Jintang
CHAPTER 6
25
Chen Fei was horrified, her face, which always wore a soft and gentle smile, now filled with panic:
“Outrageous! You should be arresting Ru Fei, why are you seizing me?”
The Empress was equally confused:
“Your Majesty, what is the meaning of this?”
Shen Chong looked down at them, as if observing clowns:
“Chen Fei just claimed that the letters were given to her by a maid from Zhen Pin's palace before the maid committed suicide. The handwriting matches exactly that of Ru Fei.”
“Based on that handwriting, she accused Ru Fei of being a traitor.”
“But what Chen Fei doesn't know is that during the years Ru Fei was lost outside the Yongyi Marquis Manor, she never learned to read or write. How could she possibly write these letters?”
Everyone was stunned.
The Empress hurriedly tried to cover up:
“Ru Fei's handwriting and calligraphy have been shown before. How can you say she can't write? Your Majesty must have been deceived by her.”
Shen Chong finally showed an expression of disgust toward Chen Fei:
“Because that handwriting is mine.”
They were struck as if by lightning, frozen in place.
I then smiled and explained:
“Your Majesty cares for me and knows how difficult it is for me to write. He tried teaching me, but I couldn't learn. Fearing that I might be laughed at for not knowing anything, he often used his left hand to write some silly poems to make me look good.”
“Others wouldn't know, but Chen Fei often visited Guanju Palace. Taking two books of calligraphy wouldn't be a problem for her.”
“What she doesn't know is that the handwriting isn't mine. So, naturally, these letters weren’t written by me.”
A month ago, when Shen Chong practiced calligraphy again, he lost two books of calligraphy.
That day, only Chen Fei came to drink tea with me.
I laughed at the time and said, “Perhaps Chen Fei and His Majesty share a telepathic bond—she loves His Majesty, and she also loves His Majesty's true handwriting.”
Shen Chong teased me, saying I had knocked over a ¹vinegar jar.
Chen Fei was utterly terrified. No matter how much she cried injustice, it couldn't change her fate of being sent to the cold palace.
The Empress fell to the ground, clearly realizing her situation was lost.
Shen Chong held my hand, and we passed by everyone to return to Guanju Palace.
Not even a glance was cast back at the Empress.
“I was wrong. I shouldn’t have been so merciful with her,” he said, pulling me into his embrace. His body trembled slightly.
I knew what he was thinking.
The death of Yun Tang that day was a topic no one dared to mention. The only explanation left was that she had jumped into Weiyang Lake and drowned.
Yun Tang was afraid of water. She feared it above all else.
If they hadn't pressured her so relentlessly, she would never have jumped into the lake.
But what he didn’t know was that, worse than drowning, I had endured the agony of being tortured in the seventh-level dungeon. I was still breathing by the fifth level before I finally succumbed.
From start to finish, my little brother was forced to witness my skin being peeled off and my tendons torn.
The pain surged again within me, but for him, I was nothing more than a source of solace.
“Today, you’ve protected me. That’s enough,” I whispered.
He held me even tighter.
He could protect me, but he had never been able to protect Yun Tang.
He was tortured with guilt, unable to bear the weight of his pain.
But in the end, he lacked the resolve and determination to investigate the truth thoroughly.
Once again, I was utterly disappointed.
In truth, he couldn’t protect me.
From beginning to end, I’ve been the one protecting myself.
The letters in Zhen Pin's hands were real; they were the evidence I intentionally left behind.
Meng Jin could never mimic Shen Chong’s handwriting.
But Yun Tang, she definitely could.
26
After Chen Fei was banished to the Cold Palace, the Second Prince was immediately sent to his fiefdom, stripped of all his power, and rendered incapable of posing any further threat.
The Third Prince, losing the support of the Zhu family, and with the sickly Empress unable to help him, could only keep his head low and live humbly.
As the Gui Fei, I became the true favored one in the harem.
Taking advantage of my free time, I went to see Chen Fei.
She was sitting disheveled in the corridor, and when she saw me, a vicious look appeared in her eyes.
I gripped her chin, speaking coldly:
“I won't kill you, don't worry.”
“Because I want you to live each day tormented by the thought of your son, far away in his fief, constantly guessing and fearing the day he'll die at my hands.”
Just like my younger brother, his body will never be whole.
It’s terrifying to have a weakness.
Even someone as vicious and cruel as Chen Fei ended up kneeling before me, constantly kowtowing and begging for forgiveness.
“Don’t even think about killing yourself. As soon as you die, I’ll send your son to join you. You know, I’ll make sure he doesn’t die easily.”
She collapsed, crying uncontrollably, begging hysterically.
But I left without looking back, a vicious smile curling on my lips, satisfied.
Let this fear, this anxiety, and daily torment strangle her, a slow, agonizing death like being sliced by a knife, leaving her wishing for death but unable to find it.
It seems I’ve won, but in reality, I haven’t.
When I took the Fourth Prince to see the Empress Dowager, she was holding a prayer bead, sighing:
“I’ve done everything I promised you. When will you fulfill your promise to me?”
My path to this point, every step of the way, has been smooth, thanks in no small part to the silent assistance of the Empress Dowager.
Even Meng Jin's fragmented soul was something she had the abbot of Huguo Temple reassemble for me.
I’m not an ungrateful person, so I handed a letter to the Empress Dowager:
“One last time, I trouble Your Majesty.”
On the way back to the palace, the Fourth Prince asked me:
“Why do you want me, mother? There are many sons in the palace, why choose the most useless one like me?”
