Yunrui said, "I...I'm too late..."

“It is indeed getting late,” Shen Wan said.

"..."

Yunrui blushed even more immediately.

Why did she arrive so late?

It's all Lu Cheng's fault.

This is also why she saw Shen Wan blush.

Yunrui asked, "Is my cousin leaving already?"

Shen Wan smiled and said, "If you had come a quarter of an hour earlier, I would have stayed a little longer. Now that we're at the main gate, I'm not going back."

Yunrui then said, "I'll go to the Ling Prince's residence sometime, and then we can have a proper talk."

After chatting for a few minutes, Shen Wan took a carriage back to the Ling Prince's residence.

Back at Moyuxuan, I spent some time with the children in the courtyard, basking in the sun.

During lunch, Yinshuang came in and reported, "Your Highness, you guessed right, the Eighth Prince left a letter and went to the border..."

They're such a worry.

The Eighth Prince is not old, not even sixteen years old yet. Consort Wang must be very worried about him going to the border.

Well, if Shen Wan hadn't reminded them, Consort Wang and the Emperor would never have imagined that the Eighth Prince would leave a letter and secretly follow them to the border, because from beginning to end, the Eighth Prince never mentioned to Consort Wang and the Emperor that he wanted to go to the border.

The Eighth Prince surely understands his father and mother. Even his sixth brother's trip to the border was not approved by their father, let alone his.

What's the point of bringing it up if they disagree anyway?

Things are accomplished in secrecy; great things are done quietly and without fanfare.

So the Eighth Prince left the palace under the guise of seeing someone off, and didn't return all night. His people and Consort Wang assumed that he had run into trouble outside the palace and had been kidnapped, so they didn't bother to search his room. Shen Wan reminded him, and Consort Wang rushed to the Eighth Prince's bedroom and found a letter in a book that the Eighth Prince was reading.

The letter was very simple, consisting of only two sentences:

Father, Mother, your son is going to the border.

Don't worry about it.

Consort Wang was so angry that she wanted to order someone to bring the Eighth Prince back, give him dozens of lashes, and beat him so badly that he wouldn't be able to go to the border or even get out of bed.

Consort Wang knew her son loved to play, and she was always worried about letting him leave the palace to play. But to her surprise, he dared to run off to the border behind her back.

Consort Wang begged the Emperor to send someone to bring the Eighth Prince back.

The Emperor sent someone over.

However, the Eighth Prince's horse was a fine steed given to him by the Wei family of the Northwest, and it was not something that an ordinary horse could catch up with.

The Eighth Prince was afraid that Xie Jingyan would not allow him to go to the border, so he left the palace early in the morning and walked ahead of Xie Jingyan. Fearing that Xie Jingyan would catch up with him, he found a place to hide halfway and waited for Xie Jingyan and the Prince of Yanping to leave first, and then followed behind.

Thinking that he would catch up with Sixth Brother in three to five days, and then admit his mistake, Sixth Brother would not send him back to the capital.

The plan was good, but the Eighth Prince forgot that Xie Jingyan and his men's horses were all top-notch steeds, and coupled with their high martial arts skills, not only did he fail to catch up, but the distance between them also widened.

The Eighth Prince chased them all the way to the border before finally catching up. This was only because Xie Jingyan and his men stopped running once they reached the border; otherwise, they would never have been able to catch up.

The Eighth Prince could not catch up with Xie Jingyan, and the people sent by the Emperor could not catch up with the Eighth Prince.

Poor Consort Wang waited for news in the palace for a long time, but instead of her son returning, she received news that he had already reached the border, which infuriated her.