Legend of Fu Yao

Zhangsun Wuji was helping to wipe her face, and his hand froze when he heard this line. Seconds later, he looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “So do you think that we chase you because of your marvelous looks?”

When Meng Fuyao heard that, she knew that His Highness was unhappy and she smiled sheepishly. Though she kept quiet, her eyes gleamed in mischief and her look conveyed what she wanted to say. ‘I think that looks are still very important, and there’s an 80% chance that looks are partly why you guys like me. However, my skin is not that thick, and I’m not daring enough to say this, so just accept it.’

Zhangsun Wuji kept his napkin and sighed. “Luckily, it’s me… If it was that bad-tempered one here, he would probably let you bleed straight away.”

However, Meng Fuyao was indignant. She raised her chin high and said, “Am I wrong? Am I wrong?”

“Terrible error!” Zhangsun Wuji smirked. “You’re, in fact, insulting us by saying it this way.”

“How serious,” Meng Fuyao muttered under her breath. “Alright, I admit. You guys are lofty and unsullied, and are never moved by others’ appearances.” Then, she looked around at the surroundings. Seeing that they were surrounded by low-lying houses fenced up with short walls, she frowned. “What is this place?” she asked.

“Seems like it’s where eunuchs and servants live in,” Zhangsun Wuji said. “You know that eunuchs and attendants who committed mistakes, or are too old or ill, will be relocated to other quarters.”

“More like throwing them to one side to let them perish on their own.” Meng Fuyao instantly understood, and she sighed. “They are all pitiful people… Let’s go. We can find another chance a few days later to settle those bastards.”

She had just turned around when Zhangsun Wuji suddenly exclaimed. “Oh?”

When Meng Fuyao looked back, she saw that Zhangsun Wuji was looking at a corner in the house. Someone was squatting in the dark corner, and he looked like an elder from the back. His white hair was messily scattered over his shoulder, and he was using a straw of grass to draw something on the ground.

Who could possibly be drawing at midnight? Meng Fuyao took a curious look, and she was about to leave, but the old eunuch suddenly cried “hehe”. Then, he threw the grass away and collapsed backward.

Hurriedly, Meng Fuyao went forward to support him, but she frowned when she came into contact with the old eunuch. She really disliked the smell of urine on the eunuch. When she looked up, she saw that the old eunuch’s face was full of dirt, the messy hair seemed like it had not been washed for a long while, and strands of hair were stuck on the rice grains which were not wiped away from his face. His facial features could not be distinguished, and at that moment, his jaws were agape, his hazy eyes were staring widely, and saliva drooled down from the corner of his lips.

He seemed as though he was suffering from stroke, or a certain disease was acting up.

Meng Fuyao patted his face and said, “Hey… Hey…”

The old man tried hard to open his eyes. When he saw Meng Fuyao’s face, his eyeballs suddenly froze in the sockets. He stood so rigidly that Meng Fuyao almost thought that he was dead from seeing her. Shocked, she tried to call him continuously. The old man struggled, and he seemed to want to call back and be released from her grip. However, his body was stiff, and he could not move at all, and his struggling was merely light spasms. From Meng Fuyao’s perspective, she thought that he must be suffering from a stroke attack.

“Dead person! Going berserk again!”

Behind her, there was suddenly the sound of a door opening. A woman whose clothes were messy and whose expression was numb walked in with large strides and she shouted openly, “Crazy old man, always not sleeping at midnight and acting like a zombie all the time.” She trotted over and snatched the old eunuch from Meng Fuyao’s hands without even looking at her. Then, she dragged the old eunuch’s withered body away, kicked open the door and threw him out. After that, she kicked the door shut, and the kick was so strong that the entire house shook.

Meng Fuyao found the scene very laughable. Looking behind at Zhangsun Wuji, she said, “This is the first time that I realized that I’m actually transparent.”

However, Zhangsun Wuji did not reply to her, and he stared at the floor in a daze. For some reason, his complexion suddenly looked much paler under the moonlight, and there were even traces of green. The corner of his eyes also seemed to be trembling, as though something had strongly affected him and even… angered him.

Since it was such a rare sight to see him with such an expression, Meng Fuyao was taken aback. She turned to look towards the floor, but Zhangsun Wuji suddenly moved. He seemed to want to use his feet to wipe away the drawing on the ground, but he retracted his leg right after he extended it.

Meng Fuyao squatted down and stared at the drawing.

It was very messy and abstract, and it was at the standard of a child’s scrawling.

There were three drawings.

The first one could vaguely be recognized as a palace. It was a very average hall, not like the complicated ones in Xuanji’s Palace now. There was a woman dressed in simple clothes talking to a man who was dressed like a eunuch.

The second drawing depicted a room, which had a layout similar to all other average-looking rooms. There was a bed, drawer, pots, and curtains. The same eunuch from the previous drawing was squatting down, and he extended his hand behind the curtain. A square corner could vaguely be seen there.

Meng Fuyao stared at that drawing, and her breathing started to quicken.

The third one seemed to be in a different setting, as there were more decorations. A woman who wore all kinds of pearls and jade on her head was lying on the floor, and there was also a thin teenage boy there. Someone hid behind the curtain and gripped the curtain tightly, and it seemed to be the same eunuch. The old eunuch seemed to have drawn a few messy lines close to each other to depict the feeling of suffocation and anxiety in the drawing.

Anxiety!

