Secrets

I married into an ancient manor. My husband was handsome and gentle, spending every day personally selecting hairpins and picking out dresses for me.

Later, I discovered the manor’s secret, and my eyes welled with tears of terror.

He said, “You’re trembling. It’s not because you’re afraid of me, is it?”

“It’s alright. You just haven’t adjusted yet. I’ll teach you, slowly…”

Seven days before the grand wedding, the legitimate daughter of the Marquis Manor, who had gone to offer incense and pray for blessings, vanished at Xiangguo Temple.

The matriarch made a prompt decision.

Taking over a hundred manor servants who had signed death contracts, she surrounded Xiangguo Temple, sealing it off into an impenetrable fortress to suppress the news.

The Old Marquis entered the palace overnight to submit a memorial, claiming that my legitimate sister had made a great vow to pray for the Imperial Family and plead for rain to alleviate the suffering of the common people before her wedding.

On the day of the grand wedding, she would be married off directly from Xiangguo Temple.

A room full of maids and older servant women, along with me, a concubine-born daughter, knelt huddled together, everyone trembling like leaves.

Because we knew that if my legitimate sister wasn’t found in one piece within seven days… We would all die.

While escorting a shipment through the mountains, I found a woman out in the wilds.

I immediately had someone take her back to Cloud City, and even wrote a letter to my husband.

But half a month later, when I returned,

I found An Chao tangled up with that woman in bed.

An Chao kissed her and murmured, “Ning Qiniang is coarse and rough. She can’t compare to your sweet gentleness.”

I kicked the door open.

Even in his panic, An Chao did not forget to shield the woman behind him.

“Qiniang, Rou Rou is a helpless orphan girl. Since you sent her back here, didn’t you mean for me to take her as a concubine?”

I was so furious I laughed.

An Chao had been blinded by the woman’s beauty. He clearly hadn’t read my letter carefully.

She was no orphan girl.

She was a fox woman!

There is no spring in the Sea of No Return.

On the eve of our wedding, Shang Wujiu personally gouged out my Heart Lamp and sealed me within the Sea of No Return.

Three hundred years later, he knelt by the shore, begging me to return.

But he didn’t know that the lamp-the very thing that had extended his life-had long since burned into ash at the bottom of the sea.

Disciples knelt all across the mountain, crying out in unison, “We respectfully send off the Patriarch on his ascension!”

But what I saw was a silvery-white hook piercing Master’s throat, dragging him up into the clouds.

His feet had left the ground. He couldn’t make a sound.

Like a fish.

I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around Master’s legs. “Let him go!”

Eldest Senior Brother struck me with his palm and sent me flying. “You madwoman! Can you bear the consequences of ruining the Patriarch’s ascension ceremony?”

Blood spilled from the corner of my mouth.

I laughed.

“Ascension? Are you all blind? That’s fishing!”

While sorting through my mother’s belongings, I found a crumpled notebook tucked under her pillow.

Four words were scrawled unevenly across the title page: “The Kill List.”

The first name on the list was the obstetrician who had delivered me.

The date noted beside it was the day I was born.

The second name was my father’s.

The date was the day he died in a mining accident.

The third name belonged to a stranger.

The date noted was yesterday.

The police told me that this person really did die yesterday, but my mother was buried over a month ago.

At three in the morning, the funeral home’s Morgue was only supposed to have five registered bodies, yet I found a sixth, unregistered, nameless female corpse in locker number six.

A slip of paper was pressed against her chest with nothing but my name written on it.

Even more terrifying was the moment my hand brushed her wrist; I saw the last seven seconds of her life and heard her raspy, blood-choked voice whisper: “Shen Nian, don’t trust your father.”

That was the night I realized that sometimes, the dead don’t come to say goodbye-they come to reopen a case.

A year ago, on a whim, I told my wife a story.

Because the content was bizarre and the details were too realistic, she was scared out of her wits.

Afterwards, I deeply regretted it and emphasized countless times that the story was made up. But her trust in me had already collapsed, and the look in her eyes was filled with fear.

That night, she ran into the bathroom, locked the door, and called the police.

As a result, I ended up in jail.

Now, I am sorting out the whole incident as follows.

At one o’clock in the morning, I counted the Eleventh Step on the western staircase of my office building.

Resting on that single step was a white sneaker, its laces tied into the same blue dead knot my missing best friend always used.

Five years ago, a woman had died in this building.

Now, the security guard who holds the elevator for me every day looked up and flashed a smile.

“Miss Tang, you shouldn’t go around counting stairs.”

I can see the final moments of the deceased through their eyes, a gift that has helped the government solve countless cases.

Everything changed when the body of a drowned man was brought in.

Looking into his eyes, I saw him strangling me just before he died.

And on those hands, he was wearing the Jade Bracelet that had been buried with me.