The First Venerable of the Prosperous Age

Sunlight streamed through the window, embracing a gentle breeze that spilled into the room. The breeze seemed to think that He, resting his head on the girl's lap, was being rather selfish.

So it gently lifted the thousands of golden threads on the girl's shoulders, allowing her sun-warmed smile to spread out, selflessly warming all things in the world.

The girl used her delicate, tender hands to gently brush the warm breeze across the sleeping boy's shiny forehead.

Her blue eyes were slightly smoky, and her crimson lips parted slightly, sending forth a gentle, heavenly sound that could soothe all: "Brother Lu, I've always been here..."

That evening, inside the Zhexian Tower, Fu Rou stood with her arms crossed, staring intently at Liu Rao, who was sitting on a stool, surrounded by the other women of the Zhexian Tower.

Liu Rao remained unmoved by the hundreds of cold stares directed at her, instead smiling broadly as she trimmed her nails with a nail clipper.

"It really was her!" one of the girls said.

"You poisoned her, didn't you? Otherwise, why would you try to kill Miss Wen?" Fu Rou said sternly.

Liu Rao looked at her meticulously manicured nails and nodded in satisfaction, saying, "Yes, it's just a pity that the kid risked his life to protect her, otherwise those two bitches would be dead for sure..."

Fu Rou sneered, "If you kill Miss Wen, no one will be able to cure Lianxue and Yulei's poison, and you'll be able to fulfill your wish, right..."

Liu Rao switched the knife to her left hand and began trimming her right nails, saying leisurely, "Indeed, it was just a little bit off."

Fu Rou tilted her head slightly and glanced at her sideways, "You really have a good plan. You started preparing to kill people the moment these two children came into the building."

Liu Rao smiled with satisfaction, "Tell me, what do you know?"

Fu Rou fixed her gaze on her, pacing back and forth as she said, "If I'm not mistaken, from the moment these two children caused trouble, you had already contacted Prince Xue to have him bring you the feathers of the poisonous bird."

"After he arrived, we deliberately made him go only to Lianxue's room, and also allowed him to pass the poison feather to you through the hidden door under her bed. This served two purposes: first, to cover our tracks, and second, to frame Lianxue."

Seeing Liu Rao nodding with a mischievous smile while manicuring her nails, Fu Rou slowly asked, "But how do you know this Prince Xue?"

Liu Rao slowly raised her eyes, smiled proudly, and said, "Well, little sister, you don't know this."

"When Prince Xue was still a boy, he was already a regular customer of our house." At this point, Liu Rao stopped carving with her knife, smiled absentmindedly, and fell into reminiscence.

But things are different now. She sighed and said, "Back then, I was the top courtesan at this Immortal Pavilion... Not to mention Lianxue Yulei, even Ningkong Pavilion was nowhere to be found back then."

"How wonderful, back then..." Liu Rao closed her eyes and smiled, lost in memories again.

Unbeknownst to her, a hundred years later, Bai Juyi, the Hermit of Xiangshan, aptly described the scene she recalled: "Young men from the Five Mausoleums vied to shower her with gifts, countless offerings for a single song of 'Red Branches'..."

No matter how much she laughed or how she spent her time in autumn and spring, she could not escape the fate of fading beauty with the passing of time.

"So, you already knew Prince Xue. After Wang Xiantong's accident, you wrote to him, asking him to bring you the Poison Feather when he came here to cause trouble." Fu Rou pulled her back to reality and said coldly.

Liu Rao nodded gently, seemingly still savoring the aftertaste.

Fu Rou pressed further, "Even if you've known each other for a long time, he is, after all, the Prince of Xue. How could he so easily take such a great risk for you? Could it be that he still has feelings for you?"

"Hmph, if he still had feelings for me, you wouldn't be here with me..."

Liu Rao lowered her head and started trimming her nails again, and said with a wry smile, "It's just a matter of mutual benefit. If those two kids don't die, I'll poison them and take care of them too, which will also be avenge for his uncle. But... I only foresaw half of what was going to happen."

“He’s so beautiful…and so young, Sister Liu Rao, how could you…how could you bear to do that?” the girls in the building said.

Liu Rao smiled dismissively, but ultimately did not answer.

Fu Rou paused for a moment, then continued, "So after you obtained the poisonous feather, you kept trying to get the poisonous bird feather to glide across the wine in the kitchen, but you were always struggling to get into the kitchen."

"It wasn't until you learned from Xiaomei that the kitchen would open the wine bottles in advance that you thought of sticking the poisonous bird's feather into the parrot so that when the parrot went to the kitchen to urge the food to be served, the feather would fall into the wine."

Seeing Liu Rao's noncommittal expression, Fu Rou asked again, "There's still a big problem here. How did you ensure that the poisonous feather was sprinkled into the wine exactly at the right moment?"

Liu Rao leaned back in her chair, looking relaxed, and said, "You said it yourself, ever since that handsome young man told me, I've been using parrots to test things in the kitchen every day. Even if some unlucky souls get poisoned early, they won't suspect me. Eventually, the poisonous feathers will drift into Lianxue and Yulei's wine."

Then she looked around at everyone and smiled, "On the night of Qixi Festival, when I excitedly discovered that our wine had been poisoned, I had no choice but to stage a scene of testing for poison and framing someone."

So most of you here were already "poisoned" before Qixi Festival, including that unfortunate Peach Heart Girl.

