The noble families and powerful officials of the age spared no effort in raising death warriors to protect themselves and their descendants.
Ability was certainly important in selecting death warriors, but loyalty was the foremost criterion.
Only absolute loyalty could keep them guarding their master’s side.
In the novel, the Emperor favored the Crown Prince excessively and naturally gave him the best dark guards, especially the Crown Prince’s personal dark guard, whose combat power was extremely high and who was utterly loyal to the Crown Prince.
After the Crown Prince was deposed and confined to a side hall, his personal dark guard still refused to leave, guarding him faithfully and repeatedly blocking open and hidden attacks for him.
The reason the deposed Crown Prince died so easily was that the other Imperial Princes had worked together beforehand, using the deposed Crown Prince as bait to set a trap and kill his personal dark guard first.
The dark guard, eager to protect his master, fell into the trap. Before dying, he worried that his badly wounded corpse would frighten the deposed Crown Prince, so he forced himself to use his last breath to leave the side hall and die silently in some dark corner where no one would ever know.
In truth, the deposed Crown Prince was selfish and narrow-minded. Even if the dark guard died before his eyes, he would not have been moved in the slightest.
Because in his heart, the dark guard was merely his blade and shield, a tool… not even considered human. Naturally, he did not care whether the other lived or died.
But for Ye Jingchen, as long as he did not reveal his identity as a novel transmigrator, the personal dark guard was his greatest life-saving charm in this strange world, his guardian deity. So he would never be as foolish as the original host!
In the novel, the death of the personal dark guard was a small climax, and the author had used quite a lot of text to describe that conspiracy and battle. Thus, Ye Jingchen still remembered the dark guard’s name.
It was ironic, really… the dark guard was supposed to be a hidden, unexposed identity, but the author gave him the name “Chenxi,” which implies the arrival of dawn.
But Ye Jingchen liked that name very much.
A dark guard was only an identity, a profession. Professions themselves had no distinction between high and low; what could not see the light of day was only the hypocritical and dark human heart.
That person deserved the name “Chenxi.”
Ye Jingchen sat up in bed and solemnly called out that name.
“Chenxi.”
Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, a man in a black close-fitting outfit and a black mask appeared before his bed.
Ye Jingchen swore he had not blinked, but he still could not see how this person had materialized out of thin air.
As soon as Chenxi appeared, he knelt on one knee before him without speaking, his posture indicating that he was ready for orders.
“Rise,” Ye Jingchen said, using as commanding a tone as possible.
Given the original host’s temperament, he could not have had a good attitude toward Chenxi, so he could not start being kind and gentle right away… that would only arouse suspicion.
Though this body was young and the voice tender, he was accustomed to giving orders, so there was still some authority in his tone.
Chenxi rose as instructed but stood with his head lowered, still silent and avoiding eye contact with Ye Jingchen.
He stood very straight, but his figure was somewhat slender. Even though his face was hidden behind a cold, pitch-black mask, he still looked like a young man.
When the Dayuan imperial family selected personal dark guards for Imperial Princes, they indeed only chose young people, usually only three or four years older than the Prince. The intention was that peers would share common interests, making it easier to build bonds and also easier to control them.
After all, a personal dark guard was different from an ordinary dark guard… they had to protect the master up close and were crucial. Even if both were equally loyal, the difference between being thorough and being negligent was vast.
Unfortunately, the original host considered dark guards to be of low status and despised Chenxi from the bottom of his heart, so naturally he never treated him well.
“After I fell into the water, was it you who saved me?” Ye Jingchen asked.
Earlier, after admonishing those palace attendants in the garden, he had also asked who had saved him, wanting to reward them heavily, but no palace attendant stepped forward to claim the reward. The situation at the time had been too chaotic, and they did not even know who had rescued the Crown Prince.
That question had earned him the names of several palace attendants, and it also gave him a guess.
Perhaps it had been a dark guard who saved him.
After all, if it had been a palace attendant, they would not have failed to step forward for the reward.
Even if it had been chaotic, if a palace attendant had saved the original host… working together in the Eastern Palace and familiar with one another… someone would have noticed. Only a dark guard, who could not appear before others, would go unnoticed even if someone had seen him rescue the person.
Among these dark guards, the one most likely to have saved the original host was Chenxi, since Chenxi had been right beside the original host at the time.
“Yes.”
Sure enough, Chenxi admitted it.
But were dark guards always so taciturn?
“Do you know your crime?” Ye Jingchen deliberately put on a stern face and lowered his voice.
The question clearly startled Chenxi. He quickly glanced at Ye Jingchen, then lowered his head again and said in a deep voice, “This subordinate knows his crime.”
Truly a man of few words!
“Then do you know where you went wrong?” Ye Jingchen teased him deliberately.
Chenxi was silent.
After a moment, just as Ye Jingchen was about to accuse Chenxi of not rescuing him in time, Chenxi spoke first, and this time he finally spoke in more than a few words at a time.
“This subordinate failed to save the master before he fell into the water. It is this subordinate’s dereliction of duty. Please punish me, Master!” He knelt again as he spoke.
With his sharp eyes, he could clearly see that the master had intended to harm the Third Imperial Prince, but who would have thought that the master would fail to hurt the other and end up falling into the water himself? He had been too shocked for a moment to save the master before he fell.
Ye Jingchen had originally wanted to accuse Chenxi of not pulling him out the moment he fell into the water, causing him to choke on water and fall unconscious. But he had not expected the other to have such high self-awareness that he actually took the blame for the drowning upon himself.
Ye Jingchen had wanted to use this incident to make a fuss and wheedle some useful information anyway. How could he miss such a great opportunity? So he lifted his chin and said haughtily, “It’s good that you recognize your mistake! Considering that you did pull this prince up in time and only made this prince choke on water and faint, this prince will give you a chance to atone for your mistake. Re-investigate the backgrounds of all the servants who followed this prince yesterday… no, investigate the origins of all the servants in the Eastern Palace… and compile them into a book for this prince to see. This prince suspects someone is trying to harm this prince!”
Ye Jingchen said this with perfect righteousness, and Chenxi, who knew the truth about the original host’s fall…
Chenxi had no reaction at all, only answering with a “Yes.”
“Don’t think this prince is making a mountain out of a molehill. Don’t you think there were too many coincidences yesterday? Third Imperial Brother is so young; the Noble Consort always protects him like the apple of her eye. How could she let him stay alone by the water in such a dangerous place?”
“The reason this prince fell into the water was because the ground was slippery. It had not rained yesterday, so why was it slippery?”
“This prince was just taking a casual stroll yesterday, so why did I happen to end up by the water, and why was Third Imperial Brother alone there? These are all suspicious points. That’s why this prince wants you to investigate all the palace attendants in the Eastern Palace!”
Ye Jingchen had only wanted to come up with some plausible excuses to make his unreasonable request less abrupt, but as he spoke, he almost believed himself that the original host’s drowning was a conspiracy.