Isn’t a Delicate, Supple Beauty a Dream Come True? - Chapter 1

As night fell, the Lu residence in the Upper Capital.

Inside the spacious and extravagant main hall, candlelight flickered as brightly as day. Five or six delicate-looking maidservants were busy making final preparations for the evening banquet.

The old housekeeper, Lin Xi, dressed in a soap-colored cotton shirt, hurried inside holding a tray. He said respectfully, “My Lords, the wine is warmed. It is twenty-year-old Jade Flower Nectar. Please enjoy it slowly.”

The maidservants attending each table stepped forward to take the wine pots. Upon returning, they tenderly and attentively filled the cups. This night banquet had officially begun.

Lu Meng raised his cup and said, “Gentlemen, no need to be formal. Today, there is enough fine wine and beautiful women for everyone. Let us not return until we are drunk!”

The maidservant by his side was the youngest, looking to be eleven or twelve years old at most, visibly green and youthful. As soon as her master set down his cup, she immediately leaned forward to refill it. Perhaps due to nervousness, she accidentally let the wine overflow.

Lu Meng’s eyes widened. He reached out with his large hand and pinched her cheek hard; it immediately turned red-purple and swelled up across half her face.

The guests seated were the Chief of the Carriage Depot, who was of equal rank to Lu Meng, and the three supervisors of the Dragon Horse, Great Stable, and Chenghua departments. Aside from the Chenghua Supervisor, who was a newcomer, the other three were long-time acquaintances.

The group drained their cups, acting as if they hadn’t seen the scene at all, and began to chatter about various rumors within the imperial court.

The Chenghua Supervisor couldn’t quite join the conversation yet, so he could only bury his head in the feast.

As he ate and drank, he couldn’t help but think back to when they had first entered the gate. The housekeeper, Lin Xi, had been slightly late in preparing the banquet, and for that, this superior of his had given the man several lashes of a whip without a word.

In truth, it wasn’t a problem with the banquet. It was simply that Lu Meng’s long-awaited promotion had been cut short by the powerful Jiang Clan, and he was merely venting his frustration.

The position of a household housekeeper is usually held by someone close and loyal for many years. To be publicly humiliated and beaten over a minor oversight… this Lu Meng was truly too tyrannical.

“Sigh, serving under such a violent Weiyang Order from now on, life is bound to be difficult,” he thought.

The banquet featured excellent dishes and truly fine wine, but after eating for only a short while, he suddenly felt his body grow cold and numb. His hands and feet gradually stopped obeying him. With a loss of strength, he slumped against the hall pillar behind him.

Struggling to turn his gaze, he saw that the others were in a similar state—all wearing expressions of terror, limp and powerless.

Lu Meng, seated at the head, was a martial artist by trade. He managed to slam the table and roar, “Lin Xi, is there… is there poison in the food?” But that was the only sound he could make before he quickly collapsed beside the table.

The old housekeeper, who had been standing respectfully at the entrance, now slowly raised his head. His aged face bore an extremely calm expression—an eerie stillness that was completely incongruous with the current situation.

“It is not poison, merely Soft Tendon Powder. It will wear off on its own in half an hour.”

He pulled a dagger from his sleeve and walked slowly into the hall. “I have no intention of making enemies of the lords at this table, but please rest for a moment and watch me settle a score with Lu Meng. Let me say this clearly: if you find the show boring and feel the need to interfere or shout, do not blame the short blade in my hand for being blind.”

The event happened so suddenly that from the moment they noticed something was wrong to the point the drug took effect, only a few breaths had passed. The maidservants at the tables only now snapped back to reality, filled with shock and fear. Before they could scream, Lin Xi moved like a blur, and they all collapsed unconscious to the ground. This left only the officials of the Court of the Imperial Stud, who didn’t dare utter a sound, watching with wide eyes as the man reached Lu Meng at the head of the table.

Lin Xi reached out with one hand, grabbed Lu Meng by the chin, and hoisted him halfway up. A cold, glinting dagger traced empty patterns in the air as if he were contemplating where to place the first cut.

“Is this old fellow possessed? Has he eaten a tiger’s heart and leopard’s gall to dare use a knife on me?” Lu Meng’s features were distorted by the pressure. He gritted his teeth with great effort: “You… dare!”

“Arghhhhhhh!!” A scream like a slaughtered pig erupted.

A slash immediately appeared on that twisted face, splitting from the forehead down to the jawline. Sticky blood mixed with tears and snot, making him unbearable to look at.

The bone-deep pain struck, and the inability to move filled Lu Meng with the panic of being a lamb led to slaughter. He didn’t care that the blood flowing from his forehead was about to seep into his eyes; he only stared hatefully at the person in front of him.

Lin Xi’s mouth curled slightly with obvious mockery. His eyes sparkled with a brilliant light. The way he looked at Lu Meng was not like looking at a human, but at a pile of rotten meat on a chopping block.

“No, those eyes… how can they be the cloudy eyes of an old man?”

“It is clearly someone else!!”

Lu Meng tried his best to scream loudly, but due to the drug, the sound he made was so low and hoarse he could barely hear it himself: “You… are not Lin… Xi. Who… are you?”

The smile on Lin Xi’s face grew even wider. He sat down composedly, leaning in close and whispering with a low laugh:

“…Guess?”

As those words landed, Lu Meng’s mind raced to guess the person’s identity. But looking back, he had offended so many people to death along his path that he couldn’t even narrow it down. Suddenly, his throat was struck violently by the hilt of the knife.

The second cut followed immediately. But this time, his mute acupoint was sealed, and he couldn’t even manage a weak whimper.

