Before Ji Kongqing could recover from the thumping of her heart, Jiang Sui’s expression suddenly shifted, turning murderous.
She stuffed her long whip into her belt, drew the arrow from her back, and nocked and drew her bow in one fluid motion. That arrow aimed straight for Ji Kongqing’s location.
Believing Jiang Sui was targeting her, Ji Kongqing felt certain she was done for. Paralyzed with her breath caught in her throat, she stood frozen, her limbs too stiff to move.
The next second, the grips of the two masked men holding her suddenly fell slack.
Ji Kongqing blinked open her eyes and saw the heads of the two men pierced through by a single arrow. Shocked, she collapsed to the ground. Was this an arrow a human being could possibly fire?
It had pierced straight through both of their temples with absolute precision. Hitting two birds with one stone, Jiang Sui was utterly formidable!
In the brief moment Ji Kongqing spent staring in a daze, Jiang Sui had already ridden her horse right up beside her. Remaining mounted, she leaned forward, bent down, grabbed Ji Kongqing by the hand, and hoisted her up entirely.
Ji Kongqing felt her body spin ninety degrees out of her control, and the next instant, she found herself seated in the saddle, pulled securely into Jiang Sui’s embrace.
Her nostrils were greeted by the familiar fragrance of gardenias, while her back pressed against Jiang Sui’s warmth and softness. Ji Kongqing’s face flushed hot, and her heart pounded wildly out of control, filled with a mix of excitement and reassurance.
She could not quite comprehend what manner of complex emotion this was.
“Fall back!” The scholar, whose face Jiang Sui had seen, immediately signaled the retreat.
“Thinking of leaving?” Jiang Sui’s eyes were filled with murderous intent. With a wave of her hand, two masked dark guards suddenly appeared, drawing their swords and plunging straight into slaughtering the group of men.
Realizing that matters had reached this point and that he could not expose his master, the scholar hardened his heart, pulled a white medicine vial from his bosom, and drained it as if facing death.
The next second, he coughed up a mouthful of dark blood and collapsed to the ground, dead.
Ji Kongqing had witnessed battlefields blazing with artillery and disaster zones filled with agonizing cries, but she had never seen close-quarters combat like this where cold steel took lives. Every strike drew blood, and every blow landed with bone-crunching force. Looking at the corpses scattered all over the ground, her gaze turned vacant.
“Scared out of your wits?” Jiang Sui’s warm breath brushed against the hollow of Ji Kongqing’s ear, her tone laced with mockery and teasing.
Ji Kongqing uncomfortably averted her gaze. “No.”
“If you are not, then we are heading back to the estate.” Jiang Sui pulled on the reins to turn the horse around and instructed the two masked guards, “Clear away the bodies and check if they left behind any incriminating evidence.”
“Understood.” The guards bowed in salute and began searching the corpses.
“Wait, what about that man and his son?” Ji Kongqing suddenly remembered something.
“You still have not been scammed enough?” Jiang Sui furrowed her brow, her tone impatient.
Before Ji Kongqing could open her mouth to speak, a wretched and grief-stricken cry burst out from inside the house.
Ji Kongqing recognized that cry; it belonged to the man.
Accompanying the wails were the man’s accusations. “Didn’t you say that if I tricked her into coming, my son would be saved? How can you say it is too late now? Save him! Save him, please!”
The man’s accusations grew closer and closer from within. The next second, an old man pushed open the door and stumbled out from inside, prompting a guard to swiftly draw a sword and press the blade directly against the old man’s neck.
Behind the old man stood the father, clutching his child with a look of utter despair.
“Who are you? State your name!” A guard glared fiercely at the old man before him.
Never expecting to escape one mire only to leap straight into a tiger’s den, the old man hurriedly pleaded for mercy. “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me! This humble person is a physician from the Huaicao Hall, summoned by someone to come treat a patient.”
“You are from Huaicao Hall? Not the Jishi Medical Clinic?” Upon hearing the old man’s introduction, the man widened his eyes.
The old man nodded repeatedly. “That is right, I am not from Jishi Medical Clinic. I truly do not know anything about this! I just received word to make a house call, and I do not know any of these people.”
