Wei Qingming ran, searched, and called out for countless laps around the manor. During her frantic sprint, the cricket cage fell, and the "Widow Green" chirped as it vanished into the undergrowth. Finally, her strength failed her. She sat silently before her sister’s corpse. After her tears ran dry, a strange calm took hold; she intended to rest for a moment before heading out to find an adult for help.
Suddenly, the grass nearby rustled. Wei Qingming leaped up, gripping her sword. Though gripped by extreme terror, she forced herself to remain steady, using her left hand to brace her right, which trembled so violently she could barely hold the blade. A figure crawled out from the brush—a boy not yet ten years old, who stared at Wei Qingming in a daze.
"Hong Lu?" she murmured, lowering her sword.
Hong Lu wore a bamboo hat and coarse hemp clothes, with gardening shears hanging from his waist. He was likely the son of the family gardener. Seeing the carnage in the courtyard, he panicked. "Seventh Miss... what... what happened..."
Wei Qingming clenched her fists, as if picking up a heavy responsibility. With sudden resolve, she said, "Go to the main residence and ask Eldest Uncle for help. I will go report this to the authorities."
As she spoke, she transformed into the likeness of Wei Qingshan before Hong Lu’s astonished eyes.
She was already consciously considering every detail. She had begun to distrust her clan, her uncles, and perhaps everyone else. Although reporting to the officials would be useless against a true conspiracy, she was only seven years old; she was already thinking far beyond her years.
The then-Governor of Pingjing and the Wei Clan Patriarch—her eldest uncle—arrived at the Wei Mansion one after the other. While the officers inspected the scene, her eldest aunt held Wei Qingming (still disguised as her brother) and wailed. Yet Wei Qingming did not shed a single tear, her cold eyes recording every detail of the evidence being gathered.
The mourning began. Because her parents were only missing and their deaths could not be confirmed, a proper funeral could not be held. Her deceased sister, labeled with an inauspicious reputation, was given an exorcism rite instead of a burial and was reduced to ash.
After being interrogated by the officials, Hong Lu was cleared of involvement. He became the only person Wei Qingming still somewhat trusted, and she took him with her when she moved temporarily into the Wei main residence.
The Wei uncles took advantage of her youth to embezzle the family properties. Hong Lu was so enraged he punched the walls, but she yielded everything with clinical detachment. She simply watched every filthy, greedy face with a gaze like a blade, carving their likenesses into her heart.
Half a month later, during Chancellor Wen’s birthday feast, Wei Qingming entered the manor in plain mourning clothes. The sight broke Old Madame Wen’s heart, moving her to tears. Realizing the kind of life the child was leading in the Wei main residence, the Old Madame took charge and brought her into the Wen household, effectively severing ties with the Wei clan from then on.
In Wen Xiang’s memory, Wei Qingming was forever that cold, detached figure who wore her brother’s identity. Facing a whirlwind of rumors, she ate, slept, practiced martial arts, and studied her books every day, as immovable as a mountain. The other children of the Wen family had no idea how to approach her.
Over a year later, once life had stabilized, Wei Qingming finally had the strength to seek the truth. Her first act was to take her sword and find the old man who had provided the illusionary sigils, demanding answers with cold fury. The old man snatched her sword away, letting her kick and punch him as he said with a grin, "Your fists aren't hard enough; talk is cheap. Girl, if you have the guts and the ambition, I’ll send you to a place where you can investigate your parents’ messy case."
In a luxurious villa on the outskirts of the capital, Feng Zhen sat in the center of the hall, smiling as he carefully observed the kneeling Wei Qingming. "Child, think carefully. If you do this, it will be hard to ever go back to being an ordinary person—to being a woman."
"As long as Eunuch Feng does not reject me..." Wei Qingming said, "...for being a woman."
Feng Zhen laughed. "What of being a woman? In the eyes of the world, how am I, Feng Zhen, any different from a woman? If you have the skill to take even a shred of power from my hands, you can carry out your duties just as well."
Wei Qingming looked up in shock, her eyes shimmering. After a moment of silence, she prostrated herself deeply. "This life of Wei Qi is now sold to Mister Feng."
"Qingming—the limit of the heavens. Let that be your courtesy name from now on."
