Jiang Yiyun looked at everyone with an open and upright gaze and said, “emperor, your subject and consort humbly request lenient punishment. I hope this matter will not implicate her family. I also bear responsibility for failure to properly manage one’s subordinates in this matter, and I am willing to accept punishment as well.”
Jia Yinger also played the good person: “Indeed. Although she framed your subject and consort, it was also because of me. I should not have treated her so harshly before, driving her to harbor resentment and resort to this desperate measure. I hope emperor and Lord Gu will impose lenient punishment.”
She had no choice but to say this. Qiying had taken the blame for her, so she had to protect Qiying’s family.
If Qiying were sentenced to the extermination of nine clans, how could she still be willing to take the blame for her?
“This guilty servant harmed you so badly, yet you are still kind enough to plead for her. Since that is so, I do not intend to impose severe punishment either. Minister Gu, what do you think?”
Chu Yinheng deliberately asked this question.
Gu Hanjue’s gaze drifted between the two beauties who surpassed all others in the Six Palaces for a moment before settling on Jia Yinger. He smiled faintly.
The smile was dazzling enough to stir Jia Yinger’s heart. Under his gaze, she could not help feeling shy.
“It is rare for both imperial consorts to show such kindness. In that case, this seat shall impose lenient punishment.”
No matter how one looked at it, he seemed to be giving Jia Yinger face. It should have been a happy ending for everyone, but his next words made Jiang Yiyun’s heart tremble.
“However.” With a single turn of phrase, Gu Hanjue displeased another person. “Empress has also admitted to bearing responsibility for failure to properly manage one’s subordinates, and this time she even harmed the imperial fetus. Severe punishment is unavoidable. Emperor, what do you think?”
There was a hint of coercion in his words. Moreover, knowing Chu Yinheng well, he also understood that the empress could not escape punishment.
His behavior today had already been abnormal, and this only made people feel even more that he had taken Jia Yinger’s side.
Chu Yinheng inexplicably felt unwilling to bear it, but he did not want to admit it. Thus, he forced himself to take the opposing stance.
“The empress should indeed be punished. Then place her under confinement for half a year.”
…
The vermilion gates stood open, once again seeing off the guests. This disturbance had come to an end, while the people coming and going nearby were merely spectators.
They did not care about the rises and falls of people in the imperial palace. Someone disappearing today and someone else gaining power tomorrow were nothing more than an unchanging rule.
They cared even less about changes in the lead characters. As long as someone could perform, everyone was naturally willing to watch.
Jiang Yiyun moved forward like a puppet. She was innocent, yet the instigator had been given the beautiful reputation of being “kindhearted.” She could not help sighing. This person’s favoritism was terrifying.
She walked this entire way like a soulless corpse. She hated Gu Hanjue, hated Chu Yinheng, and hated herself even more for remaining unenlightened and continuing to persist.
Only after nightfall did she, after struggling for an entire day, finally make up her mind: she would train hard in martial arts, with revenge as her foremost goal.
Yet one matter occupied her thoughts for a long time. Since Gu Hanjue had already taken a side, why had arsenic appeared in Jia Yinger’s palace?
After questioning her subordinates, she learned that none of them was under suspicion. Then who, exactly, was secretly helping her?
Without thinking further, she merely arranged for people to quietly investigate who had visited Jia Yinger’s residence. The answer would naturally become clear.
After organizing her emotions for the entire day, she put on another physical appearance and set out.
The guards in the imperial palace could not stop her from coming and going. Once again, she arrived at that desolate yet secluded place and waited for the mysterious master to appear.
A faint breeze swept past her side. She swiftly turned around, firmly catching the sudden strike and clearly seeing who had come.
“Master, use a different move to ambush me next time!”
“Hmph!” A cold snort was her answer, followed by another strike.
Her eyes shifted as she followed the changes in the other party’s movements, then skillfully dealt with the attacks that followed.
After several exchanges, this brief trial came to an end.
The person wearing a strange mask clasped his hands behind his back and spoke in a lecturing manner: “Not bad this time. Your reactions were timely enough, and your responses were fairly smooth and appropriate. However…”
“Look at how pleased you are with yourself. You only caught one strike, and already you are feeling proud?”
Jiang Yiyun had long since thoroughly understood this person’s temperament. Knowing that his feigned anger was merely an act, she said with a smile, “master, I have improved. Are you still not happy?”
“You have achieved only a little, yet you are already this complacent. If you die at someone else’s hands one day, do not cry your eyes out.”
“How could that happen? With you supporting me, master, who would dare touch me?”
She smiled again. “They say that as people grow older, their hearts become increasingly kind. Why is your temper so strange, master? You always insist on quibbling with your disciple.”
The person before her suddenly became serious. “How do you know your master is old?”