The third cut… the fourth cut…

The sound of the short blade whistling through the air and the sound of tearing flesh were slow and rhythmic, showing just how cold and cruel the executioner was.

No one knew how many cuts were made. For nearly half an hour, the officials of the Court of the Imperial Stud at the banquet didn’t dare look, nor could they bear to. They didn’t dare make the slightest sound; they could only listen.

The harrowing sounds finally stopped.

The old housekeeper’s voice rang out: “Fine, I’m done playing. Lu Meng treated me like a dog or a pig; killing him is only natural. I will take responsibility for what I have done; you need not be afraid. The effects of the drug for you lords are about to fade. This meeting today is a final farewell. I shall take my leave first. Farewell, and I won’t see you off.”

The sound of footsteps echoed, rustling as they moved from near to far, until there was no sound at all.

The Chenghua Supervisor’s clothes were drenched—soaked through by the cold sweat of terror on an autumn night. He tremblingly opened his eyes. Aside from the pile of bloody meat at the head of the table that could no longer be called a person, where was the housekeeper’s silhouette in the hall?

The South Quarter Flower Street, Ruyi Pavilion.

The night was very deep. Most of the guests seeking flowers had already entered the private chambers. In the main hall, thick with the scent of rouge and incense, only one or two tables of guests remained drinking and carousing.

Chu Wan was about to step forward to greet them when her maidservant, Xiao Nuan, hurried over and whispered in her ear, “Wan Niang, the light is on in the small room of the West Courtyard.”

Her shoulders suddenly relaxed, and much of her worry from the past few days vanished. She ordered the waiter to continue attending to the guests, turned around, and left.

She left the red building alone, went around the garden, and passed through a quiet, narrow alley. At the door of the small room in the West Courtyard, she knocked twice—”du du.” A clear male voice rang out: “Enter.”

She pushed and closed the door in one smooth motion. Chu Wan walked quickly to the person and looked them over carefully. Her heart finally settled. “You took quite some time this time. There was no news at all midway. It’s been nearly half a month since you returned. This face… whose is it this time?”

Chu Gui slowly peeled the mask from his face while explaining, “The housekeeper Lin Xi. Lu Meng’s residence has many guards; it wasn’t easy to do it without a sound. Fortunately, I used this shell. It’s finally over.”

“Lu Meng?! He…”

The pale old face with slanted eyebrows had vanished. A pair of narrow phoenix eyes turned toward her with a flowing smile. Even the tear mole at the corner of his eye seemed filled with joy. “There was plenty of time. One hundred and twenty-two cuts. He suffered every single one before losing consciousness. This was the most satisfying kill.”

Chu Wan’s heart was filled with a mix of emotions—both the satisfaction of revenge and the relief of completion. But looking at the flush of excitement on this face that was so beautiful it was hard to tell if it was male or female, she felt that Chu Gui’s madness had likely worsened.

Is a method of slaughter so cruel worth being this happy about?

Knowing he would not involve the innocent, she still asked the question, “Since you used the shell, what about the real Lin Xi?”

“Committed suicide out of guilt. He’s hanging in his own room.”

Chu Gui was unfastening his clothes. He turned and saw his cousin’s worried face and comforted her, “Don’t be soft-hearted. That Lin Xi was a dog that took after his master. He loved to sexually abuse and torture young girls; he deserved to die! When I snuck into the Lu residence, he had just finished burying a girl. Her age… was just about the same as Dou Dou’s.”

As he spoke these words, his voice was as cold as ice.

Dou Dou was the milk-name of Chu Gui’s younger sister. Eleven years ago, on the day his entire clan was slaughtered, she was only six years old.

Chu Wan said no more. She watched silently as the person before her removed his upper garment, revealing a body with tight, firm lines.

Under the candlelight, her cousin’s skin, white as mutton-fat jade, was more delicate and alluring than that of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. Only two or three fresh whip marks on his chest were a glaring, painful red.

She immediately took fine wound medicine from the cabinet, intending to apply it. But Chu Gui seemed completely unaware, staring blankly at the dense scars on his left arm.

These marks were clearly intentional. Some were horizontal, some vertical, with varying depths of color, yet the shapes and intervals were extremely regular. Against the skin that was so white it seemed to glow, they looked cruel yet possessed a ghostly seduction, making one want to reach out and touch them to soothe the layers of pain.

Even though Chu Wan had seen them many times, a single glance at that upper arm covered in knife scars still left her speechless with shock.

Chu Gui’s slender fingertips moved slightly, and a silver-white soft thorn popped out. He drew a vertical line right in the middle of one of the old marks, turning a “一” into a “十.”

Fearful it wasn’t deep enough to leave a proper mark, he acted as if he felt no pain at all, carving that stroke over and over until it reached the bone. Blood immediately poured out, winding down his forearm and dripping quietly from his left palm.

Chu Wan could bear it no longer. She frowned and whispered sharply, “Enough, it’s deep enough. Don’t you know pain?”

Chu Gui raised his head, his eyes clear. He tilted his head slightly and asked in confusion, “No. This is my fate. I’ve finally settled another debt; I’m too happy to feel pain.”

Yes, it was his fate.

Every horizontal mark was the life of a loved one. Every vertical mark was the life of a mortal enemy of his clan.

One horizontal, one vertical—karma and retribution.

Since that bloody night, he had carved them all onto his arm, burying the hatred in his bones.

Today, upon those old marks, a new vertical soul had finally been welcomed.

Chu Wan stopped the bleeding for her cousin and carefully applied medicine to the whip marks on his chest. Looking back at the knife marks that were beginning to close, she saw they corresponded to a solitary line at the very bottom of his arm. She couldn’t help but ask curiously, “Who is this one for?”