The group walked into the courtyard.

The servants had prepared the meal—a table full of delicious delicacies, most of which were dishes the children loved, with a small portion prepared for Chu Yi.

After the children were seated, Yun Chu noticed the man before her sitting down somewhat carefully.

“Wait a moment.”

She spoke, stopping Chu Yi’s motion of sitting down.

She stood up, took a cushion from the nearby couch, and placed it on Chu Yi’s chair. “Your Highness, please sit.”

Chu Yi maintained his composure. “Thank you.”

On the surface he indeed showed nothing, but inwardly he felt somewhat embarrassed.

At the same time, there was also a secret joy.

She was paying attention to him.

So she could see his discomfort.

This realization made the corners of his lips curve slightly upward, his entire person seeming to be bathed in a soft glow.

The meal quickly ended.

The two little ones, thinking about the cats and dogs, held hands and went to feed the small animals.

In the dining hall, only Yun Chu and Chu Yi remained.

The servants methodically cleared away the dishes and served tea and pastries to the two of them.

Chengxu looked at Tingxue standing behind Yun Chu and coughed. “Sister Tingxue, Nanny Zheng has some matters concerning the young masters that she asked me to relay to you.”

Tingxue frowned and walked out of the flower hall, lowering her head as she spoke. “Master Cheng should be older than this servant. This servant cannot accept being called Sister Tingxue.”

“It’s just a form of address, no need to fuss over it.” Chengxu scratched his head. “I’m His Highness’s subordinate, you’re Madame Xie… Miss Yun’s attendant. Our statuses are the same. Sister Tingxue, you needn’t call yourself a servant in front of me.”

Tingxue thought to herself, how could they be the same?

His Highness’s subordinates held official ranks, while she was a bonded servant. Their statuses were far apart.

She spoke. “Master Cheng, what does Nanny Zheng wish to convey?”

“Actually, there’s nothing really…”

Chengxu looked back toward the flower hall.

He had suddenly felt that he and Tingxue being there was somewhat superfluous.

When only His Highness and Miss Yun remained there, even the scenery became more beautiful.

Their prince was really too slow in handling such matters. Without him, who knew when the prince’s manor would finally have a mistress.

He truly lived up to being the prince’s first guard.

The flower hall grew quiet.

Yun Chu took a sip of tea and said with lowered eyes, “The matter of the Yun Family Army has caused trouble for Your Highness.”

“No trouble.” Chu Yi spoke. “Those in court trampling on the Yun family are former supporters of the previous Crown Prince—who was the current Empress Dowager’s biological legitimate son. The Empress Dowager is stirring restlessly in the shadows. To curb the Empress Dowager’s power, Father Emperor won’t let anything happen to the Yun family. You… needn’t worry excessively.”

“Thank you for Your Highness’s comfort.” Yun Chu raised her head. “I want to ask Your Highness, with the Yun family in such a situation—my father’s whereabouts unknown, condemned by the entire court, military authority stripped away—why does Your Highness still allow the two children to be so close to me?”

“It has nothing to do with the Yun family.” In Chu Yi’s dark eyes reflected her face. “Because it’s you.”

Yun Chu’s heart thundered.

The cold, hard walls she had built around her heart seemed to have their rigid exterior touched by something.

“Perhaps you’ve forgotten the day we first met.” Chu Yi’s gaze became distant. “The Yun family hosts a spring banquet every year. The year I was eleven, I attended the Yun family’s banquet—not because the Yun family invited me, but because that morning, I witnessed the darkest thing in the depths of the palace. I desperately wanted to escape that cage…”

He had personally witnessed the Empress Dowager kill ten palace maids, taking their heart’s blood to feed the only surviving bloodline left by the previous Crown Prince, who was also the Empress Dowager’s only legitimate grandson—Prince Zhuang, Chu Rui.

The heart’s blood of ten palace maids still couldn’t cure Chu Rui’s illness. The Empress Dowager had people continue searching for women with suitable birth charts to use as medicine.

Unable to accept such a scene, he immediately reported it to Father Emperor.

Father Emperor remained unperturbed, even ordering Head Eunuch Gao to help find suitable women to send to the Empress Dowager’s palace.

Those flower-like women, so young in age they could even be called girls, were thus caught off guard and killed with a single blade, becoming wronged spirits.

Who knew how many women had died before the Empress Dowager’s only grandson, Prince Zhuang, could live to his current age of over twenty…

At eleven years old, he couldn’t accept such things.

Now at twenty-five, recalling it again, his heart remained calm.

“That day, I escaped from the palace and encountered your father, who then brought me to the Yun family to attend the spring banquet.” Chu Yi spoke slowly. “I was resting with closed eyes in a secluded courtyard at the Yun residence when suddenly, a girl wearing a goose-yellow dress appeared before me, with a dirty dog in her arms.”

Yun Chu’s memory was suddenly awakened.

She smiled. “I fished that dog out of a mud pit and wanted to keep it, but my mother firmly refused. She searched for me everywhere with a cane. If not for fear of disturbing the guests in the front courtyard, I definitely would have gotten a beating that day.”

At that time she should have been only six or seven years old, constantly jumping around and climbing on roofs. Her mother was angered by her every day.

It wasn’t that Mother didn’t allow her to keep dogs, but that dog was clearly sick—not just dirty, but blind in one eye, with much of its fur fallen out and many sores on its body. Mother worried she would catch something bad, so she strongly opposed keeping that dog.

She was young then and didn’t care about such things. Holding the dog and refusing to let go, she hid here and there in the courtyard. She did seem to have encountered someone.

But she didn’t remember very clearly.

That scene had always been deeply engraved in Chu Yi’s mind.

The moment Yun Chu appeared before him, he thought, how could there be a girl in this world as ethereal as a sprite?

When Madame Yun was striking with the cane, she desperately protected the dog in her arms.

He thought, she was so purely kind.

Some people could cruelly kill dozens or hundreds of innocent palace maids who were like flowers.

Others would rather take a beating than fail to protect a dog that was clearly dying.

Yet he didn’t have the ability to stand up and stop the Empress Dowager’s evil deeds, nor the ability to debate right and wrong with Father Emperor.

It was from that moment he made a decision.

He wanted to become someone who could protect all the people, protect every commoner struggling at the very bottom, striving desperately to survive.

He chose to follow General Yun.

However, he only went to the battlefield for five years before the Empress became suspicious. For the sake of balance, Father Emperor forbade him from going to the borders again.

He could only lead eight thousand elite soldiers to eliminate Great Jin’s bandits.

Chu Yi withdrew his thoughts and asked, “Later, did Madame Yun allow you to keep that dog?”

The smile on Yun Chu’s face disappeared as she sighed. “My mother was hard-mouthed but soft-hearted. Seeing my persistence, she naturally allowed me to keep it. However, that dog was terminally ill and couldn’t be cured. After staying at the Yun family for less than a month, it died…”

Chu Yi pressed his lips together.

That dog was fortunate to meet Yun Chu, unfortunate that the meeting came too late. A bit earlier, and that illness could have been cured.

Yun Chu raised her head to look at the man before her.

At this moment, she felt somewhat moved. Would Prince Pingxi, whom everyone feared, also lament the fate of a dog?

He seemed to have developed compassion for a dog.

Someone who even cared about a dog couldn’t possibly be utterly wicked, nor could he be as despicable and shameless as Qin Mingheng had described.

She pressed her lips together and said slowly, “Your Highness, could you tell me about the Young Lord and the Princess—about their birth mother?”