Ming Huazhang had said this was a reconstruction — done after extensive inquiry — of the scene as best he could manage. Ming Huashang chose to take it at face value. She stood in the doorway, and tried to look at this gloomy, sinister workshop full of puppets through the eyes of the killer.
The room was in a state of complete disorder. Puppets, tools, and materials were scattered across the floor. At the center of the chaos was an outlined silhouette — not long ago, a woman’s corpse had lain here, but like the truth itself, it had since vanished inexplicably. Ming Huashang dropped to one knee beside the outline, gazing at the empty floor for a long moment, and then, from that angle, slowly swept her eyes across the surroundings.
The room appeared to have been the scene of a violent struggle. A long workbench had been knocked over, and the half-finished pieces on it had scattered in every direction. Puppet heads lay buried among severed limbs and broken legs, still smiling their oblivious smiles — an utterly unsettling sight.
Ming Huashang rose and examined the puppets one by one, eventually stopping at the long table that held the paint pigments. She bent down and studied the floor. Not far away was a patch of regular, faint white marks — the kind left when something sits in one place for a long time. Ming Huashang traced the length of the table and found similar marks in other corners.
It seemed this table had been knocked at some point and shifted slightly — perhaps an inch or so. The white marks indicated where the table legs had originally rested.
Ming Huashang scanned the table surface. The pigment dishes were arranged side by side in dense rows — fifty or sixty different colors at least, some of which Ming Huashang could not even distinguish from one another. Many of the brushes had fallen to the floor, their bristles clearly showing they had been used.
Ming Huashang moved with great deliberateness, sometimes lingering at one spot for a considerable length of time. Jiang Ling waited at the doorway, cold and unsettled, and finally could not help asking: “What is she doing? Muttering away like that — it’s quite eerie.”
“Don’t speak.” Ming Huazhang stood at the doorway with his hands clasped behind him. The shadows behind him stretched and swayed with the movement of the trees, but he remained unmoved, his gaze fixed steadily on Ming Huashang. “Let her look.”
Jiang Ling had to concede — Ming Huazhang had said they were there to examine the scene, and sure enough, what they were actually doing was “examining.”
Ming Huashang was so absorbed in her thoughts that she had no awareness of time passing. When she finally emerged from that trance-like state, she found that a full two-hour period had gone by, and the stars outside the window had risen considerably higher.
Ming Huazhang watched her expression and asked, “Well?”
Ming Huashang made a quiet sound and said, “I’ve more or less drawn a picture of what kind of person the killer is. But this rests on the assumption that what we are looking at is what the killer actually left behind. I don’t know which things you all may have moved, and which marks were left by the Taoist priests — I can only try to account for the disturbances, and you should not take my conclusions as certain.”
Ming Huazhang nodded. “Understood.”
Jiang Ling was increasingly baffled. He asked in bewilderment: “What exactly are you two doing?”
Before he could finish, his stomach received a sharp elbow from Ren Yao. He bent over in pain, and Ren Yao cast him a cold look. “Keep quiet. Huashang is about to speak — just listen.”
Ming Huashang paid no attention to the commotion beside her. Her gaze was still and deep, as if she had become a different person entirely. She moved slowly through the workshop, touching each object with careful, intimate familiarity. “The killer is someone deeply familiar with this workshop — someone who also cares deeply for it. This place appears to have endured a violent struggle, and everything seems to have been destroyed beyond recognition — yet these carving knives and tools have not suffered any real damage: the blades show no nicks or impact marks. The puppets appear scattered across the floor, but the fabric on them has only been bunched up — it has not been torn or cut. Moreover, the puppet components have all been separated intact — the joint mechanisms should be the first thing to break, yet look: every single mechanism is complete. It appears as though someone carefully disassembled them and gently set them down on the floor.”
Following Ming Huashang’s guidance, Jiang Ling discovered this was indeed the case. He furrowed his brow. “The killer is one of the Kui household’s own — they would naturally hold back in their own family’s workshop. Besides, Kui Bai Xuan is a woman. Perhaps her strength was no match for her attacker and she was quickly subdued — which is why the destruction is so minimal.”
