When Qun Qing saw layers of flying eaves and countless green trees, feeling no pain, only lightness, she knew she had probably died and become the legendary lonely wandering ghost.

What lovesickness curse, what mutual destruction—all fabricated to deceive Lu Huating. Fortunately, in the jade pillow, in her final letter, she’d left coping strategies for Yang Fu.

As long as the princess remembered them by heart, she could at least live as long as Prince Yan.

She’d done all she could, leaving strategies to preserve Yang Fu, yet ultimately couldn’t confirm the princess had escaped danger. Presumably with unfinished wishes, her spirit swiftly swept over the palace walls, piercing straight into Liangyi Hall where Yang Fu was detained.

On the windowsill sat an iron mask, its demon face turned upward. Qun Qing paused, fearfully circling around it.

Inside the hall were no mansion troops, no guards either. Yang Fu sat collapsed against the wall. Anyone who first laid eyes on her would be dazzled by her beauty—even now with disheveled hair and swollen red eyes, she remained like a spring blossom from the land of hibiscus: “What have you done to her?”

Li Huan’s expression was coldly stern, his voice severe: “She’s a Nan Chu spy who assassinated no fewer than five people. Leaving her corpse intact is this prince’s mercy.”

He wanted to approach. Princess Bao’an’s expression grew agitated as she pulled the gold hairpin from her head. Li Huan grabbed her wrist and guided her to stab the hairpin into his own waist and abdomen, saying: “Either kill me and avenge her?”

Legend said that when Prince Yan was born, his ugliness had frightened his birth mother to tears, requiring him to wear an iron mask to hide his deformity. Seeing him today, the face beneath the mask was not only not ugly but extraordinarily heroic.

When he pressed close to someone, the bandit aura from years of battlefield campaigns erupted. With one hand he completely shackled both of Princess Bao’an’s hands. No matter how she struggled, the hairpin’s sharp tip pierced deep into flesh—he didn’t even blink.

Yang Fu screamed and withdrew her hand. The gold hairpin clattered to the floor.

Li Huan trapped her in the corner, gently supporting her arm. Seeing her tremble, he uncomfortably moved his hand away: “Truly no place for me in your heart? Not even willing to look at me properly.”

He continued: “I killed your maid not to harm you, but to free you from Nan Chu’s constraints henceforth. As long as she lived one more day, she’d keep you torn between national enmity and family hatred!”

Yang Fu’s tears instantly fell like rain: “You don’t understand…”

Li Huan said: “You’re the one who doesn’t understand! The situation is decided. Crown Prince Zhao is merely a clown. Nan Chu will sooner or later fall into this prince’s grasp. Since ancient times new dynasties replace old—this is heavenly way and human affairs, not something you few young women can change!”

Yang Fu was unharmed—Qun Qing should feel relieved. But these two people’s manner of interaction was completely beyond her expectations.

Yang Fu had clearly told her that every time Prince Yan summoned her to Liangyi Hall to copy scriptures, he subjected her to extreme humiliation, so that each time she returned, her eyes were swollen from crying like peaches, making Qun Qing despise Prince Yan to the bone.

This seemed… not like mutual loathing?

The candle flame kept flickering like Qun Qing’s uncertain, doubtful heart. Yang Fu’s sobbing finally grew weaker and weaker, more and more desperate.

Li Huan said: “From today forth, if you trust me and marry me, you’ll be my wife. I’ll give you status and protect you all your life. But if you insist on being Li Xuan’s Crown Princess…” He sighed, his head turned aside, a thread of cruelty flashing in his eyes. “Then as Lu Huating said, go to the imperial prison together with the Crown Prince!”

Yang Fu swayed as if about to collapse. Li Huan couldn’t bear it and immediately embraced her.

Perhaps it was the chaotic candlelight in this hall, or the cold gaze of the Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva statue that unsettled people. Perhaps Yang Fu had been frightened all day, like a weary bird with no branch to rest on. She slowly raised her ornate sleeves and threw herself into that warm, firm embrace, crying loudly: “Qing Qing is dead—what can I do, what can I do… I pray Your Majesty won’t betray me…”

Li Huan started, an expression of wild joy on his face. He tightened his grip around her waist and lifted her onto the table in one motion.

While Qun Qing watched the two tightly entangled shadows, it was like experiencing an extremely absurd nightmare from which she couldn’t cry out, nor could she awaken.