Jiang Yiyun said, “With cultivation this profound, how could you possibly be young? Even if you are not seventy or eighty, you must at least be forty or fifty.”
She analyzed the matter leisurely, unaware of the chilling swordflash that flashed through the eyes of the person before her.
“Who says that someone with profound martial arts must have the body of this old man?” he asked as he approached.
Jiang Yiyun was startled. Could she have guessed wrong? Yet the other party’s mature and composed bearing truly made it difficult to believe he was young.
As she pondered, she failed to notice that the other party was slowly drawing closer.
Only when barely a foot remained between them did she give a slight start. Then her face reddened, and she retreated one step.
“Master, you…” Before she could react, he suddenly moved close and seized her right hand.
“My flesh is quite young. If you do not believe me, feel it for yourself.”
While Jiang Yiyun was still dazed, he grabbed her hand and guided it toward a warm place.
The man’s robes were not wrapped particularly tightly around his chest. Since it was not yet the bitterly cold season, the overlapping collar had already fallen open between his collarbones, leaving it somewhat loose.
Because of this, her hand easily slipped inside his clothes.
He guided her hand toward his firm chest, and she remained stunned for a long while by this sudden action.
Although he was male, his flesh was remarkably smooth. It was not comparable to a woman’s, but it still possessed a faintly taut and tender quality.
Yet this fine physical appearance radiated an overwhelming masculine presence, warm, mellow, and abundant.
Under the moonlight, with a line between light and shadow, the man’s silhouette was clearly visible. His features were sharply defined, especially the protrusion of his Adam’s apple.
This youthful physical appearance and tall, imposing frame clearly did not belong to this old man.
“Ah!” She hurriedly withdrew her hand, then forcefully shoved away the man radiating warm masculine presence and retreated several yards.
The shock still visible in her eyes told him that his teasing had succeeded. He therefore taunted her, “Have you felt out my master’s age?”
“You… you…” Jiang Yiyun was filled with shame and anger, but she did not know how to voice it.
Her inner heart was also filled with the feeling of having been toyed with. She breathed heavily again and again, occasionally biting her lower lip.
This exchange caused her to think of another person—Gu Hanjue.
Why had she thought of him at this moment? The enemy who made it difficult for her to sleep peacefully. The more she thought about it, the more ashamed and furious she became.
The other party noticed the change in her and realized that he had gone a little too far, so he once again adopted a serious expression.
“Do not call your master old again. I do not wish to prove it by using a method that lets you take advantage of me every time.”
Jiang Yiyun found this utterly baffling, and somewhat laughable as well. Clearly, he had teased her first, so how had it become him being taken advantage of?
“When did I ever want to touch you? You were the one who forcefully grabbed my hand…” The description that followed was difficult to speak of it. She did not know how to continue, and could only glare angrily at the solemn-looking scoundrel before her.
Her cheeks looked as though they had been lightly brushed with peach-colored ink, and it could still be seen beneath the splendor of the light.
Having enjoyed teasing her enough, he brought the exchange to an end.
“Now that you have confirmed your master’s age, can we continue with today’s lesson?”
Jiang Yiyun stood there for a long while without saying a word.
Having to call someone around her own age “master” was already embarrassing enough. Now that she had been teased and could not bring herself to openly retort, she held a breath of anger in her chest that lingered for a long time.
Noticing the silence of the person behind him, he slowly turned around. A trace of amusement touched his brows as he said, “What is it? Are you angry? You are young, yet you have quite a temper.”
“Are you not young as well?” Jiang Yiyun could not help retorting. Her delicate face still carried an adorable, petulant anger that he found endearing.
“Heh. Your master is not old, but I am not younger than you.”
Jiang Yiyun asked, “What else do you know? You know everything I do in the imperial palace, yet you never say who you are.”
This was a question she had always wanted to ask. Today, while still angry, she finally voiced it.
“Your master knows that you are a palace consort, knows that you came from the Li Kingdom, and knows that your heart belongs to Chu Yinheng. There is only one thing I do not know.”
This made her curious. She had not expected there to be anything he did not know, so she could not help asking, “What is it?”
Facing her, he asked seriously, word by word, “Your master is quite puzzled. There are no fewer than several people in the imperial palace who are at odds with you, so why do you alone harbor such implacable hostility toward Gu Hanjue, as though the two of you were blood feud enemies?”
Only then did Jiang Yiyun realize that the other party did not know everything about her. Perhaps Emperor Wenxian of the Li Kingdom had not told him that much.
She would not tell this secret to anyone, not even the person before her, whom she trusted absolutely.
“I have my reasons, and I also have an obsession,” she murmured.
“An obsession?” The person beneath the mask changed expression slightly. “Could it be for Chu Yinheng?”