The girls were all stunned.

Fu Rou's face darkened. "Do you know that by doing this, you'll kill many of your customers!"

Liu Rao snorted coldly, "Those good-for-nothings are all birds of a feather. They're dead, so be it. Besides, it's a delayed death. They won't suspect anything about our Zhexian Tower."

Fu Rou shook her head. "But you drank the wine on Qixi Festival, didn't you? You even risked your own life to harm us. How much resentment do you have in your heart? What did we do to wrong you?"

"Hahaha—" Liu Rao suddenly burst into laughter, then said hatefully, "Sister Fu Rou, ever since those two girls took my top spot, I have sworn a poisonous oath that no matter the cost, I will tear them to pieces!"

Then she went from anger to calm: "No matter how hateful they are, they don't deserve for me to die with them."

After saying that, she pulled down her wig, revealing a shiny bald head.

Everyone was stunned when they saw this, and Fu Rou said in a trembling voice, "You...you...shaved your head."

"No!" Liu Rao's gaze was like a cold arrow. "They were pulled out one by one."

With each thread pulled out, she endured excruciating pain, all in an effort to reclaim the dignity she felt had been trampled upon.

"Pull it out! The hair root!" Fu Rou couldn't help but think of Lu Xiaosan, who was born bald. "That's right, Miss Wen said that only people without hair roots won't accumulate toxins, so..."

Fu Rou looked at her again, this time with a hint of awe in her eyes, because anyone who is willing to give everything to achieve their goal is worthy of respect, even if their goal is dirty and despicable.

Liu Rao, on the other hand, sacrificed her hair to achieve her goal, which was most important to them: beauty…

"Then you should have been poisoned like the clown..." He was halfway through his sentence when he remembered that Liu Rao had immediately made an excuse to wash her hands and leave after testing positive for the poison, and then everything became clear.

Liu Rao looked at Fu Rou, slowly stood up, and said excitedly, "Clown, humph, if he had been poisoned first while sitting on the table with that bald head, everyone would have known that someone had poisoned him. You could have all died quietly, but he was there. That's why I had no choice but to take the risk and improvise."

Fu Rou continued, "So you used the delayed effect of the poison to confuse everyone and make the poison in the wine seem like it was in the chicken soup. You also conveniently framed him for the poisoning to dispel our suspicions."

"But you didn't expect that, instead of dying of illness abroad, he would bring back a girl who knew how to cure the poison."

Fu Rou couldn't help but think, "Thinking back, it was Lian Xue who asked me to let the clown join the Qixi Festival table, which led to what happened later. In the end, Lian Xue saved herself and everyone else with her kindness..."

Liu Rao tilted her bald head back and sighed, saying self-deprecatingly, "Now it seems you should really thank the clowns you used to despise so much, and put away your ridiculous, superficial love as soon as possible... That kind of thing is fleeting and won't last long..."

Most of the girls in the building were confused by Liu Rao's words, after all, humans are born with a preference for beautiful things, and that cannot be changed.

Moreover, people tend to believe that everything beautiful is perfect and everything ugly is dirty, but reality is often not like that.

Fu Rou's gaze softened slightly, and she asked again, "Finally, I want to know... why didn't you kill him..."

Liu Rao was taken aback. "You didn't kill him?"

"Given the circumstances, you could have easily killed the Joker, but you didn't. Was it because you softened at the last minute?"

Liu Rao understood, and laughed heartily, "A loss is a loss, there's no excuse..."

"What to lose?"

Liu Rao raised her hand in the air, gazing at her exquisitely slender hand. A thought flickered in her mind, her eyes shimmering slightly. She murmured, "Perhaps in this world, there really are... people with deep feelings..." Then, she plunged the knife into her chest, just like that, without any warning...

She fell backward, a blissful smile spreading across her face, as if she had returned to the beautiful days when she was still the most beautiful courtesan, but it also seemed not to be…

Because all those promises of lifelong love to her back then ultimately came to nothing... So, those were painful memories, and they wouldn't make her smile with such happiness and contentment.

But today, she seemed to see in Lu Xiaosan a deep affection that had long since disappeared from her life, as if she could see those boys from back then, finally coming back to her to fulfill their promises...

At that moment, she softened towards Lu Xiaosan and didn't stab him any further...

But she quickly realized that there was no such thing as genuine affection in the world, and thought about how those people treated her in reality! How heartless and hateful they were!

So she grabbed Lu Xiaosan's neck tightly again, wanting to expose his false affection for Wen Ying and confirm the idea she believed deepest in her heart...

But Lu Xiaosan's defiant behavior still moved her. At that moment, she really doubted whether she had really thought wrong...

She couldn't possibly be wrong; it's just that she spends her days in the midst of worldly affairs, seeing only despicable and unchangeable hypocrisy.

Gradually, she grew accustomed to this hypocritical affection and began to generalize, believing that all love in the world was hypocritical and could not withstand the test of life, death, and time.

So when Lu Xiaosan bravely stood in front of her, she wavered, and her innate yearning for true love seemed to be awakened again.

In that moment, she seemed to see the dashing young man from Wuling in her youth, smiling as he walked towards her, took her hand, and led her away from all the trouble. They would eventually go together to a secluded, quiet place, where no one would ever disturb them. Even though she was no longer the most beautiful courtesan, in the young man's heart, she would always be.