Spacious. Red. Minimalist and efficient. That’s how the villainess’s room was summarized in the book. Never quite mentioning how the walls wore different shades of red from the blood that has been spilled from multiple traitors and spies over the decades. Never quite saying that the bedroom was a torture chamber during the youth of the sect leader, and that it changed with time, now comforting one of his many children. The villainess Jiāng Yèlíng (江夜玲)
The room was more than a blank space for Jiāng to sleep and spend her time when she was not out training. It had so much more personality. Despite the room thriving in the colors of dark red, that was not the only color in its aesthetic. The furniture were made of blackwood and crafted with subtleties of emerald green, as were the pillows that sat scattered on the bed, the rims of tables, sofas and couches, the accessories around the vanity mirror’s desk. Pointing towards something the author had never thought of mentioning. The symbolism of jade and the rank of it within the sect; how the outline of jade appears on every clothing in the closet despite the color or material.
So it was no wonder that at such a huge discrepancy between fiction and reality, Rhea has not had the faintest idea of where she woke up. Surveying the room left her with nothing but an elegant and tidy impression – save for a few scrolls on the table fully painted in ink and characters. Telling a story her eyes could not notice due to the distance. What she could notice however was how soft the sheets were, the pleasant touch of silk on her body and the warm blanket full of silver colored fur.
It was all out of place. And in her unusual drowsiness, the panic in her mind was something almost inexistent, if it weren’t for the thumping heart against the cage of her ribs and the small breathings that left her lungs in a rush. The design of the room was an oddity in a bustling city filled to the brim with towers and crossroads where she grew up. In fact the place was .. silent.
Rhea could only groan as she tried to seat herself on the bed. She was curious. Deranged enough to consider this kidnapping – as she thought it, even if not probable – interesting, perhaps even thrilling, once her breathing calmed down and her heart stopped drumming in her chest. Yet the dull throbbing in her lower abdomen kept the young woman from wondering and exploring her surroundings. Making her eyes look down upon her body after tossing aside the warmth of the blanket. Coming to a quick realization that something is not right. For a couple of reasons.
The first reason would be the sudden size increase of her chest as she looked down on her body, she could clearly see the flesh through the cleavage of the silken clothing, molded by her silhouette. If it could be said that it was still her silhouette. The breast size was not the only difference she could find. The fingers of her hands were longer, slimmer – the nails were longer and sharper, painted with red and black. Her skin color was different. It was like she had swapped bodies with someone, or was dreaming still. But ..
…The second reason would be the source of the pain, the muted throbbing that was hidden behind the bloodied white robes with intricately sewn patterns of lines and laces was a sign that she was not dreaming. The place for the throbbing was accentuated with a deep red stain on the material. The color made her understand that she wasn’t bleeding currently, rather, she had bled, and the bleeding had stopped during the night.
But who? Why?
And how come she didn’t wake up from the pain? Other questions like: What happened to Anne? Where is her friend and is it possible that Anne would have stabbed her? flooded her mind like bees hurrying to their hive. But the last question has soon dispersed from her mind. No. That wasn’t possible, the pink-haired she knew needed to be accompanied to social events, let alone hold a knife.
“What even.. ” a few words made the girl look around surprised at the sudden difference in pitch. Her voice no longer held the tone it used to, instead taking a more mature edge, slightly tired, a shade deeper but still feminine sound coming out of her lips with a strange accent, it sounded like a foreigner trying to speak english for the first time.
“Why does my voice.. ” Rhea said, but the voice didn’t change, didn’t revert back to the one she knew. Making the young woman doubt the body she was in was hers to begin with.
Surely one could kidnap someone and use anaesthesia and alter their appearance and stab them, and place them in a room that seems to come out of a movie set. But why? For what purpose and reason would anyone do that? To Rhea, someone who had a few friends and acquaintances to her name.
A mirror.
A mirror was bound to clear her doubts once and for all, if she could see herself –or what she had become – surely the matter at hand would make more sense. Or that was her hope. Surveying the room once more, her eyes stopped at the vanity mirror, placed next to the drawers and closets, on the other side of the room.
“Great..” the voice appeared to be indifferent even if Rhea was a bit annoyed at the distance between the mirror and the bed. She had to, after all, walk all the way towards it with a wound strapped to her side. Wound which she had no courage in seeing, leaving it quietly hidden under the clothes and probably bandage, if whoever did this –if there even was someone that did it – had some compassion and dressed the wound. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
With a groan, the woman took a seated position on the bed, letting her unusually long hair fall down to her sides. A breath held in the lungs to relieve the pain in her body at the movement, before she exhaled, and slowly, as if the body would break if she did one wrong step. One breath. One push. And she was on her feet, hunched and with a hand pressing against the bloody part of the clothing, providing some pressure to the wound – something illogical that everyone does – and she started to walk. One foot in front over the other, careful not to trip on the robes that were lagging in front of her feet.