“There is more.” Ming Huashang walked to the pigment table and said, “This table is so close to where the body was, and all four legs have been displaced — my original guess was that this table was disturbed during the murder. Perhaps Kui Bai Xuan’s legs kicked against the table legs and pushed them back a fraction of an inch.”
“That makes sense.” Jiang Ling pointed to the floor. “The brushes fell all the way over there — they must have been kicked.”
Ming Huazhang furrowed his brow slightly. He looked at the position of the body and the table, and his expression gradually grew grave.
Ming Huashang continued: “If the impact was strong enough to send those brushes flying, the force was not small — yet look at the pigment dishes on the table. Every single one of them has its lid closed, and not one has tipped over. Ren Yao — when you clean your dressing table, what do you do?”
Ren Yao said coolly, “I don’t have a dressing table.”
Ming Huashang swallowed the non-answer and supplied her own response: “If it were my newly purchased rouge, I would make certain the maids kept the lid on it — it absolutely could not be spilled. Of course, one normally does not even need to instruct them — most women cannot bear to see their pigments spilled, regardless of the cost. It is simply because the mess would be so tiresome to clean up afterwards.”
Jiang Ling stared blankly, thoroughly lost. “So what? What does that mean?”
Ming Huashang cast Jiang Ling a withering glance. She had actually tried to teach Jiang Ling something — how foolish of her. She cut straight to the conclusion: “Therefore, I believe the killer is a woman, between fifteen and forty years of age, with nimble fingers, long accustomed to woodwork, and possessed of considerable strength. She may not appear to take care of herself, but she deeply cherishes and understands puppets, and can skillfully disassemble the mortise-and-tenon joints. She may be deeply troubled and lonely. Just before committing the crime, she must have suffered a severe blow — for she wished to take revenge on someone. She deliberately damaged the workshop, but could not bring herself to truly harm the puppets, so she only disassembled them and scattered the pieces — causing no damage that could not be repaired.”
Jiang Ling stared in complete stupefaction. After a moment, he asked in a hushed, almost mystical tone: “Do you know the killer?”
Ren Yao had truly run out of patience and shoved Jiang Ling out of the way. “Move back, you’re in the road. Everything else I can understand — but how did you determine her age?”
Ming Huashang sighed. “Because the crime scene has been disturbed too many times. I could not be certain which marks were left by the killer, so I could only broaden the range as much as possible. The age range really ought to be narrowed down further. The lower limit is fifteen because a girl younger than that would not have the strength to move a workbench of this size. The upper limit is because past the age of forty, one’s sensitivity to light declines, and it becomes difficult to quickly distinguish such a complex range of colors.”
Jiang Ling continued to marvel: “Is that actually real? You just looked at all of this and can work out what kind of person the killer is? Surely you made this up.”
Ren Yao frowned as well, her heart hesitating: “Ming Huashang, are you certain about your description of the killer? If you accuse the wrong person, you ruin someone else’s life. And how could a woman have the strength to kill? Could you be mistaken?”
“No.” Ming Huashang was firm on this point. “She is definitely a woman.”
Ren Yao and Jiang Ling were still wavering, but Ming Huazhang had already turned sharply and was striding toward the door. One of the Kui household servants outside — who had been knocked out — had apparently regained consciousness at some point and was struggling desperately against his bonds. Ming Huazhang drew his blade with a clear ring of steel and laid it horizontally across the servant’s throat. The man froze instantly.
Ming Huazhang said coldly, “I have no intention of killing anyone. But if you are foolish enough to test me, I can guarantee that before you manage to make a sound, your head will have already hit the ground.”
The servant whimpered and nodded, not daring to doubt Ming Huazhang for a moment. He knew nothing about weapons, yet he could feel that this blade was cold as snow, its edge fierce and biting — capable, by the look of it, of slicing through gold and severing jade without effort. The chill of the blade had already seeped into his veins. He had absolutely no desire to test its sharpness.
