Chapter Twenty-One: Could It Be Seeing Ghosts?

In the middle of the night, thick clouds veiled the moon, casting an eerie and unsettling atmosphere. Two figures clad in dark garb moved furtively through the desolate wilderness.

“Your Highness, do we really have to come to a place like this…” Su Xin, trailing behind Hua Rong, could not suppress her unease. A gust of cold wind swept by, intensifying the chilling gloom that pressed upon them; she shivered involuntarily.

Startled by the sudden voice, Hua Rong herself jumped, and, trembling, she didn’t even bother to glance back as she chided in a hushed tone, “Why are you panicking? Look how calm I am!”

But as she spoke, Su Xin, standing behind her, could see clearly that Hua Rong’s legs were shaking so badly she could barely stand, clutching a rough stick she had picked up along the way with all her might.

She hardly looked calm at all.

“Your Highness, are you really alright…” Su Xin asked, at a loss, watching her quiver as if she were a frail soul shivering in thin clothes at the height of winter.

The degree to which she trembled seemed even worse than Su Xin herself, making it impossible not to worry.

Growing impatient with the ordeal, Hua Rong was about to turn around and snap, “I said I’m fine!” But just as the words left her lips, her foot landed on something hard—something short and small, like a stick.

“What is this? Why is it underfoot?” Hua Rong frowned, lowering her gaze to inspect it, only to be struck by terror.

What lay at her feet looked like a human finger!

“Ah!” Hua Rong’s face went utterly pale with fright. Without a trace of color left in her cheeks, she spun around and clung to Su Xin, crying out, “Su Xin, save me!”

Su Xin was startled as well, but as she looked down, a hint of exasperation flashed in her eyes. She quickly offered reassurance: “Your Highness, please don’t be so nervous. It’s just a tree branch…”

Wasn’t she the one who claimed not to be afraid? Claimed to be composed and collected? Reality, as always, proved far more merciless.

Hearing this, Hua Rong froze. “A tree branch? That’s what I stepped on?”

Driven by curiosity and trusting that timid Su Xin would not lie, she looked down again. Sure enough, what resembled a finger was nothing more than a broken branch!

In that instant, the air thickened with awkwardness.

Su Xin fixed Hua Rong with a look of utter resignation. “Your Highness, even if I’m not scared to death by the ghosts here, I’ll likely be frightened to death by you.”

This was hardly a pleasant place to begin with, and all these shocks only made the night’s chill sharper, as if it needed another reminder.

Hua Rong gave an embarrassed, forced laugh. “Ah, I just made a mistake. Let’s hurry and get on with what we came for, shall we?”

Even as she spoke, she could not bring herself to let go of Su Xin’s arm, clinging to her like an elderly woman, dragging her along step by step.

“Your Highness, could you please stand up straight? It’s exhausting to be dragged along like this,” Su Xin complained.

So much for not being afraid—she was braver than her mistress after all.

“I just thought, since it’s cold, we should huddle together for warmth, so we don’t catch a chill, right?” Hua Rong replied, her excuse sounding grand but masking her fear.

Su Xin had nothing left to say, so she simply nodded in agreement. “Your Highness is right.”

The two pressed on through the biting wind, when suddenly a vile stench assaulted them, so foul as to be almost unbearable, like the filth of an outhouse.

“What’s that horrible smell?” Hua Rong quickly covered her mouth with her sleeve, but the stench still seeped through, making her feel nauseous and faint.

“This is the mass grave. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the stench of corpses. We must be getting close to the pit,” Su Xin explained.

For reasons unclear, though Su Xin was just as fearful, she now seemed braver—perhaps realizing her duty as protector since Hua Rong was so timid.

Cautiously, the two crept onward. The night was unnaturally silent, broken only by the faint noises they themselves made, until suddenly the flapping of wings sounded ahead.

A flock of crows, startled from their perches, burst into the air cawing harshly, their raspy cries grating on the ear.

Fearing Hua Rong would shriek and startle even more crows, Su Xin quickly whispered, “Don’t be afraid, Your Highness. They’re just here to feast on the rotting corpses. They have nothing to do with us!”

With this warning, Hua Rong managed to stifle her impending scream, forcing herself to nod in feigned composure.

They drew closer to the corpse pit. Hua Rong fashioned a makeshift nose plug out of her handkerchief to spare herself the suffocating stench—she didn’t want to die from the smell before even finding the body.

“Let’s split up and search quickly. I don’t want to linger in this accursed place any longer than necessary. What if we really run into a ghost?” Hua Rong urged.

They separated, searching the area thoroughly. Who would have thought she’d one day find herself turning over corpses in a mass grave, all to save her own life?

Nearly half an hour passed. They had turned over almost every corpse in the pit, but the familiar face they sought was nowhere to be found. Instead, all manner of grotesque sights greeted them.

“Your Highness, I don’t see anything here either. Could we have made a mistake?” Su Xin wondered aloud. By all rights, after the assassin died, his body should have been dumped here.

All their information pointed to the corpse being here, and as one recently discarded, it should have been easy to find. So why could they not locate it?

Hua Rong frowned. “That’s odd… Could it be that the person trying to cover up the crime disposed of even the corpse? How cunning…”

No matter how she turned it over in her mind, something felt off.

Just then, a chill wind swept up behind her, sharp as a blade pressing against her back.

Hua Rong’s whole body shuddered. As she whipped around, she caught a fleeting shadow out of the corner of her eye and was instantly seized by panic.

She glanced desperately to where Su Xin was searching. “Su Xin, come here quickly—someone’s here!”

Uttering such words in this place could not help but stir the imagination.

Su Xin turned, scanning the area, but saw nothing. Trembling, she replied, “Your Highness, surely you haven’t seen a ghost…”