The character Xie Shuishan had transmigrated into was originally named Xie Qianping.
At the time, the system had gone into great detail about the relevant characters and plot points in an attempt to dissuade Xie Shuishan from transmigrating.
Xie Shuishan had no desire to occupy someone else’s body. She had listened absentmindedly then, but she had always possessed an exceptionally sharp mind and an astonishing memory. Even while dividing her attention among several things, she could instinctively retain the crucial information.
Xie Qianping was the youngest daughter of Xie Chi of the Dongzhou Xie clan.
She and the celebrated female general of the Xie clan, Xie Qianfan, were twin sisters.
However, Xie Qianping had been frail since birth, having been weak even in the womb. By the time she was more than ten years old, she had rarely left her chambers, let alone the family estate.
The other children of the Xie clan had deliberately kept their little sister protected, so aside from the old servants of the household, very few people even knew Xie Qianping existed.
The entire Xie clan—even Xie Chi’s wife, Yuan Peichun—were all commanders who had spent their lives on horseback.
Because of her poor health, Xie Qianping could not practice martial arts, much less go to war and inherit the Xie clan’s troops and territory.
She should have remained a cherished daughter raised within the women’s quarters, then, when she came of age, been married off to some respectable family in one of the two cities of Zhongzhou that the Xie clan could easily keep under control.
Yet Xie Qianping had been born with the Xie blood in her veins. Her character was forthright and fierce, and the fire in her blood could never be extinguished.
Though she was unable to fight on the battlefield, Xie Qianping was one of the few people in the Xie clan with a keen understanding of the political situation.
She spent her days confined to her chambers, yet through the “stakes” the Xie clan had planted throughout the realm—eyes and ears scattered everywhere—she surveyed the state of the imperial court.
She examined the four provinces occupied by the six great clans across the entire Chongwen Kingdom, weighed the power each clan wielded at court, and tirelessly calculated how the fortunes of those six great clans might rise and fall over the coming years.
In the end, she discovered that after her father, Xie Chi, died, the new military governor of Dongzhou—although currently no more than a figurehead on the Xie clan’s territory, stripped of real authority—was not the only threat. The various clans had coveted the iron mines of Dongzhou, which the Xie clan had controlled for years, and had already infiltrated the region with their own people.
Even her father’s war against the Cangqi Kingdom, when investigated down to the finest detail, bore traces of the other clans’ involvement.
The Xie clan held great military power, but it was ultimately far from the emperor, beyond the reach of the imperial court. The various clans were gradually pushing it out of the center of power. If things continued this way, the Xie clan would eventually decline completely.
She could no longer stand by and watch her brothers and sisters die inexplicably on the battlefield, their remains never even recovered.
However, though Xie Qianping was exceptionally gifted, she was a woman. Chongwen had female generals who defended the kingdom, and the palace had plenty of female officials, but if she wanted genuine access to the heart of power, she could only take the path of passing the imperial examinations and entering government service.
That path was simply too difficult. The Xie clan was already showing signs of collapse, like a mountain about to come crashing down. It could not afford to wait that long.
Besides, the world was full of talented men. Even for a man, rising to a position of real power required decades of hardship and endurance.
Xie Qianping was helpless. Day after day, she could do nothing but wear away her lofty ambitions within the four high walls of the Xie estate.
Then the emperor, Zhu Huan, was assassinated.
The information sent back by the Xie clan’s agents stated that Zhu Huan’s injuries were beyond treatment and that he had become an invalid, crippled for life.
Not long afterward, another piece of news arrived from Shuojing, the imperial capital: Zhu Huan was secretly searching for people whose appearances resembled his own.
Those people were brought into the palace and trained. They would then impersonate the emperor, appearing in public on Zhu Huan’s behalf and stabilizing the situation.
This was nothing short of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enter the center of power, gather information about the various clans for her family, and muddy the waters between them.
Xie Qianping wanted to take the dangerous path and put her own life on the line. Naturally, her mother, brothers, and sisters were all opposed.
But no matter how much her family tried to protect and dissuade her, none of it could withstand Xie Qianping threatening to take her own life again and again.
In the end, utterly helpless, the Xie clan agreed to let the clan’s miracle physician alter Xie Qianping’s features. She and Zhu Huan had originally shared only three points of resemblance, but after repeated procedures to break and reshape her bones, followed by frequent corrections with needles and blades, they finally fashioned her a face seven or eight parts similar to Zhu Huan’s.