Ming Huazhang, seeing that he had the sense to comply, loosened his hold on the servant’s mouth. “You heard everything that was said inside, didn’t you? Someone like the person they described — do you know anyone who fits?”
The servant finally drew a full breath. He opened his mouth wide and gulped in air, trembling as he spoke: “The description that young woman inside gave — isn’t that the Second… the Second Young Lady?”
Jiang Ling and Ren Yao walked over and, upon hearing the servant’s words, were stunned into silence. “What?”
Kui Bai Xuan was already dead — how could the killer be her?
She killed herself?
Ming Huashang was the last to follow, and upon hearing this, showed not the slightest surprise. “Sure enough — exactly as I suspected. We spent so long investigating who killed her. But what if, just maybe, no one killed her — and everything was staged by her own hand?”
Jiang Ling and Ren Yao were rendered speechless. For a long while, they could not process this reversal. Ming Huazhang’s expression was extremely grim. He had known the inside story of the Kui household’s puppet commissions, and he had known that Kui Bai Xuan was the actual craftsperson involved. So when he heard of her mysterious death — with her body nowhere to be found — his first instinct had been that she had been silenced.
He had let his initial assumption lead him astray, and had committed such a glaring error.
He should have seen through it long ago. If Kui Bai Xuan had truly been stabbed in the carotid artery, the blood should not have flowed — it should have sprayed. But everyone who had seen the scene that day said that when they pushed the door open, they found Kui Bai Xuan lying on the ground with her neck still bleeding — a slow flow.
The blood was real. But the figure lying there was not a real person. It was a puppet — one that Kui Bai Xuan had crafted to resemble herself precisely!
Ming Huazhang’s face went cold as jade, his eyes like solitary flames on a snow plain — like silver eagles on a glacier. He spoke in an icy voice: “Come — there is no need for concealment now. Go and seize Kui Moyuan, Kui Zhutan, and Hua Nu.”
The black-clad figures accepted the order and vanished. In the blink of an eye, aside from the Kui household servant tied on the ground, only Ming Huashang, Jiang Ling, and Ren Yao remained. Jiang Ling gazed up at the vast empty night sky and said, “Did I miss something? How did it come to this? What have these three done?”
Ming Huashang remained composed. Her part was finished; what came next was up to others. She rolled her slightly stiff shoulders, and said carelessly, “Let them explain what they’ve done themselves. As I thought — I really do need more exercise. I was only crouching for a short while and already my back is aching.”
Ren Yao furrowed her brow and thought for a good while, then said: “Kui Moyuan was the first person to see the body. Kui Zhutan kept insisting she had seen Kui Bai Xuan’s ghost. Hua Nu’s movements have been unclear, but he has taken great care of Kui Bai Xuan. If Kui Bai Xuan is truly not dead, then all three of them must have been lying. But — why wasn’t Kui Yanqing arrested? No matter what, he cannot be without fault in this.”
Ming Huashang smiled with an ambiguous look in her eye and said, barely audible: “Perhaps because someone has already moved against him.”
·
The night was deep. Outside the window, the Scholar Tree rustled loudly, its shadows playing across the window paper like a hundred ghosts stretching their claws, frantically grasping for something. A black figure rummaged through the room, turning over boxes and lifting up floor tiles in a thorough search. Finally, he felt a loose brick, pressed down hard on it, and a hidden compartment opened before him.
He took out the wooden cylinder inside, opened it with trembling hands, and found a detailed, delicate blueprint.
Even in the darkness, one could see his eyes light up. His voice was wild with elation: “I’ve found it — I’ve finally…”
He did not finish his sentence. A sudden sharp pain struck the back of his neck, and he crumpled sideways to the floor.
Xie Jichuan dropped down from the roof beams, shook out his arm with irritation, and with great condescension picked up the blueprint from Kui Yanqing’s hands: “Useless wretch. Six days — you only found it now. Keeping watch is truly no job for a human being. Jingzhan must genuinely have a grudge against me — why is it always me who gets assigned things like this.”
