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Xie Lian was terrified to the marrow. He gripped Feng Xin hard, only squeezing out a few words with great difficulty. “My…! My…! My face! Don’t you see it? The thing on my face!”
Feng Xin stared at him and sighed. Xie Lian was still confused why he hadn’t reacted when Feng Xin said, “Your Highness, have you finally noticed the cuts on your face?”
It was like Xie Lian had been plunged into an icy cellar.
Why? How could this be? Why would Feng Xin say that?
Did this mean that Feng Xin couldn’t see the mask on his face in the mirror?!
“You don’t see it? There’s something on my face!” Xie Lian blurted.
Feng Xin was puzzled. “What thing? What do you mean? I don’t see anything.”
Xie Lian looked at the mirror again. “That’s impossible! I…”
But when he looked again, the mask on his reflection’s face had disappeared. Only his own panicked expression looked back at him.
There were bruises and crisscrossing cuts all over his face. He looked beside himself with fear and wretched to the extreme, like a laborer who had been beaten to a pulp by their landlord. Xie Lian was stu
Just then, he heard Feng Xin speak. “Your Highness, are you…a bit overtired, perhaps? Or are you just exhausted from being angry at that stinkin’ bastard? Listen to me, don’t go out for the next few days. Just take it easy.”
Xie Lian finally snapped out of it and saw that Feng Xin was about to leave, his bow slung on his back and a stool dangling from his hand.
“No!” Xie Lian exclaimed hastily. “I…”
Feng Xin pushed the door open and looked back. “Is there something else?”
Although the words almost made it to his lips, Xie Lian forcefully swallowed them, because a strange thought had appeared in his mind. Their life was already very difficult. If he told Feng Xin that White No-Face could be coming back to harass them, what would he do?
Feng Xin had also been traumatized by White No-Face. Would he distance himself from Xie Lian and leave like Mu Qing?
While Xie Lian’s imagination ran wild, Feng Xin left. Xie Lian snapped back to reality at the sound of the door closing, but he could only shrink back to bed and wrap himself in blankets to take another nap.
Suddenly, he smelled something foul.
Xie Lian crawled upright. At first, he thought it was the queen cooking again, or that some rat had died in a corner, and he got up to check. He looked everywhere, but eventually he discovered that the source of the foul smell was actually himself.
Only then did Xie Lian remember that it had been over two weeks since he’d last washed up or changed clothes. Of course he smelled.
Xie Lian held his breath. A wave of self-hatred crashed through him. Just thinking about how his parents and Feng Xin surely must’ve noticed but hadn’t bothered to tell him made him feel another wave of mortification. He sneakily opened the door and looked around; seeing there was no one outside, he found himself a set of fresh clothing and got to work heating some water for a bath.
After much struggle, he finally lowered himself into the bathtub. He sank beneath the water’s surface and held his breath until he was drowning, only resurfacing when he felt like he was going to pass out. Then he scrubbed his face roughly a few times.
After he finished scrubbing himself down, Xie Lian reached out to grab for his clothes. He shook out the robes absentmindedly and was about to get out of the water and put them on when he suddenly noticed something wrong.
These weren’t his clothes. This was White No-Face’s ghastly white funeral garb, expansive sleeves and all!
In an instant, Xie Lian felt the hot water he was soaking in turn into an icy pond. His hair stood on end, and he cried out in dismay, “Who?! Who did this?!”
Who had swapped out his clothes in secret while he wasn’t paying attention?!
He jumped out, still wet and dripping, and knocked the bathtub over with a loud splash. The entire cottage was flooded in an instant with bathwater, startling the king and queen in the next room. The queen supported the king as they walked out to see—only to find Xie Lian sprawled naked on the flooded floor. In her shock, the queen came rushing forward to hug him.
“My son, what happened to you?!”
Xie Lian was wet and dripping, his hair strewn around him. He looked up and hugged her back. “Mom, a ghost, there’s a ghost, there’s a ghost clinging to me! He follows me everywhere!”
He looked no different from someone who had lost his mind, and the queen couldn’t take it anymore. She wept in anguish and held her son. The king also watched Xie Lian in shock. Although he was a man of only forty-some years of age, he now looked like he was over sixty. The frigid air of winter jolted Xie Lian, and he pointed.
“The clothes. Look at the clothes…!”
But when he looked at the clothes again, he didn’t see the funeral garb at all. Those were just…his normal white cultivation robes?
Rage seized Xie Lian, and he slammed a fist against the wooden tub. “Just what do you want?!” he roared. “Are you toying with me?!”
The queen forced back her tears and hugged him again. “My son, don’t be angry, just put on some clothes first, put them on, don’t catch a cold…”
That day, Feng Xin came back very late. Exhaustion was written on his face, much more than usual.
Xie Lian had been waiting for him for a long time, and he said impatiently, “Feng Xin, I have something very important to tell you.”
White No-Face was too strange and too powerful a creature; even if Xie Lian told Feng Xin about him, any warnings made ahead of time would probably be pointless. Nevertheless, after much thinking, Xie Lian still believed he shouldn’t keep something like this a secret from Feng Xin. He decided to tell him the truth.
Unexpectedly, Feng Xin didn’t ask him what it was and only said, “Oh good. I’ve got something I wanted to say to you too.”
Xie Lian assumed the matter with White No-Face would be most critical, and important things were best talked of last, so he sat down at the table and asked, “You go first. What is it?”
Feng Xin hesitated for a moment but said, “Your Highness, you go first.”
Xie Lian didn’t care to decline politely anymore. “Feng Xin, you must be extremely careful. White No-Face has returned,” he said in a hushed voice.
Feng Xin’s expression abruptly changed. “White No-Face is back…? Why would you say that? You saw him?”
“Yes!” Xie Lian exclaimed. “I saw him!”
Feng Xin paled. “That’s… That’s not right. Why would he let you see him? Why are you still here in one piece?!”
Xie Lian buried his face in his hands. “…I don’t know! Not only did he not kill me, he even…”
He had even hugged him and patted his head like a loving elder. He beckoned him to his side.
After listening to Xie Lian describe the strange encounters from the past few days, Feng Xin’s shock gradually faded away and was replaced by confusion. “What exactly does he want?”
“It can’t be anything good. He also seems to be following me everywhere,” Xie Lian said. “In any case…you just have to be careful! Help me remind Father and Mother to be careful too, but don’t frighten them.”
“All right,” Feng Xin said. “I won’t leave for the next few days. The stuff that bastard gave us…should last for a while.”
It was quite embarrassing to admit. When Mu Qing went away, he left behind everything he’d brought them. Although Xie Lian had lost control of himself, flung the provisions in Mu Qing’s face, and declared that he didn’t need his stuff nor his help, they’d still picked up everything in defeat once they calmed down.
Xie Lian sighed and nodded. Then he said, “Oh yes, what was it that you wanted to say to me?”
Now that the subject was raised, Feng Xin hesitated again. After a pause, he opened his mouth, hemming and hawing and scratching at his head as he stammered out, “Actually, it’s… Your Highness, do you still have any money on you? Or something that can be pawned?”