White Stone Village, Qingyun Town.
Near noon, the sunlight was clear as gold, splashing across the rural paths and fields.
A few crisp horse neighs pierced the silence, just as they had three days prior, as a stately and elegant procession once again rolled over the country dirt road, passing the ancient stone stele engraved with the village’s name, stirring up a faint trail of dust.
From the most spacious carriage, a delicate hand emerged from the edge of the brocade curtain, fingertips bearing a fine jade-like luster.
Then, the corner of the curtain was gently lifted, revealing half of a beautiful face—skin fairer than snow, long lashes drooping like butterfly wings, lips naturally red without any rouge, like a lotus blooming from clear water, carrying an innate charm and grace.
Yet within those luminous, captivating eyes lingered a trace of restless unease. She followed the receding stone stele with her gaze until the familiar scenery vanished beyond the edge of her sight, then silently lowered her hand, letting the curtain fall back into place, shutting out the world beyond.
Her heart still fluttering with anxiety, the young woman heard the maid beside her speak in a respectful voice: “If the Princess has any instructions, please feel free to command this servant.”
Cuihua was momentarily stunned. The events of these past three days still felt as unreal as a dream. It took her a moment to realize that the maid’s address of “Princess” was meant for her.
A lost pearl of the imperial dynasty, cast adrift among the common folk—once her true identity came to light, she was to return to the phoenix palace.
Such a tale, heard only from the lips of storytellers, had actually and truly fallen upon her, a poor and orphaned village girl. How could it not leave her feeling as though she were in a dream?
She gently shook her head and murmured, “I’ve lived here ever since I could remember… Father is buried in the back hills. To leave so suddenly, not knowing when I might return—my heart can’t help but feel reluctant.”
The maid consoled her softly: “The Princess is deeply devoted. If Lord Liu’s spirit in heaven is watching, seeing your identity clarified and you reunited with Her Majesty the Empress in blood and bone, he will surely be comforted.”
Such a reverent and deferential attitude only made Cuihua feel more stifled. She simply lifted the carriage curtain again and silently gazed at the fields and mountains outside the window, letting her thoughts drift far away.
She had been found and taken in by her father. Her father was blind and had never managed to find a wife in his lifetime, but fortunately, he had a skill for making tofu, barely enough to scrape by.
She was not her father’s biological child, yet he doted on her immensely. In poor households, it was common to treat daughters like weeds, but she had always been the precious treasure cradled in her father’s hands.
Before he closed his eyes for the last time, what he worried about most was her—blaming himself for not being able to save her a proper dowry, and fearing that she would be left alone and helpless, bullied by others.
Her father’s greatest wish was for her to live in peace and happiness. Now that the female official sent by Lin Country specifically to find the Princess had located her, the wealth and honor she had never dared dream of lay right before her eyes. Perhaps, as the maid said, her father would be happy for her…
The Empress’s longing for her daughter was intense, so the procession traveled at great speed, yet in matters concerning the care of her, the Princess, there was not the slightest negligence or delay.
The carriage’s interior was luxuriously appointed, with a square table set with fine wooden dishes holding fresh fruits and delicate pastries—all purchased from the town by the lead female official, Liu Qingzi, who had first inquired about her tastes and preferences before sending someone especially to buy them.
Those expensive pastries that she had previously only been willing to buy a few pieces of during festivals and New Year celebrations could now be taken at will.
As for the faint frown that had creased Official Liu’s brow when she first saw these pastries, Cuihua, mindful of her indebtedness for the food, pretended not to notice.
After polishing off most of the pastries on the plate, Cuihua accepted the teacup the maid timely offered and gulped down two cups before savoring that this water was vastly different from what she usually drank—sweet and refreshing on entry, extremely quenching.
She blinked and asked curiously, “Is sugar added? It’s sweet, but not cloying. It’s really good.”
The maid replied respectfully, “To answer the Princess, it’s chrysanthemum tea, mixed with some wildflower cliff honey. Official Liu was concerned that the Princess might grow weary from the journey and that dry pastries could easily cause internal heat, so she specially instructed this servant to prepare it.”
