A Shocking Turn!

"Oh, Lord Chen, you're up early!"

Wang Ye stepped out of the courtyard and spotted Chen Qing doing his morning exercises. He glanced at the still-dark sky and praised him with a smile.

"Lamplight at three, roosters at five..." Chen Qing wiped away his sweat and smiled. "I haven't assumed my post yet, and I haven't broken my study habits. I hope you won't laugh at me, my lord."

"Not at all. We've all been through it." Wang Ye smiled warmly, clearly recalling his own years of diligent study.

"Those exercises you were doing were rather interesting, Lord Chen. Do they have a name?"

"The Ninth Set of Broadcast Calisthenics. A Daoist who passed through my village taught them to me. He said they would strengthen the body."

"Oh? The ninth set? They do look rather interesting..." Wang Ye rubbed his chin, committing every movement he had observed to memory. Then he added, "You haven't had breakfast yet, have you? Come eat with me..."

"Then I'd be glad to accept..." Chen Qing was hungry after exercising, so he didn't refuse. When they reached the front courtyard for their meal, he saw that Wang Ye was still alone and asked in surprise, "Is the commander not at the residence?"

He remembered Wang Ye saying the day before that they would leave for the capital that morning, escorted along the way by Commander Yuchi Peng.

Wang Ye ate his breakfast and said casually, "The commander likes raw meat. Eating with him might spoil our appetites."

"Huh?" Chen Qing froze, stunned. "The... the commander has... has that habit?"

Wang Ye looked up at him. Judging by his expression, the fellow really seemed to know nothing. Had Wang Ye truly been overthinking it?

"Eat up. We'll be leaving soon."

Chen Qing nodded cautiously and hurriedly ate the meat porridge in his bowl faster.

His expression was utterly natural; even Wang Ye couldn't find the slightest flaw. That was all thanks to the naturalistic acting skills Chen Qing had developed while pretending to be a child from a young age!

Still, his thoughts had turned somewhat gloomy. Most people with bloodlines retained some of the beastly nature of their original bloodlines, and those who liked raw meat generally had more dangerous bloodlines. A moment's carelessness could cost them their humanity and turn them into demons.

He didn't much like having that sort of person protect him.

After breakfast, they drank light tea. About a quarter of an hour later, a tall figure emerged from the inner hall. It was Yuchi Peng.

Chen Qing hurriedly rose and bowed, carefully studying him. He hadn't seen him clearly in the study the previous night, but now he could make him out: Yuchi Peng stood at least two meters tall and had an exceptionally robust build, yet his face resembled that of a fair-skinned young scholar. The combination looked peculiar, as though two people had been put together.

"There's no need for ceremony, Lord Chen." Yuchi Peng returned a scholar's salute. His voice was so gentle that he sounded nothing like a martial man, leaving Chen Qing startled once again.

The strange combination reminded him of Nezha from One Hundred Thousand Bad Jokes...

Wait, Nezha?

Chen Qing's heart skipped a beat, but Yuchi Peng had already led them to the entrance. "The carriage is ready. If you have no other instructions, Lord Wang, shall we set off?"

Wang Ye glanced at the sky and nodded. "All right."

They climbed into the carriage, and as on the journey there, Chen Qing and Wang Ye sat facing each other. The difference was that the person driving outside was no longer a royal guard, but the armored commander himself.

"What's wrong, Lord Chen?" Wang Ye looked at him in surprise. He had noticed that Chen Qing's complexion had plainly worsened after they boarded. Had the porridge upset his stomach?

"Lord Wang... where are the guards you brought from the capital?" Chen Qing composed himself as he spoke.

"Have you forgotten, Lord Chen?" Wang Ye said with amusement. "To keep you here to help me, I sent my guards to protect your family on their way to their provincial posts."

"So His Majesty gave you only those two guards?"

Wang Ye rolled his eyes. "They're royal guards. How many did you want?"

"Then you must be very capable, Lord Wang. His Majesty trusted you enough to send a frail scholar with just two or three guards to investigate such a dangerous case."

"Are you probing me, Lord Chen?" Wang Ye smiled. "What do you want to know?"

Chen Qing drew a breath and looked at him seriously. "I want to know how capable you are!"

Seeing how serious he was, Wang Ye paused, then said, "Are you afraid, Lord Chen? Don't worry. Lord Yuchi Peng is very reliable."

