When the incense ash fell into my neck, I opened my eyes suddenly.
It's not the smell of blood from the guillotine, it's sandalwood. A cloyingly thick sandalwood scent.
I knelt on the futon, my knees hurting, and in front of me were the tablets of the ancestors of the Shen family. In the incense burner on the table, three sticks of incense have just been half-burned, and the gray ashes are curled up like corpses from previous lives.
I looked down at my hands.
Fair and clear. Slim. The nails were still stained with freshly applied impatiens juice. There are no scars caused by hot irons, no deformed joints left after severed fingers, and no bloody cocoons worn on the stone walls of the dungeon before death.