Another year passed. A letter arrived from Feng Zhen. Wei Qingming bid farewell to her friends and relatives in the Wen family, restored her original features, donned male attire, and took on the identity of Wei Qi. Carrying the illusionary sigils drawn by the mysterious old man, she and Hong Lu set off with a horse each, joining a northbound merchant caravan to enter the Wujing Sect.
Feng Zhen had only provided a very ordinary opportunity for entry. She was no longer a high-born scion with a powerful backer or vast wealth to grease the wheels. Because she had started her path so late, she endured the disdain, ridicule, and cold treatment of the other outer disciples. She bore it all. Mister Feng was testing her; if she could not pass this, she would be fit only for the lowest ranks, even if she entered the Yingzhao Temple.
Several arrogant disciples studying alongside her mocked her for being a silent "dough-man." During martial bouts, they used their years of body and meridian tempering to throw her down until she was black and blue. Though the sword instructor was a man of integrity, he was a harsh master, training his disciples like wolves. The standards were set for ten-year-old boys who had tempered their bodies for years; as a girl, Wei Qingming had to pour out double the blood and sweat just to keep up.
She had once taught me to practice the sword on Zhuoxue Peak with effortless grace, but I now saw that she had stayed on that peak for three years. Facing the silent white snow every day, seeing another human soul only once every ten days or so—she had tasted the full bitterness of loneliness.
Blade by blade, she carved her way forward until the "Little Tianshan" took the top prize, breaking the limbs of the seniors who had once bullied her. The second "ticket" Feng Zhen sent was personal instruction from a mysterious Ancestor, and the second test was a bottle of Soft-Bone Body-Forging Pills.
This was a spiritual medicine bordering on sorcery and poison. Taking three pills could soften the joints to master bone-shrinking techniques. If a child who had not yet hit their growth spurt took them several times a month for three consecutive years, they could arbitrarily alter their growth patterns. In other words, to make her disguise flawless, Feng Zhen eschewed illusion and chose this most arduous method to ensure her adult physique would closely resemble a man's.
One could only imagine the bone-piercing, heart-gouging pain of consuming such pills. No wonder she never flinched when she was injured; no injury could compare to that pain. Every night of the full moon, she soaked in a tub filled with a special medicinal broth, enduring the agony of dissolving bones while forcing herself to stay conscious. The longer she remained awake, the better the medicine worked.
At fourteen, her training complete, she descended the mountain. While performing missions for the Temple, she still had to endure this monthly torment. Every year, she spent only six months studying under the various chiefs of the Wujing Sect; she had no time for sleep. Finally, at sixteen, she achieved a great merit, and her physique stabilized. Feng Zhen’s test ended there, and with a generous wave of his hand, he granted her the status of Emissary.
Over those years, she had secretly returned to the capital several times, using her means to dig out the properties her uncles had embezzled—and then some. Many were imprisoned without ever knowing who they had offended.
This was the entirety of who she was before she met me.
I was already weeping, my teeth clenched in sorrow. Even Master couldn't bear it; she coughed and remarked, "She’s got grit. But the bitterness is over and the sweetness has come! She’s about to meet our A-Zhi, isn't she?"
I covered my eyes. When Master finished watching our past in Pingjing, I was flushed red with shame. Master kept clicking her tongue in admiration, savoring the memories before saying impatiently, "Now let’s see what this girl did after her marriage proposal failed! A-Zhi, do you dare to look? Are you afraid she went looking for someone else to have fun with?"
I didn't bother answering. Whether I protested or not, she was going to watch anyway...
What Wen Xiang didn't know was that six years ago, after I left that summer, Wei Qingming didn't go to the Wujing Sect. Instead, she headed northeast with twenty or thirty men, systematically toppling every bandit nest along the way. She fought all the way to Hanzhou, slaughtering the entire stronghold of the region's greatest chieftain and severely wounding the second-in-command. Suo Tu, who was third-in-command at the time, had cut off his own ear while kneeling before her to surrender to the imperial court.
