Jiang Xingjian looked at her expression that seemed both crying and laughing, her features containing both restraint and a faint trace of madness showing through. He raised his hand to touch her face.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, Jiayue.”

Hearing these words, Lin Jiayue laughed foolishly. “Elder Brother Xingjian, you have nothing to be sorry for.”

Grasping the hand Jiang Xingjian had placed against her face, Lin Jiayue said, “It’s Yue’er who loves you.”

Gently nuzzling the palm pressed against her cheek, only then did Lin Jiayue smile and open her eyes to inquire, “Elder Brother Xingjian, I’m carrying your child again.”

She extended her slender palm to gently caress Jiang Xingjian’s face, her eyes containing an incomprehensible fervor. The heart that had become numb and crazed from being suppressed for so long now beat frantically. Lin Jiayue hoped Jiang Xingjian would say, “Be good, we don’t want this child.”

She wanted him to personally abort his own flesh and blood again—to abort his last and only child in this lifetime.

“Elder Brother Xingjian, our child has come to find us.”

Pressing the man’s palm against her lower abdomen, the young woman’s tone was ethereal. “The estate physician said you can’t feel his presence yet, but in two more months, he’ll be as big as our first child was.”

“Elder Brother Xingjian, do you think he’ll be a boy or a girl?”

Jiang Xingjian looked at her, his gaze profound and deep. He seemed to see in Lin Jiayue the appearance of Song Wan from years ago—how she had unhesitatingly stabbed him and angrily severed their relationship.

They had originally been childhood sweethearts, young lovers. Where exactly had things gone wrong to make Song Wan like this, to make Lin Jiayue also like this?

Jiang Xingjian’s heart throbbed with pain. He took Lin Jiayue’s hand and said warmly, “I hope it’s a boy.”

“The Chengyang Marquis Estate lacks heirs. If it’s a boy, I can teach him to take the battlefield like grandfather, to establish meritorious service and build a career.”

“If it’s a boy, you can teach him ingenious skills and techniques, formulas for firearms and weapons.”

Hearing this, Lin Jiayue’s expression twisted for an instant, but she quickly smiled again. “Elder Brother Xingjian is right. Our child will certainly be outstanding, will certainly be invincible.”

She buried her head in the man’s embrace, concealing the disdain in her eyes. He spoke so beautifully, but she wasn’t afraid. She was waiting for the day when Jiang Xingjian would use underhanded tactics again.

This time she would make him watch with his own eyes as his progeny was cut off before him. She wanted to make him hurt. She wanted to make it so that for the rest of his life, whenever Jiang Xingjian saw an infant, he would feel pain like knife cuts, unable to catch his breath.

The two embraced together, appearing sweet. Jiang Xingjian gently stroked Lin Jiayue’s thin, delicate back, yet his thoughts drifted he knew not where.

“Elder Brother Xingjian should attend to his business first. Yue’er will go to Longxiang Studio to read and calm my mind.”

After tidying away the bowls and chopsticks, Lin Jiayue walked out of the room. The moment she stepped outside, the smile on her face gradually stiffened. Expressionless, she went to the small Buddhist hall in Longxiang Studio.

“All evil attachments depend on the view of self. If one separates from self, then there are no evil attachments…”

She picked up the scripture Song Wan had left behind and recited it over and over until her voice became hoarse and she could no longer speak half a sentence.

Behind the shrine in the small Buddhist hall were placed four nameless memorial tablets. Before the newest one was offered a ceramic doll the size of a palm.

Lin Jiayue held it in her palm, sobbing uncontrollably.

“I didn’t mean to…”

“No, I did mean to.”

“It’s I who wronged you…”

The ceramic gradually warmed from her body heat in her palm. Lin Jiayue bit her teeth and knelt before the small Buddhist hall, sometimes laughing maniacally, sometimes weeping in pain.

She had thought of harming Shen Qianshu’s life, yet she couldn’t bring herself to be so ruthless. She had sent many dangerous things into the palace and had thought that perhaps one day the small Fifth Prince might lose his life because of those things, but…

But she…

Lin Jiayue bit her lip, both hating herself and feeling extreme self-loathing. She hated that she couldn’t achieve perfect goodness to forgive Jiang Xingjian for personally forcing her to kill their flesh and blood. She was also disgusted that she couldn’t possess a heart of great evil to disregard innocent lives.

