In the open space in the forest, everyone was busy preparing breakfast, and the small pot was roiling with steam.
Some good food was being prepared in it, and the aroma wafted out for two li.
Liu Xian’an was still on horseback, and his stomach was already growling.
There was nothing to be done.
The other three thousand worlds were not concerned with food, so no matter how spiritually rich he was, he still had to come back to eat on time.


A-Ning had already prepared hot handkerchiefs soaked in medicine for the two of them to wipe their faces and hands with.
Gao Lin took the reins of the horse and asked: “How is the situation in the city, my prince?”

“It’s not quite as expected.” Liang Shu glanced to the side and saw that Liu Xian’an had returned to the carriage and changed his clothes, and was standing by the pot waiting for his meal.

A-Ning finished a big chicken leg out of the pot for him: “Young Master, eat quickly.
This is what Cheng-guniang caught in the forest last night.
She is very capable, and her knife skills are more accurate than San-guniang’s craniotomies.”

The guards passing by were all shocked upon hearing this.
In Baihe Mountain Village, could the skull be opened so casually?

“It would be great if A-Yuan was here.” Liu Xian’an held the bowl and drank the hot soup slowly.
“She has always been good at making soups that invigorate the qi and nourish the stomach and spleen.
There happens to be one such patient in Chixia City right now.”

“Let’s not talk about nourishing the spleen, I haven’t asked the young master yet.” A-Ning sat down beside him.
“Is the plague in the city serious?”

Liu Xian’an thought for a moment and shook his head: “It shouldn’t be serious.”

A-Ning was confused.
It was either serious or not serious, what did he mean by shouldn’t be serious?

“I haven’t seen the patients,” Liu Xian’an further explained.
“Shi-daren has gathered all of the patients outside the city on Dakan Mountain, which we passed by yesterday.”

While the two were talking, Liang Shu and Gao Lin also came to sit by the fire.
Cheng Suyue had scolded the “dog official” all the way, and now that the official was no longer a dog, she was a little uncomfortable for a while: “A little-known Miao doctor and a local secretarial assistant, where did they find the guts to do a thing like actually spreading false decrees?”

“What they’ve done is not simply spreading false decrees.” Liang Shu picked up the ladle and filled it with soup, pouring it into Liu Xian’an’s bowl.
“Eat more.”

The other three people were dumbfounded at this sudden care.
They froze on the spot and looked at each other, not daring to move.
Only Second Young Master Liu who was given such care was very calm, and said while drinking soup: “The prince can rest assured, I will definitely do my best to discover the truth of the plague, and nothing will be kept hidden.”

Gao Lin heaved a sigh of relief.
It turned out that his prince wanted something.
No wonder he suddenly started to show courteousness, he had thought he was having convulsions.

But having said that, this kindness was too petty.
A spoonful of soup was nothing, at least tear off a chicken leg.


He immediately went to fish for the meat, but Liu Xian’an was already full.
Putting down the bowl and wiping his mouth, he asked: “What does the prince want me to do?”

Liang Shu said: “Pretend to be an ordinary doctor and enter the city.”

As he said before, the top priority was to get the plague under control.
The incident in Chixia City was full of oddities, not like a natural disaster, but more like a premeditated man-made disaster.
In addition, exchanging old grains for new grains allocated by the court was not something that ordinary people could do.

The Miao doctor and the secretarial assistant were pushed to the front, and it was those hiding behind them who most needed to be pulled out to see the light.

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During the afternoon of the same day, Gao Lin took several guards and set off for the nearest city,  Chang’an.
Firstly to borrow food, and secondly for the Baihe Mountain Village medical clinic there, which was not small in scale and could bring at least a hundred disciples to come help.

As for Liu Xian’an, A-Ning, and Cheng Suyue, they would pretend to be siblings and go to Chixia City as traveling doctors to discover the truth.

A-Ning asked in a low voice: “Then what will the prince be doing?”

Liu Xian’an thought for a moment, and then replied in a whisper: “Devising battle plans in a tent.”

Both master and servant stifled their smiles together, and just as they were smiling, the main character of such “tent strategy” came over with a cloth bag in his hand.
It was tied with cowhide rope, with many needles stuck in it, and there seemed to be a few strands of hair poking out.
It looked a little frightening.

Liang Shu asked: “Have you changed your face before?”

