Chapter 67

Chapter 67: Strip Falsehood, Keep Truth Word-Spirit

Shen Tang forgot Sir Gu was even there.

“A coffin?” she demanded, rounding on the court dancer. “What coffin? When?”

The court dancer hugged her head, shaking like she’d fall apart.

Sir Gu watched Shen Tang with a steady, dark gaze. “Something that happened to you, and you don’t know?”

Shen Tang’s temper snapped. “Someone stole my life out from under me.”

“Stole your life?” Sir Gu asked, genuinely curious.

“I lost my memory,” Shen Tang said flatly.

The confession landed like a slap. Sir Gu’s eyes widened a fraction.

Shen Tang gave a short, self-mocking laugh. “Surprised? I don’t remember anything from before exile.

Even the ‘brother-in-law’ identity Gong Yun Chi talked about—he shoved it onto me first. I just went along with it.”

Sir Gu stared, stunned, as if he’d expected any answer but that one. After a long moment, he asked, “Why?”

“Why?” Shen Tang’s smile sharpened. “You mean why I claimed a borrowed identity?

Because I didn’t want trouble. That’s it. But you people insist on being clever.

And how was I supposed to know whether the identity was real or fake? Maybe I really am his brother-in-law.”

Sir Gu fell silent, thinking hard.

At first he’d been sure he’d peeled back the fog and found the truth. Now, with the coffin and the missing bride, everything twisted into something uglier.

The eldest young lady of the Shen family vanished. From Gong Cheng’s reaction, he and Madam Gong knew nothing—and didn’t even know the bride had been swapped.

Young Lord Shen had amnesia. Fine. Then who had Young Lord Shen been before?

Why did he resemble the eldest young lady by sixty or seventy percent? And why had the Shen clan used him as a substitute to marry into Madam Gong?

Could he be a hidden male offspring of the Shen clan? Aristocratic nobles looked polished, but everyone knew rot lived under the lacquer.

But if the families had married smoothly, wouldn’t the fraud have been exposed? That wouldn’t be an alliance—it would be a death feud.

This wasn’t a tidy storybook where coincidence could smooth everything into a neat ending. Reality didn’t forgive.

Shen Tang’s head hurt.

She didn’t mind listening to gossip, even if the gossip was about her. What she couldn’t stand was being trapped inside a mess she couldn’t make sense of.

She tried brute force on the court dancer again—threats, pressure, cold steel—but fear alone wouldn’t make the woman coherent.

Sir Gu’s hand came down lightly on Shen Tang’s shoulder. “Let me.”

Shen Tang’s eyes cut sideways. “What can you possibly get out of her?”

“I have methods,” Sir Gu said.

Word-spirit could be used for anything in the wrong hands. Two hundred years of chaos had produced plenty of officials who studied how to break people and pry truth out of their mouths.

Unfortunately, Sir Gu knew those paths.

And combined with that hated “scholar’s dao” of his, he was built for it. No one could lie in front of him—except the Young Lord Shen standing beside him.

He’d never seen anyone resist without word-spirit, purely by locking down their own mind and refusing mind-peeking. That kind of control was rare.

Shen Tang stepped back. “Fine. Do it.”

Sir Gu pinched the court dancer’s chin between two fingers.

His hand looked thin as bone, but the grip was iron. The woman’s struggles meant nothing. Finger marks bloomed on her skin as he forced her to meet his eyes.

“Scales in hand, mirror as the court,” Sir Gu said softly. “We can crush evil, support the righteous, and strip falsehood, keep truth.”

In short: [Strip Falsehood, Keep Truth].

Shen Tang frowned.

She’d seen Qi Shan use the same word-spirit before, but he’d used it to tear away illusions over an enemy formation, revealing their movements.

In Sir Gu’s hands, it became interrogation.

Same word-spirit, different understanding. Different effect.

The word-spirit settled over the court dancer like a net. Sir Gu’s voice stayed calm.

“When was the coffin delivered?”

“Half a month before the wedding,” the court dancer answered blankly.

“Is Young Lord Shen an offspring of the Shen clan kept outside?”

The court dancer paused, confused. “Don’t know.”

“Do you know where the coffin came from?”

“No.”

She repeated the same hearsay: the servant by the back gate had said a strange coffin was delivered one night.

Sir Gu didn’t press in anger. He simply kept going. “Who delivered it?”

“Second Master Shen.”

Sir Gu asked who that was.

Second Master Shen was the biological brother of the eldest young lady of the Shen family’s father. Unlike First Master Shen, who held office, Second Master Shen was a famed scholar who lived for antiques and collectibles.

He spent his days drinking, traveling, debating mysteries, showing off, and playing at elegance. Of his word-spirit, nine out of ten uses were for amusement.

Shen Tang didn’t feel any deep attachment to the original body’s identity. But the picture forming in her head was chilling.

A strange coffin. A body inside that resembled Lady Shen Da. Second Master Shen, obsessed with Hao Gu trinkets, hauling it back to Shen Manor in the dead of night.

Nothing about it sat right.

Sir Gu, meanwhile, looked almost entertained by the puzzle. “Could it be Young Lord Shen is Second Master Shen’s hidden child?

Kept outside all along, then brought back when something happened. And with Lady Shen Da suddenly ‘missing,’ you conveniently filled the vacancy and married out as a substitute bride.”

Shen Tang stared at him. “Sir Gu, do you read street storybooks for fun?”

He knew the melodramatic tropes a little too well.

Sir Gu went silent for a few beats.

Shen Tang exhaled, forcing herself back onto the facts. “The Shen clan is wiped out. Anyone who knew the truth is gone. This court dancer is only a dowry maid—how much could she possibly know?”

She didn’t look like a close attendant. If she were, she wouldn’t still be guessing whether Shen Tang was male or female.

And a real close maid wouldn’t suddenly be performing a flower-drum dance. Even learning it overnight wouldn’t be enough.

More likely, the woman had always been trained as a court dancer in Shen Manor.

A thread caught in Shen Tang’s mind. She turned back sharply.

“You personally served Lady Shen Da?”

The court dancer shook her head. “No.”

“Then tell me your background,” Shen Tang said.

Under the net of the word-spirit, the court dancer answered honestly.

She’d been a low-ranking court dancer from the bottom. Sold young. Before she ever entered Shen Manor, her manager had used her to please a rich fellow townsman, forcing her to become his mistress. She’d even borne a son and a daughter—until his main wife discovered her and sold her away.

Later, the eldest young lady of the Shen family had bought her out of pity and kept her in the household. She cleaned, ran errands, and sometimes performed for the estate’s nobles, earning small rewards.

But her status stayed low and her age worked against her. Too old to be called a maid, too young to be called a matron. Other maids excluded her.

Even “serving in the room” was mostly sweeping floors. Dressing Lady Shen Da, pouring tea, combing her hair—those jobs went to maids who’d served since childhood.

Shen Tang’s gaze sharpened. “Those close maids went as dowry maids too?”

“No,” the court dancer said.

The dowry maids had been thrown together at the last minute.

The close maids… had been beaten to death for “failing in service.”

Shen Tang’s mouth twisted. “That excuse wouldn’t fool a ghost.”

So Lady Shen Da’s disappearance had been planned. The people closest to her were removed first.

“It wasn’t an excuse,” the court dancer insisted, blank-eyed. “They really were beaten to death.”

Shen Tang didn’t answer.