Beauty Wan

Zhang Yuanqing instantly caught the vigilance and hostility in the young girl's eyes. Discerning this required no Illusionist skill, only his extensive experience in reading people. When their gazes locked, Beauty Chu, who looked about fourteen or fifteen, snapped her head down, dropped to her knees with a loud thud, and shouted at the top of her lungs, "Greetings, Your Majesty!" Her voice was youthful and charming, yet her tone carried all the blustering momentum of Zhang Fei bellowing, "Me too!" How was this a hunter's daughter? This was Zhang Fei's daughter! Zhang Yuanqing hurriedly reached out to assist her. "Rise, beloved consort. We arrived in haste without dining, so it works out well that We can join you—" Before he could finish, Beauty Chu leaned back, dodging his hands. Then she quickly scurried back to her seat and declared loudly, "This concubine shall serve Your Majesty's meal!" She shoved several plates of meat in front of Zhang Yuanqing, tore off a drumstick, and moved to stuff it straight into his mouth. "No need, no need..." Zhang Yuanqing tilted his head to dodge. "Let the servants tend to it. Help yourself, Beauty." Beauty Chu nodded and lowered her head to shovel down food, her cheeks bulging like a hamster's. Zhang Yuanqing first shot a glance at two imperial guards, signaling them to take several palace maids outside for questioning. Then, served by the remaining maids, he chewed and swallowed slowly, turning his head from time to time to scrutinize the young girl beside him. Beauty Chu wore a plum-red, center-fastening palace dress. With fair skin, rosy cheeks, and delicate features, she was undeniably a rare beauty in the making despite her youth. She looked fifteen at the very most, and her actual age might have been even younger. Something was definitely wrong with her. First was her appetite: an ordinary person could never possess such an outrageous capacity for food. Second was her etiquette: even as a hunter's daughter, she had been in the palace for several days and ought to have learned some decorum, yet compared to the way she devoured her food, even Zhang Fei would have looked refined. Finally, she seemed fiercely averse to physical contact with the emperor. A favored concubine would never display such an attitude. Zhang Yuanqing pondered for a moment, then asked, "We heard that Beauty Chu comes from a hunter's family. Do you have any wild mountain tales to share?" "Nope!" Beauty Chu rejected the idea flatly, then hastily scrambled to cover: "This concubine was too young to go hunting with father, so I don't know any." Zhang Yuanqing nodded. "If you didn't hunt with your father, why did you ride into Our hunting grounds that day?" Unable to answer on the spot, Beauty Chu simply played dumb and buried her face back in her food. 'Beauty Chu doesn't seem very bright. She probably isn't capable of being a spy...' Zhang Yuanqing continued, "Speaking of which, Beauty Chu, you have been in the palace for several days now. Do you miss your family? We could permit you to leave the palace today." "I'm not going! I don't want to see them at all," Beauty Chu blurted out instinctively. Seeing the emperor freeze in surprise, she hurriedly amended her words. "This concubine wishes to remain by Your Majesty's side and does not want to leave the palace." 'That's not how you acted when you dodged me a second ago!' Zhang Yuanqing had initially thought the girl wasn't smart enough to be a spy, but now his mind shifted again. This girl was bizarre all over; maybe she really was a spy. Zhang Yuanqing probed with a few more questions. To avoid arousing her suspicion, he asked only about trivial matters and common lore related to hunters. As he kept asking, he noticed something was increasingly off. The girl didn't know the first thing about anything; whenever she couldn't answer, she lowered her head and shoveled down food, playing dumb. If you called her a spy, where in the world would you find a spy this stupid? If you called her innocent, she was full of holes—anyone could pick out a mountain of red flags with their eyes closed. 'Is Beauty Chu a Spirit Realm walker?' Zhang Yuanqing's heart stirred with a sudden hunch. The memories Spirit Realm walkers inherited in dungeons were exceedingly brief, which would explain why she knew nothing. Furthermore, Beauty Chu barely knew any court etiquette; her posture, eating manners, and manner of speech were utterly out of place in this era. That brought up a new question: if Beauty Chu was a Spirit Realm walker, who could she be? 'Does my Return of the Dead have any member this dumb?' Zhang Yuanqing mentally ran through all the female members who had entered this dungeon. Xiao Yuan, Guan Ya, and his aunt were immediately ruled out. That left Sun Miaomiao, Little Green Tea, and Queen. Sun Miaomiao seemed a bit ditsy on the surface, but she was actually very sharp, a shrewd keyboard warrior. Little Green Tea went without saying—she had more tricks up her sleeve than most grown women. Queen was also an experienced Spirit Realm walker. 