Insistently throbbing. The wound. If the situation wasn’t this uncertain and confusing, she wouldn’t have bothered to get out of bed. But there was too much going on. Too much that couldn’t be explained. So it’s time for curiosity to kill the cat. Rhea didn’t even know if in her mind was a storm of thoughts or completely devoid of anything as she trudged slowly past the furniture which she leaned upon for a few seconds before continuing. Her heart thrummed in her chest as she got closer and closer and closer to the vanity mirror until she could see the reflection of someone. Long straight black hair that reached the small of her back, an expression of discomfort painted across her face. Eyes with different colors. Moles that she was not familiar with. No. Rhea was convinced that she was no longer looking like herself.
That the face staring back is a stranger, but something about it made her mind mull over. Pale skin, albeit now sickly, due to the wound she reasoned. Eyes that held 2 different colors consisting of dark brown and light blue. Contrasting breathtakingly with the ink-black color of her hair that fell obediently down her figure. The first layer stopped two fingers above her chin which framed her face in straight, sharp lines while the rest of the hair cascaded down*.
“Long, black, silken strands..with eyes that saw into the very deep core of someone and an impassive, unreadable expression” she spoke, the voice noticeably straining at the pronunciation of the words, the tongue awkwardly moving as Rhea cited a description, her mis-matched eyes looking around the room. “A red room. Spacious and lacking in both warmth and useless decorations, a room belonging to..” she stopped, her voice hushed, as if speaking a secret that no one else should know. Her eyes moved back to the mirror, back on the reflection of the person contained in it.
“Jiāng Yèlíng”
At those words, the voice no longer sounded like it was unfamiliar with the spoken words. On the contrary, everything sounded smooth. As if Rhea finally talked in her mother tongue. Rhea, who always butchered the names of the novel. Rhea, who could not pronounce mandarin words. But now they were flowing perfectly from her lips, as if she did that a lifetime before. Well surely enough, with a sigh and a relaxation of her shoulders. A tension she didn’t even know she had until it disappeared.
What madness.
If the pain was not always felt in her bones and if she was not hunched as she walked back towards the bed, she would have thought herself a lucid dreamer. But in the current circumstance she had little options. The kidnapping was just not feasible. But how could one just possess a fictional character? Sure enough she read more than a handful of stories like this. Never has she ever questioned a ‘why’ or a ‘how’ before. She does now.
Yèlíng was first introduced in the story at the peak of her character. During the ‘blood moon night’ where the echoing screams of death reverberated through the ground and the walls as the main villainess killed her brothers and sisters. Everyone that had the blood of the sect leader and that could pose a threat to her desire to covet the role. Not a fan of useless bloodbath, the 18 year old spared anyone too young or not talented enough. Amongst the people she spared, 2 important plot figures: Zheng Xueqin (郑雪琴) and Jiāng Hánmíng (江寒冥). Who, despite being 16 and 23 in age respectively, survived the massacre due to them not wanting the role of a sect leader and that they will not stand in her way.
Yet, despite her great planning and strategy, the last few half siblings of hers woke up by the rumors and the feeling of bloodthirst of the rampaging villainess and put up losing fights. One however succeeded in stabbing the villainess with a poisonous hidden dagger, which was exactly the wound that Rhea could feel throbbing under the silk robe. Surely enough Yèlíng finished the fight and returned to her chambers swiftly despite the pain and without leaving any blood marks along her way. Upon her arrival in her chambers, she quickly fell down from the poison that began burning her veins.
A blessing and a curse, having an overthinking and overbearing older brother who specializes in poisons waiting in her quarters as soon as he heard the screams and shouts, knowing something like this would happen. So her wounds were dexterously bandaged and her poison was neutralized in time for her life not to be in danger.
“A siscon..” she muttered and let out a sigh as she made it to the bed, sitting down and inhaling sharply, recalling what she knew about the brother of the villainess.
Jiāng Hánmíng. Also known as Zhēn Hánmíng (针寒冥), is another half-sibling of Yèlíng. A boy whose mother died to illness. A bright woman with a weak body who ran the medicine pavilion as its master, but was also the greatest poisoner. Supplying the sect with a variety of poisons, some known to the others, some unique to their own creations, recipes that she passed down to her son before taking her last breath. A mother who was a cherished friend of Yèlíng’s mother and upon hearing the news of her friend perishing to illness, she took in the child and raised it alongside her own.
The complex started there.
And it developed over the time of their youth. As he felt the need to repay Yèlíng’s mother by watching over and protecting her daughter. And that innocent and admirable seedling of ‘taking care of her baby sibling and being a good older brother’ blossomed into an obsession with keeping her safe. With needing to know her everyday schedule and eating habits, even stalking from the shadows or using skin reshaping techniques to walk alongside her when she goes outside on missions.
He knew her best. Perhaps even better than her mother. He needed to be persuaded not to kill the mother whose child stabbed his sister. Not at all minding the fact that the child was killed by Jiāng’s hands. He was now–
“Yè líng mèimei. (little sister yèlíng ).”
–Here.