Xuexiang carefully adjusted the finely made Taoist robe she wore, rolling up the sleeves that covered her hands.
She raised her hand and took a soft sniff. The robe carried a warm, fragrant scent, the same one that lingered on the Princess Consort, and for a moment, she had the urge to bury her face in it.
Though Great Wei was a realm where the Three Teachings coexisted, since the Head of the Celestial Fate Dao, Master Xu Fu, served as Grand Preceptor, and the Yong'an Emperor styled himself as his disciple, the atmosphere in Huangtian City naturally leaned toward Daoist reverence.
Nobles and officials, eager to flatter the Emperor, often held lectures on Daoist scriptures, and wearing Taoist robes had become the height of fashion.
This particular robe had been tailored when the Princess Consort first took up the trend. She had worn it only a few times before growing bored of it, now it was passed down as a reward to Xuexiang.
Xuexiang was only fifteen. Slender and delicate, she lacked the tall, elegant bearing of Ning Caiyong.
On her small frame, the broad Taoist robe looked both coolly graceful and vulnerably soft, giving her the air of a child lost in adult clothes.
With the small dot of rouge between her brows, her skin, pale as freshly fallen snow, appeared even whiter.
She looked heartbreakingly lovely.
The girl stood nervously in front of the east wing's door, bit her lower lip, and gently pushed it open.
By now it was dusk, and with the curtains drawn, the room was nearly dark.
She didn't dare look toward the bed, walking quietly to the side to light a lantern.
As she lowered her head, she saw a few of Gu Fangchen's garments scattered across the floor, and her face instantly turned scarlet.
Fighting her shyness, Xuexiang crouched down, picked up the clothes, folded them neatly, and placed them on the rack beside the bed.
From the day these maids entered the Prince's mansion, they were personally selected by the Princess Consort, each fully aware that such a day would eventually come.
The Northern Garrison Prince's Heir was infamous across Huangtian City for his wanton ways.
To outsiders, entering his service was like stepping into a pit of fire. But to girls like Xuexiang, born into poverty, this was her one chance at survival.
If she could become the Heir's personal companion, her grandmother's illness could be treated, and her elder brother would no longer have to sell his life in the army.
Xuexiang clenched her fists, steeling her courage, and approached the bed. Kneeling on the thick carpet before the footrest, she curiously studied the young man before her.
Though she had served in the mansion for some time, whenever nobles passed, she had to lower her head, she had never actually seen what the Heir looked like.
By the lantern's light, she saw that the sleeping Heir was nothing like the fat, brutish image she had imagined.
His features were elegant, his nose straight, his skin pale from a life of luxury, and even his eyelashes seemed longer than hers.
He was... beautiful.
The girl leaned on the bedside, blinking, her heart pounding so fast she thought it might burst. Even her earlobes turned red.
Strictly speaking, she had already seen him once earlier that day, in the hall, when he had complimented her looks.
But strangely, Xuexiang couldn't remember what had happened exactly.
She recalled feeling lightheaded, as though in a trance, speaking a few words with the Heir, but what she had said or done afterward was a complete blank.
By the time she came back to her senses, the Grand Preceptor had already sent gifts of gold to the Heir, and not long after, the meeting had ended in discord.
As servants, they had been dismissed before any of it unfolded.
Afterward, Madam Cui, the Princess Consort's stewardess, came to fetch her, assigning her to serve in the Princess Consort's own courtyard.
Xuexiang had assumed she'd simply been too nervous earlier and hadn't thought much of it.
"All I need to do now is serve properly," she told herself.
She took a deep breath and looked at the sleeping Heir, feeling suddenly uncertain.
"But... how exactly should I... do that?"
She blinked.
She had studied the "Fire-Avoidance Diagrams", she wasn't entirely naive.
But the Heir was still asleep; she couldn't just wake him. Was she supposed to wait like this?
Little Xuexiang fell into deep thought.
She leaned forward, hesitantly reaching out to tug down the Heir's blanket.
But just as she moved, Gu Fangchen suddenly woke. He sat up sharply, eyes cold, and seized her wrist in one motion.
"Ah!"
Xuexiang gasped in surprise, losing her balance and tumbling forward, straight onto Gu Fangchen's chest.
...
"To turn falsehood into truth... that such an Art of Causality and Fate could exist in this world..."
A breathtakingly beautiful Taoist woman with a red mole between her brows sat before a shimmering water-sky star map, her expression grave.
In the reflection of the water and starlight before her, countless shining stars suddenly went dark, and the turbulent currents stilled once more.
Unlike Gu Youren, Xu Fu had long since calculated Gu Fangchen's karmic fate.
She knew well that on his original karmic thread, he was not of Gu Yuye's bloodline.
In other words, the causal thread declaring him as the Northern Garrison Prince's Heir had been artificially fabricated.
But during Gu Youren's examination, that thread had suddenly become real.
For the Gu family, ignorant of such mysteries, the event had merely been shocking.
For Xu Fu, who understood what it meant, it was utterly earth-shattering.
After verifying it again and again for several hours, she could still only reach the same conclusion:
the thread was real.
Even more terrifyingly, she could not calculate anything about Gu Fangchen's future, or his influence on those around him.
But that was impossible.
Causality in the world was a vast web of interwoven threads. To pluck one was to move the whole, how could such a change occur instantly?
In her understanding, not even the greatest practitioner of the Art of Causality and Fate could accomplish this.
This felt more like... a rewriting of the very laws themselves.
For Xu Fu, a master of the Celestial Fate Dao, this revelation was an unprecedented shock.
"This Gu Fangchen... is without doubt a true ancient monster."
Her expression grew heavy.
If someone with such heaven-defying power turned to evil, it would spell ruin for all of Great Wei.
Even if this was merely a "trick" as the man himself claimed, the fact that it could deceive practitioners like her was already gravely dangerous.
Still, for the moment, the man seemed aligned with their side, he had even spoken of seeking "Peace under Heaven."
"I must make further contact... and determine his nature for myself."
Xu Fu closed her eyes, mind weighed with calculation, and subconsciously possessed the same body she had used before.
...
Gu Fangchen, face darkened, looked down at the small maid before him, just about to speak, when a cold fragrance reached his nose.
"?"
His eyelids twitched. He looked up into a pair of icy, sharp eyes.
Xu Fu turned her head slightly, seeing that Gu Fangchen was gripping her wrist tightly, while her other hand braced against his chest.
The two were sitting on the bed.
And she, wearing a Taoist robe far too large for her borrowed body, had the delicate, youthful face of a girl with a red mark between her brows, reflected clearly in the young man's pupils.
Gu Fangchen twitched at the corner of his mouth, drew in a deep breath, and said very seriously,
"This is... actually an accident."
He meant: it was an accident that the body she possessed had dressed in a Taoist robe, an accident that she'd been marked with a red dot, and an accident that she'd ended up on his bed.
Who would believe that?
Xu Fu narrowed her eyes, expression blank, and said with an icy smile,
"Playing quite the game, aren't you?"
Gu Fangchen: "..."
Was there still any saving this situation? Asking online, urgent!