Rules of Horror: Survival Begins in the Haunted Harem - Chapter 30

The scene shattered once more.

Xie Nuange watched Jiang Fan endure their cruelty.

They put stones in her bowl at mealtimes, cutting her mouth bloody. They tripped her as she walked. They dropped insects into her tea.

At night, she returned to find the door barred from inside. She knocked for half a shichen, but no one let her in.

Jiang Fan wrapped her arms around herself and spent the night sitting under the eaves. The next morning, she attended her rules lesson as usual.

Xie Nuange clenched her fists as she watched.

But she could do nothing.

She could not touch Jiang Fan’s tormentors. She could not take Jiang Fan to the emperor.

She could not punish those people on Jiang Fan’s behalf.

The scene shattered and rebuilt itself again.

Jiang Fan returned to her room and discovered that someone had broken in.

Her belongings had been ransacked.

The hairpin was gone.

Her face turned white. She rushed outside to search for it.

The candidates who bullied her were playing with the pin.

“Give it back…”

“What’s the hurry?”

One woman raised it out of reach and turned it over in her hands.

Her gaze flicked between the hairpin and Jiang Fan. “As expected of a family in decline. You treasure a worthless pin like this?”

She passed it to the woman beside her. The group handed it from person to person as though examining some rare curiosity.

“Give it back!” Jiang Fan’s voice broke with tears.

No one listened.

Xie Nuange stood nearby, watching Jiang Fan’s eyes redden little by little.

She saw the laughing faces of the palace candidates. She saw the matrons and palace maids under the eaves pretend they had noticed nothing.

No one intervened.

Jiang Fan tried to reclaim the hairpin.

They shoved her down again and again. Ignoring the pain, she continued forcing herself upright.

“Give it back. Give me my hairpin.”

She stood, only to be pushed down once more.

All she could do was watch the pin pass from hand to hand.

Xie Nuange pressed her lips together, fury burning inside her.

She could not help Jiang Fan.

She was trapped inside Jiang Fan’s world—in a time that had already passed.

Powerless, she watched the scene break apart and reassemble.

The sky darkened, just as it had on the day Jiang Fan first appeared before the candidates.

One of the women sneered, “What do you think you are? Did you imagine one hairpin would turn a sparrow into a phoenix?”

Jiang Fan said nothing. Red marks covered her face, and her split lip dripped blood down her chin.

“Your family is finished. You think you’re worthy?”

The candidate pushed the hairpin into her own hair and turned away.

After several steps, she stopped and looked back.

“The water in that well looks quite clean.”

She smiled. “Send her down for a wash.”

Several candidates surrounded Jiang Fan and began pushing her.

She stumbled backward until her heel struck the rim of the well.

“No… Please…” She shook her head, looking desperately toward the matrons and servants.

Xie Nuange’s pupils contracted. She ran forward and reached for Jiang Fan.

“Jiang Fan!”

Her hand passed through Jiang Fan’s body.

She watched them shove Jiang Fan into the well.

She saw Jiang Fan’s eyes widen in terror and the panic across her face.

But Xie Nuange could not help her. Even catching her hand was an impossible luxury.

Splash.

Water surged upward and fell again.

Xie Nuange leaned over the well and watched the surface churn.

Jiang Fan’s hands caught the stone lining, then slipped. Her nails scraped bloody trails across the blue stone.

“Jiang Fan! Jiang Fan!”

Xie Nuange could not save her.

Palace candidates stood nearby. Matrons stood nearby. Eunuchs stood nearby.

No one moved.

The splashing grew weaker and weaker.

Then it stopped.

Xie Nuange remained bent over the well, reaching down, desperate to pull Jiang Fan out.

But she could not touch anything.

She was only a shadow.

A shadow incapable of changing the past.

The scene shattered again.

On the day of the final palace selection, the emperor spotted the jade hairpin at once.

He strode down, lifted its wearer to her feet, and stared at the pin.

“It’s you!”

Joy filled his eyes. He bestowed the rank of Noble Lady upon her on the spot.

Xie Nuange watched from outside the hall.

Jiang Fan’s ghost stood behind the crowd, soaked from head to toe. Wet hair clung to her face, and water dripped from her hem.

She watched the emperor place the pin back in the candidate’s hair. The woman lowered her head shyly.

“No! It wasn’t like that!”

Jiang Fan shook her head helplessly and lunged toward them.

But each attempt threw her backward. An invisible barrier seemed to shut her out.

Again and again she tried to approach. Again and again she was repelled, her body battered and torn.

She could only watch the emperor’s newly restored eyes fill with tenderness for the woman who had bullied her and stolen her hairpin.

She watched him take the woman’s hand and lead her away.

Bloody tears poured from Jiang Fan’s eyes. Her cries turned hysterical.

The scene shattered once more.

Xie Nuange saw Jiang Fan sitting beside the well at the Palace of Gathered Elegance, the hairpin clenched in her hand.

In her thin, gentle voice, she sang a Jiangnan melody.

“From bow to stern, my longing winds,

Soft vows entwined around our hands.

I ask for neither gold nor silver,

Only that we never part.

Moonlight climbs above the willows,

Lanterns glow on beaded curtains.

Two hearts bound in tenderness,

Year after year in Jiangnan.”

She sang for a long time.

Then she turned her head.

Her eyes fixed directly on Xie Nuange.

“Tell me. Don’t they all deserve to die?”

Jiang Fan gripped the hairpin. “If not for them, how would I have become this? They all deserve to die!”

Xie Nuange knew Jiang Fan’s hatred had transformed her into the scenario’s boss.

She said nothing. Jiang Fan did not need an answer.

She lowered her gaze and continued turning the hairpin in her hands.

“I must be hideous like this, aren’t I?”

Xie Nuange looked at Jiang Fan’s swollen body. She could not bring herself to offer a false compliment.

“How could I not hate them? I never even saw him one last time!”

Jiang Fan’s voice turned dark and cold. “He never saw me. He mistook someone else for me! He still never saw me!”

“What difference does it make that the hairpin came back?”

“I can never see him again. I can only remain trapped in this freezing well. He thought someone else was me. He gave her all the kindness that belonged to me!”

“Why? How could I possibly let go of that hatred?”

Xie Nuange stood at the edge of the vision as Jiang Fan advanced, teetering on the brink of frenzy.

“Jiang Fan, he knew he had mistaken her for you.”

Jiang Fan stopped and looked up.

Zhang Lanyi had been sent to the Cold Palace on the third day. That proved the emperor discovered the deception quickly.

Xie Nuange continued in a soothing voice. “He sent the woman who impersonated you to the Cold Palace. Do you know why?”

She met Jiang Fan’s eyes.

“Because he was waiting. He hoped that one day, she would finally speak and tell him what happened to you.”

“He probably realized long ago that you might be dead. But like you, he held on to one last thread of hope and waited, day after day, year after year.”

“He waited for her to reveal where you were.”

Perhaps the emperor never learned what the woman he loved looked like.

Where she had been buried. Where she had died.

Zhang Lanyi was trapped as well. She knew that if she revealed Jiang Fan’s fate, she would certainly die.

So she refused to speak. The emperor could extract no answer, and Jiang Fan could not escape.

Everything had become a deadlock.

Unless the emperor eventually tired of waiting…

Unless Zhang Lanyi tired of living.

“Thank you,” Jiang Fan whispered. “I saw how hard you tried for me inside the dream.”

She began singing the Jiangnan melody she had once sung for the emperor.

She polished the hairpin again and again—then suddenly flung it at Xie Nuange.