"What kind of honored guest just shows up uninvited?"
Shen Tang set down the writing brush in her hand.
Work made her sleepy, but the moment someone mentioned a fight, she perked right up.
"By rights, he'd be an unwelcome guest. But he came all this way to pay his respects, so at least he put some thought into it." Chu Yao could be truly vicious with his words. In just a few sentences, he'd already made a joke at the enemy's expense.
"Pay his respects? Whose funeral?"
Shen Tang wasn't fond of hearing that word.
Chu Yao only smiled and said nothing.
Shen Tang frowned. "You're here to mourn me? What a terrible omen!"
Chu Yao was alive and well, yet first his own brothers had tried to stuff him into a coffin, and now a bunch of thoughtless enemies had come rushing a thousand miles to mourn him. Even if it hadn't been an ill omen before, they'd made it one.
Chu Yao said, "It's yours, My Lord."
Shen Tang nearly blanked. "...Who started that rumor?"
It wasn't all right to spread rumors about Chu Yao, but it wasn't all right to spread them about her, either. They were rushing to mourn her in the middle of the night—weren't they afraid of running into real ghosts along the way?
Chu Yao's smile grew so broad he could barely contain it. He gave Shen Tang a key clue to jog her memory. "My Lord, do you remember the Yellow-wood Mound?"
Shen Tang: "..."
As clever as she was, she immediately understood where the misunderstanding had come from.
As everyone knew, a Yellow-wood Mound was used in the burial chambers of imperial tombs. A select few high-ranking nobles could also use one if granted special permission. But the Kang royal