“Exactly!
She’s a beauty.
So what if she’s a little delicate?
Giddy-up!”
With that, the driver of the other carriage lashed his whip across the horse’s rump.
“A bunch of brutes, not a shred of tenderness in ’em.
A pretty lady crying is a sight to behold.
But if he started sobbing, I’d slap the taste out of his mouth!”
Plainly put, this was a world where looks mattered.
A beautiful woman’s tears were a pleasing sight, no matter how she wept.
But if you lacked the looks—say, a seven-foot-tall brute dabbing his eyes and whimpering—who wouldn’t want to slap some sense into him?
Stop your damn crying!
“Great Leader, you’ve got a point.
Didn’t that guy say before that if we could have a woman on each arm, we’d be living the dream even as ghosts…”
A burly man with a broadsword tucked into his waist let out a boisterous laugh, his voice booming loud enough for Jiang Pengji to hear clearly.
He declared, “Our brothers don’t need to wait until we’re ghosts to live the dream.
We can have women on each arm and indulge in pleasure day and night while we’re still alive!”
The moment the words left his mouth, the mountain path erupted with the raucous laughter of the men, a sound laced with an indescribable sense of triumph and lechery.
This gang of seven men were bandits from the deep mountains near Hejian Commandery, who had taken to the hills to rob and pillage, committing every conceivable evil.
When they heard a group of fairies, accompanied by their maids and old women, had come out for a spring outing—and with few guards or skilled fighters to protect them—wasn’t this a gift from the heavens?
Had the heavens seen their lonely nights and sent down a flock of fairies to warm their beds?
Of course, a far greater shock awaited them.
These “fairies” were none other than noblewomen of the most prestigious clans.
Seeing the clan crests on the carriages, the bandits’ hearts trembled.
Beauty was a powerful lure, but they needed to survive to enjoy it.
Yet, the thought of these haughty noblewomen, their faces pale with terror, moaning and twisting beneath them—who wouldn’t feel a surge of wicked courage?
With such beauty before them and such riches to seize, the fierce band of outlaws raised their sabers and ultimately reaped a bountiful harvest.
“Great Leader, why don’t we just kill that sickly one inside and throw him out?
If he dies of illness halfway, it’ll bring us terrible luck…”
The speaker was a limping bandit.
He pointed toward the carriage and said, “Looks like a young lad.
Much uglier than those little darlings.”
Inside the carriage sat three young women of exquisite beauty, dressed in shimmering silks and satins.
Each was no more than a girl, yet they were all true beauties in the making.
A young man in a green robe lay curled up inside the carriage.
His jade hair crown was gone, and his long, raven-black hair spilled across the floor.
He lay there, unconscious, his entire body burning with fever.
A closer look revealed a face with a heroic, masculine air.
Yet, the loose collar of his robe had slipped, exposing the corner of a primrose-yellow dudou [a woman’s bodice] and the faint, unmistakable swell of breasts beneath.
This was clearly a girl disguised as a boy.
The burly great leader, sporting a thick, bushy beard, let out a hearty laugh.
“Well, she’s a female after all.
We’ll keep her.
We’ve got plenty of brothers in the stronghold—how could those few women possibly be enough to go around?
In the old days, we barely saw a female mosquito…
aside from Old Fourth, who among us has a woman to warm his bed?”
Jiang Pengji’s heart hammered against her ribs as she listened to the conversation outside the carriage.
“Sister Jingxian…
sob…
Brother Lanting won’t wake up…
What are we going to do…”
The sound of a young girl’s sobbing reached her ears.
Jiang Pengji found the voice completely unfamiliar, yet her mind automatically supplied the speaker’s identity.
“You’re a clay Buddha trying to cross a river—how can you worry about anyone else?” Wei Jingxian pressed her pale lips together, her knuckles turning white as she gripped her handkerchief.
She snapped, “Worry about yourself!”
Startled by the harsh rebuke, the young girl—her eyes red and swollen, looking like a frightened kitten—lowered her head, unable to meet Wei Jingxian’s gaze.
Everyone in Hejian Commandery knew that the eldest daughter of the Wei family and the second son of the Liu family had been betrothed since childhood.