Cuihua’s lips parted slightly in surprise at these words.
In the poor, remote village where she had grown up, even sugar and salt were considered precious commodities, to be used sparingly.
Such delicious sweet water was truly a first for her in her lifetime. The taste was so wonderful that it involuntarily drew her thoughts far away, reminding her of the old days when she had first found her husband.
At fifteen, Cuihua lost her father. But perhaps her father’s spirit in heaven was watching over her, for the following spring, while gathering firewood in the mountains, she found herself a most handsome husband who suited her heart perfectly.
Back then, her father had found her by the river, sick and covered in rashes. He had carried her from door to door, begging physicians to treat her, and raised her with spoonfuls of medicine and rice porridge.
And she, just like her father, had rescued her husband, who was covered in wounds and at death’s door. She had even gritted her teeth and sold the one mu of thin farmland she had planned to keep as her dowry, hiring doctors and buying medicine, carefully nursing him for the better part of half a year before pulling him back from the gates of death.
Her father had once said that when she was little, she couldn’t swallow the bitter medicinal broth or the bland rice porridge. At his wit’s end, he had mixed in sugar to coax her into swallowing.
Later, when her husband was gravely wounded and bedridden, likely because the pain and suffering were too great, he too could barely take water or food. A flash of inspiration struck her, and she used the same method.
It was a pity, though, that she was ultimately not as skilled as her father.
Her father had fully nursed her back to health. A girl raised in a poor, remote village, fed daily on coarse fare barely enough to fill the stomach, had somehow grown into a figure of jade-white skin and ice-boned grace—full-breasted, narrow-waisted, with rosy lips and white teeth.
Her husband’s leg injury, however, had not healed. Having walked through the gates of death, he had also damaged his heart and lungs. To this day he remained frail, prone to falling ill at the slightest misstep. A man long afflicted naturally has little appetite, and it was common for him to eat next to nothing.
At the thought, Cuihua’s heart ached with tenderness. She pointed to the water pouch at the maid’s side and asked, “Does the consort have this honey tea too? He’s thin-skinned and won’t ask for anything on his own. Have one of the riders out there send word to the back—we’ve traveled a long while, and he should drink some water to moisten his throat.”
The saying goes that poor couples suffer a hundred sorrows, yet in the two years since Cuihua and her husband had wed, their feelings for each other had only grown sweeter than honey.
Whenever the household managed a slightly better meal, she always tried to press more food on her frail husband, and naturally he would find all manner of excuses to push it back to her. Back and forth it went, until in the end most of it still landed in her own mouth.
Cuihua fixed her large, dark, apricot-shaped eyes on the maid. She was not yet accustomed to giving orders, and the mounted guards outside the carriage—men and women alike—were all stern-faced and unsmiling, so she hardly knew how to address them.
To her surprise, the maid who had been obeying her every word went stiff. It took her a long moment to realize who Cuihua meant by “the consort.”
But that man… what kind of consort was he?
The maid had originally served at the Empress’s side. This time she had been sent along with Officer Liu, and in the future she was likely to remain with the Princess for a long while, serving as her chief maid.
Who could have imagined that the Princess had already married among the common folk, and that the husband she had taken in was a lame village man twelve years her senior? The word “consort” simply would not leave her lips.
The maid’s face showed her reluctance, yet she dared not openly defy her mistress. She could only say tactfully, “That one… his carriage is also fully provisioned. Is Your Highness weary? Perhaps this servant may attend to you and help you rest a while?”
So saying, she moved to remove Cuihua’s hair ornaments.
But before her fingertips could touch a single strand, Cuihua twisted aside to avoid her, her expression darkening.
The maid knew she had misspoken and hastily lowered her eyes, bowing her head. “This servant overstepped. I shall not disturb Your Highness further—simply call if you have need of me.”
Cuihua paid her no mind. She drew a deep breath, then abruptly flung open the carriage curtain and called out, “Stop the carriage!”
At the Princess’s command, her carriage halted at once, and the entire procession came to a stop with it.
Before the maid or the driver could rush to steady her, Cuihua had already stepped down onto the ground by herself, using the carriage shaft as support.