Liu Xian’an shook his head.

Liang Shu sat opposite him and raised his chin slightly with the back of his finger: “Close your eyes.”

Cold ointment was smeared on his face.
Liu Xian’an was a little nervous.
He couldn’t see anything and felt a little insecure, so he silently opened his eyes a little, just in time to see Liang Shu pick up a translucent mask.


“What kind of material is that?” Liu Xian’an had never seen such a transparent and soft texture before.

Liang Shu placed the mask on his face carefully, the corners of his lips curling up slightly: “You have read more than ten thousand books and lived for forty-eight thousand years, but you don’t know what this is?”

Liu Xian’an said truthfully: “I’ve only read about the method of making disguising masks, but none of them had a description of what they look like.”

Liang Shu looked at his curved eyelashes brushing up and down.
Mischievous thoughts rose up again and he spoke nonsense: “This is made of human skin.”

A-Ning immediately said: “Wow!”

In addition, he looked up and moved closer to it.

Although Liu Xian’an didn’t say “wow,” his level of calm was comparable to that of A-Ning.
He didn’t even shake his head, but was very puzzled: “But freshly peeled human skin is not like this.
After a long period of time, it will become cracked and ashy.
Was the piece in the prince’s hand processed using some special method?”

Liang Shu frowned: “Have you ever peeled fresh human skin?”

“I haven’t, but I have seen my dad perform a similar operation,” Liu Xian’an recalled.
“The man seemed to have been a butcher.
His face was scalded by water, so my dad peeled off the skin from his back and moved it to his face.
I helped hold the skin for a while.”

Helped hold the skin for a while.

Saving people was saving people, and weird was also weird.
When all was said and done, holding human skin in his hands did not look like a normal childhood.
His Royal Highness Xiao Wang felt that he had to re-examine the living environment of Baihe Mountain Village, but at this moment, he chose to put on an air of dignity.
Brushing away his failed attempt to scare him, he said casually: “I lied to you.
This is pigskin and agar, along with some other medicines.
It’s the craftsmanship of an inner secret agent, and should not be recorded in outside books.”

Liu Xian’an raised his head and gave a slight “hmm,” but was not angry.

Liang Shu asked: “You’re not afraid of human skin?”

“What is there to fear about human skin? It’s something that everyone has,” Liu Xian’an said.
“In terms of blood, there are many patients from all over the country who come to Baihe Mountain Village to seek medical treatment, and there are many bloodier wounds than skinning.
All of the disciples are used to seeing such things.
Even A-Yuan started to learn how to open the skull and scrape the bones when she was a teenager, and moved the skeleton models —”

Halfway through the speech, Liu Xian’an suddenly realized that this seemed to be another great opportunity to persuade him to split up the marriage.
So he opened his eyes again and tried to decide based on His Royal Highness Xiao Wang’s expression whether his sister moved the skeleton models to the front hall or beside her own bed.
But unfortunately, Lian Shu didn’t seem to listen to any of this, and was still putting the finishing touches on his disguise, gently pressing the edges with the back of his finger and moving it down inch by inch.
Finally, it inadvertently brushed the small mole on the jut of his throat: “All right.”


Liu Xian’an didn’t feel any discomfort.
On the contrary, it felt rather cool and comfortable.
A-Ning held up the bronze mirror to show him.
He had an ordinary appearance.
The corners of his eyes slightly drooped, and his lips were thicker.
He really looked like a simple and honest person, but he was not ugly, nor did he have a stiff expression and ferocious eyebrows as recorded in the books.

“How long can this mask be worn?”

Liang Shu wiped his hands clean: “Three days, but it’s best to take it off every night and put it on again the next morning.
A-Yue will also change her face, and she will help you do all this.”

Liu Xian’an liked this new face quite a lot.
Wearing the mask, he stood in the wind, basked in the sun, and washed his face once, wanting to test how firm it was.
But Cheng Suyue couldn’t bear it, and ran to complain to Liang Shu.
Second Young Master Liu, with the back of an immortal, turned around with such a broken face.
It was really terrifying, the prince’s technique was too ruthless.

“It turns out that you also have times when you are afraid,” Liang Shu said.
“It should really be publicized in the Northwest Military Camp, so that those matchmakers will also know that you don’t always think about the ‘great feat’ of defeating wolves with one hand.”

