Todesanzeige 2 Schicksal

Kapitel 24

"What? Give way to that retainer? Absurd, utterly absurd! He's making a fool of himself!"

Empress Fu finally lost her temper. She slammed her jade-like hand on the mahogany table, stood up abruptly, and her face flushed with anger.

"Your Majesty, please calm down. After the ministers strongly persuaded him, His Majesty had no choice but to give up."

Empress Fu felt somewhat relieved after hearing her maid's explanation and slowly sat down. However, the Emperor's actions ultimately disrespected her as the Empress, and she couldn't swallow her anger. She thought resentfully to herself:

"One day, I'll make you pay."

"Your Majesty, who is so bold as to tear your dragon sleeve?"

When Empress Fu saw that a section of the sleeve of Emperor Ai's dragon robe had been torn off, she asked in surprise, wondering who would be so bold.

"It was Lian himself who cut it off with his sword; it has nothing to do with anyone else!"

Liu Xin looked away and said calmly.

"What on earth happened that made His Majesty cut off a piece of his sleeve with his sword?"

Empress Fu stared intently at Emperor Ai of Han, relentlessly pressing him for answers.

"It's nothing serious. I had to get up early to handle court affairs, and when I got up, my sleeve was caught under my head by Consort Dong. Consort Dong was still fast asleep, and I couldn't bear to wake her, so I cut off my sleeve with my sword so that Consort Dong could continue to rest well."

As soon as Emperor Ai of Han finished speaking, Empress Fu felt a sudden pain that instantly spread throughout her body and mind.

To think that a sovereign of the nation would not love his queen, who possesses unparalleled beauty, and his harem of three thousand beauties is one thing. Even if he loved only one male favorite, I would have tolerated it. But now, for his sake, he has done something so improper, so disgraceful to royal etiquette and dignity! It is utterly outrageous! If word gets out, wouldn't he become a laughingstock to the world?

Thinking of this, and seeing Emperor Ai of Han acting as if nothing had happened and without any shame, Empress Fu felt as if she had been pierced by a thousand arrows.

A cold, eerie wind blew by, and everyone fell silent as the story progressed.

Chen Qing had stopped crying, and Luo Min, held tightly in Chen Qing's arms, was unable to move. For a moment, thinking about the story the man had told, she also fell silent. Zheng Qi and Mo Han stood quietly, pondering the meaning of the story the man had told.

They knew that the figures in the historically famous story of "cut sleeves" were the same people in the story the man was telling.

After a long pause, Zheng Qi suddenly said:

"You are the daughter of Fu Yan, Marquis of Kongxiang, and the niece of Empress Dowager Fu, the grandmother of Emperor Ai of Han, namely Empress Fu, the wife of Emperor Ai of Han?"

The man was taken aback, then burst into laughter:

"Haha... Clever, you really are a clever person! But that was my past life. As for who I am in this life, I think you all know by now!"

The man looked at Zheng Qi and Mo Han with a sinister smile.

Luo Min wanted to say something, but after seeing the man's sinister gaze, she pursed her lips and remained silent.

"If I'm not mistaken, then you are Chen Gang, the son of my master, Master Yuqing, a close friend!"

Mo Han looked at the man with a cold smile and said leisurely.

Zheng Qi looked at Mo Han in surprise, wondering to himself, "How did Senior Brother know?"

Mo Han seemed to see through Zheng Qi's thoughts and explained:

"That day, when we couldn't summon Meng Ping's soul, I thought of a question. If the reason we couldn't summon Meng Ping's soul was because it was controlled by a vengeful spirit, then how could we summon Chen Gang, whose soul was also controlled by a vengeful spirit? If we really had to explain it, then there was only one answer: Meng Ping's soul was indeed controlled by that vengeful spirit and couldn't come, while Chen Gang's soul wasn't controlled by the vengeful spirit at all. In other words, either Chen Gang didn't die from vengeance, or Chen Gang himself was the vengeful spirit controlling other souls! But according to Chen Gang's soul, he was killed by the invisible monster, so there's only one explanation left: Chen Gang is the vengeful spirit itself!"

"Haha... You're really clever. I underestimated you two stinky Taoist priests from Maoshan!"

"Hehe, wrong! Neither of us plans to be Taoist priests for life. We want to get married and have children! Hehe, to carry forward the Taoist arts of our Maoshan School!"

Mo Han said jokingly, and Zheng Qi, standing to the side, felt a bead of sweat roll down his forehead, thinking to himself,

"He can still joke around in this situation, he truly deserves to be my senior brother, I admire him!"

"Why did you kill Wang Hai and Meng Ping?" Zheng Qi asked.

"Don't you all feel that her personality is completely different from before?"