Unable to light a lamp, Xie Jichuan had to examine the blueprint by the faint available light. He had been born into the Xie family and had mastered both calligraphy and painting. He quickly determined that this was the original — not a copy.
Xie Jichuan put the blueprint away. Just then, from outside the window came the call of a cuckoo: three short notes, one long.
This was the Xuan Xiaowei’s secret signal. Xie Jichuan pushed open the window, and the person outside ceased concealing himself when he saw the movement. Ming Huazhang stepped forward and asked, “The person?”
Xie Jichuan gestured behind him. “Already unconscious.”
“The item?”
“In hand, naturally.” Xie Jichuan said with a half-smile, “Four days from now — no, three days now — it is the Crown Prince’s investiture ceremony. Even if you can keep your composure, I cannot afford to delay any further.”
“Good that you have it.” Ming Huazhang said. “But whether or not there is a blueprint hardly matters now — the person who made the puppets is still alive. I came to remind you to tie up the loose ends. Fortunately, you were a step ahead and already have it.”
Xie Jichuan raised an eyebrow. “What happened?”
Ming Huazhang sighed lightly. “This time it was my mistake. I let my initial assumption take over — I assumed Kui Bai Xuan had already been silenced. In truth, the murder case was entirely staged by her. We were deceived by her for this long.”
Xie Jichuan looked up in surprise. He didn’t quite believe it, but it seemed the only possibility: “Your little sister’s group figured it out?”
Ming Huazhang nodded without hesitation, openly admitting it. Xie Jichuan was surprised yet again. He glanced back at the dark figure collapsed on the floor and asked, “What about this one — keep him?”
They had previously been unaware that Kui Bai Xuan was still alive and had no choice but to keep Kui Yanqing alive, hoping to obtain the puppet blueprints from him. Now that Xie Jichuan knew the original maker was still living, both the blueprints and this fraud who had been taking credit for others’ work had lost most of their usefulness.
Ming Huazhang said: “Keep him for now. Bring him to the workshop — there are still things to ask him.”
Kui Moyuan was asleep. Without warning, a cloth was pressed over his mouth. Before he had any idea what was happening, he was dragged from his bed and hauled outside. His mouth was stopped up and he couldn’t see the face or build of the person behind him — only that the person was dressed in black and had absolutely no intention of speaking. His first thought was: it’s over. He was about to be silenced.
His master’s greed had, in the end, brought a death sentence down on all of them.
Kui Moyuan walked through the night wind in a state of resignation, feeling strangely peaceful now that things had come to this. His only regret was that he would not see Zhutan again — he did not know whether she would be spared.
Lost in these thoughts, Kui Moyuan was shoved through a doorway. He raised his head — and saw the person he had been thinking of more than anyone else. At that moment, the cloth was removed from his mouth. The instant he was free, he lurched toward Kui Zhutan.
“Junior Apprentice-Sister!”
Kui Zhutan, upon seeing him, also could not hold back her tears. “Senior Apprentice-Brother…”
The apprentice-brother and sister clung to each other, sobbing. Ming Huazhang had no patience to wait for them to finish. He gripped his scabbard, struck it against the floor, and said: “Enough. If you cooperate honestly, there will still be a chance for you to be together in the future. But if you are foolish enough to resist, then save the rest of your tears for the road to the underworld.”
Mustering his courage, Kui Moyuan raised his head. All around him stood the black-clad figures, ghostly and still, each wearing half a mask, their expressions cold and blank — like spirits. The black-robed man standing before Kui Moyuan was exceptionally tall. The lower half of his face that showed was cool as jade, his lips fine and beautifully shaped — enough to make one curious about what the upper half of his face looked like. He was remarkably handsome, but when his gaze descended — like a lone wolf on the snowy plains, like a silver eagle on a glacier — the pressure of death bore down like a mountain.
