Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Wings of an Angel

Just as she was feeling relieved, the two monsters suddenly stopped, seemingly quarreling about something. Some indistinct voices drifted over from afar, but even as Lingran strained her ears, she couldn't make out a word.

Her eyes went wide with anxiety, and she pleaded silently in her heart, "Just keep going, please, don’t stop. God bless me, Buddha bless me, please don’t come back! I’ll read the Bible every morning and recite the Great Compassion Mantra ten times."

Unfortunately, it seemed neither God nor Buddha had heard Lingran’s earnest prayers. The two monsters, after a brief pause, actually began drifting back toward her.

A cold shiver crept up Lingran’s spine. She wanted to run but her legs wouldn’t move; she could only watch, helpless, as the monsters drew closer and closer, until they were right before her.

The one in the ragged skirt was being dragged along by the bronze-faced one, grumbling all the while, “She sings beautifully, Jade Doll, I want to hear her sing again.” The tone was strange, but the manner was childlike.

The bronze face seemed unable to refuse him and stopped, turning to Lingran, commanding coldly, “Sing.” His voice was icy, devoid of the warmth of the human world.

“Sing? Sing what?” Lingran instinctively stepped back, wanting to flee into the house and shut the door.

But suddenly, the monster broke free of the bronze face’s grip, floated up before her, and hopped from foot to foot, visibly excited. “I want to hear the song you sang just now.”

Lingran recalled that this peculiar man had never shown her any malice. He was odd, yes, but not necessarily a “ghost”—perhaps, as the legends said, a martial arts master of extraordinary skill. But even if not a ghost, his casual grip had left her utterly powerless; their difference in strength was overwhelming, not to mention the bronze-faced companion who didn’t even walk, but floated. Since they meant her no harm, she could only steel herself and try to remember what she’d sung. Maybe, if she sang well enough to please them, they’d let her go, or at least not threaten her life.

Trembling, Lingran hummed a few lines from “The Singing Herd Boy.”

After listening a while, the monster complained, “That song is fine, but you sing it with a weepy voice—it’s no good. Sing the other one, like you did when you were bathing.”

Lingran thought hard and finally remembered the other song was “Angel’s Wings.” She cleared her throat and began to sing.

She’d started because she was forced, but as she sang, an inexplicable emotion welled up inside her—she remembered the feeling of leaving her previous life behind, and a wave of sorrow washed over her. The song came out with a plaintive, lingering tenderness, sorrowful and haunting, all the more poignant in the stillness of the night.

The monster and the bronze face both listened quietly, not moving at all. At last, Lingran finished the final line and let out a long sigh of relief.

The strange man stood there dazed for a while, then suddenly asked in an unusually calm voice, “What is an angel?” There was none of the childishness from before.

“It’s a little celestial messenger with wings in the sky,” Lingran explained.

“I’ll find an angel to love you for me… Angel! Angel!” The monster gazed up at the stars, murmuring to himself.

The bronze face shot Lingran a glance, said nothing, and pulled his companion away. The black cloak seemed to whip up a swirl of darkness right out of thin air.

A gust of wind swept by. Lingran blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, they had vanished.

It all seemed nothing but a dream. Her clothes were still damp, the moon hung hazy and distant in the sky, the shadows of the trees swayed gently, and down below, the prime minister’s manor glimmered with scattered lights in the silence.

Should she go down and tell someone what happened, or just pretend nothing occurred and return to her room to sleep?

Lingran found it odd—when she’d dashed out earlier, the chickens and cats had been shrieking, so by rights, the people in the manor should have heard and come to investigate. But no one had. That could only mean one of two things: either they hadn’t heard at all, or they had heard and chose to ignore it—perhaps strange events like this were all too common here. Remembering the mysterious looks on Mrs. Li and the others’ faces, Lingran understood: even if she went to report what happened, nobody would care.

Forget it! Since those two had already left tonight, they probably wouldn’t return.

Suddenly, she recalled the last two sentences the monster spoke—so calm, so full of emotion. They were human! They were no ghosts at all!

At last, Lingran’s heart settled. Whatever comes, she’d face it. When soldiers come, you fight; when water rises, you build a dam. No obstacle is insurmountable! A person can only know what’s happened in the past, never predict the future. All she could do was take each step with joy.

She shook her head to cast off her worries, went inside, fetched a candle from the main hall, and tidied up the bath. She returned to the central hall to pay her respects to Princess Dowager Lanzhe, then closed and bolted the doors. On the bookshelf, she combed through the rows of volumes and spotted one called “Tears on a Blue Robe,” which seemed to tell the love story of Bai Juyi and the courtesan Pei Xingnu. She hadn’t expected to find a romance novel here, so she eagerly pulled it out to take back to her room.

Back in her little room, she changed into dry clothes, leaned against the bed, and began to read. It turned out to be a Yuan Dynasty play, with no punctuation, which made it a chore to read—and the candlelight was so dim it made her eyes ache. She gave up, blew out the candle, and promptly fell into a deep sleep.

As the stars wheeled and the moon climbed high in the eastern sky, a bronze face appeared outside her window. Hearing the steady, even breathing within, he paused for a long moment, then muttered with a sigh, “What a strange girl!” and drifted away.

Perhaps it was because she’d barely slept the previous night, but Lingran slept soundly and awoke refreshed. For the first time, no one was there to help her arrange her hair, so she had to tie her long hair into a ponytail herself, then twist it into a coil and secure it with a peach-wood hairpin.

Dawn was just breaking—her body clock had truly adjusted! Lingran took her clothes and washed her face in the spring at the back, rinsed her mouth, washed her clothes, and hung them to dry on a tree branch. Then, grabbing a broom, she cleaned all the rooms and the yard, wiping every surface until it shone, before running down the mountain.

Her first stop, naturally, was the main kitchen to satisfy her hunger.

Lingran burst into the kitchen, ready to greet everyone cheerfully, but the moment she entered, the group of women who had been chatting instantly scattered, their faces wearing odd expressions, though no one said anything.

“Is there any food left? Aunt Tao?” Lingran knew that if Chief He was absent, Tao Chunying was in charge, so she asked her directly.

“There’s porridge in the pot—help yourself,” Tao Chunying replied, her face returning to normal as she busied herself chopping vegetables, not even glancing at Lingran.

Lingran considered using the excuse of the missing portrait of Princess Dowager to go to Prince Xiang’s residence and see where Biying and the others had been sent.

She ate her porridge happily with some pickles, until one of the women finally couldn’t hold back any longer. Aunt Mao, who had lent her a lantern the night before, spoke up first. “Lingran, where’s the lantern? Did you forget to bring it down?”

“Oh…” Lingran only then remembered—after the chaos with the two monsters, she’d forgotten all about it. She quickly replied, “Sorry, Aunt Mao, I’ll run up and get it for you right after breakfast. I’ll bring it back at lunchtime.”

“That’s not urgent…” Aunt Mao trailed off, unsure how to continue, while another woman beside her kept winking furiously.