Beauty is innocent, but drowning people bring about their own demise.
—Epigraph
"Mmm...ah..." A woman's soft moans suddenly came from beside him, followed by a complaining voice, "What's your hurry...ah...you're hurting me. She's been drugged with aphrodisiac and seductive fragrance...she can't escape..."
That voice was far too familiar.
Zhao Zhi suddenly woke up. She tried to move her limbs, but they were indeed weak and powerless.
With difficulty, she pulled a silver needle from her waist, pricked her finger, and let some blood out. Only then did she regain some consciousness.
The commotion next door is getting louder and louder.
Zhao Zhi looked around and recognized that this was the purification room of Qinglian Temple.
This day last year was her and her twin sister Zhao Yun's coming-of-age ceremony.
The two sisters' betrothed, Prince Rui and Crown Prince Li, presented each of them with generous gifts.
The marriage between Prince Rui and Zhao Zhi was something Prince Rui had requested at a palace banquet three years ago.
The marriage between Prince Li and Zhao Yun was bestowed by the Emperor as a side effect, in order to prevent gossip from spreading if Zhao Zhi got engaged before her sister.
To outsiders, this was a wonderful story, but to Zhao Yun, it was just a joke.
She, Zhao Yun, is a joke.
But Prince Rui didn't arrive; the gifts he sent filled most of Zhao Zhi's courtyard. This infuriated Zhao Zhi.
Because she disliked Prince Rui, whom she had never met and who was known for his womanizing ways.
Because of her dislike for the crow, she also disliked the things that Prince Rui sent her.
But Zhao Yun saw it as Zhao Zhi showing off. She also knew that Liu Yun had been trying to get rid of Zhao Zhi all these years.
Why didn't she use their strength against them?
So, while his mother Zhang Wan was summoned to the palace by the Empress Dowager to attend to her illness, Zhao Yun suggested that he and his two younger sisters go to the temple to pray for their father and mother.
Concubine Liu from the mansion volunteered to lead the three women to Qinglian Temple to burn incense.
Along the way, Zhao Zhi and Zhao Yun rode in one sedan chair, while Zhao Rou and Aunt Liu rode in another sedan chair.
Zhao Zhi and Zhao Yun sat on opposite sides, ignoring each other.
Although they are sisters by blood, Zhao Zhi and Zhao Yun have been at odds since childhood and have a long-standing feud.
They were born an hour apart and were born to the same mother, but their personalities were very different.
Zhao Yun is gentle, quiet, dignified, and generous; Zhao Zhi, on the other hand, only acts dignified and generous when she needs to play the role of the chief minister's legitimate daughter. Otherwise, she is just a mischievous monkey.
This is not Zhao Zhi's fault.
Take, for example, subjects like rites, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and mathematics. Under the same teacher, Zhao Yun studied diligently day and night, but only learned the basics. The only skill he could be proud of was his zither playing.
Then look at Zhao Zhi. In class, she's either playing around or skipping class, which makes all the teachers go to her father to complain. But despite being so mischievous, she gets excellent grades in every subject during the exams.
What angered Zhao Yun even more was that the medical skills she could never learn were easily mastered by the carefree Zhao Zhi.
"Since you have no talent, just be a good daughter of an official family!"
From childhood to adulthood, out of jealousy, Zhao Yun often tripped up Zhao Zhi and created difficult problems for her.
Thinking this through, Zhao Zhi gave up on expecting Zhao Yun and Zhao Rou to come and save her.
At the same time, she was also furious that the monks of Qinglian Temple were so audacious as to have an affair in the temple.
She stole from Liu Yun, the concubine of her father, the Grand Secretary, and the birth mother of her half-sister Zhao Rou.
Zhao Zhi suddenly felt that her father was being cuckolded.
After a while, Zhao Zhineng stood up.
There is a window between the two clean rooms, which is not found in the other clean rooms.
Zhao Zhi guessed that this was probably a hole deliberately made by the thief monk to steal people.
She peeked through the crack in the window: Liu Yun had a rosy complexion, her neck was slightly tilted back, and she was only wearing a scarlet mandarin duck bodice, which hung loosely around her neck.
The bald monk reached out and pinched a spot on Liu Yun's body, causing her to tremble all over.
Zhao Zhi hurriedly covered her eyes. She shook her head violently, which was making her dizzy, and looked toward the door.
She thought to herself: That door must be firmly locked by that shameless adulterous couple. She turned around and glanced desperately at the small window behind her; it seemed that jumping out the window was now her only way out.
Zhao Zhi quietly pushed open the window and leaped out.
She gritted her teeth and endured her physical discomfort, using all her strength to run out of the temple.
However, Zhao Zhi had only run a short distance when he heard hurried footsteps behind him.
Taking advantage of the darkness, she turned her head and saw that it was indeed Liu Yun and a bald monk.
There is a dog hole on the west side of Qinglian Temple. When Zhao Zhi was young, he came to worship Buddha with his mother and once crawled out of the hole while playing.
She steeled herself, pushed aside the bushes, and crawled into the cave. The branches scratched and stung her body, but she didn't care.
When Zhao Zhi crawled out of the dog hole, her dizziness worsened, and her whole body felt as hot as a fireball.
She rolled up her sleeves and lifted her skirt above her knees. Although a mountain breeze was blowing, she still felt unbearably hot.
"You bastard!" she couldn't help but curse. "Just wait until we get back, and I'll teach you a lesson!"
Zhao Zhi cursed Liu Yun's ancestors for eighteen generations in her heart.
After finally finding a spacious cave, she stumbled over and slowly sat down against the cave wall.
Zhao Zhi frantically tried to insert several needles into herself, but it was no use at all.
Just then, a masked person stumbled into the cave.
Zhao Zhi inwardly groaned, "What bad luck!" She didn't know whether this person was friend or foe, and was so nervous that she didn't dare to breathe.
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