Out of the blue, Meng Fuyao’s vision turned black, and her heart instantly started beating very strongly. Pressing a hand on her heart, she struggled to look up at Zhangsun Wuji. In the meantime, Zhangsun Wuji kept staring at the second drawing with a pained and sorrowful expression. Although Meng Fuyao didn’t know what he was sorrowful over, seeing his expression made her heart feel very heavy all of a sudden. It was as though a heavy object was pressing down on her organs, and she felt excruciating pain in an instant.

At this moment, both were quietly in pain. Just like how they were standing in the courtyard and not willing to walk away even though they wanted to, they were unable to escape from reality, even though their hearts stated otherwise.

Meng Fuyao took another look at the second drawing in a daze, even though she was innately very resistant towards looking at it again. In her mind, the bright images appeared again… the dark room… the hand that reeked of urine reaching in… fingers that were abnormally long and thin…

Meng Fuyao swayed, but before Zhangsun Wuji could support her, she suddenly stood up and walked over to the door, and she opened it with a strong kick.

In the turbid room which smelled like stench, the middle-aged woman who was scolding and wiping the sweat off the old eunuch looked up in shock. She saw Meng Fuyao walking over to the old eunuch determinedly. Meng Fuyao extended her hand, snatched the old eunuch up from the bed and was ready to walk off.

“Hold it!”

The woman jumped down the bed, grabbed the bamboo broom at the side of the wall, and gave a fierce swing. “Who are you! How dare you kidnap people in the palace!”

Meng Fuyao laughed when she heard that, but that smile was cold. She shook the subconscious old eunuch and smirked. “Yes, I’m kidnapping people here in the palace, and I do as I please. If you’re tactful, you will scram to one side.”

“You’re disregarding the laws! You scram!” The woman waved her broom and dashed forward. Meng Fuyao flicked her fingers and made the woman freeze. Looking up at her, Meng Fuyao said in an emotionless tone, “You’re loyal to accompany through the troubles in the palace. I won’t kill you because of this… Tell me, who is he?”

“Bah!” The woman spat on the floor, and it contained very dense phlegm. “Your Dad!”

“My Dad died long ago.” Meng Fuyao smiled icily. “If you miss my father, I can send you to Hell to meet him. How about that?”

“You bastard!”

Meng Fuyao frowned. People who endured years of suffering in the Palace aged very quickly. The woman had long lost her original personality, and she was not afraid of death at all, so it made the situation more troublesome. Seeing that the old eunuch might not provide much useful information, she would have to rely on the woman instead. As such, after some thought, she grabbed the woman and with one person under each of her arms, she stepped out of the door.

This place was remote, and no one usually passed by. As such, even with such a huge commotion, none of the guards walked over. Meng Fuyao casually brought the two people back into the inner room of her accommodation. After throwing the two people down on the floor, she sat wide-legged and said, “See, I brought you guys out of the Palace. Speak properly, and I’ll promise your freedom in return.”

She said that towards the woman. As for the old eunuch, before his identity and history were known, she would not grant him freedom.

“We’re out of the Palace?” The woman crawled to her feet and looked at the surroundings. Leaning on the window, she glanced out. There were tall trees outside the accommodation, which was a sight that would never be seen in the Palace. Hence, she immediately understood that she was out of the Palace. Then, she started hitting her knees, and she roared with laughter.

“Ha ha ha, I’m out of the Palace, I’m out!”

She leaped over and shook the old eunuch with all her force. “Old Lu, Old Lu, we’re out of the Palace! We’ve finally made it out! We no longer need to be afraid of people coming to kill you! Haha, we’re out!”

When Meng Fuyao heard the last sentence, she raised an eyebrow. “Who wants to kill you?”

“It’s none of your business.” One corner of her thin lips raised in defiance.

“It’s not my business.” Meng Fuyao smiled. “How are you guys any of my business? I think I should just send the both of you back to continue getting killed.”

After staying silent for a while, the woman looked at the old eunuch who kept shivering on the ground. Suddenly, she asked, “What do you want to know?”

“Who is he? As well as his experience and your experience in the Palace.:

“Nothing much can be said,” the woman said in an icy tone. “He is Old Lu, my partner, who entered the Palace much earlier than me. When I committed a mistake and was banished to the dark hall, he was already there. As to why he was allocated there, he didn’t tell me when I asked him. Before being banished, he was just a lowly eunuch serving in Consort Ying’s palace. After Consort Ying died a sudden death, many of her servants were banished to the dark hall, and most of them died within two years except for him. He took care of me during my time there; hence, we decided to be partners.

Consort Ying… Meng Fuyao thought hard about this title, but she could sense any special meaning from it. After thinking for a while, she said, “There’s an abandoned palace behind a bunch of bushes in the southwest corner of the Palace. Do you know which palace is that?”

“There’s a palace there?” The woman shook her head. “There’s a restricted area in the southwest corner. Attendants like us are not allowed to enter, and I have never seen it before.”

Meng Fuyao frowned, and she tried to ask in another manner, “What is the name of Consort Ying’s palace?”

Meng Fuyao remembered the man she had met in Xuanji’s jail, and he had mentioned something that sounded like ‘Yan Ling’. She had checked the names of all the places in Xuanji, but none of them sounded similar to what was said. Now that she thought of it, could it have been the name of a palace?

“I don’t know.” The woman still shook her head. “Consort Ying passed away 14 years ago, and I entered the Palace eight years ago. How would I know her affairs?”