Only after a long period of recovery was she sent to the imperial capital, Shuojing, by the hands of the Xie clan, under the pretext of offering Zhu Huan a “gift of allegiance.”
Xie Shuishan remembered what the system had told her about the original course of events. After entering the palace, Xie Qianping had proceeded with extreme caution, maneuvering step by step. She had indeed passed along a great deal of useful information to the Xie clan.
Using the convenience of acting as the emperor’s puppet, Xie Qianping had uncovered the tangled web of power connecting the six great clans. She had also learned that the empress dowager and her maternal relatives, the Qian clan of Sangzhou, were concealing the momentous secret of the late emperor’s posthumous heir—and had promptly sent the information back to the Xie clan.
Although Xie Qianping herself was eventually exposed as a woman disguised as a man after falling into the water on one occasion, and was condemned to death by slicing for the crime of impersonating the emperor, her exposure dealt the tyrant Zhu Huan a fatal blow.
From that point onward, Zhu Huan could no longer hide his crippled body behind puppets. Worse still, the established convention that “one with a crippled body may not become emperor” gave the great clans a perfectly legitimate pretext to turn against him en masse.
The intelligence Xie Qianping had sent to the Xie clan also proved decisive. At the critical moment when the Xie clan overthrew the tyrant Zhu Huan and supported a new emperor’s ascension, they earned merit for helping rescue the new sovereign in time.
From then on, after years of lying low, the Xie clan returned to the center of power. Because it held overwhelming military strength and had guarded the kingdom’s borders for many years, its entire household was renowned for loyalty and sacrifice. It was also the only one of the great clans that the new emperor did not purge after taking the throne.
Xie Qianping herself had been a woman of unparalleled intelligence and courage.
After hearing Xie Qianping’s story, Xie Shuishan refused to occupy her body.
The system then claimed that it had exhausted all its energy to perfectly recreate the physical data from Xie Shuishan’s own body while she was alive.
Xie Shuishan still refused.
So the system acted first and sought permission later, sending her here anyway.
Earlier, while bathing, she had seen her reflection in the water.
The system had, in fact, kept its promise to recreate her body. The shell Xie Shuishan now inhabited was not Xie Qianping’s.
It was her own.
That was why, at this very moment, when she lifted the bed curtains and saw the face of the great antagonist, Zhu Huan, she could not help but stare blankly, despite all the mental preparation she had made.
Xie Qianping had deliberately undergone repeated bone-breaking reconstructions to make her appearance resemble Zhu Huan’s. Their similarity had therefore been inevitable.
But Xie Shuishan had never imagined that her own appearance would resemble him even more closely than either Xie Qianping or Zhu Huan.
That the two faces could be so alike as to seem born of the same womb, as though one were gazing into a mirror—even Xie Shuishan, who had seen the world, had encountered nothing like it in her life.
Two nearly identical faces stared at each other from close range, one high and one low, one looking down and the other looking up. Neither could avoid the astonishment in the other’s eyes.
The same carefully arched brows and phoenix-shaped eyes. The same high nose and thin lips.
Even the long, narrow sweep of their outer eye corners, rising ever so slightly at the ends, seemed to have been drawn according to the exact measurements of a ruler.
The sole difference was that Zhu Huan was far thinner than Xie Shuishan, and far paler as well. As a result, his features appeared sharper, while his brow bones, cheekbones, and every other bone in his body were gaunt and jagged, like perilous peaks indifferent to human feeling.
And while Xie Shuishan’s eyes held only the gentle ripples of a deep lake, after his brief astonishment, Zhu Huan narrowed his long phoenix eyes. His gaze was filled with a dark, bottomless ferocity.
Zhu Huan had never encountered anyone bold enough to charge straight to his bedside and fling open his curtains.
When he recovered from his shock, he raised his voice. Each syllable rang out like a falling pearl.
“Reckless! How dare you!”
At Zhu Huan’s furious shout, someone struck Xie Shuishan on both shoulders and just below the nape of her neck. A wave of indescribable numbness and soreness raced through her entire body. Her knees and spine gave way uncontrollably, and the ring of blades at her throat forced her to kneel before Zhu Huan’s bed.
So internal energy really did exist in this world.
