The Treacherous Concubine’s Guide To Whitewashing

Chapter 15, Pt 2 - Yuxiu Palace

Even if she can’t kill Sikong Yan, she should at least try to ruin his reputation as much as possible. She needed to think carefully about how to do it.

Yuan Luo walked slowly. Two small palace maids from the middle imperial kitchen brought her evening meal and a female officer of Shouxian Palace brought a message from Concubine Shu. Wanting to take advantage of the tranquil evening, she was preparing a plum blossom lantern feast at Shouxian Palace. She was inviting the entire harem to enjoy the feast together as sisters.

Neither group recognized Li Jie Yu as anyone different from themselves. Concubine Shu’s female officer also spoke a few kind words to the amiable Concubine Jie Yu.

In the empty hall, Yuan Luo sat on a chair, feeling the tranquility around her. She quite enjoyed this stated of affairs. It was a rare opportunity to relax and shed the imperial concubine identity which made her so tense.

The darkness of the night around her was deep as Yuan Luo left the East palace hall and walked for a while along the winding corridors.

In front of her was a large lake and across the black boundless surface were lights on the other side which were faintly visible and breathtakingly beautiful.

The plum blossom wood along the shore was covered with snow and countless colored lanterns hung from all the visible branches. The reflection of the lights on the wide expanse of the lake made the surrounding area shine as if it were daytime. From a distance, she saw vague outlines of innumerable  figures walking among the pillars of the richly ornamented building.

It was Concubine Shu Zhuo’s Shouxian Palace holding her plum blossom lantern feast.

If the lake were to be cut in half, the woods on the one side were full of blazing lights and masses of flowers, while the woods on the other were boundlessly desolate and crisp with cold.

Yuan Luo was suddenly inspired. If she wore this disguise and went to Concubine Shu’s banquet, how many of those imperial concubines would recognize her?

It was a pity that in this situation she could only think about it. After Li Jie Yu had entered the palace, she kept an extremely low profile. Then once she was disfigured, she had even less of a reason to leave her own door. The palace banquet had been categorically rejected in the name of recuperation. She couldn’t collapse after all.

With a bored sigh, she was about to turn as if to return to the hall.

Suddenly she heard a low and gloomy sound and Yuan Luo’s ears pricked up.

The sound was intermittent and seemed to be that of someone crying. She heard nuances of bitterness and secret grief hidden under the cadence. She tried to listen more carefully, but then the sound disappeared.

Yuan Luo had a bitter taste in her mouth. She looked over at the dark palace in the distance, it’s facade faint, yet so dark and lonely. She shivered involuntarily.

She was a die-hard materialist and did not believe in ghosts and evil monsters, only... earlier that day that palace had just lost someone to the hands of death.

In actuality, several masters from the Division of Intelligence had been following her closely, waiting for the dark line of the East China Sea king to appear before her. Yuan Luo had suspected that they were hiding inside the palace hall to intercept him, but sent them instead to guard near the big tree outside the palace hall gates.

Yuan Luo hadn’t thought about it during the day, but a decision made in broad daylight became a major regret in the pitch, dark evening.

She lifted the edge of her dress and returned quickly along the winding corridor.

However, the farther she walked, the clearer the earlier sound became. In the end, she could hear it very close by. She was surrounded by deep darkness. Yuan Luo nearly screeched and, turning as if to bolt, she suddenly stopped short.

Before her eyes she could make out a flickering light. A very, small fire was burning among the undergrowth on the east side of the winding corridor. A person was crouching next to the fire with his back facing her.

Great, I finally find a living person. He looks like one of the palace’s coarse, sweeping slaves, warming himself by the fire.

The moment she saw that living person, the strange and eerie caterwaul had also stopped. Yuan Luo breathed a sigh of relief and turned her foot to go toward the figure.

The crouching figure’s back stiffened at Yuan Luo’s approach, but quickly relaxed and stood up.

With the flickering flames as a backdrop, she could vaguely distinguish that the figure was a delicate, young man.

She greeted him with a nod and walked to the edge of the small fire. Having been outdoors for much of the evening under a brisk, cold wind and recently been taunted by the idea of ghosts, Yuan Luo realized that she was cold both inside and out.

She stretched out both her hands toward the fire and she started to feel alive again. She tilted her head to look at the person beside her. "Which palace are you from? Why do you make a fire here?"

It was a pity that the small fire had become even smaller after just a short while. Yuan Luo hurriedly picked up items from the small basket next to the flames, wanting to add them to the fire.

However, some instinct caused Yuan Luo to pause before tossing the handful into the flames. In her hand was not the dead leaves she had imagined, but a handful of yellow paper, ritual money!

Yuan Luo was unable to move. She suddenly recalled that the ghost cries that were following her before had seemed to come from this direction.

At the same time this thought occurred to her, a dark shadow enveloped her. The palace man, who had remained silent up to this point, had noiselessly walked to her side.

On a moonless night ripe for homicide and after listening to all those eerie ghost wails earlier, I was already sensitive enough at that moment and then you show me this scene.

When Yuan Luo had watched horror movies in her previous life, the scenes she was afraid of the most were the narrow escapes of the leads. She thought she had found a glimmer of light, a familiar person as a way out of the darkness. She thought she was almost out of danger, but in the next second the plot shifted...

A bone-chilling cold suddenly coursed up her spine like a viper. Yuan Luo could no longer bear it and gave voice to her growing trepidation, "Ghost…!"

Unfortunately, a mere second after she opened her mouth, a hand suddenly covered it.

Yuan Luo struggled violently. She wanted to call someone, anyone, and she knew there were several masters lurking around a tree up ahead.

But the hand blocking her mouth was like an iron vise grip.  Yuan Luo opened her mouth wider and suddenly bit down.

The rusty taste of blood entered her mouth. She could smell human blood and at the same time she heard a strange, electronic sound.

Favorability: -53

Yuan Luo: ???

She twisted her head in disbelief and saw a familiar face close at hand.

Gu Yi’s face stared gloomily at her.