This man had not said a word, and yet Kui Moyuan was immediately certain: he was the leader of this group.
Kui Moyuan stiffened his neck and said: “Who are you people, to dare trespass on private property? Are you not afraid of being held accountable by the authorities?”
Ming Huazhang responded only with a faint laugh. “You know perfectly well what you’ve done — how dare you mention the authorities?”
Kui Moyuan choked, but still pressed on stubbornly: “Whatever the matter, it is mine to answer for alone. My junior apprentice-sister has never involved herself in the business side of things. If you have a grievance, bring it to me. Let her go.”
“Very well, then I will speak of something you both already know.” Ming Huazhang gripped his straight saber and slowly paced before Kui Moyuan and Kui Zhutan, moving around behind them. Then, abruptly, he said: “Kui Bai Xuan is still alive.”
He distinctly noted both Kui Moyuan and Kui Zhutan flinch. Ming Huazhang knew then that his inference was correct.
He had been truly foolish to have committed such an obvious error — one that required Ming Huashang to correct.
Ming Huazhang continued: “That day when you came to bring Kui Bai Xuan her meal and forced the door open, everyone else who saw Kui Bai Xuan lying on the ground didn’t dare approach. You alone went forward to examine her. Of course, you could see at once that it was a puppet — one almost indistinguishable from a real person — but you said nothing. Instead, you chose to cooperate with her, claiming that she was dead.”
Kui Moyuan’s body had gone completely rigid. Ming Huazhang moved behind Kui Zhutan. Her back stiffened; she could almost feel the cold of the straight saber climbing up her neck.
“As for you — your part is even cruder. The puppets in the Kui household started moving on their own; rumors of haunting spread in private. A puppet holding a knife appearing at your bedside may have been real — may have been a coincidence — but from that point on, you could suddenly see ghosts. You performed a great scene again and again before everyone’s eyes, saying you had seen Kui Bai Xuan’s spirit. Who would suspect a woman who had an emotional grudge against Kui Bai Xuan? Everyone believed your lies.”
Kui Zhutan’s body began to tremble almost imperceptibly. At that moment, Ming Huazhang finally came to stand in front of her. Kui Zhutan seemed to have lost all control of her body — she stared rigidly downward. All she could see in her field of vision was the hem of a dark robe embroidered with an owl crest, and a pair of clean, dark leather boots.
“I am very curious. Why?”
Kui Zhutan bit her lip and refused to speak. Ming Huazhang sighed and said, “I gave you a chance.”
He slowly drew his saber. The blade flashed like snow, and the entire room seemed to brighten with it. His draw was slow — but the strike came without warning. The snow-white blade swept directly toward Kui Zhutan’s slender neck.
The shift happened with no forewarning. Everyone was startled, and from both inside and outside the room came two sharp cries at the same moment: “No.”
One cry was Kui Moyuan’s. The other…
Ming Huashang, hidden behind the gathered people, turned around and looked toward the door.
A disheveled woman appeared in the doorway. Her features were unremarkable — only her eyes could be called bright. Now, even those eyes had gone dim. She sat down on the floor, crumpling.
Ming Huazhang sheathed his saber with complete composure, and asked — though the tone left no room for doubt: “Kui Bai Xuan?”
Everything had been within Ming Huazhang’s calculation. He drew slowly, precisely to leave time for Kui Bai Xuan to struggle with herself — and at the very last moment, when the blade swept forward suddenly, it was to strike when her guilt was at its strongest, so that emotion would overpower reason and impulse would overcome self-preservation, driving her to rush forward and turn herself in.
The Kui household grounds were vast, and trees were everywhere. Searching the premises without alerting the Jinwu guards would have been far too laborious. The best solution was to make her step forward on her own.
Ming Huazhang returned the saber to its scabbard. The blade rang out with a clear, musical note as it settled into the sheath. He said: “So you truly are alive. Kui Bai Xuan — you are implicated in serious crimes. What have you to say for yourself?”
