Chapter Forty-Nine: She Was Originally the Bright Moon

As dusk fell, when Mu Cen was about to take his leave, Li Bao'er suggested seeing him off at the mansion.

The two hadn't gone far when they caught sight of a young man in black robes standing at the corner of the corridor, holding a sword. He had a strikingly beautiful face from the Western Regions, a white cloak hanging from his hand, and a three-petaled plum blossom sword tassel fluttering in the wind at his waist.

Mu Cenlin's pupils shrank suddenly. This was the person he had seen when he went back to look for Li Bao'er that night. In addition, he remembered something else.

One night last year, on my way back to the Prince's Mansion, I was attacked by an assassin who also had the same three-petaled plum blossom sword tassel hanging from his waist.

"Who is that?" Mu Cenlin asked casually, holding Li Bao'er's wrist and gently rubbing her pulse with his thumb.

Li Bao'er, completely unaware of the danger, exclaimed with bright eyes, "Ling Jin! My and A Yu's guards are incredibly agile! Last year during the Lantern Festival, when some villains robbed us, he single-handedly took on eight of them!"

The corridor fell silent in the twilight, with only Bao'er's voice echoing.

It turns out that even the guards in her courtyard could harm him for another man; otherwise, how could his guards possibly...

“And the ginger tea that A-Ling makes is especially delicious,” Li Bao’er was still counting on her fingers, completely unaware that the air pressure around her had suddenly dropped. “Every time I catch a cold, drinking a bowl of it makes me feel much better.” Her upturned face was bathed in the soft light of the sunset, and Mu Cenlin felt that her bright smile was becoming more and more dazzling.

001: [Host, Prince's murderous intent detected +200%]

Li Bao'er: "...?"

As Ling Jin bowed with his sword in hand, Mu Cenlin suddenly chuckled, "I've heard that Guard Ling is skilled in archery?"

This piqued Li Bao'er's curiosity. "How do you know that A-Ling is such a skilled archer?" she asked excitedly, tugging at Mu Cenlin's sleeve. "In the past, when A-Yu and I were insulted by Zhang Shi, we would have Ling Jin throw stones into his yard."

Suddenly, the world spun around, and my back slammed into a vermilion pillar.

Mu Cenlin's arm, which was braced against her ear, bulged with veins, while his other hand gently stroked her frightened eyes: "So you've done quite a lot for Mu Yuan." So much that you sent people to assassinate him... but the second half of the sentence remained unspoken in his mind.

The last syllable was as soft as a sigh, yet his eyes held the eternally snowy plain.

Mu Yuan was like a thorn that would prick him from time to time, but one day he would break that thorn completely!

Li Bao'er blinked, not quite understanding at first: "Huh?"

What is the Great Demon King saying? What is the relationship between Ling Jin and Mu Yuan?

The slight confusion on Li Bao'er's face, in Mu Cenlin's eyes, turned into disgust after being exposed.

Sure enough, her obedience during this period, her deliberate attempts to please others, and even those promises were all just an act she put on to survive.

Mu Cenlin suddenly released his grip on her wrists, took a half step back, and the barely perceptible softness in his eyes froze completely.

"Your Highness?" Li Bao'er asked cautiously, "What's wrong?"

She instinctively reached out to grab him, but he turned away.

"It's alright." He said calmly, as if his loss of control had never happened. "I just suddenly remembered that I still have some military affairs to attend to, so there's no need to see me off."

Li Bao'er: "..."

001: [Host, the Prince's corruption level has been detected by +50%, currently at 85%!]

Li Bao'er: "??? What did I say wrong??"

Ling Jin stood under the corridor with his sword in his arms, keenly sensing that something was amiss, and was about to step forward.

Mu Cenlin glanced indifferently at the cloak in his hand, a cold smile playing on his lips, before turning and leaving.

Li Bao'er rubbed her sore back, watching his retreating figure, and couldn't help but mutter to herself:

It is said that a woman's heart is like a needle at the bottom of the sea. In her opinion, Mu Cenlin's heart is like a piece of ancient ice, cold and hard, and even has a self-inflicted wound!

This man's emotions are more difficult to understand than advanced calculus. One second he's all sunshine and rain, the next he's shrouded in gloom. It's completely illogical!

She turned to look at Ling Jin, who was standing quietly to the side, and pouted with a hint of grievance, "Ling, did I say something wrong just now?"

Ling Jin lowered his eyes to hide the darkness in them, and forced a faint smile at the corner of his lips: "Miss is right."

He stepped forward and gently draped the moon-white cloak he had been holding over her shoulders, skillfully tying the ribbon. A night breeze blew by, carrying the faint scent of calming incense from the cloak.