“We will investigate whether there is any connection ourselves.” The guard bound the old man’s hands and feet, preparing to take him back for interrogation.
“They lied to me, they lied to me.”
Clutching the child who no longer breathed, the man shook his head with a deadened heart, his face covered in the sorrow and bitter resentment of someone who had been deceived.
Seeing his state, the old man could not suppress a sigh of warning. “Even if Physician Zhou from Jishi Medical Clinic had come, this child could not have been saved. His spleen was ruptured and his abdomen filled with blood; it was beyond saving.”
“You must have consulted quite a few physicians before going to Jishi Medical Clinic, right? They surely gave you the same diagnosis, or else you would not have agreed to Jishi’s demands.”
The man did not respond, staring blankly at the ground with all hope extinguished.
Ji Kongqing let out a cold laugh. “If you had not wanted to help these people harm me, your child might have had a chance at survival. What a pity, the innocent child.”
The man lifted his gaze to look at Ji Kongqing, sitting tall in the saddle, and laughed and cried at once as he retorted. “You could have saved him? Even Physician Zhou from Jishi couldn’t save him, what would you use to save him?”
He did not believe her, but the old man found Ji Kongqing looking familiar. Staring intently at her for a few moments, he seemed to recall something.
“Ah, are you the physician who went on the free clinic with the imperial physicians a while ago?”
“You recognize me?” Ji Kongqing asked, frowning in confusion.
The old man nodded. “This humble person is Wang Hong, a physician from Huaicao Hall. Our Huaicao Hall is located near the Huimin Pharmacy, and I saw you when I passed by. I heard you saved a woman suffering from a difficult labor by performing a caesarean section, keeping both mother and child safe.”
“Correct.” Ji Kongqing nodded.
“Then if it is you, this child might truly have had a chance.” The old man sighed, looked at the dead child in the man’s arms, and shook his head. “What a pity.”
Upon hearing the old man’s judgment, the man shifted from shock to regret, and began to violently slap himself across the face.
Ji Kongqing glanced at the remorseful man and shook her head. “Everyone in the capital knows that Jishi Medical Clinic takes lives lightly and refuses to render aid. Yet you actually believed their nonsense. Truly, harming others only harms oneself. Only your child is to be pitied.”
“I only wanted to save my child, what did I do wrong!”
The man dropped his child’s corpse, stopped his self-inflicted punishment, stumbled to his feet, and glared at Ji Kongqing. “I did nothing wrong! I did nothing wrong! I didn’t kill my child, you did! You killed my child!”
“If you hadn’t offended them, they wouldn’t have used me, and my child might have had a chance! You caused this, you caused this!”
Listening to his rationalization, Ji Kongqing sneered and shook her head. “Then keep thinking that way, otherwise how else could you lie to yourself about missing the only person who could have saved your son?”
Ji Kongqing ruthlessly unmasked the thoughts hidden in the man’s heart, thrusting a sharp blade straight into his conscience.
She had no desire to sympathize with someone who brought harm upon himself; even if he had extenuating circumstances, that was no excuse for him to sacrifice others to satisfy his own desires.
“Take him away to record his confession as well.” Unwilling to listen to any more of the man’s words, Jiang Sui waved her hand, signaling the dark guards to take the two away.
With those instructions given, Jiang Sui flicked her long whip and rode back to the princess’s estate with Ji Kongqing in tow.
“Why did Your Highness come to save me?” After the estate physician, Ye Jing, finished applying medicine to Ji Kongqing, she could not help asking Jiang Sui.
Jiang Sui had already changed back into her usual indoor robes.
She lifted her eyelids, her thoughts drifting back an hour prior.
An Wu had sent someone to pass her a message warning that someone intended to harm Ji Kongqing.
Jiang Sui’s standing order to An Wu was to monitor Ji Kongqing; aside from that, she had issued no other directives.
Dark guards swore absolute loyalty to their master’s arrangements and would not perform superfluous acts. Thus, even if An Wu witnessed Ji Kongqing facing mortal danger, she would not step in to save her.
When she first received the news, Jiang Sui merely felt that Ji Kongqing had brought it upon herself. Still angry over Ji Kongqing’s words from two days prior, she had wanted to let her suffer a bitter lesson to curb her habit of arguing at every turn.
