Chapter 536: Changing Faces

Chapter 536: Face Swap

Once Yuanchao is pushed into that position, the impact would be immeasurable.

I'm afraid Empress Dowager Yuan and the National Preceptor will live to regret it.

Just then, a dark figure flashed past the door. Xie Liuzheng had just drawn his sword when Hua Feixue sat down before him.

He was still in his black night clothes, hadn't changed yet, and took a sip of tea from the table.

Ji Yuntang asked, "Your Highness the Crown Prince, how did it go? Did you find anything?"

Hua Feixue gave her a thumbs up. "You're really clever—finding a clue in the Old Witch's words. I looked into what you suggested and actually found some leads."

"I looked into the Old Witch's cousin and found one with 'Fan' in his name, called Jiang Yanfan. He was the son of the Old Witch's aunt, two years older than her, and had been close to her since childhood."

"Later, when the Old Witch was sent to the palace at sixteen, Jiang Yanfan married a young lady from a well-matched family. The two were head over heels for each other and lived happily, and a year later, they had twin children."

Xie Liuzheng pressed, "What happened afterward?"

Hua Feixue said, "Later, Jiang Yanfan went out with the family caravan to buy cloth. On the way back, they ran into bandits, and he accidentally fell off a cliff. Since then, he disappeared."

"The Jiang family sent people out to search for a long time, reporting to the authorities and begging the Grand Marshal for help. The authorities conducted a thorough search for a month but found nothing—only some bloodstains and a token belonging to Jiang Yanfan at the bottom of the cliff."

"The Grand Marshal told Old Master Jiang and Old Madam Jiang that Jiang Yanfan had fallen from a hundred-meter cliff and was probably dead, maybe already carried off by wild animals below, and urged them to prepare for the funeral and accept their loss."

"When Jiang Yanfan's wife, Cao Shi, heard the news, she couldn't take the shock and passed out. After she came to, she cried day and night, kneeling in front of Jiang Yanfan's memorial tablet."

"At that time, the twins of Jiang Yanfan and Cao Shi were not yet a year old. Old Master Jiang and Old Madam Jiang were getting on in years, and Jiang Yanfan was the family's only son. Almost everything fell on Cao Shi, a woman on her own."

"She not only had to handle Jiang Yanfan's funeral arrangements but also take care of the elderly couple and her two kids, and run the Jiang family's cloth business."

"Cao Shi was a tough woman. She didn't stay down for long and personally took over all the Jiang family's businesses. In fact, under her management, the business did even better than when Jiang Yanfan was running it."

"Now, seventeen years have passed. Cao Shi raised her two kids on her own, saw Old Master Jiang to his grave, and took care of Old Madam Jiang with medicine, never once complaining or thinking about remarrying."

"She figured that since Jiang Yanfan was dead, if she remarried, the Jiang family would fall apart. She had to protect what he left behind and take good care of the two kids he left in this world."

Ji Yuntang drummed her fingers lightly on the table and asked Hua Feixue.

"So you think this missing Jiang Yanfan is actually the National Preceptor?"

Hua Feixue nodded. "My reasoning isn't baseless. From what I've heard, Jiang Yanfan was always a bit odd, into reading Taoist books, dreaming of becoming an immortal and living forever."

"He once mentioned to Old Master Jiang that he wanted to go to Taibai Mountain to study Taoism, but Old Master Jiang chewed him out and told him to forget it."

"His twins had just been born, he had to raise them, and he had to take over the family's cloth business. How could Old Master Jiang ever agree to let him go cultivate on Taibai Mountain?"

"So, if he wanted to be with the Old Witch, he had to find another way—like faking his death."

As he spoke, Hua Feixue pulled a portrait out from his chest and spread it on the table.

"Oh, and I also found an old portrait of Jiang Yanfan. Take a look."

Ji Yuntang looked at the portrait, then pulled out a photo she'd secretly taken of the National Preceptor earlier and compared them side by side.

She was trained in medicine and knew human bone structure and facial contours well. She could almost immediately spot the difference between the two.

"Yeah, the brow and eye contours are pretty similar to the National Preceptor's, but looking closer, the nose and mouth shapes aren't quite right. What's going on here?"

Hua Feixue glanced at her, pointed to the National Preceptor's photo, and said, "Of course you think it's different, because that face doesn't belong to Jiang Yanfan. It belongs to Ling Ce, the abbot's direct disciple at the Taibai Mountain Taoist temple."

"As everyone knows, the National Preceptor of the Xishu Kingdom is a revered Taoist that the Old Witch brought down from the Taibai Mountain temple, with the title Perfected Person Lingxi. They wouldn't dare fake that."

"So, to fool everyone, he had to change his face."

"Change his face?" Ji Yuntang was shocked. She'd only heard of plastic surgery, never of swapping faces.

Hua Feixue asked her and Xie Liuzheng, "Have you ever heard of a type of gu worm called the face-swapping worm?"

Xie Liuzheng seemed to remember something and said, "I've heard of it. It's said to be a forbidden technique in the art of witchcraft, and it's extremely cruel."

"The person swapping faces has to feed the worm with their own blood every day for a full hundred days, and only then is the face-swapping worm fully grown and recognizes its master."

"Within the next seven days, the person must place the worm into the body of the person whose face they want, letting it gnaw on their head and face until all the skin is eaten off."

"This process usually lasts three to five days. Some people die from the pain midway. If the person dies, the worm dies too, and the face swap fails."

"Conversely, if the person survives and the worm completely eats off their facial skin, then the second step is complete!"

"The third step is to place the face-swapping worm into the body of the person swapping faces. It will gradually eat away their own facial skin, then spit out the previously eaten face skin, and after forty-nine days of repair, the face swap is complete."

"The person whose face was taken rarely survives."

Hua Feixue's gaze darkened as he said solemnly, "Xie Heir is right. This forbidden technique is extremely cruel. The victim is tortured beyond endurance and eventually dies in agony."

"But the key point here is that the person swapping faces must be someone who is already disfigured or has facial injuries; otherwise, the face swap won't work and will backfire."

"Coincidentally, Jiang Yanfan fell off a cliff before. I suspect his face was injured, so the face swap makes perfect sense."

Ji Yuntang asked Hua Feixue, "Did you investigate Taibai Mountain?"

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