The Deposed Crown Prince had Three Lifelong Regrets - Chapter 19

Chapter 19

As early as three months ago, Lu Fengmian’s master, Cang Shanzi, had sought out Li Qinghuai.

From their two-day discussion, she learned that Zhizhi was destined to face a calamity within the next six months, and Li was the “noble benefactor” in her life. If she lent a helping hand, the danger would naturally dissipate.

Initially, Li Qinghuai didn’t take it to heart—until the date Cang Shanzi predicted drew near. Only then did she begin to experience symptoms of heart palpitations.

Visions of the girl began to haunt her midnight dreams.

Li Qinghuai had never liked remembering these dreams. Since her childhood in the Imperial Palace, her Father Emperor loved to say she was blessed by Heaven’s grace. Every time a major choice loomed, the heavens would point her toward the correct path. However, those divinely bestowed dreams were a chaotic mix of truth and falsehood, often disturbing enough to make one contemplate self-destruction.

In the end, after constantly sending scouts to verify facts and deducing the reality behind the illusions, Li Qinghuai had arrived here.

In this scenic yet godforsaken place of trouble.

“Su Wushuang, you have an elder sister, don’t you?” Li Qinghuai said, forcing a connection between the secret reports from her hidden guards and her dreams. “You’re doing this for her. You want her to come back to life, so you need a vessel with extraordinary skeletal structure…”

Li Qinghuai was gambling. She could never actively control the arrival or departure of her dreams, and the information she received was always fragmented. Beyond distinguishing truth from lies, she had to piece together various details like a jigsaw puzzle.

However, she was interrupted before she could finish.

At the mention of her sister, the other woman’s composure shattered. Her cultivation technique was unorthodox to begin with; in a place heavy with malevolent energy, she was the prime candidate for possession and control.

“Ah? What are you talking about? I remember I swapped that signal flare… what did you do? Heh, I don’t want to touch you, really.”

The female escort, Su Wushuang, spoke the words, but the innocence in her eyes had vanished, replaced by an overt, savage cruelty.

The emergency signal flare was common knowledge in the martial arts world—even someone of low status would recognize it. However, such an item was mostly useless in remote mountains. Furthermore, because it could pierce the clouds at a height of a hundred meters, it was expensive and rarely carried into the deep wilderness.

Li Qinghuai didn’t want to offer hypocritical comforts like “I’ll help you” or “it will all pass.”

If her guess was right, the sister was already dead.

She had become the monster from the dream.

Su Wushuang drew the curved blade from her waist and sprinted toward Li Qinghuai.

Li Qinghuai was not one to suffer a disadvantage quietly. She immediately took off, running in a small arc back toward the house where she had been staying.

The rest of the group had traveled all the way from the capital, but Su Wushuang had been recruited in Jizhou specifically to act as a guide through the Taoliang Mountains.

A crowd had gathered at the door, still confused by the situation. Li Qinghuai shoved through them and charged inside. Reaching the window frame, she braced her arms and vaulted out.

“Lu Fengmian, help! Murder!”

Li Qinghuai’s fever hadn’t broken; her cheeks were flushed crimson. This frantic sprint had completely unraveled her already loose hair, making her look even more disheveled and wretched.

The spring night was deep, the dew heavy, and the mist thick. Red lanterns hung shrouded in the fog. Looking out, the white mist glowed with a ghostly red hue, exceptionally eerie.

She ran all the way, screaming like a frantic frog until she found Lu Fengmian. The latter stood tall in the cold wind, as desolate and firm as a pine tree.

The ground was littered with the remains of spiders, while more small spiders continued to swarm from the surroundings. Most striking of all was a spider the size of a human head hanging from the distant eaves.

A red lantern hung just below the eaves; the spider was half-bathed in the light and half-hidden in the shadows. Its cephalothorax was humped, and the visible half appeared translucent and crystalline. The yellow-green markings on its back naturally formed the shape of a human face. The features were distinct—eyes, nose, and mouth, all accounted for.