Perhaps the humiliation was too deep, which was why Suo Tu gathered a new group of thugs a year later to rebuild his fortune by robbing foreign merchants—which led him to cross paths with Nie Xueqing. Wei Qingming had long since received news of Suo Tu’s movements. That winter, she quietly returned to Hanzhou. Before she even had to act, Suo Tu and Nie Xueqing clashed. The mysterious injury on Suo Tu’s horse’s hoof and the failure of his Snow-Luring Array were both the result of Wei Qingming’s secret assistance.
In these six years, not a month went by without her receiving news of me; she had no need to ask the Wen family. For instance, during the month I spent in the Nie family’s accounting room learning mathematics, the report said: "Failed at arithmetic, beaten twenty times a day." After reading it, she would shake her head with a mix of amusement and heartache, carefully flattening the small paper scroll and tucking it into a secret compartment in her desk. Dozens of such slips had already piled up inside.
During my first month back in the capital running "Ru Meng Lai," Wei Qingming was ambushed while investigating a case alone in the southwest of the city. She nearly lost her life. Having served in the Yingzhao Temple for years, she had destroyed countless families, large and small; she had long since accumulated endless grudges in the martial world. Assassination attempts were a common occurrence, happening once or twice a month. Unexpectedly, this time the enemy had paid a fortune to hire "Diao Shi Gou," the third-ranked killer in the Cloud-Swallowing Realm from the professional assassin organization "Xian Shang."
The assassins in "Xian Shang" were all named after terms related to wine. This Diao Shi Gou was fierce and cruel, preferring to torture his prey to death slowly; the martial world called him the "Corpse-Fishing Hook." In truth, both were in the late stages of the Cloud-Swallowing Realm with similar cultivation, and Wei Qingming had her brilliant array techniques to rely on. She shouldn't have lost, but Diao Shi Gou’s benefactor was likely immensely wealthy, providing the killer with a set of ancient defensive gear and weapons that were nearly at the Star-Plucking Realm. Her blades and arrays were rendered useless.
The opponent struck first, dealing Wei Qingming a heavy blow. After a dozen hurried exchanges, she barely managed to escape. She fled from the southwest of the city all the way to the East Market in the northeast, ducking into the alleyway opposite Ru Meng Lai.
At that time, the Yinshi Rain was pouring. The corrosive poison seeped into her wounds. During the latter half of her flight, she couldn't even manifest her light-travel technique, relying entirely on her familiarity with the streets to evade pursuit. Having struggled across half the capital, she likely felt her life was ending that night and wanted to see me one last time.
Thunder rumbled. A weak bolt of lightning occasionally streaked across the sky, its light swallowed by the Yinshi Rain. Yet it was enough to illuminate her injuries: her left eye was nearly ruined, blood masking half of her pale face. Her vital areas—left flank, right abdomen, both legs—were riddled with holes the size of a bowl. Her torso and limbs were covered in countless other wounds. Blood gurgled out, pooling into a lake at her feet, yet she didn't even have the strength to raise a hand to cover the gashes.
She seemed to have lost all sense of pain and even her sanity, standing there blankly staring at the closed shop door. It wasn't until I rushed out of the shop to frantically gather the herbs drying outside that her remaining eye blinked slightly. Her parched lips parted—perhaps she wanted to speak but couldn't because her left lung was punctured, or perhaps... she simply didn't want to make a sound and let me see her in such an undignified state.
After watching for a few breaths, her right hand trembled violently, and she accidentally dropped her life-saving weapon. She lacked the strength to bend down and retrieve it. The light of the Zhisui Blade flickered out as it fell into the thick lake of rain and blood, making a faint sound that startled me.
Only then did I ignore the toxic rain and rush over. In a panic, she braced herself against the wall and hid. She bit down on her sleeve and used a moment of Tortoise Breathing to prevent her punctured lung from making a hissing sound as she breathed, lest I hear her. As she listened to my heart-wrenching calls, her face contorted in agony, but she forced herself to stay hidden. It wasn't that she didn't want to see me, but that she couldn't—she feared leading the assassins to her A-Zhi.
Finally, when my search yielded nothing, I was helped away by my seventh brother. She leaned against the wall with her eyes closed for a while. Suddenly, she opened them, as if she had made a firm decision. The despair and death-wish from a moment ago vanished. She swallowed a handful of pills, struggled to pick up the Zhisui Blade, and fiercely sprinted toward the outskirts beyond the East Gate.
***
