“Can’t you speak without always being so prickly?” Taohua frowned. “Is it so difficult to just calmly say you want me to stay in the Prime Minister’s mansion?”
“I don’t have time to deal with you,” Shen Zaiye said without looking up. “If you don’t like it here, then roll back to your Zhengchun Pavilion.”
What an irritating man! Taohua pouted and rolled off the bed, tumbling towards the door.
“What are you doing?” Shen Zaiye was startled. He quickly got up and picked her up, looking her up and down with disdain. “I tell you to roll and you roll?”
Taohua nodded seriously, “The Prime Minister speaks, and this concubine listens. Whatever you say, I’ll take it literally.”
“I…” Shen Zaiye was about to explode with anger. “If I tell you to go die, will you go?”
“Alright,” Taohua nodded. “But please wait a few more years.”
This stupid woman! Shen Zaiye gritted his teeth and snorted coldly, throwing her back onto the bed. “Lie down and behave!”
Rolling once on the bed, Taohua hugged her medicinal pillow and looked at him teasingly. “Why does my lord still keep this?”
Pausing slightly, Shen Zaiye turned his head away and said, “It’s comfortable to sleep on, so naturally I kept it.”
“Then… what about this?” Taohua pulled out the broken jade pendant, raising an eyebrow.
“This was originally my thing. You lost it, am I not allowed to take it back?” Shen Zaiye rolled his eyes. “I haven’t even settled accounts with you yet. This jade pendant was very expensive.”
Pouting and tossing the items back uninterestedly, Taohua said, “Even if it’s expensive, you bit it in half and smashed it yourself. What does it have to do with me? This bed isn’t comfortable. I’m going back to my courtyard. My lord, please continue reading your official documents at your leisure!”
With that, she got up, wrapped herself in an outer robe, and walked out.
Shen Zaiye instinctively raised his hand but then frowned and lowered it, coldly watching her leave. He snorted and returned to the table to continue reading his documents.
Was he so bad at making women happy? But other women seemed easy enough to please. Why was this Jiang Taohua so difficult?
Lying down unhappily in Zhengchun Pavilion, Taohua glanced at Qingtai beside her, whose eyes were filled with tears. She quickly waved her hand, “Your mistress is very tired and has no time to watch you cry. Save it.”
“Mistress!” Qingtai knelt by the bed, sobbing. She gritted her teeth and said, “There’s only one month left. If no one comes from Zhao country, you…”
One month? Taohua was so frightened she shuddered. She quickly propped herself up and looked at her. “How is there only one month left?”
Qingtai took out the medicine bottle. “Mr. Xu took two pills of this medicine. I didn’t dare say what kind of medicine it was, so I couldn’t stop him…”
Taohua’s mouth twitched as she took the bottle and looked at it. There were indeed only two pills left inside.
What could be done? The people from Zhao wouldn’t just come at a moment’s notice. She couldn’t possibly die from this cursed poison when Shen Zaiye hadn’t even killed her, could she?
“So, there isn’t enough medicine?” Xu Yangui asked from the rafters.
The two people in the room were startled. Qingtai’s face turned pale as she looked up in shock.
Xu Yangui floated down, his expression inscrutable. He walked to the bedside and held out his palm, on which lay a pill. “Why did Qingtai lie?”
Qingtai was dumbfounded. She stammered, looking at Taohua, then at Xu Yangui, not knowing what to say.
Seeing her guilty look, Xu Yangui became even more curious. He moved closer to her, narrowing his eyes. “Logically, if something’s wrong with your mistress, shouldn’t you tell the Prime Minister? He cares so much for Jiang Shi, wouldn’t he help find a solution?”
Taohua was stunned. She tilted her head and looked at Qingtai for a while. Seeing her sweating profusely and unable to speak, she instantly understood what was going on.
“Why does Mr. Xu come in and immediately bully my maid?” she smiled. “When did the Prime Minister start caring about me? He’d rather see me dead. Qingtai’s lie isn’t wrong.”
“Rather see you dead?” Xu Yangui looked at her strangely and sighed deeply. “When will you two ever stop? Can’t you just sit down and clear up all the misunderstandings? If Shen Zaiye wanted you dead, he wouldn’t have tried to leave you the antidote, nor would he have anxiously searched everywhere for you.”
What? Taohua was stunned. She blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Are you still holding a grudge about him wanting to kill you?” Xu Yangui shook his head. “At first, I also thought he had decided to kill you. After all, if the Crown Prince discovered you, his trust in Shen Zaiye would be completely gone. From any perspective, you should have died.”
“However, that fool didn’t want to kill you. He was supposed to dine with you to avoid raising suspicion, but he didn’t eat a single bite. He gave the only antidote to Doctor Li, intending to save you. But you disappeared without a trace, making him think you were surely dead, and he even fell seriously ill.”
Jiang Taohua was dumbfounded. She stared blankly at Xu Yangui’s moving mouth, suddenly feeling like she couldn’t understand what he was saying.
Shen Zaiye didn’t want to kill her?
But that wasn’t right. If he didn’t want to kill her, why did he seem so intent on strangling her when they met again in the Eastern Palace?