Whenever Zhu Huan spoke too quickly or grew too agitated, he inevitably stumbled over his words. After shouting those three words, he pressed his lips tightly together, anger blazing in his eyes. As certain humiliating memories surfaced, he instinctively drew in a deep breath.
“Cough, cough, cough, cough—”
Zhu Huan raised a hand to cover his mouth and began coughing violently.
“Cough, cough, cough… cough, cough, cough, cough…”
Once Zhu Huan started coughing, he could not stop.
The two rows of palace maids kneeling quietly not far from the bed immediately sprang into motion like marionettes whose strings had been pulled, moving swiftly and in perfect order.
The Chief Eunuch Jiang Yi, who had been nearby, came scrambling over on all fours.
The whole group swarmed around Zhu Huan like a hive of frenzied bees around a flower. One person patted his back to ease his breathing, another brought medicine, another brought tea, while yet another pressed his pressure points. Even the black-clad, blade-wielding warrior who had been restraining Xie Shuishan kicked off his boots and leaped onto the bed, channeling invisible internal energy into Zhu Huan.
“Your Majesty… Your Majesty, please drink this medicine.”
Jiang Yi tossed aside his white jade horsetail whisk, took the medicine bowl at the perfect temperature from a maid, and knelt beside the bed. He served Zhu Huan with the anxious devotion of a filial son and grandson, carefully helping him drink the medicine.
By the time Zhu Huan’s soul-rending cough had finally been suppressed by medicine, tea, ginseng broth, and the warrior’s internal energy, the gauze curtains beside him had been completely drawn back.
The support behind his waist had been replaced, then exchanged for a wider wooden backrest, rather like a chair without legs that could be placed directly on the bed.
Supported and propped up, he sat in the wooden chair. When he looked at Xie Shuishan again, the corners of his eyes were already red, and a trace of color had returned to his pale face.
His gaze was dark and deep as he studied Xie Shuishan. His pale fingers unconsciously rubbed the dragon-head carving on the backrest, his expression thoughtful.
Clearly, Xie Shuishan’s excessive resemblance to him had also filled him with suspicion.
After finally finishing his service to Zhu Huan and washing his hands, Chief Eunuch Jiang Yi once again spoke on Zhu Huan’s behalf.
He took the horsetail whisk that an attendant had picked up for him and pointed it at Xie Shuishan, who was kneeling on the floor. “You acted recklessly and offended His Majesty. You deserve the death penalty!”
Then he turned around, bowed, and clasped his hands toward Zhu Huan. “Your Majesty, the Dongzhou Xie clan has sent such an undisciplined and insolent wretch into the palace. I fear this is no ‘tribute of allegiance,’ but an assassin! Keeping this person by Your Majesty’s side will bring endless trouble.”
Seeing that Zhu Huan merely stared at that insolent wretch without speaking, Jiang Yi understood.
He turned back once more and pointed at Xie Shuishan. “Men! Drag this person out and execute her by dismemberment!”
Her punishment had escalated from being beaten to death to being torn apart by five horses.
Jiang Yi truly was the foremost eunuch at Zhu Huan’s side. He was remarkably skilled at divining the emperor’s wishes.
His guess, however, was not entirely wrong.
What the Dongzhou Xie clan had sent Zhu Huan was indeed not a gift, but a “seed of calamity.”
Xie Qianping was not loyal to Zhu Huan, the tyrant. Her desperate gamble included plans to assassinate Zhu Huan if the need arose.
Thus, strictly speaking, Xie Shuishan, who had taken over Xie Qianping’s identity, was both a traitor and an assassin.
Hearing this, Xie Shuishan spoke up in her own defense. “Chief Eunuch Jiang, watch your words.”
She had been unable to determine the rank and identity of the man in purple earlier. But the moment Zhu Huan called him Jiang Yi, she knew he was the chief lackey at the side of the great villain Zhu Huan—the Chief Eunuch who commanded the palace eunuchs.
With a blade pressed against her throat and forced into a kneeling position, Xie Shuishan’s posture was somewhat disheveled. Yet her expression remained calm, and her tone was not particularly urgent. Instead, every word rang out clearly.
“Since I am a ‘gift’ from the entire Xie clan to His Majesty, then naturally, His Majesty himself should be the one to discipline me.”
