had been searching for for years was right under his nose.

He should have noticed something when he ate that bowl of vegetarian crab roe last time, but he was fixated on the other person's height.

But they forgot that Ye Zhen could make human skin masks, so he might be able to fake his height.

The main reason was that he never expected that the girl who had once said she wanted to roam the martial world would be content to stay at home and live as a widow in the Marquis's mansion for many years.

"Tell me what materials you need, and I'll send you a portrait of him later."

He didn't dare reveal his feelings and quickly got down to business.

That day, before he could destroy the bowl of vegetarian crab roe, he was found by a group of assassins and had to hide it under the thatch.

Fearing that the assassins might commit massacres in the temple and implicate others, he led the assassins away.

He thought he could shake off the assassins and return to the temple, but his injuries had not yet healed, and wave after wave of assassins came, far more than those who had gone to the temple.

If Xing Ze hadn't arrived with his men, he would have been dead on the spot. But at that time, Xing Ze and his men were just teenagers.

The young men, who had never been trained, relied solely on their courage to travel a thousand miles to rescue their master. How could they possibly be a match for the palace guards? Most of them died or were injured in the process, just to save his life...

When he returned to the temple, the assassins had already discovered the vegetarian crab roe, and his girl had disappeared without a trace.

Without needing to think too much, Xie Tingzhou knew the perilous situation that the bowl of vegetarian crab roe had led the girl into.

He tested Ye Zhen, and she was unwilling to admit that she had been to the North, which was probably not just because she didn't want people to know her whereabouts.

She didn't want to talk about what happened back then; she blamed him and even hated him.

Xie Tingzhou did not believe that a simple statement about a misunderstanding could erase the danger and harm he had caused the girl.

He was unwilling to distance himself from the person he had finally found, so he could only wait for a suitable opportunity to confess everything later.

"Since Lady Liu wants to go back, do you have any plans?"

He wanted to make amends to the girl, and upon learning of her plans, he wanted to secretly help her.

Ye Zhen addressed her affectionately as "brother" on the surface, but he only considered her a business partner and had no intention of revealing his true thoughts to her.

"Nothing yet, we'll take it one step at a time."

Xie Tingzhou stopped asking questions, found a large rock to sit on, and gestured for Ye Zhen to sit as well.

He began, “He lost his mother at birth and grew up with Madam Liu, whom he regarded as his own mother.”

But when he was seven years old, he realized that Liu Shi did not treat him with sincerity.

Liu found him a page who would entice him to abandon his studies to drink, watch cricket fighting, and even gamble.

"When the Marquis of Zhongyong punishes him, Lady Liu will hold him dear and beg for his forgiveness."

He was telling the real story of Xie Tingzhou, the heir of the Loyal and Brave Marquis.

Ye Zhen knew he wouldn't say these things to her for no reason, so she sat down and listened quietly.

Xie Tingzhou continued, "He feared the Marquis of Loyalty and Bravery, but he also admired him and wanted to become a battlefield hero like him, so he diligently studied martial arts and military strategy."

With a look of heartache, Lady Liu advised him to take a rest, saying that he was the eldest son of the Marquis of Zhongyong, and even if he didn't learn anything, he would still inherit the title and live a life of wealth and honor.

But behind his back, he urged Xie Yunzhou to surpass him and outdo him.

He was still young and couldn't hide his emotions, so he became estranged from Liu afterward.

After Liu noticed this, she caused a lot of trouble. But he was just a child, surrounded by Liu's people. How could he outsmart the adults? He always ended up being unreasonable and domineering.

The old Marquis's inner quarters were clean and tidy. The Marquis of Zhongyong had never experienced the intrigues of the inner quarters and had more contact with men, so he could not see through Liu's methods and refused to change the servants for his son.

He was disappointed in Marquis Zhongyong and gradually opposed him. Marquis Zhongyong believed Liu's words more and more and was convinced that it was the eldest son's fault. At a young age, he had a hard time in the Marquis's mansion.

I then gave Fu Guang to him, but in the end, I still couldn't escape Liu's scheme.

He removed his mask and said, "Back then, Liu took her three siblings to the temple to pray for blessings, and bandits broke in at night."

The servants of the Marquis's mansion could not find him anywhere, so they had no choice but to escort Liu Shi and Xie Yunzhou and his sister away in a carriage.

He was eventually found by Fu Guang in the scorched wilderness. He had been struck hard on the back of the head and was unconscious. If Fu Guang hadn't arrived in time, it wouldn't have been just his face that was burned.

He insisted that he was copying scriptures and praying for the Marquis of Zhongyong in the meditation room when he was drugged by Lady Liu, because he vaguely heard Lady Liu's voice when he was thrown into the fire.

But Lady Liu tearfully denied it, saying that she had led the servants of the Marquis's mansion to search for him everywhere, and that all the servants could testify that he was not in the carriage at the time.

Ye Zhen thought of the hidden compartment in Liu's carriage. "You mean, Liu hid him in the hidden compartment of the carriage and took him out, then abandoned him in the wilderness?"

Xie Tingzhou nodded.

"He and Fu Guang had their suspicions at the time, but they checked the carriage that Liu had ridden in that night and found no place for anyone to hide."

Some time ago, you helped me escape from trouble. When Fuguang came to meet me, he saw the hidden compartment.

He studied it carefully and suspected that the carriage from back then actually had a hidden compartment, but Liu had modified it in time, which is why they couldn't find any evidence when they investigated again.