Zhu Yu – Chapter 120

Before Fan Changyu could answer, he chuckled softly: “Li Huai’an, isn’t it?”

He had cut off one ear of the eunuch who came to announce the imperial edict, causing the eunuch to flee back to the capital without even opening the decree.

The young Emperor would want to save face and would surely suppress this matter.

With the imperial edict unannounced, his supposed arranged marriage to the Princess was merely a rumor. It hadn’t even spread in the capital yet, so for her to know about his betrothal while far away in the Northwest, it could only have been through Li Huai’an.

Fan Changyu was stunned for a moment by the murderous aura emanating from him, then looked directly into his eyes and said, “It doesn’t matter who told me. You already have a marriage arrangement, so you shouldn’t say such things to me. What do you take me for? And what do you think of our past that you speak of?”

She had always been slow when it came to emotions, but as she said the last sentence, she felt a sharp, sorrowful pain in her heart, with bitterness threatening to spill from her eyes.

In her heart, he had always been a good person. Even if the two of them could only part ways in the future due to the grudges between their fathers, she still hoped he would have a smooth life, continue to be admired by thousands, and remain the illustrious, awe-inspiring Marquis of Wu’an.

Even if things had changed, she didn’t want anyone to ruin those beautiful memories of the past.

Not even him!

Listening to Fan Changyu’s questioning, the murderous aura surrounding Xie Zheng stagnated, and he lost focus for a moment.

The sun had risen higher, and where he stood, a beam of morning light slanted through the latticed window, gilding half of his jade-like profile with a warm glow. His long, dark lashes were half-lowered, and for a moment, he seemed as pure as a child.

After a long while, he finally raised his head to look at Fan Changyu again. His eyes were bloodshot from staying up all night. Though his face was so calm, it made people even more afraid of his tranquility at this moment.

As he stepped forward, Fan Changyu instinctively took a step back, but she was already standing in front of the bed. This retreat caused her back to hit the bedpost directly.

All the alarm and momentary bewilderment in her eyes fell into the sight of the person walking towards her against the light.

Xie Zheng’s face still showed no trace of emotion. He simply reached out with his still-blooded hand to cup Fan Changyu’s face, lowering his head to meet her gaze. With eyes that seemed to be covered in a web of blood, he quietly looked at her and said, “Did Li Huai’an tell you that I cut off one ear of the eunuch who came to announce the edict, making him roll back to the capital without even announcing it?”

Fan Changyu was stunned.

He gently caressed her cheek with his bloodied fingers and softly asked, “When we met again in Lu City, you kept your distance from me. Was it because of what Li Huai’an told you?”

Fan Changyu’s throat was too choked up to speak, and large teardrops rolled down from her eyes.

Xie Zheng wiped them away with his thumb, softly comforting her: “Don’t cry.”

He was as gentle as before.

Fan Changyu was so gripped by that heart-wrenching sadness that she could hardly breathe. Her tears fell like rolling pearls as she looked at Xie Zheng, almost pleadingly: “Don’t do this… Xie Zheng, please don’t do this…”

Her heart wasn’t made of stone. It had taken her so long to heal the cracks in her heart so that when she saw him again, she wouldn’t be devastated to the point of heartbreak.

She didn’t want his gentleness to tear open those wounds that had once made her tremble with pain at night.

If they were destined to have no future together, if his life was burdened with tragic pain while hers was burdened with injustice, she had to move forward.

Even if it meant breaking her bones, she would crawl, step by step, towards that truth.

Seeing her like this, the bloodshot look in Xie Zheng’s eyes intensified.

He embraced her shoulders and lowered his head to rest his forehead against hers, stubbornly asking, “Fan Changyu, can we be like we were before?”

Like before.

These words echoed in Fan Changyu’s ears again, leaving her with nothing but heartache and a sense of helplessness in the face of fate.

She struggled to control her emotions: “Don’t you care about the truth of the Jinzhou case anymore?”

After she spoke, a deathly silence fell between them again.

Fan Changyu could feel his grip on her shoulders tightening, the blood from his fingertips staining her robe red.

They were too close. Even the scent of blood couldn’t mask his crisp aroma mixed with a faint soap fragrance.

This was probably the closest she would ever be to him.

Fan Changyu closed her eyes sadly, trying to control her trembling breath in his all-encompassing presence.

Then she heard a hoarse voice near her ear: “I don’t care anymore.”

Tired and broken, as if it was a decision made while drenched in blood, with a desperate resolution that chilled to the bone.

Fan Changyu’s pupils trembled, and her vision blurred with tears. She tried hard to open her eyes wide, wanting to see the person in front of her clearly, and asked chokingly, “Do you know what you’re saying?”

Xie Zheng’s bloodshot eyes were equally full of pain. He suddenly fiercely pulled her into his embrace, his jaw against her temple, his voice hoarse: “Then what do you want me to do?”

“Fan Changyu, tell me, what can I do?”

He questioned her viciously, out of control, laying bare his wounded self for her to see, like a beast driven to the brink.

The moisture rolling down from his jaw wet Fan Changyu’s temple, burning her skin.

“I’ve tried to let you go, I’ve used every method I could think of. I have no other way…”

He held her so tightly, yet his whole body couldn’t stop shaking.

Like a drowning man grabbing onto a lifesaving piece of driftwood.

“Whether you’re Fan Changyu or Meng Changyu doesn’t matter anymore. Can we just be together?”

Fan Changyu felt her vision blurred by tears, her heart gripped by another kind of wrenching pain that made her gasp for air. Her throat couldn’t suppress a sob.

