Chapter 4

Outside the door, everything remained quiet for a long time.

Summoning her courage, Li You stood up, her face burning red and her heart kicking like a rabbit. She feared that the Ghost Envoy would break through the door at any moment and cast her straight into Avici Hell.

“…Oh. So you can speak.” Unexpectedly, the person outside merely made this indifferent remark.

Several minutes later, Li You dried the water from her hair, took a deep breath, and opened the door. Xue Chiying stood there with her arms folded, her cool gaze directed elsewhere and her face expressionless. For a moment, the princess felt exceptionally ill at ease.

Xue Chiying slowly exhaled. Smiling, she looked back at Li You and asked gently, “If you can speak, why did you lie?”

Although Princess Qile had been lovingly protected by her imperial mother and older sisters since childhood, she was still capable of reading people’s expressions. In the past, she had often understood but simply had not cared. At this moment, however, she could not afford not to. Swallowing, she asked softly like a little lamb, “Honored Ghost Envoy, will you… cast me into Avici Hell because of this?”

Xue Chiying gave her a baffled look and examined her from head to toe. In passing, she noticed that the damp ends of Li You’s black hair had soaked a large patch of her shoulder, and she could not help frowning. She turned around, fetched a hair dryer, and merely said, “Let’s dry your hair first.”

The black body of the hair dryer gleamed coldly beneath the light, making Li You retreat two or three steps in quick succession. Now that her lie had been exposed, she thought the Ghost Envoy was about to punish her.

As the buzzing device approached with a stream of warm air, Li You stared [unauthorized copy]blankly at herself and Xue Chiying in the mirror. “What… is the meaning of this…?”

With a dark expression, Xue Chiying loosened Li You’s hair with one hand while moving the hair dryer back and forth with the other. She answered irritably, “Because I’m so full that I apparently have nothing better to do.”

Li You knitted her brows. “So full that you have nothing better to do?”

Xue Chiying had no idea what was so difficult to understand about those words. Li You sounded entirely as though she were deliberately playing dumb. Unable to restrain herself, Xue Chiying snapped off the hair dryer with a click and glared coldly at the innocent-looking princess reflected in the mirror.

“I’m extremely angry because you lied to me. Could you please refrain from speaking until I finish drying your hair?”

Li You immediately pursed her lips and nodded.

Only after the buzzing resumed did she continue secretly observing Xue Chiying through the mirror. Although this Ghost Envoy looked identical to Xue Lanjing in every respect, she had a remarkably good temper. Nor did she reveal the green face and protruding fangs described in storybooks.

“Judging by your age, you must have argued with your family and run away from home. Were you afraid I would contact them, so you refused to give me the correct information earlier?” Once Li You’s hair was dry, Xue Chiying set the hair dryer beside the sink, braced herself against the edge of the counter, and turned toward Li You’s profile. “You’re probably not a high school student, right? What year of university are you in?”

The Ghost Envoy had begun asking questions again. Li You straightened her posture and replied solemnly, “Qile does not understand what Your Excellency means.”

Xue Chiying raised an eyebrow. “Is your name Li You or Qile?”

A princess’s honored personal name could not be addressed directly by outsiders. Li You had only reported it truthfully because she believed Xue Chiying to be a Ghost Envoy. After a moment of silence, she said, “If Your Excellency seeks my courtesy name, Qile has already written the two characters ‘Shuangqing.’ Qile is both Li You and Li Shuangqing.”

“…” It was like listening to a tongue twister. Xue Chiying’s brow twitched as she thought that they might as well be a chicken and a duck trying to converse.

Li You could tell that Xue Chiying was dissatisfied, but she genuinely could not determine how to provide the answer the Ghost Envoy wanted. Her freshly bathed body began heating up again from anxiety. “Honored Ghost Envoy—”

“And then there’s this ‘Honored Ghost Envoy’ you keep calling me.” Xue Chiying cut her off. “Didn’t I tell you my name is Xue Chiying? Can you please act normally?”

Li You promptly adopted a solemn expression. “Understood, Lady Xue Chiying.”

Xue Chiying broke into helpless laughter. “You… Honestly… I don’t even know what to say to you. I can’t tell whether you’re pretending or genuinely like this.”

