Mysterious Identities

The night was cold and wet, the sky pregnant with heavy rain clouds threatening to burst at any moment. Xiang Ling's offer reverberated in the air, leaving a stunned silence in its wake. Even her husbands, who knew her better than most, were taken aback by the sheer magnitude of her gesture. It was a stark departure from the Xiang Ling they once knew, a woman who would have scoffed at the idea of offering aid to refugees.

Yet, here she stood, orchestrating the logistics of shelter for those displaced souls as if she had shed her former self along with her memories.

What surprised them even more was when Xiang Ling took over the task and personally checked each refugee's pulse to see how many of them needed medical treatment and how many were healthy. The gravely injured ones were already getting treated in the school building by the village physician with the little resources they had at hand.

Xiang Ling divided the rest of the refugees into two groups - those who needed treatment because they had light injuries or were malnourished, and those who were mostly healthy.

The village head and his family helped collect as many quilts from the villagers as possible and arranged them in three different rooms of Chen Manor that were emptied for the refugees.

By the time the first drop of rain hit the ground, the refugees were well-settled inside Chen Manor. Before returning to the manor, Xiang Ling handed over half of the spiritual herbs to the village physician to treat the injured refugees.

She even planted a handful of spirit herbs inside her space to use them later. A day inside her space was equal to an hour in the outside world which meant by the time a day would pass in the outside world, twenty-four days would have passed inside her space. That many days were enough for the baby spiritual herbs to grow up while absorbing the pure spiritual energy from the ground, water, and air inside the space. She could use those herbs, after the storm would end, to treat the refugees.

Her husbands received another surprise when they all found out about the fruits that she had collected from the mountains along with Xin Cheng. They helped in distributing those fruits and water to the refugees along with a bowl of porridge that Xiang Ling cooked herself by adding some of the spiritual herbs along with the spirit water from the stream. The more spirit energy these mortals would consume, the sooner they would heal.

"I can't keep thinking that she's acting. What she has done today, that's a far cry from her personality. Someone like her couldn't hide her true emotions no matter how good she is at putting on an act." Li Xian commented as he kept his gaze focused on Xiang Ling who was currently helping kids to clean up along with Fu Xiao. They were washing the hands, feet, and faces of the kids to get rid of the dirt that was covering them.

None of the other four men spoke but their silence was more or less an agreement to his statement. They were also starting to believe that their wife was not just pretending to have turned over a new leaf but had actually forgotten her memories and changed for the better.

Completely unaware of her husbands' thoughts, Xiang Ling continued helping the kids tidy up before they could have their dinner and sleep. Among all the refugees, barely one-third were healthy and doing fine compared to others, and most of them were kids. The elders did a great job at protecting their kids and keeping their bellies full even if it meant that they would get to eat less or nothing at all.

"These elder brothers are all so handsome."

Xiang Ling heard a little girl of around six, whispering the words to her brother who was only a couple of years older than her. The little boy turned an unimpressed gaze toward the five men his sister just mentioned and the look in his eyes completely changed. He stared at the men in awe and nodded his head slowly in agreement. "They are..."

Xiang Ling failed to suppress the smile that bloomed on her lips as she heard the little boy's admission of her husbands' beauty. Those men could even charm kids this young.

"Look, brother! All five of them had such long and silky, smooth black hair. Jade skin, and dark black eyes. They almost look too pretty to be real." The little girl whispered again as she admired the beauty of the men who had given her and her brother a place to sleep and food to eat.

The smile on Xiang Ling's lips froze as her ears registered the little girl's words. Black hair? Black eyes? She found herself turning her attention toward her husbands and sure enough - Wei Guang was the only one with black hair and black eyes, Li Xian had silver hair and sapphire blue eyes, Xin Cheng had crimson eyes and dark hair that almost had touch of red in it, Dao Ming had grey eyes and ash black hair while Zhe Yuan had purple eyes and platinum hair.

Her eyes scanned each of her husbands and she found herself wondering about what she didn't pay much attention to before - no normal mortal had such weird appearances.

How come her husbands had such different hair and eye colors but no mortal around them behaved differently? Or was it only she who could see their true appearances?

Wei Guang's appearance was according to mortal standards with his jade back eyes and hair. For a moment, she could decipher why she was seeing Li Xian's true hair and eye colors as she was an immortal inside a mortal's body and could see the true soul residing inside the mortal body of her second husband. But if that was the case, didn't it mean that her other three husbands also had some mysterious identities?

Just what was going on? What were the identities of the other three husbands? And how come the previous owner of her body ended up marrying not one but five men who weren't mortals?