Li Qinghuai took one look and immediately grabbed Lu Fengmian’s waist, burying her face in the other woman’s stomach in an attempt at self-deception.

The small spiders that had been closing in suddenly began to crisscross in place. They appeared to be moving constantly, yet they barely advanced a few steps.

Lu Fengmian’s various perceptions of this woman collapsed and rebuilt themselves repeatedly. For now, she had to accept that this person simply possessed such an unseemly, undignified temperament.

“No, no, no… I can’t keep you all to myself. You have to slay the demons.”

Li Qinghuai let go, trying her best to produce a misty-eyed effect. But she had overestimated her acting skills; she only managed a look of “all thunder and no rain” panic.

“You go, I’m not afraid.”

After saying this, she actually seemed to stop being afraid. Her panic faded into a calm tinged with impatience.

That last sentence had genuinely disgusted even herself. In a split second, she lost all desire to perform; such behavior was truly beneath her status as a member of the imperial family.

Though Li Qinghuai was experienced in “playing hide-and-seek around a pillar,” she had still sustained some injuries. Several cuts on her arms were bleeding steadily. Now, even Lu Fengmian’s clothes were stained with her blood.

“Back off a bit, Lu Fengmian. Look—you’ve been fighting for so long, yet there’s not a peep from the houses on the street,” Li Qinghuai shouted with the last of her patience. “They probably think we can’t win. Though, it’s easier for us if they don’t come out.”

Lu Fengmian had to deal with the giant spider, watch for the small ones jumping up to bite, and keep one ear open to listen to her.

According to the intelligence gathered by the secret guards, the townspeople had migrated here from western Hunan.

Su Wushuang had a sister who married into a family in the prefecture. Because of her low status, she was disliked by her husband’s family. When she was pregnant with her second child, she craved sour dates and apricots all day; the doctor said it might be a boy. Overjoyed, she took her maid and headed home to visit her parents. In just those few days, she vanished without a trace.

The husband’s family sent people to search, but the answer was always the same: she had been taken by the Cave God.

Women chosen by a Cave Demon were usually called “Cave-Falling Maidens.” If they weren’t careful, the Cave God would hook their souls away. Those lacking souls would become delirious and die shortly after. In the North, such predatory things were called Evil Gods and were despised. But in many parts of the South, people specifically worshipped these entities.

But even if she had been sacrificed alive by the townspeople, and her Yin energy was extremely heavy after death, how could she have turned into that half-human, half-demon form?

It seemed there was more to her death than met the eye.

In the distance, Lu Fengmian continued to tangle with the human-faced spider.

Su Wushuang hadn’t chased her out. Perhaps she was blocked by the other escorts, or perhaps the demon had abandoned her midway to possess someone else.

“This person must have an accomplice. Maybe not many, but definitely someone,” Li Qinghuai thought grimly, scanning the surrounding houses.

Whether Lu Fengmian won or lost didn’t matter much. If she lost, it was simple: bury her in the dirt and wait for Mo Xianghao to take the bait. If she won, they’d have a victory feast—one sprinkle of knockout powder, and Li could take down all the escorts herself.

Or perhaps the whole town was her ally. These people didn’t intervene; they watched coldly but didn’t stop it. Whether they won or lost had nothing to do with them…

Even guiding them through the forest might have been part of a plan for body-snatching. The mountain demons were likely trained; their sudden appearance was simply because there was someone the culprit wanted among the escorts. And the intervention of the two Taoists, Lu and Mo, had made her change her mind and switch targets.

Li Qinghuai sat on the ground. The more she thought about it, the more she couldn’t swallow her anger. She stood up immediately.

She began running from house to house, banging on doors. Truth be told, though no one came out, she discovered that some were already hiding behind their doors, ears pressed against the wood. A sudden knock startled the family in the first house; a muffled curse came through the door. It was low, but she heard it clearly.