'None of the members in Return of the Dead seem this stupid... Did an internal member from the White Tiger Cohort come along? That doesn't make sense either. With Little Fu's emotional intelligence, he wouldn't bring an outsider into a circle of acquaintances.' Zhang Yuanqing's thoughts raced. Regrettably, he couldn't reveal any information about being a Spirit Realm walker. Although the dungeon hadn't explicitly stated the penalty for blowing one's cover, in a high-difficulty dungeon like this, it was best to stick strictly to the established rules. Otherwise, a minor mistake could snowball and drag the entire team into a wipeout. After all, his assigned role was the debauched ruler, and the dungeon itself was called "Ruler of a Fallen Nation." A slip-up on his part carried entirely different consequences from that of an ordinary character. After finishing a bowl of mutton soup, he had an inkling. He looked at Beauty Chu beside him and smiled. "Beauty, at your age, you ought to study the guqin, chess, calligraphy, painting, and literacy. Tomorrow, We shall have a Grand Scholar instruct you." Beauty Chu's pretty little face froze. She blurted out in pure reflex, "I don't wanna study! I don't wanna study!" A second later, her eyes flickered. Pinching her throat to speak in a delicate tone, she said, "It is not that this concubine dislikes studying. It is just that studying would divide my focus, making me unable to care for Your Majesty properly." Zhang Yuanqing gave an "Oh?" and asked in a casual tone, "Beauty, We seem to have forgotten your fair name." Beauty Chu paused, as if not understanding the elevated phrasing. "What is your name?" Zhang Yuanqing asked in plain, colloquial speech. "This concubine is named Chu Xiao'ao," Beauty Chu replied. Zhang Yuanqing said nothing more and went back to eating. Beside him, Beauty Chu sat with her back stiff as a board, her face filled with tension. Even the food in her mouth lost its flavor. She glanced dartingly at the emperor from time to time, looking thoroughly guilty. Suddenly, Zhang Yuanqing asked, "What is your dad's name?" "Jiang—" Beauty Chu gave a start, answering almost on reflex, before abruptly biting off her words. Her expression warped drastically as she picked up a slice of tender ginger, shoved it into her mouth, and grinned foolishly. "Ginger is so tasty! Your Majesty, my dad is called Chu the Fourth; he's the fourth child in his family." 'How did she end up in this dungeon? Why didn't Fu Qingyang tell me beforehand!' Zhang Yuanqing showed no outward reaction, but inwardly he was ecstatic. He now knew who Beauty Chu was. Jiang Jingwei! If Beauty Chu was Jiang Jingwei, every absurdity made sense, and every bit of stupidity became completely natural. Her age matched, too. 'With Jingwei here, even if I don't track down the spy today, I won't just be meat on a chopping block. Mmh, I still can't blow my cover...' Zhang Yuanqing stood up with a glowing face and announced, "We are finished. Beauty Chu possesses an exquisite grace and an innocent heart; We are greatly pleased. Tonight, you shall attend to Us in bed!" With that, under Beauty Chu's dumbfounded gaze, he ordered his attendants, "Bring Our Beauty Chu another whole roasted lamb." Prodded and nudged by the palace maids around her giving meaningful looks, Beauty Chu hastily fell to her knees and stammered in delight, "Th-thank you, Your Majesty..." Leaving the three-story pavilion, Zhang Yuanqing boarded the deer carriage and continued on his way. En route, he listened to the guards' report: there were no issues in Beauty Chu's residence—or at least, they hadn't uncovered any suspicious clues. The maids and eunuchs hadn't noticed anything abnormal about her either, aside from her lack of wits and ignorance of etiquette. The next target was Beauty Wan. That was the woman who had been howling in the shrubbery in the middle of the night. The deer carriage rolled through the palace compound—which resembled a celestial residence—for half a quarter-hour before halting in front of a somewhat modest building. It stood two stories high, and while it had carved beams and painted rafters, the craftsmanship lacked elegance, and the courtyard grass was sparse and unremarkable. Zhang Yuanqing lifted the curtain, stepped down with the support of an accompanying eunuch, and led his entourage into the small courtyard. Maids and eunuchs were scarce in the courtyard, and the former's looks were quite plain. 'Beauty Wan doesn't seem very favored...' Just as Zhang Yuanqing was thinking this, a eunuch called out loudly, "His Majesty arrives—!" A few seconds later, heavy thuds echoed from inside the building. Moments later, the latticed doors were shoved open with immense force, and a burly woman roughly one meter seventy-five in height came barging out. She had a face like a millstone, eyes like brass bells, thick eyebrows, full lips, and a profoundly masculine physique. Truly, she was a stalwart warrior on whose arms horses could race and on whose fists men could stand. Shocked, Zhang Yuanqing staggered back several steps. The titan came to a stop before him, curtsied with an attempt at dainty grace, and boomed in a muffled, cavernous voice, "Your Majesty~" "Wan—Beauty Wan?!" Zhang Yuanqing's lips trembled. 