Heat.
A sensation of internal organs churning, stomach acid rising.
Wen Yan opened her eyes.
No shadowless lamp, no dissection table—only the dim, aged carved ceiling above.
Her vision was blurred, bloodshot.
She didn’t waste time on the foolish question of “Who am I?”
Her body reacted faster than her consciousness.
Bringing her index and middle fingers together, she pressed them against the radial artery of her left wrist.
The pulse beneath her fingertips was weak and floating, accompanied by noticeable intermittent pauses.
Heart rate: forty-eight. Severe bradycardia.
Her tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth.
The sensation was thick and greasy, the taste buds lingering with an indelible metallic bitterness.
Wen Yan impassively delivered the first diagnosis for this body:
Sluggish nervous system, necrotic peripheral circulation, chronic heavy metal poisoning.
Without intervention, this body would experience multi-organ failure within seventy-two hours.
Death, in three days.
A sudden explosion of unfamiliar memory fragments erupted deep in her mind.
Gu Xiwei, the legitimate daughter of the Duke’s Mansion, hopelessly in love with Prince Jing, willingly reduced to medicinal dregs for love, finally sent to the afterlife with a cup of “calming soup.”
Another clichéd script.
Wen Yan tugged at the corner of her mouth but found even moving her facial muscles exhausting.
This wasn’t lovesickness.
This was a meticulously planned murder, spanning three months.
The sound of a door hinge turning shattered the deathly silence.
Wen Yan immediately adjusted her breathing, half-closed her eyelids, concealing the cold gleam in her eyes.
A maid approached with a black lacquer tray, her steps light.
Qiu Chan.
The most loyal personal maid in the original owner’s memories.
Wen Yan’s gaze swept over her like a scanner.
The thumb joint of Qiu Chan’s right hand, holding the bowl, was pale white—muscle rigidity from extreme tension.
Her eyes wandered, fixed on the foot of the bed rather than the patient’s face—a classic avoidant, guilty reaction.
Most importantly, the bowl of medicine.
On the surface of the pitch-black liquid floated a few almost invisible white flocculent sediments.
“Young Miss, you’re awake?”
Qiu Chan’s voice was tense as she brought the bowl to Wen Yan’s lips. “This is today’s calming soup. The imperial physician said it must be taken while hot.”
Wen Yan said nothing.
She obediently opened her mouth.
The bowl tilted.
Bitter liquid flowed between her teeth.
Wen Yan curled her tongue upward, tightly sealing her throat, allowing the medicine to pool entirely in the space beneath her tongue and between her gums.
Her Adam’s apple feigned a swallow.
She had “drunk” it all.
Qiu Chan visibly relaxed, the tension in her shoulders instantly collapsing.
“This servant will be in the outer room. Young Miss, rest well.”
Watching the door close, Wen Yan abruptly turned to the side, spitting the medicine in her mouth onto a silk handkerchief she had prepared earlier.
Black stains spread.
A few extremely fine white crystals gleamed menacingly under the candlelight.
She pulled a silver hairpin from her hair and stabbed it into the medicine stain.
Three seconds.
The tip of the silver pin rapidly oxidized, turning black.
Arsenic.
Arsenic trioxide.
Lethal dose.
This wasn’t a slow poison—this was meant to send her off tonight.
Wen Yan stared at the blackened silver pin, her pupils devoid of any fear, only an almost pathological calm.
Since she had taken over this body, this was now her crime scene.
Where there’s a case, there’s a culprit.
Where there’s a culprit, they must face justice.
She propped herself up on the edge of the bed, forcibly dragging her heavy legs to the floor.
With each step, her feet felt as if they were treading on cotton—a sign of damaged nerve endings.
Wen Yan shuffled to the dressing table.
Behind the bronze mirror, a partial fingerprint was clearly visible.
A whorl pattern, edges blurred, pressed with great force.
Extract.
Though she had no adhesive tape, she gently brushed charcoal powder over the surface and pressed a silk handkerchief to lift the impression.
At that moment, a cold, piercing pain shot through Wen Yan’s temple.
Everything before her eyes seemed veiled in a gray mist, with only a few objects emitting faint glimmers of light.
The bronze mirror on the dressing table shone with a fragmented glow;
The bowl of unconsumed medicinal dregs gave off a murky, tainted light;
And from the direction of the autumn cicada outside the door, the light flickered like a candle in the wind, dim and unsteady.
No textual prompts.
No data streams.
Only these eerie lights, as if silently conveying something through their colors and forms.
Far from panicking, Wen Yan narrowed her eyes.
This sensation felt like interpreting a corpse that could not speak.
The stiffness of a corpse indicated the time of death; the color of lividity revealed the cause.
And these lights?
She did not reject this unnatural phenomenon. In the eyes of a forensic examiner, anything that could provide clues was a tool.
One of the light spots moved in sync with the autumn cicada’s steps outside the door, its glow an unstable, ashen gray.
That was the color representing [extreme fear].
Wen Yan picked up an eyebrow pencil and pulled over a strip of white silk.
On it, she wrote three words.
Autumn Cicada (executor).
Unknown (source of poison).
Unknown (mastermind).
Timeline: three days.
If she did not break the situation, in three days, her autopsy report would be finalized.
Wen Yan rolled the silk into a thin strip, tucked it into the hollow interior of a silver hairpin, and reinserted it into her hair.
This was the safest place.
Since the “script” wanted her dead, she was determined to see who was holding the pen.
“Autumn Cicada.”
Wen Yan spoke, her voice rough and hoarse, like sandpaper grating.
The door was instantly pushed open, and Autumn Cicada peered in anxiously. “Miss?”
Wen Yan sat in the shadows, her fingertips tapping idly on the table.
“I want to go to the garden.”
Autumn Cicada’s face turned deathly pale. “But… but the imperial physician said you must not be exposed to the wind…”
According to the script, Gu Xiwei should have fallen unconscious after drinking her medicine tonight, then died in her sleep from respiratory failure.
She should not have had the strength to stroll in the garden.
Wen Yan raised her head.
Her eyes, clouded by poison, now shone with a startling brightness, like two freshly tempered blades.
“Help me there.”
Her tone brooked no argument.
Autumn Cicada trembled all over, instinctively wanting to refuse, but under that piercing gaze, her legs grew weak.
Wen Yan watched the light spot representing Autumn Cicada tremble violently.
Good.
This small act was like a stone thrown into the stagnant pond of the “plot.”
Wen Yan knew that from this moment on, the true game had begun.