Chapter 21 Facing the Past
The Women’s Examination proceeded as planned.
The princess invited the greatest scholars of the age to set the policy questions. The test lasted three full days.
When I finally emerged from the examination grounds, the first person I saw waiting anxiously in the crowd was Mother.
She smoothed my disheveled hair. “How do you feel?”
“Good. And you?”
“Perhaps even better than you.”
She had taken the examination too.
The chains that had bound me were gone. She had decided to live for herself at last.
Years of preparation—for this moment.
We smiled at each other.
Then an unwelcome voice broke in. “Mother--Mother? You--you're not dead?”
Xie Yunting followed, stunned. “Mother? It really is Mother.”
“What is going on?”
I stopped walking. Only then did I notice Xie Chengzong and Xie Yunting standing beside Shen Wanrong, staring at us in disbelief.
They had come to fetch her—and walked right into this.
My palms grew slick with nervous sweat.
Was that cursed plot still not willing to let us go?
Mother noticed my tension and gently squeezed my hand.
Then she turned, a mocking smile on her lips. “Bai Zixuan? Now that’s a familiar name.”
“Oh, right. Didn’t the Marquis of Zhongyong’s Bai Zixuan die? Every notable family in the capital paid respects at her spirit tablet.”
Xie Chengzong had started forward to demand answers, but her words stopped him cold.
Her funeral had been hasty. No body had been found, yet the household declared her dead.
Now Bai Zixuan had a tablet in the ancestral hall. Were they truly prepared to drag her back and reinstall her as the official wife?
Moreover…
Their eyes all flicked to Shen Wanrong.
If Bai Zixuan lived, how could they ever bring their treasured girl into the light?
The three of them exchanged glances. Whatever they’d been about to say died in their throats.
I felt a wave of nausea.
I could tell she saw right through them. She clicked her tongue and looked Xie Chengzong and Xie Yunting up and down.
Then she gave Shen Wanrong, shielded behind them, a deliberately malicious glance before speaking.
“Are you three perhaps bewitched?”
“If you’re ill, I could ask the princess to summon imperial physicians for you.”
Xie Yunting’s eyes bulged. “You—you know Yaohua—you’re clearly…”
“Silence,” Xie Chengzong hissed. “Your mother is dead.”
He seemed to realize something, grinding out through clenched teeth, “The world is vast and full of wonders. Resemblances are common. Forgive my poor eyesight—I mistook her.”
Xie Yunting opened his mouth again, but the princess’s guards closed in. “Advisor Feng, is something wrong?”
Mother raised a brow. “Nothing. Just a few dogs barking. Startled me for a moment.”
The three across from us snapped their heads up. “Advisor Feng—you’re the Advisor Feng?”