She's an ancient beast who has lived for tens of thousands of years. She nearly destroyed the world. She's so sharp that she can spot a lie from a mile away. So how did Jiu Ying (九婴), the main villain of Veil of Shadows (月鳞绮纪), get tricked by a few simple sentences from Ji Ling (寄灵), a blind fox from under Nan Shan (南山)? The answer isn't that Ji Ling is some master manipulator. It's that Jiu Ying's own mind built the trap for her. She wanted something so badly that her common sense took a holiday. And that made her the easiest mark in the entire drama.
The Arrogance of an Ancient Beast
Jiu Ying has been around since before humans learned to make fire. She's seen empires rise and crumble. She's watched heroes beg and villains weep. In her eyes, Ji Ling is a child playing dress-up. She doesn't fear his little schemes because she believes she can crush him with one claw behind her back. The power gap between them is that enormous. Remember, it took nine dragons sacrificing themselves just to seal her away the first time. Each dragon swallowed one of her nine heads. And even then, they couldn't finish her off—Wu Shiguang (武拾光) had to become the tenth dragon to finally do the job. With that kind of reputation, who wouldn't get a little full of themselves?
But here's where her pride becomes a blindfold. After being sealed by the Long Shen (龙神), Jiu Ying lost all her heads. They shattered into eighty-one pieces of soul fragments scattered across the land. A majestic beast reduced to such a pathetic state—it's enough to drive anyone insane. She created Lu Wuyi (露芜衣), a perfect copy of someone from her past. That single act screams louder than any monologue: she cannot let go. Her obsession with reclaiming her former power is not a weakness. It's the only thing she thinks about when she sleeps, when she wakes, when she plots. And that, dear reader, is exactly the crack in her armor that Ji Ling needed.
The most dangerous desire is not the one you hide. It's the one you'd burn the world for. Jiu Ying would burn a thousand worlds to get her heads back. So when someone walks up and whispers, "I can help you with that," her ears perk up like a wolf smelling blood. She doesn't stop to ask why a stranger would be so generous. She doesn't wonder if there's a catch. Because her craving for power has already started chewing through her logic like acid through rope. That's not stupidity. That's obsession wearing a clever disguise.
The Words That Hit Like a Dagger
Ji Ling didn't walk up to Jiu Ying with a complicated plan full of twists and turns. He kept it simple. He told her: I don't actually want to save Wu Wangyan (雾妄言). I can use her to force Wu Shiguang to kill Chiwen (螭吻). A dragon killing a dragon—that's a sin so heavy it can never be washed away. Then I can stay as the fake Long Shen forever. And you, dear Jiu Ying, can finally get your heads back. That's it. No fancy rhetoric. No long speeches. Just a straight line from A to B to C. And Jiu Ying swallowed it whole.
Why? Because those words were tailor-made for her soul. She had been scheming for ages—controlling the Wuxiang Moon, crafting Lu Wuyi as a puppet, even hiding her essence inside Wu Shiguang's body. Her only goal was to kill Chiwen and reclaim her stolen power. So when Ji Ling laid out a path that ended exactly where she wanted to go, she didn't examine the map. She just started running. From her perspective, Ji Ling was just another selfish creature clinging to power. She thought he feared the real Long Shen coming back to take his throne. She projected her own hunger for control onto him. And that felt comfortable. That felt familiar. That felt true.
What she never considered—not for a single second—was that Ji Ling might not want to be the Long Shen at all. He didn't care about the throne. He didn't care about power. He cared about one person: Lu Wuyi. Everything he did, every lie he told, every risk he took, was to protect her and change a fate that seemed impossible to escape. Jiu Ying couldn't imagine that kind of selflessness because she had never met anyone like that in ten thousand years. She assumed everyone played the same dirty game she did. And that assumption turned her into the perfect victim.
Smart People Get Fooled the Most
Here's a bitter truth that real life proves again and again: most people who get scammed aren't stupid. They're clever. They're the ones who think they're too smart to be fooled. A boss promises you a promotion next year, and you believe it—not because the boss is honest, but because you want that promotion so badly that you invent a hundred reasons to trust the promise. Your brain doesn't filter for lies. It filters for hope. Jiu Ying did the same thing. She wanted her power back. She wanted revenge on Chiwen. So when Ji Ling handed her a story that delivered both wishes on a silver platter, her eyes turned the lies into truth all by themselves.
This is what people call "too clever by half." Jiu Ying thought she had figured Ji Ling out. She saw him as a greedy impostor who would do anything to keep his fake throne. That made sense to her because that's exactly what she would do in his position. She never imagined that someone might act out of love instead of self-interest. She never met a person willing to risk everything for another person's safety. So when that kind of "fool" stood right in front of her, she couldn't recognize him. Her own dark heart had become a pair of distorted glasses. Everything she looked at through them looked just as dark as herself.
The biggest limitation any person can have is not the inability to see others clearly. It's the inability to see themselves. Jiu Ying didn't fall for Ji Ling's lie because the lie was brilliant. She fell for it because her own inner world was too shadowed. She assumed every creature on earth played by the same selfish rules. She wrapped her profit-above-all logic around the entire universe and then walked straight into a trap of her own making. That's not irony. That's tragedy. And it's a warning written for anyone who thinks they're too sharp to ever be tricked. Your sharpest knife can cut you if you hold it by the blade.
