With a click, the door locked behind her the moment she entered.
Nan Yue flicked her lighter, and the scene before her eyes rooted her to the spot in shock.
Why did each of these siblings have such... unique tastes in decor?
Taking the estate as a whole, the most obvious difference between the West Castle and the East Castle was that the West Castle had no roses.
The decoration style and ornaments here leaned toward things men usually preferred, like armor and weapons, with an overall color scheme of elegant black and gold.
It was only because Miss Wen loved roses that her "devoted" brother had transformed the East Castle, where she resided, into a rose garden.
Yet Master Wen's office did not follow that refined style at all. To put it bluntly, this room looked like the den of a lunatic.
The walls were covered, inch by inch, with photographs.
They were all photos of a single woman.
There were photos of all sizes, both in black and white and in color. The woman was exceptionally beautiful, sharing a seventy to eighty percent resemblance with Wen Xiang Yuan.
She appeared to be in her thirties, and Nan Yue estimated this was Wen Xiang Yuan's mother.
Why would Master Wen plaster his mother's photos across the entire room?
If it were out of love, Nan Yue felt there were far better ways to show it—unless Master Wen himself was a madman.
Not far away lay the corpse of the maid who had entered earlier. Her body was intact, and from a distance, it was impossible to tell how she had died.
Nan Yue took a few steps forward and flipped the maid over. Everything seemed fine on the surface, but the body beneath the maid's uniform looked strangely bloated.
The maids here were all slender women, so there was definitely something wrong with this corpse.
Nan Yue scrutinized the body by the light of her lighter. Suddenly, she focused her gaze; there seemed to be something in the air.
Because the room was so dark and the flame wasn't particularly bright, there were flickering dark spots in her vision.
But as Nan Yue stared harder, she realized these weren't spots, but...
Tiny particles floating in the air.
These particles were so incredibly small that they could easily be mistaken for common dust.
However, Nan Yue realized they weren't dust because these particles seemed to have a mind of their own, swarming around her as if with intent.
There were hundreds, thousands of these tiny specks surrounding her.
Yet there wasn't a single one near the maid's corpse beside her.
Normally, dust should be evenly distributed throughout the air.
Before entering, Nan Yue had completely encased herself in a layer of black mist. It acted like armor, covering even her face.
Though it wasn't visible, she was protected by a layer of invisible, sturdy plating.
She didn't know why these particles were concentrating around her, but it certainly wasn't anything good. Thanks to the black mist, none of the particles had been able to touch her yet.
With a flick of her wrist, a blade as thin as a cicada's wing appeared in Nan Yue's hand. She gently sliced open the maid's corpse.
"Puff."
A faint sound, almost lost in the air, reached her ears. Nan Yue frowned; this didn't feel like slicing through human skin.
She felt as if she had just cut open an inflated leather sack.
What happened next was so fast that even Nan Yue could only barely dodge it.
With a soft pop, the corpse's arm burst open along the small slit she had made. From within, a dense cluster of things fought to crawl out...
Roses.
Yes, what crawled out of the corpse wasn't horrifying insects or some disgusting thing that would drain one's psychological value.
Instead, they were roses.
They were as vibrant as the roses displayed in the West Castle.
No, it would be more accurate to say they were even more beautiful than those.
Because they were made of flesh and blood, they possessed a sort of blooming, bewitching allure.
Nan Yue watched the corpse in stunned silence. She had only made a cut the length of a finger, but just as plants will desperately push through any crack, these roses forcibly tore the opening until it spanned the length of the forearm.
The maid's body was now like a human vase of flesh, displaying roses of indescribable beauty.
Nan Yue's gaze shifted to the rest of the maid's body. No wonder she had thought the corpse looked bloated earlier.
Could it be that her entire body was now filled with roses?
Logically, roses blooming from a body should be better than disgusting bugs, but these delicate, beautiful flowers gave Nan Yue a sense of chilling eeriness.
Even a human vase of flesh seemed to fit the aesthetic of this ancient castle with a tragic, beautiful harmony.
Was this reasonable?
Of course not.
Nan Yue now understood why that maid had died so shortly after entering. She must have inhaled these tiny particles, which then turned her flesh and internal organs into a petri dish for the roses.
Nan Yue stopped looking at the corpse. She controlled her black mist to ensure no part of her was exposed to the air, then walked quickly to the desk.
With such a defense mechanism, Master Wen could keep almost anyone out.
Nan Yue was only able to escape unscathed because of the specific nature of her ability.
She reached the desk and saw the notebook Miss Wen had mentioned. She flipped through it hurriedly and realized it was a ledger recording the dealings of other families connected to the Wen family.
To put it simply, this was a book of leverage. Whoever held this ledger could command the other families to do their bidding.
Of course, if it were made public, it would destroy both Master Wen and the families involved.
In the brief moment Nan Yue spent scanning the pages, she saw several appalling acts committed by prominent families.
This notebook was quite old, likely passed down through the Wen family's ancestors. No wonder the family had remained so prosperous.
As Nan Yue packed the notebook away and prepared to leave, she saw another item tucked beneath it.
It looked like a calendar.
The pages were filled with numerous dates.
Nan Yue paused after just one glance. It seemed to be...
A log of the times Master Wen had arranged for Miss Wen to meet with other people.
And every single one of those "others" was a son of a wealthy family.
A surge of sky-high fury rushed into Nan Yue's heart. For a moment, she even wanted to level this entire place to the ground.
She forced herself to calm down, her eyes cold as she flipped through the records.
The entries began when Miss Wen was only fourteen years old and had continued for over eight years.
What kind of beast would trade his own sister again and again to curry favor with other families?
No wonder Miss Wen's personality was the way it was. Looking at it this way, her temper was actually quite restrained.
She hadn't tried to drag everyone down to hell with her.
Nan Yue was now a bit confused about whether this was Miss Wen's history or Wen Xiang Yuan's actual past.
Granted, Miss Wen and Wen Xiang Yuan shared many similarities, but one thing couldn't be faked: if Miss Wen had truly experienced all of this, her psychological value would definitely be abnormal.
However, Wen Xiang Yuan had been examined by Jiang Siyan before, and she was perfectly healthy.
Nan Yue now realized that Wen Xiang Yuan's healthy psychological value likely stemmed from the fact that she couldn't truly die in the mission world, because she originated from the pollution world herself.
Rate on N.U.
