-Imperial Palace-
“You useless fools! What have you all been doing!”
Memorials lay scattered across the floor, soaked through with spilled tea.
Eunuchs and palace maids knelt throughout the room, none daring to utter a word.
“Your Majesty, please calm your anger.”
Li Fuquan knelt trembling on the ground. On his way here, he had checked the national treasury—aside from empty chests, not a single valuable item remained!
The crucial point was that he had questioned the guards at the entrance; no one had been seen entering, and the lock on the treasury door remained intact.
If Consort Jia hadn’t asked the Emperor for rewards today, the theft from the national treasury might never have been discovered!
Emperor Shang Zheng pinched the bridge of his nose, his fingers trembling with rage.
“How many people know about this?”
Li Fuquan cautiously glanced up at the Emperor, his voice quivering. “Just… just this servant?”
“Do you think these people are dead?”
Eunuchs and palace maids: “Your Majesty, please calm your anger! Your Majesty, please calm your anger!”
“Take some men to my private treasury and retrieve funds to cover the deficit in the national treasury. Remember, no one else must know of this!”
Fortunately, he had been embezzling treasures from the national treasury into his private treasury every year, otherwise… Emperor Shang Zheng twisted the jade ring on his finger, his eyes dark and brooding.
“This servant obeys!” Li Fuquan bowed his head and hurried out, his expression tense.
If the Emperor were to learn that the Mu family also knew about this, he wouldn’t have eight hundred heads enough to atone!
-General’s Residence-
“Hey! What are you doing!”
“Let me go! Let me go!”
“Mother! Save me! Aaaah!”
Mu Shicai was restrained by two officers. One of them pressed a red-hot branding iron firmly behind his ear.
“Ah—” Mu Shicai screamed like a stuck pig.
After the branding iron was removed, a bright red “prisoner” character was visible behind his ear.
“My son! Oh, my son!Jiang Xia was similarly restrained and branded with the “prisoner” character behind her ear.
The remaining eight members of the Mu family, including Wang Shi’s personal maid Xiao Fu, were all branded in the same location.
The escorting officers sneered cruelly. “This is His Majesty’s mercy—so if you die on the journey, we can at least cut off your ears as proof.”
Shang Yueli felt the still-searing heat behind her ear, yet her heart remained unusually calm.
Compared to her previous life amidst hails of bullets, this was nothing.
The officers glanced at the sky, calculating the time.
“You have half an hour to prepare yourselves. After half an hour, we depart the city!”
With that, the main gate of the General’s Residence was locked from the outside. Officers stood guard at various points within the residence, maintaining strict surveillance.
“Mother, are you alright?”
Shang Yueli quickly helped Wang Shi up from the ground, examining the wound behind her ear.
The injury was red, swollen, and bleeding. Without prompt treatment, it could leave lasting complications.
Pretending to retrieve something from her sleeve, she focused her thoughts—the golden wound medicine she had taken from the national treasury instantly appeared in her palm.
“Mother, come closer. Let me apply this medicine for you.”
Wang Shi shook her head, taking the medicine from Shang Yueli’s hand. “Let me tend to you first.”
After all, she was a woman who had followed her husband to battlefields—how could she fear such a minor injury?
But her heart ached for Yueli, who had never known hardship since childhood, now forced to suffer alongside the Mu family.
Mu Yunsheng approached. “Mother, Yueli, please sit and rest. Let me apply the medicine for you both.”
“Alright.” Shang Yueli noticed Xiao Fu secretly wiping away tears nearby and beckoned to her.
“Xiao Fu, come here too.”
“Madam, I am but a servant, unworthy of such things.” The young girl’s tear stains at the corners of her eyes remained undried, yet the light in her gaze hadn’t dimmed in the slightest.
Shang Yueli remembered from the original book that after the Mu family met with disaster, Xiao Fu had remained steadfastly by Lady Wang’s side without abandoning her. Later, when Lady Wang died of illness, Xiao Fu herself soon succumbed to influenza.
Such a good person was merely mentioned in passing in the book.
Shang Yueli sighed and took her hand.
“Who said you’re a servant? We’re all convicted persons now, equal in status. There’s no distinction between master and servant anymore!”
“Come, apply the medicine first to prevent the wound from festering.”
“Alright!” Xiao Fu nodded emphatically, wiping away her tears.
While applying the medicine, Shang Yueli glanced at the second branch of the family.
Lin Zhiman had collapsed to the ground in pain, unable to stand up.
The gold and silver jewelry she had been wearing had long been hidden away, leaving only her silk garments as the sole valuable possessions on her person.
