Surviving in the General's Mansion - Chapter 2: Another World

Chapter 2: Another World

After the woman in pink was sent flying by that kick, the women beside her seemed to cast aside their hesitation as well.

One after another, they rose and lunged forward. Some yanked hairpins from their hair; others drew daggers from their sleeves…

At the same time, the deputy general and guards behind Cang Chuli moved. As if they had rehearsed it, they tore through the attack with lightning speed.

“Leave none alive.”

Cang Chuli merely moved his lips. Then, paying no mind to the rest of the women attacking around him, he slowly strolled back toward his chair, as if the danger at his side did not exist at all.

The deputy general closest to Cang Chuli flicked his sword in an elegant flourish and sent one woman’s weapon flying…

In the span of just a few breaths, all four assassins, including the woman in pink, had been forced to the ground.

Cang Chuli had already returned to his chair and nestled back into it. His posture was honestly terrible.

Xia Heng even saw him rub comfortably against the white fur draped over the chair back.

“Do you still remember Zhang Ningze, the man you dragged off to be conscripted?” the woman in pink shouted furiously.

Yet at that moment, in Xia Heng’s utterly chaotic mind, all she could think was:

Xia Yuhe? What Xia Yuhe?

Cang Chuli lifted his eyes and glanced at the four women pinned to the floor. It lasted only an instant before he looked away.

But the deputy general and the guards seemed to have received an order. Before the women could announce their names one by one, their heads were already separated from their bodies.

Xia Heng abruptly tore her gaze away from the scalding splash of blood. She shrank in on herself again and again, no longer daring to have a single thought.

“Heh.”

Cang Chuli let out a soft laugh.

Xia Heng nearly curled herself into a turtle.

If only she had a shell, she would not have felt so utterly unsafe right now.

She was terrified that in the next second, her own head and body would part ways.

Cang Chuli sat in his chair, continuing to toy with the short blade in his hand.

A strange tinge of red lurked in his eyes. He pressed the tip of his tongue against his gums, then after a moment of calm, said, “Burn them.”

One guard expertly stepped around the corpses strewn across the floor and walked outside. Before long, a group of people dressed as household servants arrived, collected the bodies, and carried them out. After turning a corner, they vanished from sight.

By now, the few girls left beside Xia Heng had almost all fainted…

Some lay unconscious on the ground. The ones still barely holding on were nearly sprawled flat, trembling from head to toe.

Xia Heng even caught a faint smell of urine from somewhere…

She was forcing herself to keep the last shred of awareness, but her fingernails dug viciously into her palms.

Forgive her, a modern person from the twenty-first century. Wanting to die was one thing. Seeing someone killed right in front of her was a first!

Cang Chuli himself, however, seemed entirely unconcerned that he had frightened someone into wetting themselves. He rubbed the hilt of the blade in his hand and murmured under his breath,

“Maidservants… heh.”

“Come pour me a cup of tea.”

Xia Heng waited for a while. Seeing that neither the man seated above nor the girls beside her made any movement at all, she felt the cold sweat on her forehead about to drip down. After thinking it over, she quietly lifted her eyes for a glance.

She met Cang Chuli’s dark gaze head-on.

That one look made Xia Heng dizzy. Her cold sweat could no longer be held back and rushed down her spine in a sheet.

Cang Chuli had clearly grown impatient.

Clang!

The short blade flew past her hair, so close it nearly brushed her bun, and buried itself in a crack between the stone tiles an inch in front of Xia Heng.

“Do you not understand?”

Xia Heng barely remembered how she stood up.

She drifted to the side table beside Cang Chuli, turned over a teacup, and poured the tea that had already been steeped in the pot into it.

The fragrance of tea spread out. From the scent, it should be Biluochun. At the end, she even remembered to finish with the three nods of the phoenix.

Finally, she placed the teapot back where it had been, set the teacup with both hands closer to Cang Chuli’s reach, then respectfully stepped back and stood in place, her hands crossed before her lower abdomen.

Years of experience providing VIP service at hotels allowed Xia Heng to complete the entire flowing sequence almost entirely through muscle memory.

Cang Chuli raised an eyebrow. With growing interest, he picked up the teacup and looked toward Xia Heng.

Only to see that the woman who had just poured tea with such composure was now standing perfectly still, her bearing dignified.

Unlike the other servants, her whole body was straight. Nor was there any sight of a submissively lowered head or hunched shoulders.

She looked nothing like the person who had been curled into a ball on the ground just moments ago.

A little strange. Not sure. Better take another look?

Only then did he realize that the woman’s body had, in truth, already gone rigid. Her eyes had lost focus, as if she had fainted while still standing…

Cang Chuli withdrew his gaze. Suddenly, he no longer felt like killing anyone.

He took a sip of tea and lazily said to the white-bearded old man in the corner by the door, “Uncle Zhao, you arrange the rest. This general is tired.”

“Yes.”