Li You clasped her hands together and instinctively tried to hide them beneath her sleeves. However, she was currently wearing the T-shirt Xue Chiying had given her, leaving nowhere to conceal them. She therefore said, “My lady, Qile was momentarily confused earlier and thus deceived you. Please forgive me. Qile would never dare repeat the offense!”

“No, Li You… How about this? Let’s forget everything that happened earlier, all right? Now I’m sincerely going to ask you something.” Xue Chiying’s voice grew serious. “How long have you been away from home? Where is your ID card? Did you lose it? What about your phone?”

Seeing Xue Chiying’s serious expression, [stolen content]Li You did not rush to answer this time. Instead, she turned the other woman’s questions over and over in her mind.

Although she was an esteemed princess and had never sat for the imperial examinations, her talent for composing poetry and matching couplets was no less than that of a top-ranked scholar. She could still provide some answer to the question of how long she had been away from home. An “identity card” was presumably proof of identity, like an official travel permit presented upon entering a city. She could easily explain why she did not have one now. But the “hand chicken” the other woman had mentioned… she truly could not fathom what it meant.

“The day Qile encountered Your Excellency was the day she left home. Previously, Qile seldom left the palace and had never left the city. Besides, why would one need an official travel permit here in the Netherworld? As for the chicken Your Excellency mentioned… please forgive Qile for being unskilled in cookery. Qile has never entered the imperial kitchens, much less seen a live chicken.”

“A l-live chicken?” Xue Chiying was rendered speechless instead. After a long while, she spread her hands. “I said phone! Not chicken! Okay?”

Princess Qile’s face plainly said, Not okay.

Xue Chiying had no choice but to temporarily accept the other possibility in her mind. Saying, “All right,” she unplugged the hair dryer and jerked her chin toward the door. “Come outside with me first.”

The two sat down on the sofa. Xue Chiying let out a long breath to calm herself, then pulled the dinosaur bolster into her arms and good-naturedly asked Li You to tell her everything about this Kingdom of Yongzhao. Li You therefore clasped her hands together on her lap and recounted her entire life as Yongzhao’s Fifth Princess, carefully explaining how she had been born, how she had grown up, and how she had ultimately run out of options and been forced to jump from the city wall.

At the end, when she mentioned her imperial mother and older sisters, tears filled her eyes. However, when she saw Xue Chiying’s complicated expression across from her, she forcibly held them back, not daring to let them fall. She tried to “sweep her sleeve” across her face, only to realize she had no sleeves. For a moment, she could only wipe everything onto the back of her hand.

“Here…” Xue Chiying silently pulled over some tissues and handed them to Li You.

This time, she finally understood. Li You had regarded her as one of the likes of Ox-Head and Horse-Face all along. No wonder she looked unauthorized copy as though she had seen a ghost no matter what Xue Chiying did.

Only after Li You had nearly finished crying did Xue Chiying forcibly sweep the wad of tissues clutched in her hand into the trash. “The dead are already gone. The good news is that this isn’t the Netherworld. You probably… can be considered not dead.”

Li You’s eyelashes were damp and glistening from her tears. She softly repeated, “This is not the Netherworld?”

“Mm… Let me put it this way. You understand that there was a very long stretch of history before your Kingdom of Yongzhao… and many other kingdoms too, right? The place I’m in comes after your Kingdom of Yongzhao—hundreds, even thousands of years afterward. Basically, you fell from your Kingdom of Yongzhao straight into my time, hundreds or thousands of years into the future.”

Princess Qile blinked. Another tear that represented no particular emotion slipped from her clear, watery eyes.

Back in her hometown, Xue Chiying had a seven-year-old younger cousin to whom she was very close. Whenever she returned, she often played with the child. Perhaps because of this, she had developed something of an older-sister instinct and could not bear to see children cry. She reached out and wiped away the tears of the oversized child before her, softening her voice as she comforted her. “Of course, you probably can’t accept all of this immediately. But being alive is a good thing, and our era is very safe. No one will ever force you to jump from a city wall again. Forcing someone to do that is against the law.”

