The mont the words were out, Qingqing stared in stunned silence, and the young won seated at the table lost all movent and expression, becoming as still as clay figures.
"Husband... how did you figure that out?"
"Did you think I was actually playing a ga with them?"
Li Qiuchen smiled. "The main purpose of this ga was never to extract information from them. So whether the rules had loopholes, whether everyone told the truth, none of that mattered."
"From the very beginning I really only had three questions."
"First, who are you really, Qingqing."
"Second, why the five of you would swap identities."
"Third, what secret is actually hidden in Five Lotus Manor."
"So I sent you away to boil water, then had a deeper conversation with the other young ladies, and arrived at the following conclusion."
"First, all of you share the sa brain."
Either you had a private ssage group among yourselves, or... the only inference I could draw was that these five people were actually one person.
"That's not right!"
Qingqing imdiately beca unhappy when she heard this. "What gives you the right to say we share a brain? How did you see that?"
"The information gap."
Li Qiuchen explained. "From the very first exchange between us, when you asked whether I had money and none of them showed the slightest interest, I found it strange, and from there I guessed that so form of information-sharing must exist among you."
"Then during the ga that followed, even though each young lady was doing her best to maintain her role, I kept feeling a subtle wrongness."
"To put it plainly, the character boundaries were blurring."
"Hongluan was so eager to play the Mistress that even after I exposed her true identity, she kept trying to claim lines that belonged to Yilan."
"So I began to wonder whether there was actually one person holding five different scripts trying to fool ."
"This was conjecture without any evidence, but it happened to explain one thing that puzzled , which was why you would swap identities in the first place."
"The concern was precisely that this sort of problem might arise. If I noticed sothing off, you could use the identity-swapping explanation to cover it over."
"But there were two flaws in this."
"First, you never wrote any dialogue for little Ying. She was entirely decorative."
"I understand the logic. She's young, so having nothing to say in a situation like this is perfectly natural. A young girl only needs to be adorable. What if soone happened to have that preference?"
"If things had proceeded according to the rhythm you'd planned, I would probably have guessed she was the scholarly young lady, and you were the manor master's younger sister. After all, from any angle, you don't look like soone raised in a scholarly household."
"What kind of scholarly young lady has her entire existence revolving around money?"
Qingqing flared up. "We're having a conversation here. Can you not make it personal?"
Li Qiuchen spread his hands. "You see, I'm honest with you and now you're upset."
"Obviously! Won like to hear the truth, but not that kind of truth!"
Qingqing puffed out her cheeks and said irritably, "Fine, say you got it all right. What of it? Based on those guesses and inferences, you're just going to declare I'm a little lotus spirit? That has absolutely no logic to it."
"You want
to tell the truth?"
"Of course I want the truth, but not that much truth!"
Difficult to raise, whether won or petty people...
Wanting it both ways, perfectly mastered.
Li Qiuchen sighed. "I noticed the problem with little Ying's na from early on. Do we really need to keep talking through all of this?"
"Keep talking!"
Qingqing gave a cold snort. "I want to hear how you traced everything back to little Ying."
Li Qiuchen started counting on his fingers.
"Qingqing, Zisu, Yilan, Hongluan... all four of your nas contain a color. And Five Lotus Manor is connected to lotus flowers. Little Ying is the only one whose na contains no color."
"And her identity is particularly special. She's the manor master's younger sister, which ans her surna is the manor master's surna. That is precisely the piece of information you deliberately left out of the story you told , specifically the identity of Five Lotus Manor's master."
"Sotis the absence of information is itself information."
"I'm not especially interested in the manor master's surna. But since you deliberately concealed it, that tells
the story you told
has problems, and may have been false from beginning to end."
"Was it really just three random strangers that cultivator abducted to make up the numbers?"
"With the mistress of the house present, Hongluan was still casually referring to them all as my sisters. Is there not a possibility that all five of you originally had a close personal connection to the manor master, sothing like intimate companions or loved ones?"
Qingqing clicked her tongue. "Husband, how exactly does that brain of yours work, that you can connect all of this together?"
"I haven't finished yet."
Li Qiuchen smiled. "The story you told
has one more person hiding inside it."
"Is it Miss Mucheng, the one who didn't appear tonight?"
"No."
"Then it can't be the little lotus spirit you ntioned?"
"No, not that either."
Li Qiuchen smiled. "Your first way of addressing the Mistress was young mistress."
Qingqing's eyes went wide.
"How could the manor master's wife be addressed as young mistress? That only makes sense if, when she ca to this house as a bride, the master was still just a young master."
"Which ans there's a Master hidden in here."
