"What else...what else do you want me to do?" Feng Wan asked the man wearing the ghost head mask tremblingly.
The man curled his thin lips into a smile, slowly opened his mouth, and casually uttered a sentence.
The wind howled, carrying the man's deep voice into Feng Wan's ears, causing her to shiver instantly!
She reacted strongly to the man's request: "No...I won't do it! I won't do that kind of thing!"
Although Feng Wan was flustered, her tone was extremely firm. After speaking, she turned to leave the courtyard, but was blocked by two men in black with swords drawn. She was so frightened that she had to take a few steps back and give up the idea of running away.
She turned and knelt before the masked man, pleading tearfully, "Please let me go, I really won't do such a thing!"
The man held a silver note between his fingers and casually tossed it to her. The thin piece of paper, however, carried a profound inner strength and landed precisely in front of Feng Wan's knees. She didn't reach out to pick it up, but she saw that it was a silver note worth a thousand taels.
Feng Wan shook her head like a rattle-drum: "No matter how much money you give me, I wouldn't do such a thing... It's all for nothing if you have money but don't live to spend it. The Prince Jing's Mansion will not let me off the hook..."
Having said that, she mustered the courage to fight to the death, suddenly got up and staggered toward the wooden door! Just as the two men in black were about to stop her, they saw that their master had already made his move.
The verdant leaves, carrying a strong wind, shot straight towards Feng Wan like flying knives, but instead of aiming for her vital points, they gently grazed her face behind her ear, leaving a long, thin cut.
Feng Wan stopped, covering her left cheek with her hand, blood slowly seeping through her fingers. Her shoulders trembled slightly, but what frightened her was not this mere wound.
"Alright, stop hiding it."
As he spoke, the masked man walked towards Feng Wan. Although Feng Wan clearly resisted him, her feet seemed to be rooted to the spot, and she could not move at all.
The man walked up to her, reached out and peeled off a layer of skin along the thin wound, revealing her true face underneath.
"Consort Wan." The man's voice was deep, yet inexplicably tinged with mockery.
Feng Wan looked up at him with tear-filled eyes in despair, "How...how did you know?"
"A person skilled in disguise can wear two masks if they can wear one. In fact, from the first time I saw you, I knew that the face you claimed to be Feng Wan's was also fake."
The man slowly walked past Feng Wan, his hands behind his back, and said, "A person who needs to hide themselves with layers of masks must have a true identity that cannot be seen in the light. But no matter how you try to conceal it, your dance moves will not lie."
"When I had someone offer you a price to dance that Green Waist Dance that day, I already had a suspicion, but I needed further evidence. And your dance moves are indeed similar to those of Consort Wan, whom I once saw in the palace. Although you have deliberately changed many parts, the arc of your every move is like a person's handwriting, which is the accumulation of years of habits and cannot be completely changed overnight."
Now that her identity had been guessed, Feng Wan had nowhere to hide, so she tore off the remaining part of her mask to reveal her true face.
But there was still one thing she couldn't understand: "What made you suspect Consort Wan in the first place?"
“That’s simple. I had someone investigate your background and found that all the traces you left were from the last five years, while there was not a trace before five years ago. This proves that you either came suddenly from outside the realm or came from an extremely isolated place.”
“For example, the imperial palace.” He stopped and looked at her.
"Exactly five years ago, Consort Wan offended the Emperor by being spoiled and arrogant, and was sent to Qingyun Nunnery to reflect on her mistakes. However, a fire the following month not only reduced this century-old royal nunnery to ashes, but also caused Consort Wan to disappear without a trace."
"What disappears and what appears—can there be such a coincidence in the world?"
Feng Wan gave a bitter laugh and asked him in return, "You think I set that fire to escape Qingyun Nunnery?"
"Otherwise what?"
"Although I was young at the time and had not served the Emperor for long, the favor he bestowed upon me was unmatched by anyone else in the harem. Even when I joked with him about urgent reports from the border and wrote random comments with my red brush, he was furious but did not imprison me or punish me. He simply sent me out of the palace to reflect on my mistakes..."
Recalling these memories, a strange light shone in Feng Wan's tearful eyes, a testament to her deep longing for that period of time.
After pausing for a moment, she continued, "I know that once His Majesty has calmed down in a year or two, he will surely find another pretext to bring me back to the Daye Palace. Tell me, why would I run away?"
Upon hearing this, the masked man understood: "So that fire was someone trying to prevent you from returning to the palace."
Feng Wan nodded. "Even though I spent those days with only the dim light of the lamp and the Buddha, there were still people who couldn't sleep at night, so she wanted to burn me alive! To ensure I would never have a chance to rise again!"
"Her scheme failed, and you escaped this calamity in the end."
Hearing this, Feng Wan laughed and cried at the same time: "I did run away... but you see what kind of life I'm living now?"
Her smiling eyes, brimming with tears, gazed at the man as she said, word by word, "I have fallen into prostitution!"
"I'm promiscuous!"
"I live a life that's neither human nor ghost!"
...
Faced with her frantic roar, the man's voice remained calm as always: "Then do you wish to regain your former glory?"
Feng Wan fell silent, staring blankly at him, as if she had heard something she deeply longed for, yet could only treat as a joke. Finally, she frowned, gazing at a tree in the corner of the courtyard whose blossoms had all fallen, and said with utter helplessness, "It's impossible..."
Having already become a withered flower, how can she return to the side of the most noble person in the world?
"It's all fate..." she murmured bitterly.
The masked man gave a slight smile. "You named yourself Feng Wan, isn't it because you dream of one day rising from the ashes like a phoenix?"
"That fire didn't kill you, which was also a matter of fate."
This last sentence was like a wake-up call, jolting the despondent Feng Wan awake. She slowly turned her head to look at the man beside her again, "Who exactly are you?"
The man raised his right hand, his fingers holding the jade thumb ring: "This is both your pledge of loyalty to me and your stepping stone to return to the Daye Palace."
After a moment's hesitation, Feng Wan's gaze suddenly hardened, and she resolutely took the ring from the man's hand and slipped it onto her thumb.
Feng Wan left the courtyard with several men in black, and the ghost head mask was finally removed by the man.
Li Qingchen looked north, his sharp gaze seemingly able to pierce through layers of walls and land on Yandang Mountain...
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