Seeing that Chen Qing still looked uneasy, Wang Ye smiled and explained, "You really don't need to worry. You don't know how things work here. Lord Yuchi Peng was born into the Golden Peng Yuchi Household. In every generation, the Yuchi Household's young patriarch takes the name Peng. Whoever inherits that name is the strongest person in the household. Don't be fooled by Lord Yuchi's youth; there aren't many under heaven who can match him!"

Chen Qing drew a deep breath and slowly closed his eyes.

Of course he knew of the Yuchi Household. Among the eight hundred bloodline families, the Yuchi Household's Heavenly Peng Bloodline made it a superior bloodline family. Every generation's patriarch became one of the Heavenly Capital's pillar-of-state generals.

But...

"So Lord Yuchi Peng is the one you're relying on, Lord Wang?"

"Isn't he enough?" Wang Ye asked with amusement.

Chen Qing sighed inwardly, slowly reached out and took Wang Ye's hand, then used his other hand to write what he wanted to say on Wang Ye's palm.

Wang Ye was puzzled at first, but the next second, his expression changed dramatically!

For he had felt the words Chen Qing wrote, and their message was horrifying!

"Yuchi Peng... is an impostor!!!"

"Have they set out?"

In Master Huang's study, a figure even taller than Yuchi Peng stood across the desk. Clad in heavy armor and wearing a bronze mask fashioned after an evil spirit, he gave off an icy aura, truly resembling a ghost general who had walked out of the underworld.

Master Huang was even stranger. There were no writing brushes, ink, paper or inkstone on his desk. Instead, scattered across it were puppet parts: arms, thighs and a head.

Any student present would have been terrified, for the puppet's head was none other than Madam Huang, who was usually so harsh with people!

"They left near the end of the third watch. At the ghost horse's speed, they should be nearly outside the city by now."

"Are you confident?" Master Huang looked up. "He is Liu Yu's final disciple."

"With Ghost Child acting personally, and Mister Miao as well, nothing can go wrong!" The masked man's voice was cold and deep, without the slightest trace of emotion.

Master Huang nodded, stroking the puppet's face lovingly. A trace of realization appeared in his eyes, but his voice remained calm. "A Li reacted quickly enough this time and handled it very well. We can't afford the slightest mistake on our end. Fooling that old thing Liu Yu is no easy task!"

"Your craftsmanship, sir... will never be discovered!"

Master Huang sighed and gently stroked the puppet's face, his eyes full of reluctance. But the next second, his hands began to move with incredible speed. Had Chen Qing been there, he probably wouldn't even have been able to catch a glimpse of them.

In the space of a few breaths, the puppet's face changed from Madam Huang's into Wang Ye's!

How is that possible?

Inside the carriage, Wang Ye, normally so composed, went pale at the warning Chen Qing wrote with his fingertip. Fortunately, he had weathered countless storms and calmed down in an instant.

He caught Chen Qing's hand in turn and wrote, "Have you met Lord Yuchi before?"

"No..." Chen Qing wrote back. "But I know he isn't Yuchi Peng!"

"What proof do you have?"

"None... but you have to believe me, my lord, or we'll die!"

"Absurd!!"

Wang Ye's face turned ashen, but he ultimately kept himself from shouting. Instead, he wrote his rebuttal on Chen Qing's palm: "I've known Yuchi Peng for years, and you say he's an impostor? Are you suggesting my memories have been thrown into disorder?"

"Perhaps your memories really have been thrown into disorder, my lord?" At this critical moment, Chen Qing could no longer afford to hide his abilities. He wrote, "Have you considered that you may have already met the Thousand-Faced Fox in the royal city?"

"So you know about the Thousand-Faced Fox!" Wang Ye's expression steadied, and he wrote back with a cold sneer, "You really aren't an ordinary scholar!"

"My lord, now isn't the time to dwell on that..."

Wang Ye's sneer didn't fade. "Spreading lies to mislead people. You say I've already met the Thousand-Faced Fox. Where? At the pleasure houses where you palace examination graduates were drinking? Or was it a palace maid I met when I entered the palace to report? Don't tell me that monster only had to exchange a glance with me on the street to disrupt my memory?"

Chen Qing shook his head and continued writing. "The Thousand-Faced Fox can read memories, but influencing someone's mind requires guidance. You're no ordinary person, my lord. To alter your memories, it would need a familiar face, a familiar setting, and preferably a familiar pretext to alter the relevant memories."