Liu Qingzi, leading the party, hurriedly dismounted and strode forward, kneeling in obeisance. Her posture subtly, deliberately, blocked Cuihua’s path ahead. “Forgive me, Your Highness. Has this officer or any of my subordinates been remiss in attending to you?”
Cuihua had been full of fury, but seeing the dozens of people kneeling before her in an instant, the anger churned in her chest several times and was forcibly choked back.
She suddenly realized that being one of the exalted was not so easy after all. Among common folk, the saying went that you don’t strike a smiling face. Faced with such a display of people kneeling and begging forgiveness at the slightest provocation, even with every reason on her side and ten thousand measures of rage, it was hard to let it out.
Yet when she raised her eyes and saw the gray-white carriage parked more than ten zhang behind her own, she pressed her lips together, her expression turning stern once more. “I want to ride in the same carriage as my husband!”
Though Cuihua knew few characters, she had been raised single-handedly by her blind father, growing up in the marketplace and accustomed to the warmth and cold of human relations. She was quite skilled at reading between the lines.
These people, ever since they had come to the door of her thatched cottage three days ago, had been looking down on her husband in both open and subtle ways!
They paid her endless deference as Princess, kneeling in droves at the slightest thing, yet left her husband cold and neglected, as if he were not a living person in her household at all.
Her husband was magnanimous and reasonable, and did not take offense—so they only grew bolder. Had she not kept a firm hold on her husband’s hand the whole time, letting Liu Qingzi and the others see the depth of their bond as husband and wife, they would likely have tossed down a few taels of silver and sent him packing.
The more she thought about it, the angrier she grew. She walked around the kneeling crowd and hurried straight to the carriage at the rear. Before the driver could stop her, she yanked open the curtain.
The contrast cut straight to her heart.
Her own carriage was spacious, ornate, grand, and comfortable—while the one they had arranged for her husband was not even half its size.
Never mind the guards in their grim armor astride tall horses—even the maids attending her were dressed in brocade and silver ornaments, more elegant than the daughters of wealthy families in town.
So it wasn’t that they couldn’t prepare another proper carriage. They had done it deliberately, to make her husband understand that between two people who had long shared the intimacy of skin against skin, their stations were now as far apart as clouds and mud!
When she saw the state of the carriage’s interior, Cuihua’s eyes reddened with heartache.
They had seated her husband—whose leg bore an old injury—on a bare, hard, narrow bench, grudging him even a single cushion!
She reached out her hand to the man inside the carriage, her voice choked with tears. “Husband, they’re bullying us. Let’s not go with them anymore. I don’t care about some so-called Princess—I’ll take you home right now!”
The man took the soft hand she offered and looked up. His face was a beauty rarely seen in this world—strikingly handsome beyond compare.
Perhaps owing to some exotic bloodline in his ancestry, his features were strikingly sharp and well-defined—cold, arched brows, a high, straight nose. Even though he was gaunt to an extreme, his complexion pale to the point of near-illness, he could not conceal the refined, noble air that emanated from the very core of his being.
His gaze toward Cuihua was gentle, and he responded with an agreeable murmur, yet his body did not move.
Both his legs were bound in rigid wooden splints, which he ordinarily used as support alongside crutches to drag his crippled legs through the distance from the house to the courtyard. But he was tall, and with his knees unable to bend, he truly could not manage any movement within the low, cramped carriage.
Cuihua knew well her husband’s predicament. She immediately leaned in close, intending to lend him her warm, soft body as leverage, wrapping her arms around his back to help him down from the carriage.
Since childhood, she had followed her father pushing a cart to sell tofu, and by her teens—though she appeared delicate and tender as warm jade—she was in fact full of strength. Splitting firewood, carrying water, spring plowing, autumn harvest—when it came to farm work, she was no less capable than the village boys.
Her husband’s weight was something she had always borne with ease.
Today, however, the man did not lean into her embrace to rise. His indifferent gaze passed over her shoulder to look outside the carriage, where Liu Qingzi had silently appeared at some unknown moment, her phoenix eyes harboring a faint murderous edge.
