When Noah chokes on his own saliva in a dream and dies, he awakens in a bamboo grove as Li Wei — a murdered youth whose body is now his. Guided by a sentient white rabbit named Cotton, Noah must navigate a cultivation world with a game system, inherited cooking skills, and a mysterious fate-seal that draws powerful individuals to him. His first real challenge? Survive when a dangerously handsome masked Sect Master decides he's worth protecting.
Cael is a scholarship student at Verdane Academy whose face is so ordinary that people forget him mid-sentence. That is exactly why the imperial chancellor hires him to wear Crown Prince Aurelian's face at duels, banquets, and social traps — using a family Mirror Art that copies the Prince's voice, posture, and swordwork. The price is brutal: every hour under the borrowed face burns one of Cael's own memories, and exposure means execution for him and his family. Cael expects to be a shield. Instead, he becomes the person the Prince's suitors have been waiting for. Kaelen, the duke's heir with a hidden wrist injury; Sevarin, the foreign prince whose forbidden book was confiscated; and Niel, the commoner genius drowning in a duel debt — each of them is ignored or dismissed by the real Aurelian, and each is quietly saved by the decoy wearing his face. As the suitors drift toward the boy who remembered their details, the real Prince grows jealous and forces Cael to wear his face longer and longer, burning away his sister's face, his mother's voice, his own name. At the Winter Ball the deception is exposed — and the suitors must publicly choose between the perfect Prince and the boy who actually showed up.
“Upon hearing The Fool’s question, Audrey did not immediately answer like in the past. Instead, she widened her crystalline eyes and glanced at The Hanged Man with a scrutinous attitude. Alger subconsciously subdued his body motions. After…”
Dark action manhwa