“You’re lying to me, aren’t you?” Taohua frowned. “Why would he be so kind-hearted?”
Xu Yangui rolled his eyes. “What do I gain from lying to you? Go ask anyone in this mansion and see what kind of life Shen Zaiye has been living these past two weeks.”
Jiang Taohua fell silent. She had always been able to see through appearances the essence of things, but suddenly, she couldn’t understand this situation. Shen Zaiye didn’t want to kill her but wanted to keep her. And he wanted to protect her even when it conflicted with his interests?
Had he hit his head or something?
“If you don’t believe it, you can go ask Shen Zaiye yourself and see what his true feelings for you are,” Xu Yangui said with a pout. “Anyway, that bet we made – you didn’t win, I did. You owe me a life.”
“…Does this count?” Taohua frowned. “I did indeed come back from the brink of death, but why is he innocent? He still poisoned me, didn’t he? Who asked for his afterthought antidote? Couldn’t he have discussed it with me first? Even if I didn’t win this bet, it can’t be said that I lost. Let’s call it a draw.”
She knows how to bargain! Xu Yangui snorted and laughed, holding the small pill. “A draw is fine. Now, can you explain what this medicine is?”
Qingtai kept her head lowered, not daring to make a sound. Taohua looked at her and chuckled lightly. “It’s just an antidote. Wasn’t I poisoned?”
“The poison Shen Zaiye gave you, he’s already fed you the antidote,” Xu Yangui frowned. “It didn’t work.”
The way her poison acted when it flared up was something he had never seen before.
Taohua shrugged. “Can I not say?”
“It’s fine if you don’t want to say.” Xu Yangui put the pill in his hand back into her medicine bottle, smiling ambiguously. “The other pill has already been sent to the imperial doctors in the palace. I believe we’ll have results soon.”
Taohua raised an eyebrow, looked at Qingtai, and said helplessly, “This can’t be considered my fault, right?”
After a long while, Qingtai finally raised her head, her eyes full of guilt as she looked at her. “If the Prime Minister can save you… then, it doesn’t matter if we tell.”
“Doesn’t it matter?” Taohua chuckled lightly, her gaze extremely serious. “Aren’t you afraid the new Empress will blame you?”
Qingtai fell silent.
She had been by Jiang Taohua’s side for two years, and because she liked this mistress very much, their relationship was very close and harmonious. She thought Taohua didn’t know she was the new Empress’s person, so she had no guard against her.
However… she knew.
No wonder the mistress once said, “Qingtai, I can put my life in your hands, but I can’t fully trust you.” She wouldn’t dare take her life if given to her. But once fully trusted, she would truly be completely known and controlled by the new Empress.
Her throat tightened as Qingtai kowtowed heavily to her twice. “This servant has wronged the mistress!”
Taohua chuckled lightly and waved her hand. “I’ve known about this for a long time. You haven’t harmed me in any way.”
Except for planting the charm bug in her.
Qingtai’s eyes were red-rimmed. She felt a chill throughout her body as if she had lost something important. Just thinking that her mistress had always known about her actions made her want to kill herself to atone for her sins!
“What’s going on here?” Xu Yangui was confused. “You two mistress and maid seem to have such a good relationship, how could…”
“If you want to know, sir, I can tell you,” Taohua turned to look at him with a smile. “If you can save me, I would be even more grateful.”
The fear was that after hearing it, they might not want to save her at all.
Xu Yangui nodded and sat up straight. “Go ahead and speak.”
“Zhao country is in decline, with the harem interfering in politics. The new Empress wants to establish my elder sister as the heir apparent. I had no choice but to come to Great Wei for a political marriage, seeking another way out,” Taohua said. “Before I left, the new Empress feared I would escape her control, so she had Qingtai give me a charm bug, which is a kind of poison. I need to take one pill each month to suppress it, otherwise I’ll be in pain for three hours and then die with blood flowing from seven orifices.”
Xu Yangui was startled and looked at the bottle in her hand. “So she didn’t intend for you to live?”
“She’s not that cruel,” Taohua chuckled lightly. “She gave me twelve pills. One year after my marriage, which started when I left, is when the Zhao envoys came to Wei. At that time, they’ll see if I’m obedient and give me the next year’s antidote.”
Counting from when she left for marriage? The journey from Zhao to Great Wei took two months, and adding the past three or four months, shouldn’t there be six pills left? Xu Yangui’s eyes widened. “Then why are there only this many left, and you say there’s only one month left?”
“We have to thank the Prime Minister for that,” Taohua smiled. “The charm bug consumes other poisons, but the poison he gave was truly potent. After being consumed by the charm bug, it enhanced the toxicity of the charm bug, making me need to eat two antidote pills a month to survive.”
In other words, her survival time was cut in half.
Taking a sharp breath, Xu Yangui said, “But didn’t he give you the antidote?”
“It’s useless now,” Taohua shrugged. “His medicine can’t cure the charm bug’s poison, and the poison he gave has already been consumed, so it can’t be cured either. That’s why I say our bet should be a draw.”
(End of Chapter)
Yeah I’m not really sold on forgiveness when he DID poison her, he DID go through with it, and then he changed his mind. Is she supposed to thank him for giving her a bandaid after stabbing her?