Uncle Zhao’s voice was hoarse. He turned and instructed the young servants beside him to take the surviving girls away.

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By the time Xia Heng came to and regained awareness, she was already standing in a bare little courtyard.

The remaining five girls had been carried or supported by the young servants. They all followed behind crookedly and unsteadily as well.
Before Xia Heng could take a closer look at the courtyard, Uncle Zhao’s voice sounded beside her.

“There are exactly six rooms in this courtyard, so you can each take one for the time being.

“Get familiar with the place first. Someone will bring lunch over later. There’s a small kitchen here too; after a bit of tidying, it should be usable.

“As for everything else, we’ll discuss it once everyone wakes up.”

With that, he directed the young manservants to gently carry the other young women into separate rooms.

Uncle Zhao clearly had no intention of speaking with them any further. Once the women were settled, he hurried off with the manservants.

Xia Heng chose a room at random and sat down on a stool.

Uncle Zhao and the servants’ footsteps grew farther and farther away. Then the courtyard gate closed, and little by little, the sound faded until she could no longer hear it…

Only then did Xia Heng slowly loosen her tightly clenched, ice-cold hands. A bitter laugh slipped from her lips.

“Heh.”

She placed her hands on the only square table in the room, slowly lowered herself over it, and closed her eyes.

Only now did she realize that many parts of her body were faintly sore from being tense for so long.

Damn it. Transmigrating into a book really wasn’t fun at all.

After a long while, Xia Heng slowly opened her eyes.

Xia Heng had grown up in a single-parent household. After she graduated from high school, her only family-her mother-had also passed away from illness.

It could be said that she was not a particularly sensitive person.

Or rather, compared with most normal people, she was emotionally detached.

Even so, seeing a life wither away before her eyes for the first time today had still filled her with panic.

Years of ingrained habit forced Xia Heng to quickly put her emotions in order.

To distract herself, Xia Heng lifted her gaze and began carefully surveying the room she had chosen.

This small courtyard was laid out like a traditional quadrangle residence, with four separate buildings in total.

One was slightly smaller, with a pile of firewood by the door. It was most likely the small kitchen.

Her room was in the building on the right after entering through the courtyard gate. The building had two rooms. A young woman had just been placed in the room opposite Xia Heng’s, its door now tightly shut.

The room was a little over ten square meters. Against the wall stood an antique-looking wooden bed.

Above the bed was a square frame, bare and empty.

From what Xia Heng could tell, it was probably meant for hanging a mosquito net.

Beside the bed were two double-door wardrobes. They were not very large, and their color had a faint reddish tint.

Perhaps because no one had used them for years, the wood grain on them looked somewhat dry.

Where she was sitting, there was a square table. Aside from some hollowed-out floral carvings where the lower frame connected to the table legs, the rest of it was clean and plain, without any extra ornamentation.

There was only one window in the room, and it could be pushed open. Beneath the window stood a slightly narrow writing desk with a small round stool.

Xia Heng was surprised by how fully furnished the room was.

The layout even resembled that of a modern hotel somewhat, and her heart gradually settled.

After looking around, she saw that the room had probably been cleaned not long ago and was fairly tidy.

However, the bedding was all stored inside one of the wardrobes.

She took out the quilt and bedding and shook them out. They felt slightly damp to the touch.

Glancing at the sunlight outside, Xia Heng thought for a moment, then carried the bedding out and spread it in the courtyard to air in the sun.

After that, she went to the small kitchen.

Inside was an earthen stove and a large wok. There was still quite a bit of firewood, neatly stacked to one side.

Along the side was a square platform built from bricks; it looked as if it was meant to be used as a work surface. In the corner of the kitchen stood a large vat.

Only a shallow layer of water remained at the bottom of the vat. Fortunately, she had just noticed a working well in the courtyard, so getting water should be convenient enough.

Xia Heng made a circuit around the courtyard. All the other rooms were still completely quiet, without the slightest sound.

She patted the quilt that was drying in the sun, then returned to her room. Sitting at the narrow desk before the window, she began thinking back to the contents of the novel she had once read.

This was a fictional era. Its social customs were closer to the Tang dynasty, relatively open and liberal.

Cang Chuli was not the male lead in the original novel, so there was not much content about him.

He only appeared as a human weapon at a few major turning points in the male lead’s storyline. Whenever he appeared, bloodshed and death basically followed.

Xia Heng only knew that this was the third day since Cang Chuli had returned to the capital from his northern campaign.

In about three months, unrest would break out again on Huaxia’s borders. Cang Chuli would head to Luo City to suppress the rebellion and remain there for a year.

Xia Heng herself had not read the book all that carefully to begin with. As far as her current situation was concerned, the useful information was even more pitifully scarce.

But judging by the present circumstances, as long as she could successfully muddle through these three months, then so long as she did not court death,

her chances of surviving the following year would be much higher.

Xia Heng silently returned to her room. As long as she stayed alive, anything was possible.

She closed the door, and the small courtyard returned once more to silence.