"What do you mean?" Wang Ye frowned deeply, but continued to write on Chen Qing's palm.

"A setting where you would let down your guard, and someone whose presence would bring your memories of Yuchi Peng to mind without arousing suspicion. Only then could your memories of him be altered without leaving a trace. Think carefully, my lord. Was there such a place?"

Wang Ye sneered and continued writing. "Then give me a hint. What sort of place could achieve what you're describing?"

"Before you left the capital... did you visit the Yuchi Residence?"

Wang Ye's pupils contracted, but he continued to sneer. "Are you trying to say that the fox demon was inside the Yuchi Residence?"

"Only that... would make sense!"

"Utter nonsense!" Wang Ye's patience was nearly exhausted. He sneered outright. "Who exactly are you?"

Chen Qing sighed, pointed out the window, then continued writing. "If you don't believe me, my lord, why not look outside?"

Wang Ye frowned and moved a finger slightly, causing the carriage curtain to lift just enough to form a small gap. It was narrow, but Wang Ye's sharp eyesight allowed him to see outside clearly. And precisely because he could see clearly, a chill surged through him!

Outside the window... lay a stretch of desolate wilderness. They were clearly already far from the city, yet they had been in the carriage for less than half a quarter of an hour. How could they already be outside the city? Normally, getting out of Liuzhou City in an hour would have been considered fast...

There was something wrong with the carriage... and probably with the person driving it too...

Wang Ye drew a deep breath, icy from head to toe. He looked at Chen Qing again and saw that he was still calm. Taking his hand once more, Wang Ye wrote, "When did you notice something was wrong with Yuchi Peng?"

"Before we got in..."

"Why didn't you say so then?"

"I couldn't. He was too close to me..."

Wang Ye fell silent for a few seconds, then wrote, "The Yuchi Residence may not have many descendants, but there are still powerful people guarding it. How could a fox demon get inside?"

Chen Qing took his hand and wrote two words: "Female relatives"!

Female relatives?

Wang Ye frowned in thought. In bloodline families, the women who married into the household were all ordinary people, and there were opportunities to strike at them. After all, many noblewomen had a habit of going out to temples to worship and pray. He also remembered that the days around Cui Yan's death had been busy ones at the Buddhist temples.

"But I didn't meet any of the Yuchi Household's female relatives before leaving the capital!" Wang Ye wrote back. "According to you, the demon would have had to meet me face-to-face to disrupt my memories, wouldn't it?"

"Are you sure you didn't meet any, my lord?" Chen Qing wrote in reply. "You'd better think again!"

Wang Ye was about to write that he hadn't, but something occurred to him. Yes... there actually had been one!

The grand matriarch of the Yuchi Residence, an elder of the household who was already over ninety!

Yes, he remembered now. He had needed Yuchi Peng's help, so he had gone to the Yuchi Residence to visit the Yuchi Household's former patriarch, Master Yuchi Jiawu, who had relinquished the name Yuchi Peng.

But Master Yuchi happened to be away, and it was the oldest elder of the Yuchi Residence, Grand Matriarch Yuchi, who received him...

The grand matriarch had not received outsiders for years, which had surprised him at the time. She had been quite warm, repeatedly asking how he and Yuchi Peng had come to know each other.

Because she was an elder, he had assumed she wanted to know more about her favorite grandson's friendships, so he had concealed nothing. Now that he thought about it...

Wang Ye couldn't help shuddering. He still found it unbelievable and could hardly accept that the grand matriarch of the Yuchi Residence itself had been replaced by the Thousand-Faced Fox. But the more carefully he thought about it, the more possible it seemed!

The grand matriarch's identity was the least likely to arouse suspicion, and she was also the person most entitled to avoid the younger generation. If she said she felt unwell, who in the Yuchi Household would question it?

People might grow suspicious over a long period, but in the short term, it was the identity least likely to be exposed!

"Lord Wang!"

Just as Wang Ye wavered between shock and doubt, the carriage stopped!!

A strange, mocking laugh came from outside the carriage. "Since you've already realized something is wrong, why pretend otherwise? How about stepping out for a chat?"

"You were right!" Wang Ye looked at Chen Qing, whose face was pale even as he feigned composure.

"My lord, is there a way for us to escape?" Chen Qing asked the question that concerned him most.

Wang Ye looked steadily at him, at this young man who had been able to roughly determine the Thousand-Faced Fox's location from a thousand li away, and made a decision!