Xie Shuishan could die, but she could not die under the accusation that the Xie clan had sent her to assassinate the emperor. Otherwise, the entire Xie clan would be doomed.
“I exist as His Majesty’s shadow. The Xie clan is far away in Dongzhou, guarding the eastern border year-round. We have no opportunity to attend court and do not even know His Majesty’s true appearance. How could we presume to discipline him?”
“On the verge of death, you still dare to quibble?” Jiang Yi sneered. “If the Xie clan were truly sincere, they would have sent someone properly trained to His Majesty’s side. There are already people beside His Majesty to teach him how to conduct himself. Who gave you the right to make your own assumptions and commit the crime of offending your sovereign?”
Xie Shuishan looked toward Zhu Huan. Just as she had brazenly thrown open the bed curtains earlier, she met Zhu Huan’s gaze without the slightest restraint.
Zhu Huan did not look away either. The two of them gazed deeply at each other, dark currents surging in both their eyes.
As Xie Shuishan carefully examined Zhu Huan, she reached a new conclusion: Zhu Huan’s eyebrows were thicker than hers.
At the same time, she split her attention and continued, “You said that there are people at His Majesty’s side to teach him… Who are they? You?”
The corner of Xie Shuishan’s lips curled into a faint smile. If her business rivals or employees were here, they would know that she was about to play her trump card.
Unfortunately, Jiang Yi knew nothing about Xie Shuishan.
Her voice turned eerily soft. “I come from Dongzhou. Perhaps the distance from the capital has left me ignorant and ill-informed. When did Chief Eunuch Jiang become an emperor? How else would you know how to teach someone to be one?”
“Or perhaps Chief Eunuch Jiang harbors an earnest ambition to ascend to the highest throne?”
The moment her words fell, the entire hall fell silent as a grave.
Jiang Yi’s mind went blank with a roar, and he dropped to his knees with a thud.
“Your Majesty…”
Jiang Yi opened and closed his mouth several times. His throat was dry and burning, and for a moment, he could find no words to defend himself.
It was true that Jiang Yi had always been the one to train the puppets. Xie Shuishan’s words were like ink splashed across a blank sheet of paper. No matter how innocent and loyal he claimed to be, he could never wash himself clean.
He did not permit anyone to offend or slight Zhu Huan. Whenever the Investigations Office’s informants reported that some court official had privately spoken ill of Zhu Huan, Jiang Yi would find an opportunity to retaliate.
But the fact that he taught Zhu Huan’s puppets how to walk among other people was itself an act of usurpation. He was merely a servant—how could he know how an emperor ought to conduct himself?
Even if those people were only puppets on strings, the strings should not have been held by him.
What was more… the puppet he controlled had only just caused trouble.
That puppet had impersonated Zhu Huan for quite some time. After becoming accustomed to being surrounded by attendants, he had developed private ambitions and grown bold enough to commit treason. He had even favored a palace consort and left behind an illegitimate child, then conspired with court officials to kill the other puppets.
He had thought that all the other puppets were dead and that Zhu Huan would not live much longer. By then, the Empress Dowager would surely refrain from moving against him for the sake of stability. He had even dreamed of taking Zhu Huan’s place.
The corpse beaten to death beneath the plum tree had yet to be cleared away!
If His Majesty truly followed this woman from the Dongzhou Xie clan’s line of thought and began to suspect him, then even if Jiang Yi cut out his liver and offered it up, it would probably only be deemed foul and reeking.
In the blink of an eye, his entire body began to tremble, sweat pouring from him like a spring.
Jiang Yi looked up at Zhu Huan. His lips opened and closed several times before he finally rasped, “Your Majesty… The sincerity of this servant’s heart can be witnessed by Heaven and Earth…”
It was truly a case of being left with nothing but one’s bitterness.
Xie Shuishan was still staring at Zhu Huan. The two stood some distance apart, their positions now reversed, yet one still looked up while the other looked down. Every detail of each other’s brows, eyes, nose, and lips was laid bare to the other’s gaze.
After a moment, the flush slowly faded from Zhu Huan’s face, and he suddenly laughed.
At first, the sound was muffled in his throat. “Heh heh heh heh…” He broke into a cough. “Cough, cough…”
But soon, pearly white teeth showed between his vividly colored lips, and he laughed with evident delight.
The gloom between his brows vanished completely, leaving his face as radiant as a spring dawn.