"By the ti I ca to et everyone, no one questioned the use of the title Mistress. Which ans the Master is already dead."
"A master dying is unremarkable enough. But there is another dead person in this story, which is the villain Zisu ntioned, the one you called a cultivator."
"Could the Master and that cultivator be the sa person?"
There is no need to multiply entities beyond necessity.
Li Qiuchen felt that in an illusory realm this generously constructed, there was really no reason to introduce so many inconvenient dead n.
"So in my view, the true story should go sothing like this."
"The young master grood for years by the old manor master died outside from his own dissolute behavior, leaving behind a number of won with claims on him. The old master, wanting to revive his son and also wanting to prevent these won from bringing sha on the family na, lured them all into the manor and killed them, using a dark technique to cultivate lotus flowers."
"But he ultimately failed. A hundred years later the lotus flowers finally blood in full, but by that ti not a single living person remained in the manor. The lotus spirit, unbearably lonely, conjured the forms of those won to keep her company, and along the way amused herself by playing tricks on the occasional innocent traveler who wandered in by mistake."
"So of the specific details may be open to debate, but I think the broad direction is correct. Is that right, wife?"
Qingqing was silent for a long mont. One by one the young won around her dissolved into colored smoke and drifted away.
"You figured out so much. Why do you still call
wife? Aren't you angry that I deceived you?"
"I promised to be husband and wife for one night, so that is what we will be. I have always been an honest and faithful person who takes relationships seriously."
Li Qiuchen said with seriousness. "You and I were strangers at the beginning of this night. There was no basis for trust between us. If I had let myself be led astray by beauty and been deceived by you, that would only reflect my own foolishness. How could I bla you?"
The tension eased out of Qingqing's expression, and the two small dimples reappeared on her face.
"Would husband like to go and see the lotus flower?"
"It won't try to eat ?"
"Of course not."
"Well, sleep clearly isn't happening tonight anyway. Let's go and have a look."
Qingqing wrapped her arms around Li Qiuchen's and led him out of the room.
Through a long corridor, they ca out into the back garden. In the pond before them floated a lotus flower, pure white with five-colored light shimring within it, drifting on the surface.
Standing at the edge of the pond was a gentle, soft-looking young woman holding an open book, who must be the Miss Mucheng who had not participated in the ga.
When she saw the two of them approach, she gave a small nod, and dissolved into colored smoke as well.
Li Qiuchen took a few steps forward and felt a sudden emptiness beside him.
He turned to find Qingqing gone as well.
The colorful lotus flower in the pond began to open slowly, and from its very center walked a young woman in white, no taller than three cun.
With each step she took, she grew a little.
By the ti she reached Li Qiuchen, she had grown to full adult height.
The closest description he could imagine was from the Ode to the Goddess of the Luo River. Vague as light clouds drifting across the moon, floating as leaves carried on the wind over snow.
When Li Qiuchen had read that passage in his previous life, he had been completely unable to picture what kind of woman it described.
Now he could see it.
The young woman before him seed to carry together the finest qualities of all five beauties from before, and in her smallest expressions one could faintly trace Qingqing's shadow.
"Husband, what do you think of
like this?"
The young woman's lips curved into a smile.
Li Qiuchen swallowed once, and nodded. "Not bad."
The young woman gave a pouting look. "Husband is so articulate at other tis. And now that you're seeing
in my true form, all you have is not bad?"
"Words genuinely fail . Not bad is all I can manage."
The young woman smiled fully, and gave Li Qiuchen a graceful bow.
"Congratulations, husband. You have successfully cleared the final first-grade illusory realm trial. Your Dao Heart is complete. From this day forward, you may set foot on the immortal path. Your future is without limit."
Li Qiuchen said in surprise, "Does this an I've passed?"
"Of course not. There is one final step."
The young woman smiled. "Only when I give my approval can you pass the trial. Therefore... whatever condition I propose right now, you must fulfill it. Only by making
happy will you be permitted to pass."
Li Qiuchen sighed. "Even one night as husband and wife creates an obligation lasting a hundred days. Dear wife, why would you do this to ? I stood up for you before all your sisters, and remained faithful from beginning to end. I wonder now what you would like to be called?"
The young woman smiled. "You may continue to call
Qingqing, or you may call
Xiao Lian. A na is just a symbol. Any na will do. I know your heart was sincere toward ."
"Even if your heart is a little cunning. But husband and wife must accommodate each other. So I won't make things deliberately difficult for you. All you need to do is sit here with
and wait together until the sun rises. That's all!"
Li Qiuchen looked at the stone table and stone bench beside them, and nodded. "In that case, I would be glad to accept. Let
keep wife company through the rest of this night."
[NEXT CHAPTER]
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