Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The candle flame guttered in the wind, wavering between light and dark as it cast broad, mottled shadows across Shuyue’s face.

Ignoring her postpartum weakness, she nestled her head limply against my chest and murmured on and on:

“It wasn’t easy for you to come to the capital. You have to stay with me for a good while.”

“We’ve been separated as sisters, scattered to opposite ends of the world. Heaven knows how much I’ve missed you.”

With bright enthusiasm, she began recounting amusing stories from the past.

The way the corners of her mouth curved when she acted spoiled, the way she wrapped her arms around my waist and clung to me without letting go, even the way she raised her brows when begging me for something-all of it was exactly as it had been before.

But the bowl of blood bird’s nest the servants had presented to me on the table still betrayed her.

I wore a dead person’s skin, putting on a passable imitation of humanity, but I could not consume the food of the living.

Shuyue had spent ten years with me. How could she not know that?

In the past, she would cover for me in front of others, even lying that I had a peculiar constitution and was prone to allergies, so there were many foods I could not touch lightly.

And though she and I had been close since childhood, she had never once burrowed into my arms.

Because she was afraid of the heart beating thump, thump, thump inside my chest.

I suppressed the doubts in my heart and, with a cold scrutiny hidden beneath a show of indulgence, gently patted the cheek of the person before me.

“You never used to want to come near me, yet today you’re acting spoiled.”

At that, the body curled in my arms stiffened. Her mouth turned down, and a sob crept into her voice.

“I nearly lost half my life giving birth. Of course I understand better now how to cherish the people by my side.”

“You came all this way for me, Sister. I was so overjoyed, how could I care about the past?”

What she said was perfectly reasonable, as if there were no flaws at all.

But when I deliberately let my fingertips brush along her jaw, I still found a trace of wrongness in that unfamiliar feel.

Her skin was delicate and soft, smooth and exquisitely shaped. Even the clean edges of her features were flawless.

Yet the very perfection of this face was its greatest flaw.

Shuyue’s rotted face had been sewn back on by my own hands, replaced with a dead person’s skin.

The stitches were fine and dense, but the final knot had been hidden at the angle of her jaw.

It was inconspicuous, but there was a tiny bump the size of a sesame seed. With hands that had sewn dead skin before, I could easily detect it beneath the flesh.

This was not the dead skin I had stitched on one needle and one thread at a time, using spiritual power as the needle and drawing upon my cultivation as the thread.

The Shuyue before me was not my younger sister.

Holding down the chill inside me, I looked into her eyes one last time and tested her.

“You’ve been naughty. You clearly have migraines, yet you don’t wear a forehead band after giving birth. You deserve a smack!”

Shuyue’s expression changed at once.

Then she shoved me away and pouted, huffing as she complained:

“You’ve changed, Sister.”

“It was obviously my tooth that hurt, but you remembered it as migraines.”

Her lips trembled, and her accusing voice took on a wounded sob.

“If I’d known, I never would have married Xiao Yun. Once you enter the imperial family, it’s as deep as the sea. I can’t see my family, and I can’t even be close to my sister.”

“And now look. I know perfectly well you don’t eat bird’s nest, but I still wanted to offer you the very best. Even if you only looked at it, I would feel as though you were sharing in my happiness and wealth, and that would have been enough to keep me happy all night.”

“But you’ve forgotten me completely. You can even remember wrong whether I had headaches or toothaches.”

Fuming, she turned her back to me and waited for me to surrender.

But I was in no hurry to coax her.

I would never remember a single thing about my younger sister wrong.

Because my life was given to me by her.