After two months and seven days, she once again allowed herself to cry unrestrained in this embrace.

The morning sun poured through the carved window lattice, filling the room with warm light, dust motes dancing in the beams.

The woman with her back against the bed frame was grasped by the waist by the man in front of her, her chin held as he kissed her deeply, inch by inch. The lotus-patterned bed curtains hanging from golden hooks were scattered, all struggles became futile, and she couldn’t even cry properly anymore.

An autumn rain came suddenly, with raindrops pelting down like beans, turning the yellow earth on the official road into a muddy mess.

A merchant caravan struggled forward in the heavy rain. Spotting a dilapidated temple ahead where they could take shelter, the caravan’s carts and horses hurried towards it.

The servants used the broken door planks from the temple to start a fire, cleared a clean spot on the ground, and without bothering to dry their soaked clothes, took out stools from the carriages to set up. Only then did someone go to carefully escort the person from inside the carriage.

The wide brim of an oilpaper umbrella hid the face of the man alighting from the carriage, but his ink-blue brocade robe embroidered with cloud patterns was extremely luxurious. Despite it being only September, he already had a thick cloak draped over his shoulders, suggesting a weak constitution.

The man who stepped down from the carriage behind wore a snow-white scholar’s robe, elegant and gentle. Before entering the dilapidated temple for shelter, he paused to look back at the road they had come from, then stepped into the temple.

The servants and guards all remained outside. By the fire in the broken temple, there was only the man wearing the cloak and a deaf-mute servant attending to him closely.

Li Huai’an said, “Your Highness, please rest for a moment. Once the rain eases a bit, we must continue on our way. Li’s family’s death squad has been almost entirely wiped out, barely managing to shake off the Blood Robe Cavalry under the Marquis of Wu’an. If they catch up to us again, I’m afraid we’ll be in trouble.”

Qi Min’s face was gloomy as he looked at the elegant young man before him: “My people must be brought back to me.”

After pretending to be Sui Yuanhuai for over a decade, now that he had shed that identity, he was no longer the useless prince confined to the back courtyard of the Changxin Prince’s Manor after his face was burned in a great fire. Soon, he would become the master of this realm.

Li Huai’an bowed respectfully and said, “The Li family will do everything in our power to rescue the Imperial Great-grandson and his mother. But right now, Your Highness’s safety is of utmost importance.”

The deaf-mute servant boiled tea over the fire and poured a cup for Qi Min, but Qi Min angrily knocked it to the ground.

The shattered porcelain flew, and hot tea splashed everywhere, even spattering onto Li Huai’an’s shoes.

This commotion alerted the guards outside, but Qi Min’s Royal Shadow Guards firmly guarded the temple entrance. Even though the Li family’s guards were worried about Li Huai’an, they didn’t dare to act rashly.

Li Huai’an calmly knelt on the dusty ground: “Please calm your anger, Your Highness.”

Qi Min stared at him coldly: “It was your Li family who sent word to me, saying that Xie Zheng had been lured away to Bieyue Manor, telling me to quickly set out for the capital. But what was waiting for me on the road? It was hundreds of Xie Zheng’s Blood Robe Cavalry and that madman Sui Yuanqing!”

The Blood Robe Cavalry was already a cavalry unit that struck fear throughout the entire Da Yin dynasty. Sui Yuanqing, bent on avenging his mother’s death, was like a god of death incarnate, vowing to take his head.

Half of the Royal Shadow Guards around Qi Min were lost, and the experts sent by the Li family were almost completely wiped out before they managed to break out of the encirclement with just him. Yu Qianqian and Yu Bao’er fell into the hands of the Blood Robe Cavalry.

Upon learning that Xie Zheng had not fallen for the trap, Li Huai’an had set out from Lu City that very night.

The Marquis of Wu’an had the authority to mobilize all the military forces in the Northwest. Once the Blood Robe Cavalry brought back the Imperial Great-grandson and his mother, he would have no more chances to leave.

Hearing Qi Min’s reprimand now, Li Huai’an only bowed calmly, almost numbly: “This was this humble servant’s fault. I failed to detect that the Marquis of Wu’an was turning the tables on us, putting Your Highness in danger.”

The game had already progressed to this point. Every decision he made from now on would just be implementing the Li family’s original plan. He had become too numb to ponder the rights and wrongs of it all.

The more he displayed such an expression, the more it fueled Qi Min’s anger. He suddenly bent down and grabbed Li Huai’an’s collar.

Although he was a chronically ill person, with fingers as pale as a normal person’s, he had a strength in his hand no less than that of a normal adult male.

Perhaps only those Royal Shadow Guards knew that Qi Min had been secretly studying martial arts with them to overcome his sickly body.

Apart from those Royal Shadow Guards, he didn’t trust anyone, including the Lan mother and son who had served by his side for many years.

Qi Min’s voice was terrifyingly cold: “You think as long as I safely enter the capital, the Li family has already won? Xie Zheng doesn’t dare to rebel in the Northwest on his own, but now that he has that child in his hands, do you think he still won’t dare?”

Finally, other emotions stirred in Li Huai’an’s calm, unruffled eyes.

Qi Min released his grip on his collar and coldly ordered: “I don’t care what methods your Li family uses. Either bring my people back unharmed or… kill that child and bring his mother back.”

Just then, a clap of thunder roared outside the broken temple. The flash of lightning swept across the temple, making even the smiling face of the Buddha statue in the shrine appear cold and eerie.

Li Huai’an’s heart shook violently. The cold wind blew in through the dilapidated doorway, and he suddenly realized his whole body was cold.

He slowly bowed his head and said: “This humble servant obeys the command.”