However, as time passed, the messages sent by An Wu grew increasingly frequent.
Realizing that Jiang Yu might genuinely cripple Ji Kongqing, Jiang Sui could no longer sit still. She hurriedly changed her clothes and galloped away on horseback to rescue her.
Fortunately, she had arrived in time; Ji Kongqing was not crippled, merely beaten black and blue, which could be considered a lesson learned.
“If you were crippled, it would be this princess’s face that lost luster.” Jiang Sui glanced at Ji Kongqing, dropping venom with her words.
Ji Kongqing had already figured out Jiang Sui’s personality to some extent. Rather than taking offense, she was filled with immense gratitude. “Regardless, thank you so much this time, Your Highness. Thank you for saving me.”
Jiang Sui swept her gaze over the bruises on Ji Kongqing’s face, her expression dripping with disgust. “Ji Kongqing, you really are a genuine idiot. A scam transparent at a glance, and you actually fell for it. Foolishly following them along for so long. Truly, you are utterly foolish. Look at you now, you are hideous.”
Knowing she was in the wrong, Ji Kongqing pressed her lips together and admitted fault. “Your Highness is right, you were right the last time you scolded me too. It was my overflowing sympathy that invited disaster. I am sorry for causing trouble for Your Highness.”
It was precisely through today’s ordeal that Ji Kongqing had come to a profound realization of her current predicament.
This was the Jiaming Kingdom, and her current identity was that of a hostage from a hostile nation. She had no relatives, nor any friends she could rely on or turn to for help.
In Jiaming, she did not even possess basic freedom; apart from the capital, she could go nowhere. To Jiang Sui and Emperor Jiang Shirong, crushing her to death would be as easy as squashing an ant.
Isolated and helpless, she had no other choice besides cozying up to Jiang Sui’s influential backing.
The lesson today was that she needed to alter her past survival habits, suppress her sympathy, and adapt to the rules of this society, lest she simply play right into the hands of those plotting against her and Jiang Sui.
Ji Kongqing’s prompt admission of guilt completely caught Jiang Sui off guard.
After an awkward silence hung in the air for a few seconds, she cleared her throat. “It is best if you understand. This princess could save you this time, but next time might not be the case. Alright, tend to your injuries properly, this princess is heading back first.”
“Safe journey, Your Highness.” Ji Kongqing nodded, bowing in salute as she watched Jiang Sui depart.
Once Jiang Sui left, Ji Kongqing let out a long sigh of relief.
Ping’an and Ruyi, who had been quietly waiting by the side too terrified to make a sound, hurried forward to anxiously inquire about her physical condition.
After reassuring them that she was fine, Ji Kongqing got up and walked over to the bronze mirror to look at her face.
“No way? Why am I so hideous right now?”
Not looking was fine, but looking gave her a fright. Her once clean and fair face was now covered in black and blue bruises; her eyes were swollen, her cheeks were swollen, and she looked practically indistinguishable from a pig’s head.
She had thought earlier that Jiang Sui calling her ugly was merely her trademark sharpness, but looking now, Jiang Sui had been speaking absolute truths.
How was she supposed to face people in the coming days looking like this? Ji Kongqing felt a wave of existential despair.
Ping’an and Ruyi had not expected Ji Kongqing to still have the mood to joke around, which finally eased their anxious hearts as they smiled to comfort her. “Master, it is fine. Physician Ye said these are superficial wounds and will heal after resting for a period of time.”
Ji Kongqing sighed. “I suppose that is all we can do.”
Meanwhile, in the Fenghua Courtyard.
An Wu handed the gathered intelligence over to Jiang Sui.
“It really was Jiang Yu who made the move.” Jiang Sui’s expression shifted slightly after reading the report.
“What is the Second Prince plotting?” An Wu did not understand.
Jiang Sui curled her lips into a cold smile. “This is his way of giving this princess a warning.”
“Then what does Your Highness plan to do?”
Jiang Sui’s lips curved upward. “Jiang Yu and the Qian family have been lording it over the capital for far too long. It is about time someone else sat in the seat of the wealthiest merchant in the Jiaming Kingdom.”