She seemed utterly enraged, pointing at Mu Tairan’s nose and cursing, “It’s all your fault for saying you wanted to marry me back then! If you hadn’t seduced me into marrying you, would I have fallen to this state?”
“I seduced you?”
Mu Tairan clutched his still-bleeding ear, his face flushing crimson.
“Lin Zhiman, it was you who stripped naked and lay on the bed forcing me to marry you! Now that the Mu family has met with misfortune, you’re putting the blame on me?”
“Father, family shames shouldn’t be aired in public!”
Mu Changge endured excruciating pain as he jumped up to cover his father’s mouth.
“Ungrateful son, let go of me! I’m going to beat this woman to death today!”
“Go ahead and beat me to death if you dare!” Lin Zhiman’s body trembled slightly, but her words remained sharp. “If you don’t kill me today, you’re not a true Mu!”
Amidst the commotion there, Shang Yueli turned her gaze to the third branch.
Mu Shicai lay wailing in his mother’s arms, tears and mucus mingling together.
“Waaah, Mother, it hurts.”
Jiang Xia had no choice but to shake Mu Taiqi’s shoulder vigorously. “Think of something quickly! Our son is in agony!”
Mu Taiqi slapped her and said irritably, “Stop making noise! All of you, shut up!”
Watching them in complete disarray, Shang Yueli couldn’t help but shake her head.
Husband and wife are birds in the same forest – when disaster strikes, each flies away separately.
“What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell somewhere?”
Seeing her silent, Mu Yunsheng thought Shang Yueli might be uncomfortable somewhere and asked concernedly, “You can go inside and lie down first. I’ll call you when it’s time.”
Shang Yueli said gently, “I’m fine.”
“Gurgle~” Her stomach betrayed her with an untimely rumble, making Shang Yueli blush instantly.
From the moment she transmigrated until now, she hadn’t eaten anything.
“It wasn’t me, the baby is hungry,” Shang Yueli explained.
Mu Yunsheng’s tense nerves relaxed, and he smiled rarely, humoring her: “Alright, we’ll say it’s the baby who’s hungry.”
Shang Yueli felt so embarrassed she could have dug out a magical fairy castle with her toes.
As a top-tier thief from the 31st century, when had she ever been embarrassed in front of others?
“Yueli, are you hungry? Come with Mother. I saved some food for you earlier – the soldiers probably didn’t find it. I’ll take you to eat.”
“Alright!”
Shang Yueli shook off Mu Yunsheng’s hand that was holding hers and followed Wang Shi to the small kitchen.
Mu Yunsheng felt the lingering warmth on his fingertips, gently brought them to his lips, and curved the corners of his mouth.
“General?” Xiao Fu called out to him in confusion.
Mu Yunsheng turned around, placing his hands behind his back.
“What is it?”
“Madam and Old Madam have already gone, won’t you go too?”
“Xiao Fu, I am no longer a general now. From now on, just call me by my name like everyone else.”
“How could that be, General? In Xiao Fu’s heart, you will always be my master!”
Mu Yunsheng looked at Xiao Fu’s determined eyes and knew this mindset couldn’t be changed overnight.
“Very well, from now on call me Young Master, but don’t address me as General anymore.”
“Alright, Young Master!” Xiao Fu happily followed behind Mu Yunsheng as they headed to the small kitchen together.
Shang Yueli looked at the dazzling array of food before her, nearly drooling.
This is what Lin Zhiman called simple fare?
Roasted chicken legs, roasted suckling pig, steamed lamb, steamed deer tail, roasted duck, roasted young chicken…
This is clearly a state banquet, isn’t it?
How extravagant were the Mu family’s meals before?
Shang Yueli’s tears nearly dripped from the corner of her mouth. If only she had transmigrated a month earlier, she would have had a lifetime’s supply of delicacies, and perhaps could have saved Mu Yunsheng from practicing the Sunflower Manual?
“Yueli, is it tasty?”
Shang Yueli picked up a bowl of easily digestible rice porridge, took a sip, and immediately nodded.
“Delicious! Mother, you should eat too!”
Wang Shi waved her hand, “Mother isn’t hungry. I just feel sorry for you – you haven’t had many good days since marrying into our family, and now you have to suffer with us.”
Wang Shi served bowls to Mu Yunsheng and Xiao Fu each, “Yunsheng, Xiao Fu, you should eat too. If you don’t eat now, there might be nothing to eat on the journey.”
“We don’t know how difficult the journey will be. If we eat too much greasy food, we’ll inevitably suffer.”
Mu Yunsheng nodded. Just as he took his first bite, sudden violent pounding sounds came from outside the door.