The wall inside Kui Zhutan’s heart finally crumbled. She burst into weeping: “Since you already escaped — why did you have to come back?”
Kui Bai Xuan did not seem at all grateful. “What good intentions were those — all pretense.”
“I had almost forgotten about you.” Ming Huazhang walked unhurriedly to the head seat, smoothed his robe, and sat down with composure. “If Kui Bai Xuan staging her own death and fleeing could be called understandable under the circumstances — then why did you help her do evil?”
Two tears slid from Kui Zhutan’s eyes and she wept brokenly. “I wanted her to have her wish.”
That reason left everyone momentarily speechless. Ren Yao leaned against the door with her arms folded, looking ahead. Jiang Ling was increasingly lost and whispered to Ming Huashang, “What does she mean?”
Ming Huashang inwardly sighed. When they first heard of this strange puppet-haunting case, everyone had assumed the worst of those involved and enumerated many possible situations. They had overlooked just one: what if people’s hearts were good?
Kui Moyuan’s concealment of what he found was not a thief crying “thief.” Kui Zhutan’s daytime ghost-seeing was not the guilt of a wrongdoer. Hua Nu’s suspicious comings and goings were not the scheming of a man with indecent intentions.
It was simply the most artless, uncomplicated kindness of human nature. She had already suffered enough — they all wanted her to have her wish.
The moment Kui Moyuan saw the puppet, he guessed that Kui Bai Xuan was staging her own death. But he said nothing and did not expose her, because he also pitied this second apprentice-sister of his — the daughter of his former senior apprentice-uncle. If those people long ago had never harboured such shameful thoughts, the two of them should have grown up together from childhood.
Kui Moyuan had sent all the servants away, precisely for fear that someone would notice something amiss about the corpse. Before he could work out what to do, the body disappeared.
This was in fact quite easy to achieve. Normal people confronted with a corpse would panic and instinctively flee. Kui Bai Xuan herself only needed to hide inside the workshop. After everyone outside was frightened into scattering in all directions, she dismantled the puppet piece by piece and scattered the parts among the pile of puppets. She then disappeared as though by magic.
After all, the best way to hide a leaf is to place it in a forest. Who besides its maker would dare look closely at a pile of dark and eerie puppets?
Kui Bai Xuan then used the chaos to slip out of the workshop. The Kui household grounds were full of groves and empty buildings — it was not difficult to find a hiding place. Using her intimate knowledge of the Kui household and its puppets, she placed puppets in various locations to create the illusion that they had come to life.
The primary target of her revenge — Kui Zhutan — seemed to be especially easy to frighten. It was not long before Kui Zhutan began showing signs of mental instability, raving about seeing ghosts.
In truth, it was not that Kui Bai Xuan’s methods of frightening her were so clever — it was that the people in the story were unwilling to expose her. Kui Moyuan had not told Kui Zhutan the truth, but Kui Zhutan, observing the details around the household, found it not difficult to guess the truth.
At this point, if she had reported it to her master, she could have permanently disposed of Kui Bai Xuan — her rival. But Kui Zhutan did not.
Kui Zhutan wept until her tears fell like rain, covering her face with her hands. “Master and Senior Apprentice-Brother never told me. But I could sense it. Master’s attitude toward her was very strange. She would often have unexplained bruises on her body. One time when she placed a puppet in my room, I had actually woken up. I was trembling with fright, thinking she meant to stab me — but she only put the knife in the puppet’s hand and turned the puppet’s face toward me. Whatever wrong she had done — the worst she was capable of was frightening me. So I thought: if this is her wish — to let ‘Kui Bai Xuan’ die and escape master’s control while she lived — then I was willing to let her have it.”
Ren Yao was visibly moved, her nose beginning to sting. She turned her gaze away in silence. Jiang Ling had considered so many strange and dark possibilities, yet none of them had led to this: the true reason was so simple.
Ming Huashang looked on at the scene and sighed quietly.