Chen Gang pointed at Luo Mindao, seemingly giving an irrelevant answer.

Zheng Qi and Mo Han nodded without saying a word.

Suddenly, Chen Gang gently raised his hand, and a ghostly figure gradually approached from afar, transforming from transparent to solid and slowly floating in front of them.

When Zheng Qi and Mo Han looked, they realized it was Director Wang.

"Emperor Ai of Han died suddenly at the age of 26. Dong Xian committed suicide for him. After his death, his wife, Lady Dong, a woman as miserable as I am, peeled off Dong Xian's face."

Chen Gang paused here.

"Originally, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Dong Xian's face. But who knew that loneliness and sorrow would follow me? In the end, I decided to go with Dong Lang! Empress Fu knew that I possessed Dong Xian's face. When Wang Mang suspected Dong Xian's sudden death and opened the coffin to examine the body, mentioning why Dong Xian's face was so horrifying, Empress Fu had defended me regarding the face. So after I decided to leave, I entrusted the face to Empress Fu for her to dispose of. But who would have thought..."

Director Wang continued the conversation, glancing at Chen Gang with a resentful look.

Zheng Qi suddenly understood. No wonder Director Wang's eyes flashed with a hint of pain, a hint of affection, and even a deep-seated resentment and infatuation the moment the man's face was destroyed. It turned out that the destroyed face belonged to his once most beloved husband!

"Hmph, considering the hatred of that brat Dong Xian stealing my husband and the pain of destroying my family, how could I let him go? After Liu Xin died, I was soon banished to the cold palace, and unexpectedly, I was demoted to a commoner a few days later. Thinking that all this pain and hatred was caused by Dong Xian, how could I not take revenge? That day when I defended Dong's face, I had other plans. Unexpectedly, heaven helped me. After Dong's death, I obtained Dong Xian's human face and had someone make an ancient wooden box. I carved spirit-controlling talismans around the box. I want to firmly control his soul and make him obey me forever in life and death!"

Chen Gang glared at Luo Min and continued,

"I deliberately made Luo Min's soul appear aloof and eccentric, so that when she was later wrongly accused of being a monster, she would have even less of a reason to explain herself. Although I am a vengeful spirit that needs to reside in other people's bodies, I was born from the resentment that condensed from my own suicide. After that, I kept killing people out of resentment, and soon my magic power made me able to separate from the human body and form an independent monster body."

"Why can you be reincarnated?"

Zheng Qi asked curiously. Generally, vengeful spirits also tightly lock their own souls within themselves so that they can firmly control the souls of those who die with resentment. Therefore, without the three souls and seven spirits, one cannot be reincarnated!

"Hmph, what do you know? There will be a price to pay!"

Chen Gang sighed and said,

"Actually, I locked my soul within a vengeful spirit to control the souls of other people who died with resentment. I could send my primordial spirit to reincarnate in the mortal realm, but without the combined power of the three souls and seven spirits, it's useless. Each time I'm reincarnated, I live like a living dead; you can't imagine the pain. When I reach my third birth year, that is, at the age of 25, on the very day I was born, I must die, and my primordial spirit must undergo another reincarnation. Two thousand years have passed, and I've lived like this for two thousand years! Haha…"

Chen Gang laughed bitterly.

Zheng Qi and Mo Han were immediately relieved. This explained why the locations of Chen Gang's death and Wang Hai and Shi Feng's deaths were different. It seemed that after he died, Meng Ping and the others had just finished eating and entered the newspaper office, so Chen Gang didn't have time to move his body to the trash can at the entrance of Lion Alley in time. Therefore, although the locations were different, the manner of death was the same.

"You still haven't explained why you killed Wang Hai and the others, including Meng Ping?" Mo Han asked.

"My purpose in killing Wang Hai and the others was entirely to make Dong Xian (i.e., Luo Min) suffer the same misery, unease, and desolation I had endured. Before killing Wang Hai, I deliberately let him see me hiding half of my body inside Luo Min's body, with the other half floating above her head, creating the illusion that Luo Min was a monster. This allowed me to pin his death on Luo Min. As for killing Shi Feng, that was something Sister Zheng thought of after seeing me, which made her suspect that Shi Feng's death was also caused by a vengeful spirit, and that vengeful spirit was Luo Min in disguise. Meng Ping's death was actually caused by me possessing Chen Qing's body to frame her. Although I once deeply loved her, I wanted her to die along with Luo Min!"

"Chen Qing is—"

Zheng Qi had already figured out who Chen Qing was.

"Yes, Chen Qing is a descendant of Emperor Ai of Han, Luo Min is a descendant of Dong Xian, and I am Empress Fu, the wife of Emperor Ai of Han!"