The Woman

Chapter 261 – The Woman

As if to showcase the intensity of the battle, the red-faced general, surrounded by a few soldier-actors, leapt onto a three-legged table and began spinning on its edge with increasing speed.

“Clang, clang, clang, clang~” Accompanied by the music, he spun for several whole minutes—and on a table with only three legs, no less. An impressive display of skill.

Even Li Huowang’s eyes widened slightly at what he saw on the stage. “The requirements for opera performers in Great Liang are this high?”

“Clang~ clang~ ta~” The general, his back bristling with flags, executed a backflip and landed steadily.

As the surrounding soldier-actors collapsed to the ground in unison, the general struck a pose, held it sharply—and the crowd erupted into cheers and applause.

Li Huowang clapped along with them. He realized he had been wrong. He hadn’t expected the gap between one opera troupe and another to be this vast.

Even someone like him, who knew very little about opera, could see how remarkable it was.

Just as he was getting absorbed in the performance, the general on stage froze. The two long pheasant feathers atop his helmet began quivering violently as he shook his head, a rapid, high-frequency flutter. “Hmm~? Who~ goes~ there~?”

The moment the general finished speaking, the lanterns on the stage went out. Everything was plunged into pitch-black darkness.

A sliver of doubt flickered in Li Huowang’s mind. Then, the lanterns lit up again—but this time the light was no longer red. It had turned into an eerie green.

The stage, which had held only the general moments before, now had someone else standing on it.

A woman. She had her back to everyone. The long, flowing water sleeves on her arms trembled endlessly like cascading waterfalls.

The music had stopped at some point. The only sound left on stage was a kind of breathing—growing heavier and heavier.

“Hehe…” A chilling whisper suddenly sounded right next to Li Huowang’s ear. Every hair on his body stood on end.

“What the hell is that crap! Can’t this place ever settle down?!” His expression instantly twisted into a snarl. One hand on his sword, he pushed off the tiles beneath his feet, ready to charge at the stage.

But Bai Lingmiao grabbed him with both hands, holding him tight. “Senior Li, it’s fake! It’s just a performance!”

“Fake??” Li Huowang hesitated, staring at the stage. The general paced slowly in measured steps, circling the face-hidden woman warily, round after round.

Then, abruptly, the woman whipped her head around. At the same moment, two large bronze mirrors were raised on either side of the stage. The bright candlelight reflected off them, casting a beam directly onto the woman’s face—a face that had no features at all.

The sight made everyone in the audience jump. Several children burst into frightened tears.

Li Huowang, however, let out a breath of relief. It really was fake. His sharp eyes caught the trick: the head was just a prop. Her real head was currently tucked inside her costume.

He slowly released his grip on the sword and sat back down on the rooftop. “You people of Great Liang really go all out with your operas, huh? Adding horror elements to a play?”

“Senior Li, what are ‘horror elements’? This opera has always been performed this way. It’s been done like this for over a hundred years. They say General Yue once encountered something like this on the battlefield.”

Staring at the eerie, terrifying stage in the distance, Li Huowang thought that if the legend was real, the actual thing must have been far more brutal—and far more terrifying—than this.

Just then, he saw the general raise his jian and bring it down with a single blow, cleaving the woman’s head clean off. She fell straight onto the stage as if truly dead.

But before her body had even settled, a man with a dark-painted face and a copper-coin paper pasted on each cheek wobbled onto the stage, his head tilted back.

“Wahahaha~”

Rows of sharp teeth spiraled in and out of his mouth as he spewed them. Accompanied by the sharp clang of gongs, sparks flew from his lips—bright pinpricks of fire in the pitch-black night.

“Heh.” Bai Lingmiao heard Li Huowang laugh. She turned her head, puzzled, to look at him in the dark. “Senior Li, what’s so funny? Isn’t the show good?”

“It’s good. I’m not laughing at the performers on stage. I’m laughing at Troupe Leader Lü. He really miscalculated this time. With his mediocre skills, I doubt he could earn a single coin in Great Liang.” Li Huowang watched Lü Zhuangyuan’s increasingly sour face in the distance.

“Honestly, Great Liang is different from anywhere else. Whether it’s material comforts or entertainments, it’s leagues ahead of other places. No wonder it’s the strongest region.”

That night, everyone was thoroughly entertained—including Li Huowang.

The visiting troupe collected plenty of rewards. There was a reason they had chosen this time to perform: it was harvest season. The landowners had money, and they were generous with it.

Lü Zhuangyuan returned looking utterly defeated. All his earlier bravado was gone. His decades of pride as an opera performer had been shattered into dust.

Unlike the others, who chattered excitedly, he led his two sons into the room and crouched in a corner, silent.

“Dad, that guy can spit sparks from his mouth! How are we supposed to compete with that?” Lü Xiucai broke the silence.

“What do you mean, how? The old sheng at the end—his singing isn’t as good as mine!” Lü Zhuangyuan argued stubbornly, his neck stiff.

But as soon as he said it, he deflated like a punctured bladder. He could talk tough, but that didn’t close the gap between the two troupes.

He shoved his pipe into his mouth, hunched his back, and shuffled toward Bai Lingmiao, who was spreading out bedding in the corner.

“Hehe… Miss Bai, could this old man ask you something? That play they performed today… can all the troupes in Great Liang put on something like that?”

“Yes. And not just one kind—they can perform several types. And today’s wasn’t even their best!”

Lü Zhuangyuan hunched even lower and staggered back over to his two useless sons.

That night, Lü Zhuangyuan barely slept. He tossed and turned, his mind churning. “If I can’t keep the Lü Family Troupe’s stage standing…won’t I just be freeloading again?”

But he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep. When the roosters in the village started crowing, Lü Xiucai, an early riser, saw Gouwa emerge from a small thicket, grinning lecherously while holding the woman Hong’er.

The two were tangled together, laughing and whispering intimately.

When Gouwa spotted Lü Xiucai drawing water from the well, his eyes lit up. He sent Hong’er away and swaggered over, his face full of smugness.

“Hehehe~ Hey, kid, you know what I did last night? Hehehe~”

Lü Xiucai said nothing. He picked up his bucket of water and walked toward the house. But Gouwa wouldn’t let him off, following him and yakking away.

“Oh~ that feeling~ oh~ that feeling~ hehehe~”

With his sneaky eyes and weaselly face, he couldn’t have looked more vulgar.