Lin Baiwei's Identity

Dusk was falling.

As usual, Shen Yi knocked, then pushed the door open.

Lin Baiwei was hiding in the backyard as always. Only after hearing his voice did she peek out.

Unlike yesterday, when she'd been soaking wet, the woman had changed into that white outfit today. Her fitted gown fluttered in the breeze, making her look like an ethereal immortal. If only she could rein in her ravenous expression a little and stop swallowing so often, she might even have been called a heavenly beauty.

"Hehe, I smell meat."

"Did you get paid?"

She took the crock and lotus-leaf parcel from Shen Yi and hurriedly set them on the table to open them.

Shen Yi watched her from the side, feeling a little envious.

Whether she was eating flatbread or a feast, she could wear the same smile. If he'd had such a temperament in his previous life, maybe he wouldn't have had to struggle so hard to get by.

"You've got blood on you again. Every day you go out..."

Lin Baiwei teased him as if it were an idle remark. But as she opened the lotus leaf and crock, her brow furrowed slightly, and her expression turned noticeably colder.

Shen Yi saw her face change but had no idea what had happened.

He couldn't be bothered to ask, though. Eat it or don't.

He sat at the table and grabbed a goose leg. The aroma of crisp skin and rich meat juices bloomed on his tongue, more than making up for its slight blandness.

Lin Baiwei's nose twitched. She simply closed her eyes and folded her arms. "It's so greasy! I've lost my appetite."

Shen Yi rolled his eyes at her and drank straight from the wine jug.

Lin Baiwei cracked her eyes open, her lashes trembling as she glanced at him from the corner of her eye. She bit her red lip. "If you don't like eating flatbread, buy some raw meat and soy sauce tomorrow. I'll cook for you, all right? Why go around robbing other people..."

"You can cook?"

Shen Yi looked up, surprised.

"If I couldn't cook, I'd have starved to death by now. Not everywhere has restaurants... Are you even listening to me?"

Lin Baiwei counted on her fingers. "A pound of pork costs about twenty coins. If you're careful with your monthly salary and count in firewood, rice, oil, and salt, you could eat meat almost every day. I can sew, too, so you wouldn't need to replace your clothes and shoes when they tore."

In the dim room, Shen Yi watched her recite all this as if she were listing household accounts. Then he thought of how Master Lin had casually produced eight hundred taels of silver.

"Are you really a young lady of the Lin Family?"

"Are you deaf?" Lin Baiwei snapped in exasperation. Why couldn't he just listen?

A respectable constable on the imperial payroll, either consorting with demons or bullying ordinary people. What a waste of such fine talent.

If this had been before, she would have yanked his ears right off.

The woman looked adorably indignant. Shen Yi looked away, pulled a few bits of silver from his waist, and tossed them onto the table, cutting off her endless chatter. "Your father gave them to me."

At that, Lin Baiwei froze.

Her gaze darted between the silver and the blood on Shen Yi's clothes.

"You went to see him?"

Before he could answer, she sprang to her feet and leaned toward the young man, her pretty face close to his. "Do you know how serious this is? They're not as simple as you think. An elder of the North Cliff Fox Demon has come here on his travels. The reason it hasn't entered the city is that it fears my identity! But if you really kill its junior and provoke it completely, no one will be able to protect you!"

She was clearly truly panicked.

Shen Yi felt her fragrance waft over him, but his expression stayed calm. "So what is your identity?"

At his question, Lin Baiwei fell silent. After a long pause, she muttered, "You certainly heard the important part of that."

Shen Yi stood as well, his face blank. He unhesitatingly crushed the strange feeling that had risen in his heart.

This woman had indeed been keeping things from him. The trouble surrounding her was far worse than he'd imagined.

"Eat."

Shen Yi returned to the bed and sat down.

"Anyway, I'm not a bad person." Sensing his distance, Lin Baiwei sat back down and prodded the yellow croaker with her chopsticks.

She truly had no appetite this time. Only after a long while did she ask quietly, "Is my father all right?"

"For now."

Shen Yi roughly understood how she felt. "The Fox Demon isn't at the estate, but it brought other demons into your home."

"Thank you."

The blood on the young man's clothes and the silver on the table already told her what had happened.

Lin Baiwei tried to steady her trembling hands as she hugged the crock and took small sips of fish soup.

She slowed her breathing, and her emotions gradually settled.

Shen Yi remembered what she'd said earlier: she had to stay alive... More precisely, even if her own parents' lives hung in the balance, she still had to keep living.

According to Lin Baiwei, even the Fox Demon's elder feared her identity too much to enter the city.

"I want more money."

"What?"

As Lin Baiwei stared at him in surprise, Shen Yi carefully wiped his scabbard with a rag. "I said two Initial Realm martial arts manuals aren't enough. I want ones from the Jade Liquid Realm. Still two, and I want one in advance as a deposit."

Now that her identity had changed the situation, the price had to change, too.

Lin Baiwei watched him in silence. She actually accepted this blatant "taking advantage of her while she was down." Picking up her chopsticks again, she took a piece of fish. "I can only memorize one. Get me paper and a brush, and I'll give it to you in three days."

The woman chewed the fish forcefully, hiding the hurt welling in her eyes.

She wasn't used to showing weakness in front of anyone.

Suddenly, that same cold, irritating voice reached her ears again.

"Does what you said earlier still count?"

"What did I say?" Lin Baiwei stuffed the sweet, tender fish into her mouth. Her cheeks puffed up, oil glistening at the corner of her lips. She didn't want him to hear her voice trembling.

"About cooking."

Shen Yi hung the clean scabbard on the wall.

Even if she spoke in riddles, he'd more or less pieced things together.

The Fox Demon had feared her identity and spared her, yet casually dumped a defenseless woman on his former self. As powerful as those foxes were, could they really watch her day and night?

They'd simply wanted to use his former self to get rid of her.

So what made him special?

After turning it over in his mind, Shen Yi could only think of his status as a constable. From that, it was easy to infer what Lin Baiwei had been stammering to conceal.

Tsk. The Lin Family had sent their only daughter away to study under a master, only for her to end up in the Demon Suppression Division.

The Fox Demon wasn't what she feared most. It was him.

If she were killed by a constable of the imperial court, the foxes could walk away from the whole affair without a scratch, dumping all the blame elsewhere.

If his thoughts had strayed even a little in the beginning...

If he'd really cut her down and killed someone from the Demon Suppression Division with his own hands...

Just imagining the whole Great Gan Dynasty putting a bounty on him made Shen Yi's back go cold. He cursed his former self in his heart, that fool who let a pretty face cloud his judgment.

What kind of woman would you not dare touch?

"..."

Lin Baiwei had no idea what was going through Shen Yi's mind. She swallowed her fish and sniffed hard, her nose slightly red. Her voice was hoarse as she said, "Fine, I'll cook!"

It was just cooking, wasn't it? She'd cook him to death!

Her little hand squeezed the chopsticks until they creaked. Once she'd made it through this month, she'd find a way to break the seal.

Then she'd prepare a huge basin of dishwater and pinch his nose shut as she poured it down his throat.

At the thought, Lin Baiwei felt a little better. She picked up the wine jug and drained it in one long gulp.