Consort of a Thousand Faces

Su Xi-er furrowed her brow and crouched down to inspect the object more carefully, rather than immediately reaching out her hand to grab onto it.

The cupboard has four corners, but only one has something padded underneath. It looks a little like woven silk fabric.

Her left hand lifted the empty cupboard slightly while her right hand grabbed the item from beneath the corner of the cupboard.

The woven silk fabric had yellowed with the passing of time, its edges frayed until it was deformed. 

Su Xi-er brought the fabric with her to the door to take a better look. Only then was she finally able to discern a leaf design embroidered on it, but she could only make out the contours of the leaf.

This woven silk fabric only has a leaf embroidered? It’s not that simple, right?

She scrutinised it even more carefully. There’s a character embroidered on the outline of the leaf!

Her fingers trailed along the lines of the word on the textile. After carefully examining it, she was certain that the character was ‘Yun’.

Yun? A person’s name? The name is embroidered on the outline of the leaf? What does it represent?

“Su Xi-er.” Hong Li’s voice sounded. Her voice was particularly soft, barely audible with how much it was quivering.

Hong Li picked up her walking pace, stopping just outside the woodhouse. As she gazed at the shed, she trembled in fear and a look of trepidation was written across her face.

“It’s an abandoned woodhouse with only a few old items in it. Do you have to be this scared?” Su Xi-er asked as she kept the woven silk fabric into her sleeve.

“How could you have forgotten? When the matter occurred, it created quite a stir. At the very least, it caused a large sensation in the Palace Side Quarters.” Hong Li revealed an astonished expression.

Su Xi-er didn’t reply. Despite being reborn in this body, she had only received a limited amount of its memories. Of course she wasn’t aware of whatever affair Hong Li was talking about. 

When she saw Su Xi-er’s baffled expression, Hong Li couldn’t bear it anymore and directly blurted it out, “You don’t even remember Liu Ye-er? She was an especially gentle and very good looking palace maid in the Palace Side Quarters who was seven years older than us. If it weren’t for that incident, she would have definitely become the head palace maid in the Palace Side Quarters, succeeding Old Maidservant Zhao’s position in the future.”

“Liu Ye-er…” Su Xi-er muttered in a low voice. She thought of the leaf[1] sewn on the woven silk fabric.

“That’s right, Liu Ye-er. Have you remembered? She wasn’t as lucky as He Xiangyu. When she was sweeping the palace path, she met someone with tremendous power. At that time, no one knew that Liu Ye-er was calculating and kept her thoughts deeply concealed, having been really persistent in forging connections with puissant personages. In the end…”

Before she could finish speaking, she was interrupted by Su Xi-er.

“In the end, she offended the person with tremendous power and got punished by Old Maidservant Zhao to come to the woodhouse. Afterwards, she died a tragic death?”

Hong Li nodded, then shook her head again. “It was her who proposed that she come to the woodhouse to reflect upon her mistakes as punishment. However, she died just two days after she entered the woodhouse. I don’t know who on earth she had offended.”

“At the end of the day, a palace maid died in the woodhouse. Is people dying such an uncommon event in the palace that people are this terrified?”

Even if it is the repose palace of the late deposed Empress, nobody was this scared, right?

“It wouldn’t be such a big deal if only one person died. No one sweeps the palace path leading to the woodhouse and no one tends to the surrounding grass even when it’s so tall, the reason being that whenever anybody approached this location, the only result would be… death.” Hong Li’s body trembled as she became afraid once again.

Su Xi-er chuckled. “I don’t believe it. A person won’t die for no rhyme or reason. How can there be some forbidden death zone?”  

“Old Maidservant Zhao instructed me to watch you. She has definitely started to get suspicious of me and wants me to die together with you.”  Hong Li pursed her lips tightly, her face clearly showing that she was not resigned to it.

“You and I are in the same boat. If you want to continue living, you must listen to me.” Su Xi-er’s words were mild. She didn’t think anything of the rumours of guaranteed death in the forbidden death zone.

Right now, she was sure that the woven silk fabric belonged to Liu Ye-er. As for the ‘Yun’ character, is it the person who Liu Ye-er offended?

A person with tremendous power in Beimin and has a ‘Yun’ in the name…

1. The ‘ye’ in Liu Ye-er’s name means ‘leaf’