Afterward, Xue Chiying wanted to give Li You some time alone to compose herself while she processed everything as well, so she left Li You sitting by herself in the living room.

It took Princess Qile a long while to return to her senses. Her gaze traveled from left to right, examining this so-called “hundreds or thousands of years later” inch by inch. Then she stood and knocked on the bedroom door. Xue Chiying quickly answered it, holding the object Li You regarded as a soul-stealing silver artifact. Her smile had yet to fade. “Wait a moment. I’m on a video call with my friend.”

Naturally, Li You did not understand. She merely looked hesitantly into Xue Chiying’s eyes. “I…”

After thinking for a moment, Xue Chiying turned toward the person on the video call and said, “I’ll tell you about it later. I’m hanging up [Read on BaiLianTales]for now.” Lowering her phone, she smiled brightly at Li You. “What is it?”

“Honored Gh—Lady Xue, could you take me back to the place we were at today?”

Xue Chiying asked, “The place from today? Where you fell?”

Li You nodded.

Xue Chiying tilted her head. “I can… but why do you want to return there in the middle of the night?”

“I think that place may allow me to return.”

“Return?” Xue Chiying frowned. “But didn’t you say…” She swallowed the rest of the sentence—“Wasn’t your kingdom already destroyed?”—and changed it to, “Didn’t you say someone who looks exactly like me is your enemy and forced you to jump from the city wall? What if she catches you again after you return?”

Li You did not respond and silently lowered her head. Naturally, she had considered that question and was terribly afraid. But no matter how frightened she was, she felt she could not simply abandon her imperial mother and older sisters. Even if returning meant only death, she should still rush toward it. Only then would she be worthy of her imperial mother’s teachings… As she thought this, Princess Qile’s eyes reddened again in an instant.

“All right, all right. Don’t cry. I won’t talk about that…” Xue Chiying stroked the princess’s cheek. After watching her force back her tears, she released her and looked around the apartment, muttering, “Since you insist on returning, perhaps you should take something with you…”

Something that might save her life?

But the thought only made things more difficult for Xue Chiying. When it came to the difference in military power between the modern era and ancient times, cannons and firearms were naturally worlds apart from those cold weapons… The problem was, she had none of those things here.

What could she possibly give Li You to protect her life? The rusty, blunt fruit knife in the kitchen? The laundry pole on the balcony whose head was always falling off?

After thinking for a long time, Xue Chiying suddenly took Li You by the wrist. “How about this? Stay one more night. Tomorrow morning, I’ll go to the supermarket and buy you some useful things, then take you back. You can consider them… local specialties and bring them with you. And if you wait one night, maybe you’ll avoid running into that Xue Lanjing person while she’s searching for you.”

Princess Qile froze after hearing this. Although Xue Chiying had once again used some words she did not understand, she could still hear the concern and care in her voice. She could not help feeling somewhat apologetic for her earlier deception, hostility, and wariness…

“Many thanks for your profound kindness, Lady Xue.”

She bowed her head in salute and spoke softly with lowered eyes. When she looked up again, her features were calm and her expression resolute. “I have imposed upon you for so long and am deeply grateful, yet I have no means of repaying you. For now, however, I ask that you forgive me, for Qile cannot remain any longer. If it is inconvenient for you, I can go by myself.”

Why was this child so stubborn?

Xue Chiying glanced at the time on her phone. It was almost eleven. If they could not get back inside later and ended up being arrested as thieves, that would truly be ridiculous.

When Xue Chiying said nothing, Princess Qile slowly lowered her eyes, took two shallow breaths, then resolutely stolen content turned around and retrieved the clothes she had left in the bathroom.

“Until we meet again, my lady.” Princess Qile bade her farewell, turned around without another word, and left.

“Hey, Li You!” Xue Chiying panicked for a second, but the next moment, she slowly closed her mouth. “…”

Click, click… Click, click!

Standing in place, Xue Chiying watched Li You struggle unsuccessfully to open the locked security door and immediately found herself caught between laughter and exasperation.

Her path obstructed, Princess Qile took a deep breath and turned around, her voice sounding both aggrieved and indignant.

“My lady! Why does this door refuse to open and let me pass?!”