His howl carried a tinge of manic coldness.

Gu Qingzhi appeared unaffected as she covered the incense burner and set it aside. With one hand holding up her sleeve and the other reaching for the prepared tray nearby, she lifted the gold-rimmed sandalwood tray that held a wine pot and two cups. After turning the cups upright, she grasped the wine pot, about to pour.

“What are you doing?” Xiao Changqin strode forward, pressing down on her wine pot, his composed voice concealing a hint of panic.

“Your Highness need not worry.” Gu Qingzhi gently brushed his hand away, filled both cups and raised one toward Xiao Changqin, fixing him with an ambiguous smile. “Whether there is poison in the wine, Your Highness knows better than I. This cup I offer to Your Highness, with my thanks.”

Ever since the Gu family’s imprisonment, he had employed every method to maintain strict surveillance, leaving her no opportunity for suicide. The room was filled with hidden guards, eyes watching from every corner, and everything that reached her hands was checked and checked again.

Xiao Changqin gazed at her silently, his eyes so intense they seemed to pierce through to her soul, yet he remained motionless.

“What’s wrong? Does Your Highness think I could have tampered with it somehow?” Gu Qingzhi smiled softly, tilting her head back to drink the wine. “This is the Qingzhi wine I brewed myself.”

Xiao Changqin’s body jerked forward, wanting to stop her, but the cup was already empty. His gaze swept over the other cup, and without hesitation, he picked it up and drained it in one gulp: “Even in death, you won’t escape me.”

A brief laugh escaped her as Gu Qingzhi folded her hands in her lap, sitting properly while looking at Xiao Changqin: “Your Highness, with your divine appearance, even while I was still in the inner chambers, I would hear young ladies at every banquet singing endless praises of you. I still remember the first time I heard Your Highness’s name—it was five years ago when you, at merely fifteen years old, challenged the scholars of the Imperial Academy with your literary prowess, amazing everyone.”

“Amazing everyone,” Xiao Changqin scoffed quietly, gazing at her intently. “Yet I could never amaze you alone.”

Her brows creased almost imperceptibly as Gu Qingzhi smiled composedly: “Your Highness is too obsessed, or perhaps what cannot be obtained is harder to let go…”

She paused, a flash of abstraction crossing her detached eyes: “When I was nine, my mother, on her deathbed, held my hand and told me that in this life, one can do anything except let their heart fall for a man. The moment my mother closed her eyes, my heart departed with her. A heartless woman is naturally without feeling.”

Taking a gentle breath, Gu Qingzhi maintained a gentle smile on her face. “Mother said that in this world, only by being utterly detached can women live freely and happily.”

“Your Highness, look how respectfully my father treated my mother. After her passing, he refused to remarry even without an heir from the main wife, yet she still died of melancholy.”

Gu Qingzhi smiled and shook her head slightly. “That was because she was greedy. As the head of the Gu family, how could my father devote himself entirely to her? Mother deeply loved the father who respected her, yet couldn’t receive the same single-minded devotion. Unwilling to become a jealous and ugly woman, she could only suppress all her unhappiness and pain in her heart, leading to her death from melancholy—all because of emotional attachment.”

“Qing’er…” Xiao Changqin seemed to understand her meaning.

He recalled their newlywed days when he wanted to present her with all the best things in the world, his eyes and heart seeing only her until now. Yet she always remained cold and composed, decisive and rational about everything, making him feel that his offerings and even his very existence were worthless to her.

Young and proud, heaven’s favorite son that he was, he used extreme methods to provoke her jealousy, to attract her attention.

As a prince, he used the most humble methods to try to win her affection.

Yet he had never considered how to protect her heart completely after winning it.

He hadn’t thought about it, and she had never given him the chance.

Now he couldn’t even hypothesize whether, if she had truly given him her whole heart, he could have withstood the pressure from his imperial mother and father, whether he could have changed the Gu family’s fate, keeping her from any harm.

“If even my father was thus, how much more so for Your Highness.” Gu Qingzhi gazed at Xiao Changqin. “Your Highness, from the day the Emperor’s marriage decree reached the Gu family, I knew this day would come. The Gu family would inevitably crash and bleed, and our marriage would ultimately reach its end. How could I possibly develop feelings for Your Highness?”

“Among the men of the world, Your Highness is truly exceptional—accomplished in both civil and military arts, of noble character, a perfect gentleman. The only fault lies in Gu Qingzhi not being a shallow woman who sees only romance between men and women, who sees only the small world of the inner court. Therefore, Your Highness’s devoted heart was destined to be misplaced—ugh…”

Finally unable to endure the knife-like pain in her abdomen, a wet sensation carrying the scent of blood continued to descend.

“Qing’er!” Xiao Changqin rushed past the table in panic, holding Gu Qingzhi in his arms, only to see the large pool of blood beneath her. Terrified and disbelieving, he glanced at the weakened Gu Qingzhi before roaring like a trapped beast toward the outside, “Imperial physician! Quickly summon the imperial physician—”

The guards outside were so frightened they didn’t even stop to ask questions before running off.

“Your Highness…” Gu Qingzhi’s voice finally took on a note of weakness. This was the first time she lay in his arms like a fragile woman. She smiled at him, a smile like a blooming night flower, beautiful in its serenity yet shrouded in the coolness of night. “I’m not just a heartless, unfeeling woman, but also a ruthlessly poisonous one. See, I could even bring myself to harm my flesh and blood…”

“Stop talking, please stop talking!” Xiao Changqin had never experienced such pain—pain that felt like countless insects gnawing at his entire body, his heart, liver, spleen, and lungs, even his bone joints ached, making him want to howl madly.

“The Gu family is finished, and the Gu family’s daughter cannot live on. Her survival would only make it harder for people to forget His Majesty’s iron-blooded ruthlessness. And my pride, Gu Qingzhi’s pride, won’t allow me to live on… at others’ mercy.”

After the immense pain passed, Gu Qingzhi regained her composure: “A child without a mother, living in the gloomy imperial family, would face too much hardship and misery. I am this selfish—since I cannot protect him completely, cannot give him joy and freedom from worry, I am unwilling to bring him into this world of complicated human hearts…”

Large tears fell from his pain-filled eyes as Xiao Changqin spoke: “Gu Qingzhi, Gu Qingzhi, how cruel you are, how truly cruel…”

Even at this moment, Gu Qingzhi could still give Xiao Changqin a brilliantly serene smile. Her increasingly blurry vision fell on the overturned table, where not far away lay the fallen incense burner.

She didn’t want to live, and no one could stop her, no one could save her.

Gu Qingzhi, first among the capital’s nine perfections, excelled in music, chess, calligraphy, painting, women’s work, and cooking—considered the model of noble ladies. But no one knew, not even this man who had loved her for three years and shared her pillow, that what she excelled at most was the art of perfumery.