'Wait, didn't the record say her eyebrows were like newly drawn crescents, her hair like trailing clouds, an astonishing beauty? Who wrote the imperial diary? We're going to have his head!' "Your Majesty, this concubine has yearned day and night, and finally you have come!" Beauty Wan seized Zhang Yuanqing's hand in an iron grip. Zhang Yuanqing tugged, but couldn't break free. He tugged again, still stuck. Terrified, he let out a screech: "Protect the Emperor! Someone protect the Emperor!" Two guards and three eunuchs pounced forward, pinning Beauty Wan to the ground. Under the cover of two palace maids, Zhang Yuanqing fled back to the deer carriage as swift as an escaped hare. As the wheels rumbled and the deer cried softly, Zhang Yuanqing learned the true story during his frantic escape. It turned out there were two Beauty Wans in the imperial harem! One was the woman who had recently sung in the shrubbery, caught Zhao Shun's eye, and received the title of Beauty Wan after being favored. This Beauty Wan, however, dated back two years ago when Zhao Shun was boating on the lake and accidentally fell into the water. In that critical moment, this stout warrior had plunged into the lake, swift as a swimming fish, and hauled the emperor out before any of the guards could react. Zhao Shun didn't have many virtues, but he did know gratitude, and his way of rewarding women was conferring imperial titles. So he had conferred the title of Beauty Wan upon this heroic soul, hoping she could protect the peace of the harem. 'So it was a mix-up! I knew it—Zhao Shun's morals may be rotten, but his taste in women couldn't possibly be that blasphemous...' Zhang Yuanqing mused. Suddenly, the stag pulling the carriage let out a few urgent cries, picked up its pace, and trotted briskly toward a pavilion not far away. Zhang Yuanqing looked closely and saw several fresh, green leafy branches planted outside the pavilion, dripping with water. The stag rushed over eagerly, sticking its head out to chomp ravenously on them. Zhang Yuanqing sniffed the air and caught a faint, salty scent wafting from the foliage. 'Coated in saltwater?' He grew even more curious about this other Beauty Wan. Right at that moment, an ethereal, melodic voice drifted down from the second floor. Following the sound, he saw a figure in light-colored palace dress seated by the balustrade bench, wearing an exquisite hairpin ornament, her back turned to him. *** After the midday meal, Fu Qingyang finished inspecting the city defense equipment and provisions, completed a survey of the terrain around the city walls, and checked the official granary before hurrying back to the marshal's quarters. He found his five teammates sitting in silence inside the room, their expressions grim. Seeing him return, World Returns to Fire said worriedly, "We searched all around earlier. There are no women in the military camp. The female Saints and Dominators of Return of the Dead must all be stationed at the capital." Xiahou Aotian's face was solemn. "There's even worse news: Brother Red Chicken isn't in the army either." Lingjun sighed and summed it up: "All the brainless ones are over there, and all the lightweights are over there too." Fu Qingyang thought for a moment and said, "Actually, Jiang Jingwei came along as well. I didn't expect this to be a role-assignment dungeon." Heavenly King Demonic Eye slammed the table and stood up. "We fall back to defend the capital immediately!" "Don't panic. As long as we hold Linxia, the capital won't be in danger," Zhao Chenghuang said placatingly. Just then, a soldier hurried over, paused at the door, and called out loudly, "Grand Marshal, a secret dispatch!" Fu Qingyang strode forward, took the folded memorial from the soldier, and flipped it open. His gaze narrowed slightly. Looking at his companions, he frowned and said, "The dispatch reports that the Northern Dynasty has sent an assassination squad into the capital. Furthermore, a spy may be lurking within the imperial palace. Their objective is to assassinate the Emperor of the Southern Dynasty." Heavenly King Demonic Eye, who had just sat down, slammed the table and rose again. "We fall back to defend the capital immediately!" Before anyone could respond, another soldier rushed over. "Grand Marshal, the troops in the camp are suddenly suffering from diarrhea and vomiting! It appears to be poisoning!" Before Fu Qingyang could answer, the thundering rumble of war drums came from the city walls, accompanied by faint, distant shouts: "Venomous insects! It's full of venomous insects—!"