Chapter 4

Jiang Yinxue looked away with the distaste of a man refusing to gaze upon filth.

“Jealous? Are you boasting that you are particularly skilled at latching on to powerful people?”

Shen Feng laughed. “Do you truly believe you hid it so well that no one ever knew?”

He sat back down and reclined in his chair. “I went to a Taoist temple to pray today. One chamber holds countless longevity tablets.”

His eyes stayed fixed on Jiang Yinxue, searching for the slightest change. “There is another room within, reserved for only a handful of tablets. One bears Shi Songyue’s name. Do you know who commissioned it, Lord Jiang? A man whose surname is also Jiang.”

Jiang Yinxue’s eyes turned cold.

Shen Feng continued, “The Taoist who tends the tablets has witnessed a lifetime of partings, yet even he sighed over one man’s obsession. There is no way to bring the dead back to life.”

His voice hardened. “So I will ask you once more, Lord Jiang. Do you truly not know where Songyue’s body is? She was my fiancée in life. I already regarded her as my wife. I will not let anyone deny her peace in death.”

Jiang Yinxue pressed his fingers to his temple. “Steal a corpse—and Shi Songyue’s, at that? I have not lost my mind. Vice Minister Shen, summon an imperial physician to examine your head before the Minister’s favor slips away from you.”

Shen Feng’s chest heaved. He seemed ready to argue, but Jiang Yinxue raised his voice.

“See him out.”

Zheng Ling entered with several attendants and forcibly escorted Shen Feng away.

Silence returned to the room. I sat opposite Jiang Yinxue and tapped the tabletop.

“Where is my body?”

Had Jiang Yinxue stolen it?

It was not impossible that he had dug me up merely to flog my corpse and vent his spite.

He cast me a sidelong glance. “Has becoming a ghost left you unable to understand human speech? I said I don’t know.”

“Did you visit my grave? Did you commission that longevity tablet?”

Jiang Yinxue rose from the table. “You never valued your own life. Why should I commit the same foolishness on your behalf?”

So it was not him? Then why was Shen Feng so certain?

“Why did Shen Feng come to you, then?”

“Shen Feng, Shen Feng, Shen Feng. Perhaps stupidity does have its advantages. A dullard like you can be sold off and still believe the buyer appreciates your worth.”

One encounter with Shen Feng had apparently honed his tongue to a new level of viciousness.

I had no answer. I could have died of fury.

He could not be bothered with me. He shed his outer robe and went to bed.

I looked down at my body. Instead of feeding at once, I drifted aimlessly around the room.

My final moments had grown hazy. Perhaps they had been so painful that I had chosen to forget them.

It felt as though I had merely closed my eyes in a boundless lake and opened them in a secluded mountain forest.

An old Taoist there told me that if my spirit became solid enough, I might have a chance to return to the mortal world.

Then I appeared in Jiang Yinxue’s room.

I assumed he could not see me. Instead, he stared at my face in a daze, and in a single instant his eyes reddened and filled with tears.

I blinked—then nearly laughed myself senseless. The great Imperial Censor Jiang had been frightened to tears by a ghost.

I made faces at him, pulled down my lower eyelids to expose the bloody flesh beneath, and floated so close that the tips of our noses nearly touched.

But he swiftly recovered his composure. Closing his eyes, he rebuked me in a cold voice.

“Shi Songyue, stop that.”

Jiang Yinxue had always been a joyless man.

And now I was bound to that joyless man, unable to leave him or even this room.

The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed.

How could a dead person return to life for no reason at all?