portrait
Less than half an hour after Liu Weiyang and the Luoyue clan chief were locked in the same room, Shui Xing poked her head in from outside and smiled shyly: "Which one of you is Young Master Yu Mo? Young Master Liu, please invite him over."
Yu Mo stood up, and then Shui Xing said, "Father asked me to tell you that he thanks you all for your kindness, but this marriage will probably have to be postponed for a while. If you feel bored, you can go for a walk, but please don't go too far, the woods ahead are a bit dangerous."
Yan Dan watched Shui Xing and Yu Mo walk away, then, holding her teacup, smiled enigmatically. "Young Master Liu is truly skilled. He dealt with Lord Taishan so quickly; not only do they no longer see us as villains, but they even come to thank us." Liu Weiyang was always taciturn, but when he did speak, it carried a certain credibility. Yan Dan knew that it was precisely because of his personality that others believed every word he uttered was true, while in reality, they were being completely fooled by Palace Master Liu without even realizing it.
Tang Zhou walked to the door, then turned back and asked, "Would you like to come outside for a walk with me?"
Yan Dan also felt that there was no point in letting it get moldy in the room, so she nodded and said, "Okay."
The two walked side by side along the stream for a while, when Tang Zhou suddenly stopped and touched her neck, which was exposed outside her collar: "What is this?"
Yan Dan felt a slight itch when he touched her, and quickly squatted down by the stream to check her reflection. The clear water faintly reflected a slight red mark on her neck. Yan Dan rested her chin on her hand, puzzled: "It wasn't there yesterday. Did some bugs crawl in and bite me while I was asleep?"
Tang Zhou was silent for a moment, then suddenly bent down and turned her shoulder. Yan Dan was squatting, but when he turned her like that, she was forced to maintain an extremely difficult posture, watching helplessly as Tang Zhou lowered his head.
"Tang Zhou, even if you're hungry, you can't bite me!"
Tang Zhou released his hand, carefully compared the two marks, and nodded, saying, "They really are different."
Yan Dan flailed twice, clutching her neck in a pitiful manner: "Of course they're different. If you want to compare, go bite yourself!" Even if she wasn't a mortal but a demon, she only had one appearance. If she were bitten and damaged, how could she be used?
Tang Zhou dusted off his sleeves and looked down at her: "If I wanted to compare it myself, I could never bite my neck, right?"
Yan Dan snorted twice, muttering to herself, "I just feel like you're doing this on purpose..." She turned her head to look at the other side, and saw a young man's figure getting closer and closer, holding a scroll of paintings in his hands. The young man was none other than Nan Zhao. She remembered that last time she had wanted to strike while the iron was hot and train Nan Zhao into a pillar of society, but before she could say more than a few words, Liu Weiyang interrupted her. He had come at just the right time.
Yan Dan jumped directly from one side of the stream to the other, waving: "Nan Zhao!"
Nan Zhao was startled, his hand trembled, and the scroll fell to the ground with a clatter. Yan Dan, seeing how he had held the painting earlier, knew it must be something he cherished, so she quickly brushed aside her clothes and caught the scroll in her hand.
Yan Dan glanced at it quickly and saw that the Xuan paper used to mount the scroll had turned a little yellow. The woman in the painting was wearing a light lake-colored silk shirt, with a pair of shallow dimples at the corners of her mouth, willow-leaf eyebrows like crescent moons, eyes like water, and a charming smile. Her expression was so lively that it seemed as if she would suddenly leap out of the paper.
She returned the painting to Nan Zhao and casually asked, "You seem to treasure this painting so much. Who is the person in the painting?" When she first saw it, she thought the person looked about six or seven parts like Nong Cui.
Nan Zhao held the painting and thanked him politely before saying, "This is a portrait of my mother. I was afraid it would get damp, and since the weather is nice today, I thought I'd take it out to air it."
Yan Dan thought for a moment. The woman in the painting was too young; she was probably what Nan Zhao's mother looked like when she was young. It seemed Nan Zhao's mother had already passed away, and he could only look at the portrait and reminisce over it. She had met Nan Zhao a few times and actually liked this gentle and sincere young man.
"Your mother is very beautiful."
Nan Zhao smiled shyly: "My mother was a famous beauty in our clan when she was young."
"Hey, weren't you going to air out the painting? Hurry up and go." Yan Dan made way for him, watching him hurry away carrying the painting. After Nan Zhao had walked a short distance, a young man in brocade robes suddenly darted out from the side and bumped into him. Nan Zhao swayed, almost falling, but still held the painting tightly.
The young man shoved him to the ground, then snatched the scroll from his hand, weighed it in his hand, and looked at it coldly, saying, "This kind of woman is a disgrace to our Luoyue clan. What's the point of keeping this portrait?" He used force with both hands, as if he was about to tear the painting in half.
