Mystery

On my wedding day, my twin sister knocked me unconscious and locked me in the basement.

Then she impersonated me and married my fiancé.

“From today on, your man is mine.” Her eyes were filled with sheer determination.

She left in such a hurry

that she didn’t notice I had stopped breathing in the darkness.

The Marquis of Ningyuan’s favored concubine had been brutally murdered.

She had been arrogant, domineering, and spoiled by his favor, making countless enemies in the marquis’s mansion.

For a time, the authorities had no idea where to begin.

So Yuan Nanshan, the Vice Minister of Dali Temple, tossed this hot potato to me.

“The Marquis of Ningyuan’s concubine came from an official family, bore him children, and held a status no lower than the Marchioness.”

“You’re a woman, so it will be more convenient for you to investigate. You must find the murderer and give the deceased justice!”

“…”

But I was only a fortune-teller.

My roommate was a professional bride.

She said she’d landed a big job recently, and the client was incredibly generous.

When I saw the fee wrapped in red paper, I tried to talk her out of taking it.

But on the day of the event, my roommate still snuck off.

And she never came back.

What she didn’t know was that every one of the event’s organizers…

wasn’t human.

The second young lady of the Guardian General’s Residence was young, beautiful, and of noble status.

After attending a gathering of noble ladies, she suddenly hanged herself.

She left not a single word behind.

Her elder sister, Wang Ping’an, the Guardian General stationed at the border, rode back to the capital overnight.

Then, with lightning speed, she abducted the other four noble ladies who had attended the gathering-

the Grand Tutor’s daughter, the daughter of the Minister of Personnel, the legitimate daughter of the Censor-in-Chief, and the County Lady of Zhongwang Mansion-and brought them to a farmstead on the outskirts of the capital.

I, along with Yuan Nanshan, the Vice Minister of Dali Temple, was also dragged here to help uncover the truth.

Seeing me stare worriedly at the four top-ranking noble ladies, the Guardian General gave a chilling sneer.

“Master Yu, I hear your divinations are infallible, and that you can see the past and the future.”

“I want to know how my sister died!”

“If you can’t get to the bottom of it today, all of you can accompany her to the grave!”

Wait. I’m going to die too?

I’m just a fortune-teller.

A bloody, brutal murder had shaken the city.

The prostitute Yuanyang was found dead and naked on her embroidered bed, her body slashed again and again, drenched in blood.

The authorities proved utterly useless at catching the killer. They could not find so much as a single suspect.

Just as rumors were flying everywhere, a young victim came to my stall.

With the only five copper coins she had, she begged me to find Yuanyang’s murderer.

Me: “?”

But I was only a fortune-teller.

I went on a celebrity dating reality show, and the host asked me which male guest I would pick.

Smiling, I looked toward the acclaimed Best Actor, the veteran singer, and the current young idol heartthrob.

“Among these guests is a serial killer. Three years ago, you dismembered my little sister.

You left no remains of her behind and turned her into a target for the internet’s scorn.

“Now, it’s my turn to hunt you down.”

While everyone else was fighting for the Emperor’s favor, I built an intelligence station in the cold palace.

Until the day he died, the Emperor never knew that the woman stirring up the hidden currents of his harem was someone whose name he could not even remember.

I died in Yongxiang Alley during my third winter there.

Not truly died-only the kind of death where your name is crossed out in vermilion ink on the registry.

They said Noble Lady Li, who had once worked in the imperial garden and was later favored by His Majesty for her beauty, had gone mad.

Because on the late Empress’s memorial day, I let my hair hang loose, went barefoot, and sang a rousing rendition of “Liangzhou Ci.”

In truth, I was not mad. I had simply calculated that the Chief Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial would pass through the imperial garden that day.

Madness was the best pass in the cold palace, and the best armor.

On the day I moved into the West Third Institute, only one lame old eunuch came to lead the way.

The weeds in the courtyard rose past my knees, and the moss on the well curb was as thick as a velvet blanket.

My roommate, Attendant Li, had been thrown in here three years ago after offending the Imperial Consort.

When she saw me arrive, she did not even lift her eyelids. She only kept rubbing a length of hemp rope in her hands, its edges worn fuzzy.

I set my only bundle down on the crumbling earthen kang.

Inside were two sets of worn palace clothes, a bald writing brush, and half a ream of yellow paper.

The paper pasted over the window lattice had a hole in it the size of a fist. The north wind poured in with a howl, carrying the faint sound of pipes and flutes from far away.

I stared at that hole, but in my heart, a sliver of light slipped through.

In a madwoman’s world, there were the fewest rules.

Here, perhaps, I could live.

I run a science-debunking channel.

I’m also a Taoist priest.

Every day, I livestream ways to expose feudal superstition for what it is.

One day, a young woman asked me to help sever a toxic romantic entanglement.

The next day, her boyfriend was dead.

In the dead of night, a friend called me begging for help.

“Save me! Someone with their bones showing broke into my house!”

I cursed him for being insane and was just about to hang up.

Then he sent me the video.

In the surveillance footage, a stark-white humanoid skeleton was pacing back and forth through his living room.

My rich, pretty roommate had a boyfriend who was five-foot-three, weighed 187 pounds, and always had a greasy shine on his face.

She guarded against me at every turn, terrified I had designs on him.

I told her her boyfriend was a pig, and she snapped that I was just calling the grapes sour because I couldn’t have them.

But what she didn’t know was that her boyfriend really was a pig.