“Is this also… one of Your Highness’s talents?”
After a long while, Shen Zhi finally spoke, his voice strained.
The noblewoman before him was like a completely different person from the one he’d seen just moments ago.
If he hadn’t witnessed it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it either.
This was entirely beyond his understanding.
As if acting on instinct, he raised a hand, wanting to pinch Zhang Yang’s cheek, but she dodged him.
Shen Zhi sheepishly explained, “I just wanted to make sure.”
Zhang Yang exaggeratedly kneaded her cheek twice as if it were dough.
Even with such broad movements, there wasn’t the slightest hint of a disguise flaw.
“What’s there to make sure of? Don’t underestimate my face sculpting item.”
The essence of a Player’s face sculpting was to reshape their bone structure and skin.
The disguise item Zhang Yang had obtained through countless hardships could also come remarkably close to achieving the same effect.
Of course, it wasn’t going to expose any amateurish flaws.
She pulled out a mirror, looked at herself, and admired the result for three seconds.
The face she had sculpted in the mirror was less influencer-like and more distinctive, with a style entirely different from her real appearance.
In the words of those observation samples, her original self had been cool, alluring, and haughty, while this face and figure she’d sculpted now gave off the air of an innocent young girl untouched by worldly affairs.
The only thing the two had in common was that pair of peach-blossom eyes.
Just as she was about to put the mirror away, satisfied, Shen Zhi asked solemnly, “So, are you really that Highness?”
If she wasn’t, then most things would make sense.
The only thing that wouldn’t was—
Why had she appeared there in pieces of a corpse?
Shen Zhi believed that a leopard couldn’t change its spots.
Even if she had lost her memory, there was no way an acknowledged good-for-nothing scumbag could become both learned and skilled in combat, courageous and resourceful, and gain the talents of surviving dismemberment and disguise as well.
As far as Shen Zhi knew, anyone with even one Talent was a rare prodigy.
Yet the person before him had displayed at least two.
Clearly, he’d mistaken her for someone else?
Zhang Yang tilted the mirror in her hand, revealing half of a lovely face like a hibiscus, touched with innocent, girlish sweetness.
Expressionless, she said, “How would I know? Whether I am or not, isn’t that just something you decided for yourself?”
Shen Zhi was speechless for a moment.
It was true.
He had pinned the identity of that honored person on her without any conclusive evidence.
“…Then you, assuming you really aren’t that Highness, how did you end up there? Who dismembered you into so many pieces? Don’t you remember anything at all?”
“Of course I—” Zhang Yang slipped the mirror back into her game inventory, deliberately drawing out her words before saying coolly, “don’t know.”
Who the hell knew what the Homestead Side Quest’s plot was supposed to be?
She regretted not pumping the observation samples for information ahead of time.
Shen Zhi was incensed.
“You—”
His anger flared halfway, then abruptly died.
Grinding his teeth, he clenched a fist and pounded it into his palm.
“Right now, I have no way to prove you are her, nor any way to prove you aren’t…”
And this person just happened to have an uncanny Talent for perfect disguises.
She could make a simple matter complicated out of nowhere.
The more he thought about it, the more his head hurt.
If the person before him wasn’t that honored person, then where had the real person’s body gone?
Or, rather, where had she gone? Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Was she dead or alive now?
Who had moved her and rescued her?
And who had brought in similar body parts to create a smokescreen?
So many unanswered questions.
A spoiled, good-for-nothing princess?
How could she have so many secrets?
Zhang Yang pulled out a handful of sunflower seeds and cracked them as she said, “So you’re still going to give me quests. Stop dawdling and overthinking things. If you hold up my plot quests, I’ll skin you alive.”
Shen Zhi: “…”
He suspected Zhang Yang had set him up!
Shen Zhi hesitated for a few moments.
“Since your identity is unclear, I can’t very well keep calling you ‘Your Highness.’ The title of ‘Your Highness’ is a hot potato these days, too. Why not pick a new name for yourself? It would make it easier for us to address each other.”
“Zhang Yang. Zhang Boyuan. But you should call me Your Highness.”
Shen Zhi relaxed his tightly furrowed brow a little.
The noblewoman wasn’t called Zhang Yang.
Realizing this, Shen Zhi was roused by her words into a fit of youthful defiance.
He retorted indignantly, “What kind of Highness are you? Your Highness, Your Highness—you ought to have a palace before you can call yourself that, shouldn’t you? Otherwise, why not just change your name to Your Highness?”
Zhang Yang tilted her head and stared at Shen Zhi, expressionless.
Her gaze made the other man’s back prickle.
After that, Zhang Yang calmly said, “The vault of heaven above serves as the roof of my palace, and the earth below is paved with golden bricks for its floors. I take heaven and earth as my palace and myself as its mistress. What could possibly be wrong with calling me Your Highness?”