"It's windy here, let me take you back to your room." His voice was very soft, as if he were afraid of disturbing the pear blossoms in the twilight.

After escorting the person back to their room, Ling Jin stood in the long corridor outside Qingfeng Courtyard. The night wind gradually rose, causing the three-petaled plum blossom tassel on his waist to flutter.

In the shadows of the corridor, Ling Jin unconsciously stroked the sword tassel with his fingertips; it was a gift from Li Bao'er on his birthday.

Li Bao'er was also the first person in the world, besides her mother, to personally make a gift for him.

Ling Jin lowered his eyes to look at his hands. His knuckles were distinct, his skin pale, yet possessed the slender lines characteristic of people from the Western Regions. He was often called a "monster."

He was different from others from birth. His mother was a dancer from the Western Regions, with emerald green eyes like jade in the desert, while his father was a drunken border soldier from the Great Lin. He inherited his mother's features but had the facial features of a Great Lin person, becoming a bastard whom neither side recognized.

"Why do they all say I'm a monster, Mother?" The scarred hands in his memory suddenly trembled and pulled him into an embrace that smelled of grapevines.

"Because my Ah Jin is more dazzling than the gems of Crescent Lake, and people are always afraid of beautiful things they have never seen before."

When she was ten years old, the flames of war reached the border. Her father gave her mother to an enemy general in exchange for three jars of strong liquor.

That night, he huddled in the woodshed and heard his mother crying in the tent next door. She cried until the middle of the night, when her voice suddenly stopped.

At daybreak, people found her dead by Crescent Lake, her blood staining the pool of water red.

All she left him in the end was the string of silver bells on her wrist and the desire for him to escape...

But he didn't escape...

Ling Jin remembered that when the human traffickers caught him, they said that his face could fetch a good price. In the black market cages, buyers pried open his mouth to look at his teeth like they were choosing livestock, and discussed how many gold coins his emerald green eyes were worth.

Until Li Bao'er appeared.

That day, she was wearing a pale yellow shirt, holding a candied hawthorn in her hand, and squatted in front of the cage, looking at him curiously: "Your eyes are so beautiful, like jade."

She spent all her savings to buy him, and Li Yu even secretly slipped him a piece of osmanthus cake.

That was the sweetest thing he had ever eaten in his life.

And that line, "My older sister said you're part of our family now!"

Those were the most beautiful words he had ever heard in his life.

He still remembers the lights in Qingfeng Courtyard of the Li Mansion that night; they were brighter than the stars in the desert.

He originally thought that the children of wealthy families were just having a passing fancy, and that he would eventually be kicked out of the mansion because of his special status. But as spring turned to autumn, the three of them grew taller and taller, and the only thing that remained unchanged was...

The girl squatted under the tree and reached out to him, her pomegranate-colored skirt brushing against the moss. "Catch!" Li Yu threw a sour apricot from the tree, and the three of them burst into laughter.

So when Li Bao'er was infatuated with Mu Yuan, he was willing to be her weapon.

If killing Mu Cenlin would make her happy... he was willing to get rid of him sooner rather than later.

Last year, he lay in wait for three days, finally waiting for the opportunity for Mu Cenlin to go alone. He held his breath and drew the bowstring taut, but the moment he let go, he met a pair of eyes that suddenly looked back, sharp as a hawk, as if they had already seen through his existence.

The arrowhead was crushed, and the counterattack was more ferocious than expected. Before the sound of it cutting through the air even arrived, a sharp pain had already pierced through his left shoulder. He remembered hearing the crisp sound of his collarbone breaking when he fell from the tree.

Ling Jin gritted his teeth and rolled into the bushes under the cover of night. Behind him came Mu Cenlin's cold voice: "Little fish."

He dragged his broken body through the dense forest for half the night, his left arm already numb. Before dawn, he hid in an abandoned house and painstakingly dug out the arrowhead.

Seven days later, when he returned to the side courtyard of the Li residence in extreme weakness, Li Bao'er was embroidering a sachet for Mu Yuan.

"Where has A-Ling been lately?" Li Bao'er asked anxiously, looking at Ling Jin's weak appearance.

Ling Jin subtly dodged Li Bao'er's hand as she tried to help him up. "I went hunting in the dense forest with some people and saw a wolf." He looked at his left hand, which could no longer draw a bow. "It's a pity it got away."

Mu Cenlin's gaze just now clearly showed that he recognized him, but he didn't explain because... neither the gentle and hypocritical Mu Yuan nor the ruthless and dangerous Mu Cenlin were worthy of the bright moon in his eyes.

His god should forever hang high in the heavens, and he will be her most faithful believer, even though she is about to marry the Prince of Jing...