Picking up where we left off, as Lingcai slipped over the palace wall like moonlight skimming tiles, she ran into a maid named Qiancao who claimed to know Princess Korol.

The girl was blind with certainty, like a moth stunned by a flashlight’s flare, and she swore Lingcai was the princess herself.

She stuck to Lingcai like a burr on winter wool, a leech that refused to peel away.

“Listen up, listen up. I don’t care who you think I am. I’m not that little princess you imagined, got it?”

Lingcai waved and chopped the air like she was sweeping leaves, trying to talk this clinging maid down.

Qiancao frowned, chin propped like a sparrow on a rail, muttering in a doubtful, half-sure hum.

“But I clearly saw you sneaking out over the palace wall. Still, why wouldn’t the princess use the main gate, and why go alone, dressed like a commoner?”

Finally, the gears in that head clicked like stones in a mill.

Lingcai saw a crack of hope like sunrise through fog and drew a deep breath.

“Isn’t the answer simple? Because I’m not Her Highness! Now you get it, right? I’m just an ordinary citizen!”

Qiancao still doubted her own mistake. She cupped Lingcai’s cheeks, kneading left and right like dough on a board, then showed a look half-understood, half-lost.

“I think I get it,” Qiancao said, stopping her hands and blinking like a firefly.

“What do you get?”

Lingcai felt her face turning to paste under those busy fingers.

Qiancao rolled her neck like a crane, then leaned close and whispered in Lingcai’s ear, voice soft as mist. “Put it this way. At least right now, you’re not the princess, right?”

“Finally! You got it…” Relief washed through Lingcai like a stone dropping into a lake.

“So that means, you’ve used the princess identity before, but you’re not using it now. Right?”

Lingcai froze like frost on grass. She hadn’t expected Qiancao to touch the truth with just a few words.

She’d thought she was one step ahead and Qiancao was behind, but Qiancao was five moves ahead like a chessmaster.

Enough—stale layered-cake jokes.

Since she’s figured it out, this gets easier. She’s a maid, a reed in the wind, not someone who’ll press too hard.

“You… well. Since you’ve seen through it, I won’t hide it. I’m actually the princess’s dou—”

Before “double” left her lips, Qiancao’s eyes lit like lanterns, and she grabbed Lingcai’s hands on the spot.

“So it’s a secret tour in plain clothes!”

“Huh?”

Lingcai didn’t catch it, but Qiancao was already floating in her own incense-sweet fantasy.

“Our little princess is amazing! Not only clever and capable, but caring for the common folk. Little Qian will follow you for life!”

Great. Turned out Qiancao wasn’t above ground—she was in the basement, like a cellar door swinging open.

“Go, move—please, you’ve got it wrong, just let me finish—”

While Lingcai wrestled with Qiancao, throwing cat-paw jabs like two kittens scrapping, her eye caught a figure at the edge of her sight.

He carried a long, curved blade like a crescent torn from night, black hair falling like ink, eyes burning with open fire at Lingcai.

Lingcai would never forget that face, not in this life. Standing before her was the assassin who nearly took her life that day—

Qiange.

Her heart, already at her throat, dropped silent like winter water.

Heart. Lungs. Stopped.

“It’s you… ah… hehe…” Lingcai forced a crooked smile, her gaze drifting toward Qiange’s blade as if pulled by tide.

Her face was calm as a pond, while the blade slid free with a whisper like rain on steel.

All right. She wouldn’t finish the explanation. She’d be dead before the last word.

“Heaven’s eyes are open. What luck, meeting you here,” Qiange said, voice even as dusk, stepping closer one slow beat at a time.

“Today I’ll kill you, dog of a princess. For my brother. And for justice owed to all under heaven.”

Lingcai saw the blade bare and flung her hands up like waving flags, making her last stand with words.

“Can you let me say two things? Why won’t any of you let people finish a sentence?”

Qiange kept advancing, blade in hand, like a tide that wouldn’t turn. “Speak. Your last chance.”

“I—”

Before Lingcai could plead, Qiancao stepped forward like a shot, chest out like a drum.

“Who are you? What are you doing? Murdering in the street to silence her? Do you know who stands before you? This is the regent princess herself!”

“I’m not! I didn’t—don’t listen to her nonsense! Have you ever seen a princess run around with no guards?” Lingcai shouted hoarse, clamping a hand over Qiancao’s mouth like a lid.

Qiancao wrenched free with raw strength, fearless as thunder under a summer sky, and blurted on.

“This is traveling incognito! Our princess doesn’t fear you! She just won’t expose her identity!”

Don’t drag me into your fearless death wish!

Lingcai wanted to kick this maid into a pit and bury her with one spade of dirt.

“That’s even better. If she weren’t the real one, I wouldn’t kill,” Qiange replied, voice cool as shade.

Hold on. If Qiancao could boast like that, maybe she had a way to handle him?

Right! Why didn’t she think of it sooner? Qiancao’s a palace maid. She may seem dim, but she knows the princess well. She might have a few fighting tricks.

Better to play along. Let Qiancao and Qiange clash like storm and wave, and slip away like a fish in foam.

“All right, Your Highness! Prepare to teach her a lesson!”

Huh?

In a blink, Qiancao shoved Lingcai forward like pushing a lamb out of a pen.

“Wait—you mean me, fighting her…?”

Lingcai pointed at herself, then at Qiange, face blank as paper in the wind.

“Yeah!” Qiancao nodded, righteous as a bell. “I can’t beat her.”

Beat you, my foot.

Lingcai’s thoughts scattered like leaves in a gale—don’t drag me in just because you can’t win!