She could no longer remember when the lies began.

All along, hadn’t Princess Bao’an deeply detested Li Huan?

In their childhood, when the Li family came from the northern lands to the palace to pay respects, every time she saw Li Huan kneeling beneath the Yuhua Platform, Yang Fu would hide behind her, clutching her with sweat-dampened hands, walking quickly past as if suffering great torment: “Look how terrifying his mask is! He keeps staring at this princess—truly audacious.”

Every time, it was Qun Qing who straightened her back, blocking the young Prince Yan’s audacious gaze.

The night Prince Yan broke through Chang’an, he violated Princess Bao’an’s reputation at Qingjing Temple. The princess grew even more disgusted and fearful. No matter how Li Huan tried to show goodwill, whenever the princess saw Li Huan, it was like seeing an evil demon…

The day they decided to poison Li Huan, Princess Bao’an had said painfully: “I am ultimately a nation’s princess. If I endure even this humiliation, how can I face Father Emperor, Elder Sister, the ancestral temple and state?”

Until that day, Qun Qing had believed the princess hated Prince Yan, believed Prince Yan was their common enemy.

When did it start—when did Prince Yan become less detestable in the princess’s heart? When he showed concern for her welfare? When he sent gifts? When he pursued her relentlessly?

Why had Princess Bao’an never told her of such betrayal, not even in a few words?

Qun Qing suddenly fixed her gaze on Yang Fu’s hand.

Princess Bao’an’s arms hung loosely around Li Huan’s neck. The tip of her long, ornate nail sheath had a tiny spot of shimmering gold leaf, beneath which hung the poison pearl Qun Qing had personally affixed. The poison pearl was intact, the glue seal unbroken.

A thunderous roar filled Qun Qing’s ears.

No wonder Lu Huating had looked at her with that expression. No wonder when the imperial physician examined him, he reported Prince Yan had “no serious ailment.”

How could there be ailment without poisoning? Inside Liangyi Hall, Princess Bao’an hadn’t succeeded. She’d touched it once, then quickly withdrew her hand.

She couldn’t bear to poison Li Huan!

What complex feelings Yang Fu harbored toward Prince Yan to soften and change her mind at the threshold, even knowing Qun Qing was risking death plotting behind her back…

In Yang Fu’s heart, who was light and who was heavy—no more words were needed.

So today, it wasn’t Princess Bao’an trapped in the scheme at all—rather, it was she, Qun Qing, who’d taken the bait and walked into the net.

Slowly, she heard chanting sutras in unison, that sound resounding through heaven and earth, interspersed with the crisp sound of striking bronze instruments—sorrowful, ethereal, and otherworldly, like warm hands stroking her head, extinguishing her rage, urging her toward peace, bidding her sleep.

Completely useless.

Her heart hurt.

Many faces flashed through Qun Qing’s mind. Since the Chang’an night chaos scattered her closest relatives, Mother’s fate unknown—alive or dead unseen—and Doctor Li who rescued her, Doctor Li’s young apprentice Fang Xie… Along this path, many people had shown her kindness, and she owed many people debts. Leaving everything behind, she’d willfully entered the palace.

For national restoration, she’d known she’d die sooner or later. After being wounded in assassination attempts, illness and pain tormented her worse than death. She’d fantasized about many ways to die, yet never imagined she’d die in vain like this.

One can die, but not die so uselessly!

Qun Qing forced her eyes open. Her vision returned to clarity. She saw the source of the chanting: on the palace path, a funeral procession—seven or eight Daoist priests held white banners, chanting, while two inner attendants in mourning clothes carried a coffin. The black coffin wood bore exquisitely painted lotus flowers: “Prime Minister Lu’s funeral—make way, make way—”

Hearing the inner attendants’ words, Qun Qing felt doubtful.

The current Prime Minister was Meng Guangshen. Who was Prime Minister Lu?

She heard the young coffin-bearer whisper: “Godfather, why is this coffin so heavy? It’s as if it contains more than one person. My arms are so sore…” He was subsequently scolded by his godfather.

The funeral procession passed by her spirit. The enormous chanting shook heaven and earth. Falling paper banners spun, passing through her body without obstruction.

Certain she’d become a ghost, she instantly dispersed into heaven and earth, then was gathered by an enormous force and dragged to an extremely distant place…

Opening her eyes was like being rolled around seven or eighty times inside a box then dumped out—heaven and earth were spinning.