She hated her mediocrity and also hated her own incompetence.

Lin Jiayue lay supine on the ground, biting her lip tightly as silent tears flowed. Day after day she could feel the pain of her soul separating from her flesh, as well as the despair of greed, anger, and the five aggregates knotted together with no way to resolve them.

Jiang Xing sat on the corridor of Longxiang Studio. Through the door that hadn’t been tightly closed, the wind carried out faint sounds of painful lament. She looked on with sadness filling her eyes, yet was powerless to help.

She knew Auntie Lin didn’t want her to see her crazed appearance, yet she truly wasn’t at ease leaving her alone to struggle in suffering.

The night wind blew continuously. Jiang Xing gathered up her wind-scattered hair and continued sitting in her original spot with gentle dignity.

“Little Xingxing, you came to keep me company?”

“Sister Yue.”

Jiang Xing stood up and extended her hand toward Lin Jiayue, whose face was full of smiles.

Lin Jiayue grasped her hand and gently rubbed it. “So cold—are you frozen?”

“Xing’er isn’t cold. It’s you who’s dressed too thinly.”

“It looks thin, but I have a cotton-lined inner garment underneath.”

Holding Jiang Xing’s hand, they walked from Longxiang Studio back to Xiuyan Pavilion. The two even made some ornamental knots together before each returning to their rooms.

As the sky grew late, the lights in various quarters of the Chengyang Marquis Estate were gradually extinguished. Yet Shen Qianyu still sat in Laiyi Pavilion like a rock, with not the slightest intention of wanting to leave.

It wasn’t that he harbored any improper thoughts today, but rather that the matter of the Nanqing envoy delegation’s visit left him not knowing how to broach the subject.

Song Wan seemed to also see that he had something he wanted to say, so she sat quietly to the side, waiting for Shen Qianyu to speak. She neither rushed nor inquired. Her gentle, mild manner strangely calmed Shen Qianyu’s restless heart.

After thinking for a moment, he grasped Song Wan’s hand in his palm and said sullenly, “I received a secret letter. The Nanqing envoy delegation is coming to Dongning.”

“Nanqing?”

Song Wan frowned, truly having no good impression of this nation that loved killing and plundering. Nanqing’s military forces were formidable, and whether men or women, all could take to the battlefield. They not only loved war but also loved killing and plundering. It was said that the only one who could repel Nanqing’s border troops was Prince Sucheng, who had died early in the succession struggle.

Forty years ago, the war between Dongning and Nanqing had severely injured both nations’ vitality. What made Dongning people even more contemptuous was that battle had directly broken Emperor Wenhui’s backbone.

These years, Emperor Wenhui had reached the point of changing color at the mention of Nanqing. If not for this, back then he wouldn’t have made the decision to send the Crown Prince to Nanqing as a hostage.

“No wonder Your Highness was troubled today. So this is why.”

Gently squeezing Shen Qianyu’s palm, Song Wan softly comforted him. “Does Your Highness have some concerns about Nanqing? If Your Highness is willing, you may speak of it to Wan’er.”

“There’s nothing I’m unwilling to say.”

Shen Qianyu’s tone was calm. “The Nanqing imperial family are mostly lustful and debauched, from the national ruler down to princes and princesses alike.”

“The old Nanqing ruler had one son and one daughter. It’s not that he only fathered these two, but rather that only these two did he acknowledge as his own.”

“The new Nanqing ruler, Qin Zhan, was born to the old ruler and the empress, while the princess was born to the old ruler and Nanqing’s Lady Lianyi.”

Song Wan’s eyes widened. After a long while, she furrowed her brows and said, “If Wan’er remembers correctly, Lady Lianyi is the old Nanqing ruler’s…”

Shen Qianyu said, “Blood aunt.”

Due to extreme shock, Shen Qianyu saw the expression in her eyes slowly become unfocused, as if she was trying hard to regain her senses to say something in response to him.

Embracing her, Shen Qianyu snorted with laughter. “I didn’t want to speak of it, fearing it would dirty your ears.”

His Wan’er was intelligent but too rule-abiding. She simply didn’t know that in this world there existed human hells as laughably extreme and hatefully extreme as the Nanqing imperial family.

After thinking, Shen Qianyu said, “Qin Rao is the biological daughter of these two. She…”

Thinking of Qin Rao, the man’s words paused, as if pondering where to begin speaking from.