The glaring sun made my eyes ache. I held back my tears and said:
“Because I’m destined to be with you.”
But he didn’t know—the Soul-Suppressing Pearl that shattered my bones was supposed to sink to the bottom of Weiyang Lake.
It was his mother, the concubine the Empress Dowager sent to the Prince’s residence, who had always been my rival, who secretly switched me out.
She buried me outside the mass grave, planting a peach tree nearby as a marker.
“If he is willing to do anything to seek justice and avenge you, I’ll bring him to you.”
“The peach tree bears witness!”
But for the sake of power, the newly attained crown prince position, and to avoid scandal in the harem, Shen Chong suppressed my death and the injustice of the Yun family.
No one came looking for me—I'd long known that he had abandoned me.
“Gui Fei,” Shen Chong called gently, “come here, I painted something for you. Take a look.”
His eyes brimmed with affection as he reached out to me from afar. I smiled and placed my hand in his.
In the painting, the woman’s face bloomed like a peach blossom. Her expression, caught between a smirk and a sneer, carried a trace of defiance and cold sharpness.
It was me. And yet, not quite me.
“You’re all I have left,” he said. “You must stay with me until we’re old and gray.”
The setting sun burned like fire, turning his eyes blood-red in its light.
He seemed so sincere—so I answered just as sincerely:
“All right.”
But barely half a month later, when the Imperial Diviner claimed I was a demonic spirit possessing Meng Jin’s body—
He didn’t hesitate to hide behind the Imperial Diviner.
27
“Whether it's true or not,” Shen Chong said, “let the Imperial Diviner go through the motions.”
“That way, I’ll feel at ease—and so will you.”
The long-ailing Empress stood beside him, her eyes cold and sunken as she stared at me.
She mouthed words that only the two of us could understand:
“Once again, you’re going to die by my hand.”
This so-called Imperial Diviner was the very same one who had embedded the Soul-Suppressing Pearl in my bones fifteen years ago—now summoned once more to destroy my body and soul entirely.
But Zhu Huan, people do not stumble twice over the same stone.
Wearing a faint, calm smile, I nodded to Shen Chong:
“Yes—this way, we’ll both be at peace.”
The talisman was slapped onto me, and the Five-Flavored True Flames swept across my face. It burned—gods, it's so painful.
But I kept smiling, eyes fixed on Shen Chong.
He couldn’t even meet my gaze, guilt heavy in his heart.
Looking back on my life, my greatest mistake had been clinging to Shen Chong for warmth when we were both at our most helpless.
I had risked everything—my life, my dignity—for him.
Yet he hadn’t even the courage to speak up for me.
And my poor younger brother—his body lost in the river forever, never to reunite with mine.
Once the lengthy ritual concluded, the Empress paled in shock.
“How can this be?!”
I collapsed to the ground, exhausted from the ordeal, and looked up at her with unwavering calm:
“What else were you expecting?”
“That I’d cough up blood and die on the spot, as you said?”
Just as I finished speaking, Shen Chong, white as a sheet, vomited blood violently and crumpled to the floor.
And in my arms, the white jade that held the remnants of Meng Jin’s soul suddenly quivered.
Perfect.
Borrowing the breath of the True Dragon, Meng Jin’s soul had been restored.
“How dare this false Diviner harm the Emperor—arrest him immediately!” the Empress Dowager stormed in, flanked by the real Imperial Diviner.
The Empress’s scheme—using a fake Diviner to murder the Emperor—had backfired. The Dowager wasted no time: the Empress was cast into the Cold Palace.
This was my plan all along—killing two birds with one stone, using others’ strength to fulfill both my and the Empress Dowager’s wishes.
Shen Chong lay on the bed, ashen-faced, unable to speak.
Knowing he was at death’s door, I told him a story:
“The sorcerer who borrowed your true dragon aura once placed a Soul-Suppressing Pearl on Yun Tang’s remains over a decade ago.”
“Yun Tang died, but not completely. She became a restless ghost, eyes yearning, waiting for her husband to come for her.”
“But in the end, it wasn’t him who came—it was a little girl named Meng Jin.”
Shen Chong’s eyes widened in shock.
“Guess why he dared to offer up his own life to help me take yours?”
“Because if I offered blood in sacrifice, he would suffer backlash and be utterly destroyed, body and soul.”
In this world, you only feel pain when the slap lands on your own face.
I don’t want anyone’s remorse—I want them to feel the pain, truly and deeply.
Shen Chong included.
He stared at me, gaze full of complex emotions.
“How does it feel to die at the hands of the legal wife—the noblewoman from the aristocratic family you respect the most? Painful, I assume?”
“Do you know how much it hurt every time I realized you’d betrayed me? How much it hurt each time you abandoned me?”
Shen Chong’s eyes reddened, fixed on me.
“Are you looking at Meng Jin, or Yun Tang?”
“It doesn’t matter. They’re both me.”
“It’s just—you never deserved either.”
“The Empress Dowager will take good care of you. After all, she raised you for so many years, and you personally killed her biological son—no one hates you more than she does.”
“The empire? Mm, that’s what you loved most. Give it to my son. After all, half of it was won with my help.”
“You ruled one half, let me rule the other.”
After I got up and left, I never looked at him again.
But as for Zhu Huan in the Cold Palace—I visited her the most.
________________
Glossary:
¹Vinegar Jar (醋坛子 - cùtánzi): Jealous and possessive person.
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment