"Did you hear?" A maid drew nearer to her companion, then giving a brisk glance behind herself, she leaned in to whisper, "Second Young master is missing."
"Huh? I heard he was sick and resting—"
"Of course they aren't going to announce the real reason for his disappearance! Do you remember what day it is today? But he is still wandering outside. No one could find where he is. Master Wei was so angry that he refused to speak to Second Mistress."
"I don't understand. Shouldn't they be searching for him if he is missing? Why this... secrecy?"
"If he was really missing, that is." The maid suddenly smiled mockingly. "Do you really believe Second Mistress doesn't know where he is? She just doesn't allow master and others to really bring him back to the mansion in his current state! Not strange, if you believe the rumour where he was last seen. Can you believe, he was in that infamous Red Pavilion? Someone reported he was lying wasted, too drunk to even be conscious anymore. Second Mistress is just taking everyone for a fool busy hiding her son's faults. Do you think those guests won't notice? It's impossible."
The two maids kept gossiping as they quickly left the small alleyway. After they left, a small figure crept out from a hole, then jumping across the courtyard walls, stole into the abandoned courtyards. As she walked further into the meandering roads, more and more crumbling structures started appearing.
Wei Zhiruo keenly noticed the subtle shifts in her surroundings. Some scattered courtyards started popping up in her vision with much cruder shaped outlines, looking oddly-fashioned and ill positioned, some too weathered to be livable at all. She passed pavilions with chipping stones, and then came across a firewood shed with an egregious amount of decay plastered all over its walls—on closer inspection, it turned out that a layer of wooden carvings had rotted completely and was now falling apart. Its surroundings smelled odd and pungent, too much like a pile of rotting corpses. The air suddenly grew heavier and stifling, and even the previous clatter died down. She could no longer hear the hurried steps of servants hitting the ground and even the muted loud music that was probably coming from a certain banquet hall in the mansion, mixed with laughter and ringing of bells and zithers stopped reaching her ears.
"Creak—" The door to the shed was easily pushed open. Immediately Wei Zhiruo wrinkled up her nose at the indescribable smell inside. She squinted her eyes to look around in the dark.
There wasn't much to see at first. It was just a small shed full of wood logs and dried branches piled together in bundles. Perhaps the caretakers hadn't really taken care of this place in a long time, the roof showed signs of leaking and some wood had started rotting, giving an awful stench. On closer inspection however, the things grew bizarre.
'Rotten wood, leaves and blood.' Wei Zhiruo noted the scent then spotted the red traces. "But nothing to do with that beast.'
The blood was likely human blood. The traces on the floor were old though, several months old at least. She bent down to touch a few stains, then stood up to feel the walls.
What she was looking for didn't have a habit of draining blood of its prey, or rather this wasteful sort of draining had never been observed amongst its wide-ranging, but always disgusting, feeding habits. However, she couldn't be sure this wasn't one of its hunting grounds. Maybe in these regions, Siethe had evolved a slightly more sophisticated taste — like eating humans 'drained out of their blood'.
'Who can be sure of that? At least I am not.'
On first glance the ground looked like it had once been flooded with that red liquid, likely drained from a corpse.
Wei Zhiruo busied her hands feeling for any remnant fluctuations in the air, any whorls forming over walls she could touch, or glimpse over the beams, or roofs or even pathways —there was nothing anywhere to show where the Siethe disappeared. Just some traces of someone struggling desperately. Nail scratches, patches of rotting cloth, pieces of skin.
Wei Zhiruo found a few tufts of human hair. She sniffed and examined them, and after some silent calculation she muttered to herself, 'Six months.'
Strange. The resentment within these walls felt too fresh to her, like the macabre incident happened just a couple of months ago. But before she could pursue this information further, she heard a woman's muffled crying.
"Second young master, mistress has always thought only the best for you." Rest of the words got muffled in her sobbing.
The sound came from a nearby building. Wei Zhiruo froze for a moment, then without much thought, she stealthily rushed out in that direction. She was lucky as the small room didn't had any of its windows and doors shut close, so prying became just a matter of taking cover near a wildly growing Heather bush and then listening keenly for any movements. She even tiptoed closer to a parted window and peeked inside — at first, the black and moldy walls, and moth-eaten, dented wooden floorboards came into her sight. The room looked like a hall, with just a few scattered pieces of furniture remaining intact. She breathed in a slightly more pungent smell, irritating her already sensitive nose, but then her eyes got immediately entangled with the rays of a single, flickering candle in the room. It appeared to be suspended in the air like a ghostly will-o'-wisp, yet, when she looked closer it was being clutched in a hand full of bulging veins.
There were three people inside — one collapsed like a corpse, all his four limbs bound and wrapped tightly. Another, old woman sat beside his head continuously sobbing and awkwardly embracing that young man. The third person was the man who was holding the candle itself, who stood towering over the other two, speaking in an agitated hoarse voice.
"Second young master, mistress doesn't want any of this. But you need to be stopped."
"Stopped in this brutish manner? Repeat that while looking into my eyes!" A trembling voice rebutted, attracting Wei Zhiruo's curious eyes towards himself. The second young master seemed to have failed to assert his full anger before he broke into a fit of coughs.
"She is thinking about both of you." The older man shook his head at him. "True Wei blood is all they need; there are many to replace the second miss for this sacrifice, but our mistress only has this one daughter. Nothing will happen — no one will ever know whose hands reached this far…or who pushed this boat. And even if we are found out, there are still many who can take blame for us."
"Ha! If only that was the whole truth. You can lie to yourself, to my mother, but I'm not ready to be fooled by you. How dare you tell me that this is what is best for me with a straight face, Shitou? But forget this —there is no need for me to say anything, is there? Nothing is going to change what she has decided already."
The silence that followed was a haunting affirmation.
"There are two candidates like all other times, and names aren't set in stone, yet," the older man tried to persuade in a slightly breezy voice, stifling any show of emotion as he said, "And there is already a precedent, young master—your two aunts were named for this very sacrificial ceremony a decade ago, but since they both soon died at the hands of a few vagrants, your youngest aunt and uncle were named and got accepted."
"Don't talk to me about precedents." Second young master laughed in a softer, muffled voice as if he was amused by what he heard. "Tell me, does my mother know this is blasphemy? An act against the gods? Or that if grandfather were to ever know any of this— this affair she wishes to keep hidden forever right under his nose—what will befall her? Forget being divorced, what she'll face is not that forgiving, no! My grandfather will have whoever's head he needs to have to appease his masters. If she still thinks that the man surnamed Zhang, her beloved father, will put aside his interest or that of Zhang Jia's to save her, she is gravely mistaken."
"If Wei Ziya dies, Master Wei and the Old Gentleman will hardly have any choice but to pick your sister as the second princes' fiancé, and this is a fact! Nothing you fear will happen, young master. We've thought very carefully about what we need to do." Shitou said this and turned to leave.
However, before he could step out of the door completely, he heard a jeering voice from behind, "You better be jesting. Once Wei Ziya is dead, we all are going to die. One year, or even two, you can hide this murder, but there is no way the gods will not send people to investigate. What do you think will happen to all the accomplices? And Wei Ziya was chosen for this marriage on the day she was born! She has been brought up in the fashion the gods desired her to be — flawless matriarch, reserved and abiding. First and foremost, she has spiritual roots! What about Wei Lina? Where does she stand? She becoming the second prince's fiancé? Puch! Don't make me laugh. I know no one within these walls is a vegetarian, my mother too. But my mother has started to think she is the smartest of them all — unfortunately that is not the truth. Her plans are neither perfect nor untraceable. In the end, all it is going to land us is a death sentence!"
"Second young master! That is your mother you're talking about! You –!" The man shivered with choking anger, yet refused to turn back. He clenched his fist to stifle his emotions, blew out the candle and then in a few strides was out of sight, after he'd said his words of farewell, "I have things to finish tonight, so I'll take my leave from you, goodnight."
"I've already warned you, Shitou."
The whisper was clearer than the echoing footsteps leaving it behind. Wei Zhiruo didn't watch anymore.
Her shadow was soon lost in the growing darkness outside.