But how could the ever-proud Wei Jingxian maintain her composure?
Her childhood friend had suddenly turned into a childhood girlfriend—a woman of her own gender!
If this scandal hadn’t broken out now, would she have waited until their wedding day to discover she had married a woman?
For Wei Jingxian, the humiliation of having a fake husband was far worse than the raucous laughter of the bandits outside.
Another strange girl’s voice…
Yet her name still surfaced in Jiang Pengji’s mind.
Jiang Pengji thought hazily…
Wei Jingxian…
So she’s my fiancée…
Wait!
A jolt of electricity shot through her mind, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.
Fiancée?
What the hell?
Jiang Pengji was so shocked by the information flooding her mind that she felt like she was being resurrected from the dead.
When did I get a fiancée?
As she pondered this, Jiang Pengji consciously began to sift through the thoughts and realized there was a fragment of a stranger’s memories embedded in her mind.
The owner of the memories was a young man—or rather, a young woman disguised as one—named Liu Lanting.
How is this possible?
Jiang Pengji wondered.
Why do I have a stranger’s memories in my head?
Before she could make any sense of it, the carriage she was in—which felt as if it were about to fall apart from the violent jolting—finally ground to a halt.
“Whoa!
Stop!
You stinking bitches inside, get out!
Don’t make me come in and drag you out!”
The carriage tracks were too obvious.
They had kidnapped so many noblewomen from the gentry families that, to put it bluntly, Hejian Commandery was probably in an uproar by now.
The constables and family servants could follow the carriage tracks straight to them.
If they wanted to survive, they couldn’t leave a single footprint behind.
Therefore, they had to switch to another mode of transport.
“Great Leader, how about…
we brothers get to enjoy a couple of them first?”
Watching the glamorous noblewomen crawl out of the carriage one by one, huddled like frightened quails, several bandits stared with wide eyes.
One of them licked his lips, moistening his parched mouth with saliva, his eyes gleaming like a hungry wolf.
The thought of having a wild romp in the open fields with one of those beauties made his blood boil with anticipation.
The young woman he was eyeing looked as if she were dying of shame and fury, wishing she could hide herself away where no one could ever find her.
The bandit chief’s steps came to a sudden halt.
He then raised his massive, fan-like hand and slapped his subordinate, scolding him with a laugh, “What are you daydreaming about?
We’ll take our time and get to each one of them back at the hideout.
What’s the point of playing around now?
You might not even have your pants unbuckled before the ones who’ll capture you have already arrived.”
After he spoke, the bandit chief viciously licked the blood from the corner of his mouth, his gaze turning to the noblewoman with intense malice.
Though the robbery had been easy, they hadn’t escaped without paying a price.
They had set out with over twenty brothers, but only seven were returning.
Since the boss had spoken, the bandits had no choice but to endure.
Still, they could still take advantage of the situation by groping and shoving.
Just then, the lame bandit carried the unconscious Jiang Pengji out of the carriage, cursing all the while.
No one knew that the seemingly brain-dead “Liu Lanting” was quietly opening one eye, then slowly closing it again.
System!
Jiang Pengji called out in her mind, and a clean, simple, transparent panel appeared “before her eyes.”
Name: Jiang Pengji (Liu Xi, courtesy name Lanting, also known as Liu Lanting.
Base Martial Power: 5, Fused Martial Power: +30)
Gender: Female (Disguised as male, replacing deceased elder brother Liu Lanting)
Age: 41 (12), born on the Flower Festival of the 3rd year of Tianwu
Origin: Second legitimate son (eldest legitimate daughter) of the Liu Family of Hejian.
Fiancée: Wei Jingxian, second legitimate daughter of the Wei Family of Hejian]
Specialties: Six Arts of a Gentleman (Beginner), Combat (Expert), Deductive Reasoning (Provisional), Other Abilities (Provisional)]
Attributes: Charm (Hidden: 21 points), Appearance (75 points)
Channel: Live Stream (Points sufficient, not yet activated), Streamer Level 1
As a woman from the future, an era of information explosion, Jiang Pengji might not have been interested in entertainment, but she understood that her mind seemed to contain something truly remarkable.
So, she tentatively asked in her thoughts, I wonder how I should address you, sir?