She hadn’t expected anyone to actually open up. But at the eighth house, after she had cried out piteously a few times, the door was suddenly flung open, giving her a genuine fright.

As they say, the Wheel of Karma turns; Heaven spares no one. Li Qinghuai had outsmarted herself.

A young man and woman stood there, looking quite young—either siblings or a newlywed couple. One held a shovel, the other a dustpan. Though they tried to look imposing, their eyes were darting around, and their legs weren’t even straight. They froze upon seeing the person at the door.

What they saw was a deathly pale face with vivid red markings. It was like seeing a Rakshasa in the flesh, and it scared them out of their wits.

Li Qinghuai couldn’t figure out what they were trying to do. She swallowed and backed away silently.

“Go… we’ll go with you!”

The sentence started with some momentum, but the courage drained out by the middle and vanished entirely by the end.

“Doing what?” Li Qinghuai was so bewildered she accidentally lapsed into a regional dialect.

“Killing the monster…” the girl beside him added, her voice thick with tears.

They certainly didn’t look like they could help.

Li Qinghuai had come to knock just to spite them. Now that the situation had taken an unexpected turn, she hesitated. Her brain was fried from the fever, and she couldn’t think of what to say.

Furthermore, an old father stood behind them, who had been trying to stop them since the moment they opened the door. He was hopping mad, trying to pull them back.

“Oh, my ancestors! Get back inside! Zhilan, pull your brother back! You… you’re even pushing me? You’re going to be the death of me!”

All sorts of absurd thoughts flashed through Li Qinghuai’s mind—knocking them both unconscious and kicking them back inside seemed like the most normal option.

“Um… well…” Li Qinghuai stammered vaguely. “How about you just… you just… uh.”

She struggled for a long time before finally blabbing out: “Why don’t you tell me about the local customs here?”

The night wind brushed against the four faces. The sudden chill made everyone’s skin crawl.

“Maybe we can deduce the monster’s weakness from certain events,” Li Qinghuai added when they didn’t move. “Do you know Su Wushuang?”

At the mention of that name, both were filled with terror. The young man on the right instinctively took two small steps back, his head shaking slightly as he muttered something under his breath.

Li Qinghuai knew she was onto something. Wushuang was actually her real name. Just as she was about to press further, she noticed the girl next to him looking at her with absolute horror.

It was as if she were looking at a monster.

The terror was so overwhelming that Li Qinghuai saw her hands shaking; the dustpan she held was about to drop.

There’s no need to be that scared, Li thought. Before the thought could even finish, she felt a cold sensation at the small of her back. Before she could even process the pain, she realized a dagger had been plunged into her body.

It was thrust in and then pulled out.

Li Qinghuai used all her strength to lunge to the side. After rolling twice on the ground, she looked back.

It was a middle-aged man she didn’t recognize.

His cheekbones were prominent, his face angular and sharp. His eyes were slightly uneven in size, his skin sallow, his stubble messy, and his brow was etched with a violent aura. He was tall but excessively gaunt.

Li Qinghuai slumped on the ground, using her hands and feet to scramble backward.

That single stab had caused her immense suffering.

As the saying goes, if there is a calamity, someone must bear it. Had she wiped out the entire village from the start, the disaster would have likely worsened and fallen upon the victim in another form later.

Originally, she couldn’t find an excuse to convince her Father Emperor to let her come here. But this mountain was different from others; it held a great secret regarding the Imperial Family. The two groups that had gone missing on the mountain were by no means simple escorts. Though they were “mercenaries for hire,” they had secret ties to her Fourth Brother, which made it impossible for her to rest easy.

Getting involved in a conflict inevitably leads to being consumed by it. But she truly hadn’t expected the retribution to come so quickly.

Li Qinghuai took a deep breath, cursing Lu Fengmian in her heart. I’m working so hard to help you, yet you don’t remember me at all. You avoid me like the plague and I can’t even get a kind word out of you.

Then, she gritted her teeth.

I’ll be damned if I let myself die.