Kui Bai Xuan was completely stunned. No wonder she had felt everything was going so smoothly — the puppet standing in for her had gone undetected, her ghost-playing inside the compound had gone undetected, and she had hidden in the empty room for over a dozen days without being discovered. It was not that the others were foolish — they had simply pretended to be taken in.
Kui Moyuan had initially refused to say anything, but could no longer hold out at this point, and his own tears fell: “Second Junior Apprentice-Sister, I am sorry. I knew you were Senior Apprentice-Uncle’s daughter. But I didn’t dare say it. I didn’t dare defy Master. When Master ordered me to take you as a concubine, I didn’t refuse — out of guilt toward you. And I have wronged Zhutan too.”
Kui Zhutan burst into fresh tears upon hearing this, and the two of them embraced and wept together. Kui Bai Xuan sat slumped on the ground, already stupefied.
“Tell me — who am I?”
“Master was once an actor in a puppet troupe in his early years. You are the daughter of his Senior Apprentice-Brother. Your family name was originally Wu, and your childhood name was Suisui. When you were young, you did not go missing by accident — after Master’s voice was poisoned and destroyed, he harbored a grudge and had human traffickers abduct you.”
Kui Bai Xuan opened her mouth, wanting to curse but having no standing to do so, wanting to weep but unable to make a sound.
No wonder she always felt that her Master harbored an unspeakable malice toward her. No wonder he kept her close yet constantly humiliated her. The bitter fruit had been destined from the beginning.
She thought of all these years she had spent as a slave, laboring like a beast of burden. She had assumed herself born wretched by fate. But it turned out she was someone with a family?
Kui Bai Xuan finally wept aloud — a howl of anguish: “Why! Why treat me this way!”
All that filled her ears was Kui Bai Xuan’s cry of anguish. Ming Huashang turned her eyes away, unable to bear watching.
Hua Nu, who had been kept outside the room, finally had the cloth removed from his mouth. He had already been weeping for some time. He stumbled forward and fell: “Suisui — forgive me. It is your father who has failed you!”
The room fell into a hush. Kui Bai Xuan stared at Hua Nu in shock. Even Kui Moyuan wore an expression of utter disbelief: “Senior Apprentice-Uncle, you…”
In his memory, Senior Apprentice-Uncle Wu Kong was a man renowned for his beauty — in his day, his looks had surpassed even Master’s by a considerable measure. Senior Apprentice-Uncle had always thought highly of himself, which was why, when Master eventually surpassed him, he had been so unable to accept it.
That bitterness had eaten its way into obsession. He had put poison in Kui Yanqing’s tea, destroying Kui Yanqing’s voice.
Kui Yanqing, cut down at his peak, had been driven from the troupe even before recovering fully, and in the dead of winter had nowhere to rest. Filled with resentment, Kui Yanqing devised a scheme of revenge: he had Wu Kong’s daughter abducted.
If time could be turned back, the root of all this misery lay with Wu Kong, who had given free rein to his envy and handed his apprentice-brother that cup of poisoned tea.
Afterward, he also reaped what he had sown. He lost his daughter. When the troupe dispersed, he spent years tracking the human traffickers and fell down a mountainside during his search. Sharp rocks slashed his face. When the wounds healed, they left a centipede-like web of scars that stripped away every trace of his former beauty.
Kui Moyuan, hearing Wu Kong speak, looked more carefully at his features and recognized the familiar shape of the face beneath. He was horrified. “Senior Apprentice-Uncle — how did you come to look like this?”
People say seeing is believing — yet eyes are the most deceptive organ of all. When Wu Kong was dressed in respectable clothes, everyone noticed his bearing and manner; but when he became disfigured and shabbily dressed, no one looked at his face, let alone tried to recognize his features.
It was truly absurd — a man so deeply intertwined with Kui Yanqing’s story had spent so long working under Kui Yanqing as Hua Nu, crossing paths with him day after day, and no one had ever noticed.
