Princess Shengping had sent many people to work on it, and it had taken them three whole years to produce glazed glass.
After that, this clear, lustrous glass began appearing throughout the capital.
But now, it had appeared ahead of schedule.
Just as she remembered, the glass shimmered beautifully beneath the sunlight.
Yet Princess Shengping was clearly dead. Rongyao had even personally burned her corpse.
So what was she now—a human or a ghost?
She was far more powerful than a ghost. When she had been one, she had never possessed such abilities. She had not even been able to touch a person.
Why had she become so powerful?
“Yaoyao, Yaoyao, what are you thinking about so intently?” Cui Huaiyin noticed that something was wrong with her daughter. She took her hand and asked with concern.
Rongyao looked up at her beautiful mother, smiled, and shook her head. “Yaoyao is fine.”
Cui Huaiyin said, “Do you like this glass? If you do, Mother can ask your second maternal uncle to find more for you.”
Rongyao lowered her head and gazed at the glass bowl. “Yaoyao is just curious. Who made this glass?”
Cui Huaiyin gave a soft laugh and led her daughter to sit on the chaise longue. “Anyone capable of making such a thing must be a remarkable person.”
Rongyao nodded. “Yes, a remarkable person. A very capable and very troublesome person.”
Cui Huaiyin had not heard her clearly. “What did Yaoyao say? What do you mean by troublesome?”
“Nothing!” Rongyao placed the glass bowl on the table, then slipped her arm through her mother’s. “Mother, ask Second Uncle to investigate who made this glass. Yaoyao wants to meet this remarkable person.”
Cui Huaiyin hesitated for a moment before looking at her daughter and nodding. “All right. Mother will write to your second uncle right away.”
Her daughter was clever. If she wanted to meet someone, she surely had her reasons. All Cui Huaiyin needed to do was care for her and keep her safe.
Besides, her daughter was a princess. Was there anyone under Heaven whom she could not meet?
Cui Huaiyin rose and went to write a letter to her second brother.
Her daughter had finally asked her to do something, so naturally she had to take care of it as quickly as possible.
After her mother left, Rongyao withdrew her gaze and looked once more at the glass bowl before her.
In her previous life, Princess Shengping had made glass only for use within the palace. She had never sold it outside.
Princess Shengping had said that the rarer something was, the more precious it became. Thus, the glass had never spread beyond the palace walls.
But now, not only had the glass been made into bowls, there were supposedly also glass plates and glass hairpins.
Was she short of money now, and that was why she had made so many different kinds of glassware to sell among the common people?
Where was she hiding?
Rongyao pressed her lips together, her brows unconsciously knitting.
No matter who she was now, Rongyao had to find her.
She would never let her harm her mother again—or anyone else she cared about.
That day, Grand Princess Fuxi left the palace once more.
This time, however, she brought only a few trusted attendants and went to a desolate mountain.
Hongyu held a hoe and exchanged a baffled look with her master, Chu Mingyi. Both of them stared at the little princess standing atop a grave.
“Princess, are we here to…?” Chu Mingyi asked softly.
Rongyao pointed at the weed-covered grave beneath her feet.
“Dig it up!”
Chu Mingyi and Hongyu fell silent.
The scene seemed strangely familiar.
Four years ago, in this very place, the princess had pointed at a freshly buried grave and ordered them to dig it up.
Now, four years later, why did the princess want to exhume a grave again?
Still, this time was different. This time, they had more experience!
Without another word, Chu Mingyi and Hongyu raised their hoes and began digging.
Who cared whose grave it was? If the princess wanted it dug up, then it certainly was not an ordinary grave. There had to be something wrong with it!
Chu Mingyi and Hongyu began digging with all their strength.
Rongyao also picked up a hoe and joined them.
She wanted to see whether Princess Shengping was truly dead or alive.
Could it be that even if only her bones remained, they could somehow grow flesh again, allowing her to crawl out of the coffin and continue living as a person?
Rongyao absolutely refused to admit that Princess Shengping was more capable as a ghost than she had been.
She could not possibly be a ghost.
Rongyao had been a ghost for ten years, and she had never once managed to touch a living person.
The three grave diggers were all much stronger than they had been four years ago.
Unfortunately, the earth was harder than before and took far more effort to break through.
While digging, Chu Mingyi even came across a snake.
It was venomous.
With a single swing of her hoe, Chu Mingyi severed the snake at the seventh vertebra. She did not forget to remove its gallbladder and wrap it in a large leaf.
When she had finished, she even took the trouble to explain to Rongyao, “Snake gall can be used in medicine. It can save lives.”
Rongyao wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Mm-hmm!”
After a long while, the coffin finally appeared.
Chu Mingyi and Hongyu pried it open.
A foul, decaying stench immediately drifted out.
Inside was nothing but earth.
“This… this is…”
“Where are the bones? We didn’t burn them to ashes back then. It’s only been four years. How could the bones have disappeared?”
Chu Mingyi was the boldest of them. She climbed into the coffin, pinched up some of the soil lining the bottom, and sniffed it.
“This… this seems to be the remains of the corpse. Only, the bones have been crushed.”
Hongyu said, “Master, didn’t you say bones could last for a thousand years?”
Chu Mingyi frowned. “That’s true. But her bones have turned to powder. I’d say someone deliberately crushed them.”
Hongyu instinctively looked toward her princess.
Rongyao shook her head. “It wasn’t me.”
“Then who could have hated her so much as to come here and crush her bones?” Hongyu asked.
Chu Mingyi climbed out of the coffin and respectfully asked Rongyao, “Princess, did you have this grave dug up because you suspected the remains were no longer here?”
Rongyao stared into the empty coffin. “You’re saying that dirt is her bones?”
Chu Mingyi replied, “Yes. They must have been deliberately crushed. Someone hated Sun Yu even more deeply than we did.”
Rongyao crouched silently beside the coffin and stared at the bone ash for a long time.
She watched for so long that Hongyu and Chu Mingyi began to worry that the princess’s legs would go numb.
“Bury it again,” the princess suddenly said.
Chu Mingyi and Hongyu exchanged a glance before working together to close the coffin.
The coffin was old, and it gave off a creaking, grinding sound as the wood rubbed against itself, as if the rotten boards might fall apart at any moment.
Once the coffin was closed, the three of them filled the grave back in with earth.
They stamped down the mound several times.
“Princess, it’s buried. Shall we return to the palace?” Hongyu asked.
Rongyao said, “Not yet. We’re going to the glass shop in the capital.”
“Yes!”
The three of them washed their hands and climbed into the carriage.
They headed toward the East Market, the busiest and most prosperous district in the capital.
The carriage stopped in front of a shop called the Glass Pavilion.
Rongyao and the others disembarked and entered the shop.
The moment they stepped inside, they saw rows of shelves displaying exquisite glassware.
The larger pieces were shaped like vases.
The smaller ones were crystal-clear cups and bowls.
An entire set of glass tea implements was displayed together.
The shop was filled with richly dressed customers.
There were men and women, old and young.
The shop even had a second floor…
Chu Mingyi and Hongyu had long accompanied the princess and seen what true wealth looked like, so they were not dazzled by the scene before them.
“Esteemed guest, would you like to choose some glassware as a gift for your elders at home?”