Liu Qingzi had been ordered to escort the Princess back. The Princess’s marriage was already an unexpected complication, and the fact that the consort taken was a severely disabled village man made the matter all the more troublesome for her.
To keep the Princess’s heart steady and not delay their journey, she had no choice but to temporarily tolerate this “burden” traveling with them.
But if she truly brought this man before the Empress… she could almost imagine the fury Her Majesty would unleash.
So either she would persuade the Princess to abandon him along the way, or she would engineer an “accident” to eliminate the problem permanently. Such had been her resolve since the moment they set out.
Yet while she was willing to yield temporarily for the greater good, she absolutely could not tolerate such a coarse, lowly cripple commanding their precious Princess to perform acts that shamed the dignity of the royal house.
Liu Qingzi’s right hand had already silently moved to rest on her saber. Unexpectedly, though she had only formed the thought—and it was impossible for the man to have seen her movement through the Princess—he spoke: “Weren’t we all traveling along just fine? Why such a sudden burst of anger?”
Cuihua stamped her foot in fury: “They’re all bullying you! My carriage is spacious and comfortable, with food and drink and attendants—but you have nothing here! Besides, we’re husband and wife—what right do they have to separate us? We should be riding together!”
The man’s words sounded as though he had only just noticed, yet his tone betrayed no ripple of emotion: “…Is that so? I thought perhaps it was because we haven’t yet performed the formal rites. Officer Liu is concerned about the strict protocols of the imperial house, afraid that allowing us to ride together would violate propriety, and that she would face punishment upon returning and be unable to answer to Her Majesty the Empress…”
This reasoning was indeed something Cuihua had not considered.
She was momentarily at a loss for words, and upon deeper reflection, she found her husband’s explanation made more sense.
It was true that they called her Princess, but she couldn’t very well do anything to this group of fully armed officials, male and female. They knelt at the drop of a hat—if not for fear of being blamed by their superiors upon return, why would they go to such lengths?
Cuihua turned back, half-convinced, her beautiful eyes sweeping toward Liu Qingzi: “So you’re saying you weren’t deliberately mistreating my husband, but rather afraid we’d break the rules—and since my mother wouldn’t bear to punish me, her daughter she worked so hard to find, she’d instead hold you accountable?”
Liu Qingzi: “…” She vaguely felt something was off about this reasoning, but her instinct told her that going along with it now was the safest course, so she remained silent in tacit acknowledgment.
Seeing this, Cuihua let out an enlightened “Ah!” and complained: “Why didn’t you just say so from the start! You all wore such stern faces—either kneeling without a word or speaking only halfway—how was I not supposed to misunderstand!”
Liu Qingzi lowered her head: “…This official acknowledges her error. The Princess’s reprimand is well taken.”
Cuihua’s expression softened somewhat, and she heard her husband offer a few more gentle words of coaxing.
He explained that he hadn’t been neglected—merely that he hadn’t traveled far in a long time, and the jostling of the journey had made him dizzy. Others, seeing his discomfort, had simply refrained from disturbing him.
To call it reassurance would be generous; more accurately, it was blatant obfuscation—yet it happened to leave Liu Qingzi and her people with nothing to fault.
After all, his actions had defused the situation, steadied the Princess, and he hadn’t openly done anything so presumptuous as to give them genuine cause for objection.
“Officer…” After Cuihua’s anger had subsided and she returned to the front carriage, Liu Qingzi’s deputy approached quietly, her expression complicated.
A faint, icy curve tugged at the corner of Liu Qingzi’s mouth—a smile that didn’t reach her eyes: “Huai Che… a mere village rustic, yet one who knows exactly what’s what.”
If the man had failed to recognize his own place, wearing his greed for wealth and status plainly on his face, she would never have allowed him to live long.
But since he was willing to feign ignorance while knowing full well the truth, to read the times and plan his own retreat, she didn’t necessarily have to hunt him down and finish him off.
Everyone prefers to extend courtesy to those smart enough to read the room—and the seasoned minds within these nine layers of palace walls, more than anyone.
And this principle, someone else understood even better than she did.