Qun Qing endured the discomfort when a ladle of cold water mercilessly poured down on her head. Beside her ear rang ghostly crying sounds that made her tailbone tingle.

Qun Qing turned her head extremely slowly to glance at those “ghosts,” only to see several palace maids biting their teeth and sobbing quietly. The underworld’s palace maids wore simple chignons, their appearances seemingly no different from palace maids above ground.

“It’s hot—people faint easily. This servant is cooling you down. Don’t think you can escape punishment by pretending to faint while swaying around.” A ladle of water violently poured onto another person, water droplets splashing on Qun Qing’s face.

Qun Qing let water droplets fall from her hair and eyebrows, the wet sensation flooding into her collar.

Water…

She tightened her fingers, crumpling the hem of her multicolored skirt. Tighter still—her palm transmitted clear, sharp pain.

She felt her palm pressed against scorching ground, the unbearable stabbing pain in both knees, distant muffled cicada calls entering her ears, intense sunlight overhead.

This was the mortal realm!

Holding the water ladle was an inner attendant in date-red robes wearing a cloth cap. Standing beside him was a woman in palace dress in her forties, broad and plump. Meeting Qun Qing’s gaze, she hurriedly signaled with her eyes, telling her not to look around carelessly.

Qun Qing stared up at her for quite a while, finally pulling back a thread of memory from the chaos—this was the teaching palace official from when she first entered the Lateral Courts under the identity “Qun Qing,” called Nanny Zhang.

But wasn’t this from the first year of Shenglin?

She slowly reached to touch that dagger wound on her lower abdomen, touching again and again—the wound was gone…

Eunuch Pei had the palace maids kneel under the scorching sun as punishment. Nanny Zhang advised: “Supervisor, if there are misbehaving maids, however you educate them hereafter is acceptable. But today, this servant was ordered by His Highness the Crown Prince to take them for selection by the two noble masters. It wouldn’t be proper to keep the noble masters waiting anxiously.”

Selection by the two noble masters…

Qun Qing recalled—back then she’d assumed a palace maid’s identity to return to the palace. After staying in the Lateral Courts for over a month, she’d used the opportunity of palace maid selection to reach Princess Bao’an’s side, then infiltrated the Six Offices, becoming Nan Chu’s chess piece planted in the palace.

It seemed today was precisely the day she left the Lateral Courts. But why the kneeling punishment again?

She heard Supervisor Pei sneer coldly: “Precisely because we’re selecting maids for the noble masters must we choose carefully—absolutely cannot let those with deficient virtue sneak in.”

Nanny Zhang was surprised: “What deficiency? These maids were all carefully selected by me!”

Supervisor Pei said: “Someone secretly reported to this servant that the night before last, one among you privately exchanged messages with an outside man. According to Da Chen law, palace maids are forbidden from communicating with outsiders—violators receive thirty lashes. If discovered to be a spy, death without burial! You may denounce each other. The noble masters are still waiting in Luanyi Pavilion. If within one pot of tea’s time you still can’t find that person, you’ll all share thirty lashes together!”

The teenage palace maids instantly swayed as if about to collapse.

The punishment rod was made from bramble branches covered with thorns. When it fell heavily, the thorns embedded in flesh wrapped in clothing. When raised high, it tore flesh out together. Within ten strokes, cries would cease. Thirty strokes would smash lower limbs like crushed melon pulp.

Even preserving one’s life meant spending the rest crippled.

Qun Qing stared at her skirt hem, her thoughts somewhat chaotic. She’d never believed in resurrection in her life, still unclear whether this truly was a return to the first year of Shenglin or if she remained in a dying dream. If the latter, it was merely what elders called “life flashing before one’s eyes”…

Just thinking this, her head was heavily struck by Supervisor Pei’s whisk: “So calm—can’t squeeze out a single tear? You speak first.”

Qun Qing’s heart jumped. She had no memory of this part!

Before she could speak, an urgent voice suddenly sounded beside her: “Eunuch, this servant reports—the one who passed messages is precisely Qun Qing! This servant rose at midnight and heard her talking with an unfamiliar man.”

Qun Qing sharply turned toward the palace maid on her right. The other didn’t dare meet her eyes, prostrating herself with trembling shoulders.

In an instant, familiar crisis spread throughout Qun Qing’s entire body, incredibly real in reminding her of the sensation of being alive—also reminding her she might be about to die a second time.