“Those matchmakers themselves are scary enough.” Cheng Suyue hurriedly took two steps back and spoke again, “And now that I have met Second Young Master Liu, I am even more unwilling to marry a man in Yueya City.
Why is there such a large gap between them? It is like an immortal compared to a wolf.”

All right, with Second Young Master Liu as the comparison, the rest of the men were not even qualified to be human.
Liang Shu looked at her troubled and anxious face and smiled mercilessly: “Do you want to marry him?”

“Marry who, Second Young Master Liu? That’s not true.” Cheng Suyue said, “He’s so celestial-like, but I’m so worldly.
If we forced ourselves together, I’m afraid we would be divorced in a few days.”

Liang Shu scolded her good-naturedly: “When you see a good-looking man, you have already taken this step into consideration.
I don’t see why you don’t want to marry.
Aren’t you very proactive?”

“Aiya, I’m really not.” Chengyue thought hard about how to explain this difference, but because the books she had read were limited, she could only squeeze out the sentence, “They can only be looked at from a distance, but not played with.” However, that sounded very much like a low-educated scoundrel who insists on talking too much and molests the little daughter-in-law,

a fool who still shakes his head and chants irrelevantly, “The moonlight shines bright in front of my bed.”[1]

Seeing that this person was already flushed with anxiety, His Royal Highness Xiao Wang finally showed kindness and let her go.

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Liu Xian’an gingerly took off the mask and seriously studied it in the light.
From the corner of his eye, he saw that Cheng Suyue had finished her conversation with Liang Shu and was walking this way, so he raised his hand to stop her and then went over to ask for details with his mask on.


But Cheng-guniang’s blush hadn’t completely faded yet.
After Liu Xian’an saw this, he asked with concern: “Do you have a fever?”

“I don’t.” Cheng Suyue quickly waved her hand.
“I’m not infected with the plague, it’s the prince. Aiya, it’s not the prince who has the plague.
I mean, my blushing is because of the prince, he just said that I want to marry the young master.”

Liu Xian’an was amused: “Then you just made it clear that you don’t want to marry me, so why are you blushing?”

“My prince can be annoying sometimes.” Cheng Suyue sat on a stone and helped him arrange the mask.
After a while, she asked, “Second Young Master Liu, what kind of girl do you want to marry in the future, ah?”

 Liu Xian’an thought for a while and said, “Any kind is fine.”

Cheng Suyue was confused by this answer.
The blacksmiths in Yueya City had to pick and choose, listing more than a dozen requirements when asking for a wife.
But when it came to Second Young Master Liu, he was so casual and said that any kind was fine.
“It’s okay if they aren’t good-looking?”

“Naturally.
When virtue is strong, form is forgotten.
Beautiful or ugly, it is all the same to me.”

“That….” Cheng Suyue lowered her voice to the lowest level and asked almost breathlessly, “If the Emperor allowed the princess back then, would you also be willing?”

Liu Xian’an nodded: “It would be fine, the emperor’s decree must not be violated.”

Although he did not care for life or death, and really didn’t want to marry the princess, he couldn’t help being lazy, ah, too lazy to resist the decree.
He didn’t have anyone he liked very much right now, so it was fine to marry.
After marriage, if he could continue to live his life, then he would live it.
If he really couldn’t live it, then he would break up, pack his things, and go back to Baihe City and lie down.
It was all fine.

Cheng Suyue had never heard of such a strange concept of marriage: “Don’t you want to find someone you really love?”

Liu Xian’an didn’t answer at this time, because it seemed that he hadn’t thought about this question.
In books, when it came to the matter of love, sometimes a heartless person could not understand the distress of a passionate person, and sometimes wine was poured and love sickness turned into sadness and tears, the soul flew away, the heart broke, and then they tortured each other so much that they couldn’t bear to live.
How tiring that was, too tiring and troublesome.
Just thinking about it made his scalp tense.

Liang Shu, who was not far away, accepted his silence quite well, and could find a reasonable explanation.

He had spent twenty years with those old white-bearded men in the clouds.
If he could find love, it would be truly preposterous.

[1] This is the start of a poem by ancient Chinese poet Li Bai.
The beginning goes: “In front of my bed, the moonlight shines bright; could this be frost that formed in the night?” ⮐

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