Wu Kong knelt on the floor and bowed his head deeply. “Every last mistake was mine. If I had not harbored evil thoughts from the very beginning — had never raised my hand to harm another — then we would still be performing puppet theatre in Taiyuan today. The troupe might have been wildly successful, or it might have scraped by — but at least our family would have been whole, my apprentice-brother would not have had to endure a life of wandering and hardship, and you and Suisui could have grown up safe and undisturbed. This is retribution. All of it is my retribution — and I deserve never to find peace in the afterlife!”
Kui Bai Xuan stared at Wu Kong, too shocked to speak.
She had always despised this old, ugly servant, and when she suspected he had improper feelings for her, the revulsion was enough to make her want to bring up her last meal.
Looking at him, Kui Bai Xuan could see herself. When she pined after Senior Apprentice-Brother, was she not just as repulsive?
But after her false death, she needed someone to cover for her. So despite her aversion, she had sought out Hua Nu. To her surprise, Hua Nu had not used the opportunity to demand anything more shameful from her. He only brought her food, stood at a distance watching her eat, then collected the dishes and left — with no apparent intention of taking things further.
Kui Bai Xuan could not understand it, but it was undeniably a good thing. She had never imagined — had never for a single moment considered — that he might be her father.
The hall was dim, the tree shadows dense. The wind through the room keened like a ghost’s cry. In the stillness, an elegant, unhurried voice broke the suspension: “What a touching story. Forgive the interruption — but he has woken up.”
Everyone looked up at once. Only then did they notice that along the west wall stood a vast screen, behind which a human shadow flickered. It had been hidden in darkness the whole time, and everyone’s attention had been fixed on Kui Bai Xuan and the others — no one had noticed.
Xie Jichuan dragged a dark figure out from behind the screen and casually dropped him on the floor. With a flick of his blade tip, he caught and snapped the ropes binding the man’s hands.
Kui Yanqing’s hands were freed. He immediately tore the cloth from his mouth and pointed at Wu Kong, hurling curses: “Wu Kong! How dare you show yourself before me! I’ll kill you!”
Kui Yanqing lunged forward and seized Wu Kong by the throat, squeezing with all his might. Years of wandering had left Wu Kong’s body utterly spent. He was caught off guard by Kui Yanqing’s sudden attack. Kui Yanqing bore down with his weight advantage, and it was not long before Wu Kong’s eyes began to roll back.
Kui Bai Xuan was still working through whether the man before her was truly her father and, if so, whether she wanted to acknowledge him. She had not yet reached an answer — but the moment Kui Yanqing’s hands closed around Wu Kong’s throat, her body answered for her.
Kui Bai Xuan threw herself forward. Old grudges and new grievances erupted together as she clawed and struck at Kui Yanqing with everything she had. “Let go!”
Kui Moyuan and Kui Zhutan were both frightened; they looked on anxiously, unsure whose side to take.
Kui Yanqing could not hold out against the strength of two. Kui Bai Xuan shoved him away. He appeared out of breath as he was thrown to one side — but while Kui Bai Xuan turned to look at Wu Kong, he suddenly flung something from his sleeve.
Whatever the object was, it struck the floor with a loud bang and immediately released a cloud of white smoke. Ming Huazhang’s expression changed sharply. He called out loudly: “Careful — it may be poisonous. Fall back! Cover your mouths and noses.”
Ming Huashang had been standing near the doorway. The moment the commotion erupted, Ren Yao moved with swift reflexes — one hand seized Ming Huashang, the other grabbed Jiang Ling, and she yanked them both out of the room.
Ming Huashang covered her nose, gagged on the outdoor air, and coughed out: “This is bad — Kui Yanqing is going to run!”
When the smoke cleared, Ren Yao was the first to run back inside. But on the floor, all that remained were Wu Kong and his daughter, and Kui Moyuan and Kui Zhutan — all of them toppled sideways, coughing. Kui Yanqing was nowhere to be seen.
Ren Yao’s face fell. They had been at this all night, and in the end he had slipped away?
Ming Huazhang remained relatively composed. He gave the cold command: “After him.”