Yan Dan was anxious. If that person was after her, she had at least a hundred ways to deal with him. But he was after the painting. If she used her magic to retrieve the painting from afar, she might accidentally tear it in two. Just as she was getting worried, Tang Zhou's figure flashed, and he swiftly and decisively touched the man's arm holding the painting. He struck the acupoint, snatched the painting, and gracefully landed in one smooth motion.
Yan Dan finally realized one thing: whether they were demons or Luo Yue people, they all had the Dao.
Tang Zhou held the scroll tightly, gently rolling it up. As he did this, he inadvertently frowned, then handed the painting to Nan Zhao. He glanced down at the young man sitting on the ground and said indifferently, "It's not your turn to tear up this portrait."
The young man's face was ashen, and after a long pause, he finally uttered a sentence: "Are you... are you a mortal?"
Yan Dan was taken aback for a moment, then remembered that the people of Luoyue looked down on mortals.
The young man pointed at Nan Zhao, his audacity growing: "You two, one a mortal and the other a bastard child of a mortal, are actually in cahoots!"
Tang Zhou frowned slightly, but his expression remained the same as usual.
Nan Zhao lowered his neck, then suddenly raised his head after a while and said loudly, "My father is indeed a mortal, but he is a good person, which is why my mother fell in love with him!" He clenched his fist and spoke hurriedly, his face turning red.
Yan Dan couldn't help but think that with Nan Zhao's imposing presence, there was really no need for her to go through the trouble of teaching him to be a true man.
The young man gave them a sharp look, then turned and strode away.
Holding the painting that he had lost and found again, Nan Zhao said to Tang Zhou, "Thank you, Brother Tang. Most of the clansmen do not like mortals, and Yi Lan is the eldest son of the clan chief, so he said some rude things. Please don't take it to heart, Brother Tang."
Tang Zhou nodded slightly and patted him on the shoulder: "I won't hold it against you."
Yan Dan watched Nan Zhao's figure disappear before sighing, "The Luo Yue people have a deep-rooted concept of clans. Someone like Nan Zhao has probably suffered a lot."
Tang Zhou seemed thoughtful, then said calmly, "When I saw that portrait just now, I felt... there was something strange and eerie about the person in it..."
Yan Dan thought back and couldn't figure out how a portrait could have such an eerie aura. She said with certainty, "People from Luoyue are naturally a little different from ordinary people. You must have seen it wrong."
When Yan Dan returned to the room she had stayed in, she saw Yu Mo already sitting at the table waiting for her. He was resting his chin on one hand, his long eyebrows slightly furrowed, as if he was thinking about something difficult to understand. He didn't even notice her approaching.
Yan Dan, suddenly seized by a playful impulse, tiptoed behind him, about to place her hands on his shoulders, when Yu Mo abruptly shifted his body and swiftly grabbed her wrists. Startled, Yan Dan lost her footing, struggled twice to no avail, and finally tumbled onto Yu Mo.
She was stunned, guessing that Yu Mo hadn't expected this either, and remained silent for a long time.
Yan Dan stared into his eyes for a moment, then Yu Mo coughed lightly and said in a low voice, "Did you go out for a stroll just now?"
Yan Dan was still a little confused and mumbled a reply, thinking to herself, "Shouldn't Yu Mo push me away right now?"
Yu Mo looked at the two marks on her neck, then suddenly reached out and pressed his hand against the back of her neck, their foreheads touching and their noses lightly touching, and slowly said, "Yan Dan."
Yan Dan felt a chill run down her spine. She racked her brains, wondering what he was trying to do. Was he confessing his feelings or planning to kiss her? If it was the former, should she accept, politely decline, or remain ambiguous? If it was the latter, should she stay calm and not move, or just grab a teacup and smash it on his head?
After a moment, Yu Mo slowly said, "Palace Master Liu said that there is something he can't understand. The things that appear in the Demonic Realm should be things that at least half of us have seen before. But you haven't seen the previous upheaval, I haven't seen it either, and Tang Zhou, being a mortal, naturally wouldn't have seen it either."
Yan Dan asked blankly, "What exactly are you trying to say?"
"Actually, I don't think it's a big deal either. If you've seen it, just say so. I can't blame you for this."
Yan Dan understood, and clumsily climbed off him: "So that's what you wanted to say... I knew it, how could that be... No! Yu Mo, don't go too far! Don't slander me for no reason, I absolutely, absolutely have never seen Fantian! I really haven't seen it, what else do you want me to say?!"
Yu Mo smiled and said, "If you haven't seen it before, you haven't seen it before. Why are you so excited?"
Yan Dan froze for a moment, then gritted her teeth and remained silent. She would never reveal the embarrassing thing she had just done, which was out of line.