She had paid a hefty price for that deed to the land.
She was the landlady of this entire Homestead.
She could build as many palaces as she liked, and whether she called herself Your Highness or Your Majesty was entirely up to her.
What right did Shen Zhi have to say she couldn’t call herself Your Highness?
Hmph.
She’d go back and crown herself Empress in her own Homestead palace!
Shen Zhi was struck dumb.
“You—you’ve got some nerve!”
“NPCs don’t have tempers. Even my saliva has no taste.”
Shen Zhi: “…”
He had no idea what an NPC was, and assumed it was some unknown race.
This only made him more curious about Zhang Yang’s true origins, and further convinced him that she couldn’t possibly be the Princess.
By rights, he ought to find an excuse to leave and track down the real Princess.
Only by killing her to silence her could he put his mind at ease.
If he failed to eradicate the threat, there was no telling when it might explode into a crisis someday in the future.
But—
At the thought of that band of rebels, he just couldn’t bring himself to let it go.
Zhang Yang was far too strange.
Who could guarantee she would go to Tianbian Commandery and deliver the message as promised?
If she failed to report in time, who knew what sort of catastrophe might ensue?
There was no choice.
He would have to make the trip himself.
Shen Zhi went back and forth over it in his mind, then finally sorted out his thoughts.
Zhang Yang didn’t care in the slightest.
They traveled day and night, taking shortcuts to arrive ahead of the rebel army.
Shen Zhi looked at the city, where no battle had broken out yet, and let out a long breath of relief.
He led Zhang Yang inside.
“Do you have a travel pass?”
“What’s that?”
“Proof of identity for traveling outside your home.”
“Oh. No.”
“Then how are you going to get in… Wait, you’ve lost your memory…”
“Just fly in from the sky. What decent person uses the main gate? Isn’t that a waste of time?” That was the conclusion Zhang Yang had reached after observing countless specimens: proper humans never used the main gate.
So she didn’t understand why they bothered putting doors in their houses, either.
You might not need one, but you can’t do without one?
Shen Zhi said, “That’s contempt for the law—”
Zhang Yang pulled out a pastry and stuffed it into her mouth, watching the queue ahead of them gradually shrink until at last it was their turn.
Shen Zhi straightened his sleeves and untied his token from his waist.
He had just raised his hand when Zhang Yang pressed it down with one hand.
He looked at her in confusion, silently asking what was wrong.
Zhang Yang murmured, “We’re in trouble.”
The moment the city gate guard’s pupils contracted, the name above his head changed from neutral yellow to scarlet, and a ring of red light flared around him.
That was the marker for a hostile attack!
Zhang Yang watched them exchange glances, thinking they were being so discreet.
Four of them came over, vaguely forming a circle around her.
Still stuffing herself with pastries, Zhang Yang tilted her head and stared at the big red name above the guard.
Without changing expression, she reached into her game inventory.
If she couldn’t walk in, she’d fight her way in.
And these squishy Red Name NPCs thought they could mouth off to her?
She had just pulled out half a gold brick when Shen Zhi stopped her with lightning speed, urgently saying, “What are you doing? This isn’t a place where you can run wild. The Tianbian Garrison has over ten thousand troops stationed here. Don’t do anything reckless!”
“You useless teammate! I should’ve slapped you to death too!”
As they argued, Zhang Yang saw the name above the guards’ heads change again, from [Tianbian Guard] to [Rebel Guard].
Zhang Yang: “…”
Wasn’t Tianbian Commandery supposed to have no dealings with the rebels?
There wasn’t a single reliable thing that came out of Shen Zhi’s mouth.
There were no signs of battle outside the city.
What did that mean?
That meant either the people in Tianbian Commandery had long been colluding with the rebels, working together from within and without to open the city gates without a fight, or the rebels were so powerful that they crushed the Tianbian garrison, despite its advantage of deep moats and high walls, so quickly that they left no trace of battle.
Either way, it was bad news for the two of them.
Following that line of reasoning, another little bug had cropped up.
Zhang Yang lowered her voice and demanded, “Shen Shude, are you sure that whole pile of fancy reasoning of yours is right? Would those rebels really be heading for Tianbian? Now that Tianbian is in rebel hands, why would their troops come here to kill innocent people and claim the credit, padding their numbers?”
The question turned Shen Zhi’s face white on the spot.
Zhang Yang rolled her eyes.
It was obvious she couldn’t count on him.
Well, damn—
Not only had they brought their warning to the wrong place, they’d walked straight into a trap.
She was starting to suspect that Shen Zhi was actually on the enemy’s side and had set her up!
“Get away from me—” The observation samples were right.
Those games’ scriptwriters must write their plots with their feet.
Their characters were sharp as foxes one moment, stupid as wild boars the next, somehow managing to be both scheming masterminds and laughably dimwitted.