Chapter 5

Chapter 5

At last, the Commandery Princess got her wish. She took my place, married Xie Zhixing, and became Madam Xie.

His Majesty even bestowed the Commandery Princess’s Mansion upon her and promoted Xie Zhixing. Their wedding feast went on for three days and three nights, with endless tables of food, a bridal procession stretching for miles, and a spectacle grand beyond measure.

Everyone believed Xie Zhixing doted on the Commandery Princess to the extreme.

On the day of her wedding, the Commandery Princess was still secretly stabbing a little effigy of me. I had been dead for so long, yet she still would not stop muttering, sneering at me with contempt and triumph.

“See that, Qin Sang? Are you jealous? Do you hate me? Whatever I want, I will have. Everything you once possessed will belong to me in the end. Even Lord Xie, that untouchable flower on a snowy peak-didn’t I pluck him for myself all the same?”

At the mention of Xie Zhixing, a shy flush rose over her face. During this time, Xie Zhixing’s deep, gentle gaze had left her utterly dazed, and she did not even realize she was sinking deeper and deeper for him.

She smugly imagined how jealous I must be, unable to see that I was floating right beside her, looking down at her with pity.

I could hardly blame them for failing to realize how dangerous Xie Zhixing was. After all these years, he had come to resemble a true gentleman, refined and warm as jade-meticulous and considerate in private, humble and courteous in public.

With that pure, harmless appearance of his, no one could have guessed what sort of dangerous creature he truly was beneath the surface.

Even I had almost forgotten what Xie Zhixing had been like when I first met him in our youth. Back then, the boy had been swinging a human head in his hand as if it were a toy, his body drenched in dark red blood, while his eyes were like frost and snow untouched by the mortal world-clean, empty, and emotionless as they drifted lightly toward me.

A beautiful madman with the face of an immortal. Ruthless, vicious, cruel, and bloodthirsty, without the ideas or feelings any normal person should have.

At three, Xie Zhixing killed a man and sliced open his belly. At four, he raised a giant python to swallow people whole. At five, he flayed a man’s face to make a lantern… He was rotten by nature.

I had spent tremendous effort teaching him how to disguise himself, how to rein himself in. It had not been easy to make him look like a normal person, yet someone just had to court death by provoking that lunatic.

The Commandery Princess married him with a heart full of anticipation. She bowed in the wedding ceremony, had her veil lifted, and drank the cross-cupped wine.

After the noisy crowd dispersed, Xie Zhixing stood where he was and watched the Commandery Princess collapse after drinking the doctored wine.

He tilted his head slightly and revealed a faint smile.

With a light raise of his hand, several filthy, foul-smelling, hulking men were thrown into the room. The moment they saw Xie Zhixing, it was as if they had seen the King of Hell himself. They huddled in the corner, trembling in terror.

If the Commandery Princess had still been awake, she would have recognized them. They were the same death warriors who had once disguised themselves as wandering bandits-the ones she had supposedly killed and claimed as her military merit.

She knew how to swap out the genuine for the fake, but Xie Zhixing knew it even better.

Long before she went to “suppress the bandits,” Xie Zhixing had already captured all of them and found death-row prisoners from far away to take their places. Because those men had always worn masks with blue faces and fanged mouths, even after they were replaced, the Commandery Princess never noticed.

In such a short time, Xie Zhixing had already gathered a small faction under him, yet no one had noticed at all.

His voice was as gentle as ever as he looked askance at the men curled together in a heap. “Afraid of me?”

These men had once been death warriors, people who did not even fear death. Yet now, one soft sentence from Xie Zhixing made them shake with fright. They dropped to their knees, trembling as they begged for mercy. No doubt they had endured plenty of torment during this time.

Xie Zhixing’s expression, still mild just a moment ago, suddenly turned cold for no apparent reason. He raised his hand and brought his sword down, severing one man’s arm, then said lightly, “I don’t like it when people beg me for mercy.”

The man rolled across the floor in agony. The others fell silent as if frozen in fear; one of them even wet himself on the spot. Xie Zhixing glanced at the Commandery Princess, whose face was flushed and whose mind was muddled, then instructed them to “serve” her well before turning and leaving.

Those men did not dare hesitate for even a moment. They surrounded her.

Just as the Commandery Princess had once hoped others would treat me. Just as that innocent woman she had killed had been treated.

What she had done to others would be returned to her in kind.

One debt at a time. Slowly.