He stood up and suddenly said, "Do you still want to go out for a walk? The one who died suddenly last night was stabbed to death in the chest. I was just about to go to the mortuary to take a look."
The sword slashed from the chest down to the ribs, the initial force dissipated, leaving only a shallow mark.
When Yan Dan and Yu Mo arrived at the mortuary, Liu Weiyang was already there, standing with his hands behind his back beside the coffin. Hearing footsteps behind him, he didn't even raise his head, but reached into the coffin, lifted the corpse's arm, and examined its stiff fingers.
In this situation, Yan Dan really wanted to joke and say, "Young Master Liu, you really care about this matter, after all, it concerns your life's most important thing." But when she saw Liu Weiyang turn his head away expressionlessly, she swallowed the words that were on the tip of her tongue.
She was ultimately not bold enough.
Yu Mo took two steps forward and asked in a low voice, "How is it?"
Liu Weiyang shook his head slightly, his voice low: "The wound is uneven and the depth is not uniform. It seems that the sword is very dull, somewhat like the kind that has never been sharpened."
Upon hearing this, Yu Mo pondered for a moment: "If it's an unsharpened sword, and it's a direct stab to the lady, then this assailant's skills must be quite good. However, judging from the force with which he wielded the sword, it seems that the person's skills are rather ordinary... Brother Liu, are you implying that this assailant must be someone the lady knows?"
Liu Weiyang nodded and said, "This is just speculation, it doesn't count yet."
Yan Dan walked to the coffin, leaned over the edge of the wood and looked down. She saw that the woman lying in the coffin was quite old, with a few shallow wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She looked somewhat like Nan Zhao's mother. Nan Zhao and the two sisters, Nong Cui and Shui Xing, were cousins, so their mothers must have been sisters as well, which explained their resemblance.
She had seen coroners examine corpses before, so she reached out to pry open the corpse's jaw, but before she could even touch it, Yu Mo stopped her. Yu Mo looked at her helplessly: "What do you want to do?"
Yan Dan replied matter-of-factly, "An autopsy."
Yu Mo bent his finger and pressed it against his forehead, feeling even more helpless: "This is not your turn. Before this, the doctors of the Luo Yue Clan had already examined it carefully. They checked everything from the lady's mouth and fingernails to even her hair, and there was no trace of anything."
Yan Dan gave an "oh" and withdrew her hand with great regret.
As they spoke, a slender figure gracefully entered the mortuary. Yan Dan heard the footsteps and subconsciously turned around to look, only to see that it was Nong Cui from the Luo Yue tribe who entered. Without looking to either side, she went straight to greet Liu Weiyang, a smile on her face, her voice soft and sweet: "I went to look for you, but you weren't there. I asked around and found out you came to the mortuary."
Liu Weiyang glanced at her noncommittally and said nothing.
“Don’t always be so cold. I’m going to marry you after my mother’s mourning period.” Nong Cui reached out to grab the other man’s wrist. But before she could touch him, Liu Weiyang suddenly grabbed her neck, his tone cold: “Last night, your wife passed away. You were the first to arrive. What else did you see?”
Yan Dan was speechless. She knew Liu Weiyang was a bit taciturn, but she didn't expect him to be so rude.
Nong Cui reached out to pry his fingers off, her pretty face flushed red from suffocation, and she struggled to speak, "I... I didn't..."
Liu Weiyang slowly released his grip: "Fine, you don't have to say anything then. Do you really think that you Luo Yue people can stop me?"
Nong Cui coughed violently, clutching her neck, and wiped away the tears welling in her eyes with her sleeve. Suddenly, she straightened up, a flame burning in her eyes: "Ever since I met you, my heart has only belonged to Xuan Xiang. What's wrong with me thinking of you?" She finally glanced at Yan Dan and Yu Mo, who were standing to the side like decorations, and smiled slightly, saying, "Miss Yan, do you think it's shameless and lacking in any restraint for me to say these things?"
Yan Dan was surprised that she would ask her that question, and awkwardly replied, "It's just that the local customs are different."
Nong Cui raised her face, looked directly at Liu Weiyang, and said without any hesitation, "I know you don't like being forced. By now, you are no longer the Xuanxiang you once were, and I feel I have no reason not to be worthy of you. I also know that you can't wait to leave this place, so there are some things I have kept from Father and the others. It's just because I want you to stay. Your Highness Xuanxiang—regardless of whether you are or not, if you leave, I will tell all the clansmen that you are the murderer who killed my mother."
Liu Weiyang remained expressionless, but with a slight movement of his sleeve, he had already picked up the emerald green jade flute.
Nong Cui didn't notice Liu Weiyang's subtle movement at all, and continued speaking to herself: "Last night, when I arrived, my mother still had a breath left. She told me that it was a curse. I wanted to ask her more questions, but she couldn't hold on any longer. She just said that it was a curse."
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