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墨書 Inktalez
The sound of the medicine spoon clinking against the porcelain bowl jolted me awake. The Second Mistress's Buddhist beads slipped off the edge of the bed, the scent of sandalwood mingling with a faint, sweet metallic tang. "Ying Niang, it's time to drink your throat-soothing soup."
I stared at the peony tattoo peeking out from her qipao collar. The torn fabric from last night's torrential rain had been meticulously fastened, yet it couldn't conceal the fresh bite marks on her collarbone—adult teeth impressions.
" Yan'er went to the dock before dawn to scoop up the amber-colored medicinal liquid," she continued. "I heard that foreigners are bringing in new-style wheelchairs; this child always complains that the wooden wheels hurt his legs."
As the medicinal liquid slid down my throat, I suddenly tasted a familiar metallic flavor. The Second Mistress's nails dug into my wrist. "Drink slowly; when I nursed Yan'er, he would always choke in his eagerness..."
In the beam of light filtering through the window, I noticed tiny pinpricks on her neck. The scars arranged like lotus petals reminded me of Shen Yan's burn marks and how his severed limb had pressed against my thigh last night.
"Did you say Young Master was raised on milk?" I intentionally let some of the medicine spill from the corner of my mouth.
The Second Mistress froze mid-motion as she reached for a handkerchief. When her silk cloth embroidered with intertwined lotuses brushed against her chest, I clearly saw the dark bruises surrounding her areola—injuries that could not have been caused by an infant's sucking.
"Twenty-five years ago, I knelt in mourning clothes at the funeral parlor," she suddenly tore open her collar, her aged breasts sagging in the twilight. "While nursing Yan'er, I listened to Master unfastening his belt behind the coffin."
The porcelain bowl suddenly fell and shattered on the floor. I stared at the stretch marks on her abdomen; those were definitely not remnants from twenty-five years ago.
As I changed clothes, the copper mirror reflected bruises on my back. The red rope Shen Yan had tied around me last night left lotus-shaped impressions on my waist, eerily similar to those of the Second Mistress.
"This Chuanbei Loquat Syrup..." I traced my fingers over the engraved markings on the green porcelain medicine jar, which bore a cursive character for "Yun."
Suddenly, the Second Mistress's Buddhist beads snapped, wooden beads rolling under the bed. " Yan'er said you were particularly... at night..."
A loud thud echoed from outside. We rushed out to find the steward directing servants to move a carved wooden box. A blood-stained swaddling cloth tumbled out of the broken crate, its lining embroidered with " the Qin Wan Yun."
"This is Madam's relic!" The Second Mistress suddenly screamed and lunged forward, her neck veins bulging. "You touched the items in the west chamber?"
In the chaos, I picked up a half-soaked piece of paper that concealed a horrifying fragment: 【......Twin Swap, do not forget your promise......Qing Yun's final words】
"!"
Amid the butler's gasp, a pair of scissors suddenly slid out from the bottom of the box. The Second Mistress gripped the scissors and smiled at me, saying, "I used this to cut that child's umbilical cord back then."
The dusk thickened at that moment. I looked into her distorted pupils and finally understood the origin of those needles—they were old scars from being stabbed by scissors.
As the clock struck midnight, I reached for the west chamber. A wheelchair stood beneath the moon gate, its chrome metal glinting coldly in the moonlight. He was wrapping bandages around his prosthetic limb, blood seeping from the severed end and staining the dark patterns on the bandages—endless lotus flowers.
"Young Master's leg..."
"When I was eight, I caught my father violating the wet nurse in front of my mother's spirit tablet." He suddenly tore at his own bones. "My mother's coffin began to seep blood."
The stench of blood mixed with the scent of milk rushed towards me. Only then did I notice that the armrests of the wheelchair were covered in tiny bite marks, just like Shen's.
"Later, I learned that the mechanical friction sound came from moving the prosthetic," he continued. "That night, what seeped from the coffin was human blood—the wet nurse's blood splattered when my father slit her throat."
The night wind lifted his shirt to reveal his birth date tattooed on his lower back. My blood ran cold—I realized it was the very day I was sold into Shen Mansion.
"Do you want to know why I chose you?" He suddenly grabbed my neck and pressed me against the wheelchair, the metal armrest digging into my chest burn. "Because when you breathe..."
Suddenly, a sound of shattering porcelain came from the east chamber. When we rushed in, we saw Master shoving a jar of Loquat Syrup into the Second Mistress's lower body, with torn swaddling cloth scattered all over the floor.
"You couldn't feed me back then, Yan'er... now how about feeding you here?"
Shen Yan's prosthetic suddenly lodged in the old master's throat. In the chaos, I stumbled upon the torn letter, the last line of which bled under the moonlight: [Twin Swap, the Shen Family's fortune requires the blood of kin].
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