Chapter 16 Fatal Fate: "One Corpse, Two Lives"
What did you just say?
Ning Xian thought she had misheard.
Lan Rong looked up and said, "I only found out later that the contraceptive soup had been tampered with. Miss Ruan was unwell for a few days, so I called a monk who knew medicine to come and take a look. The monk said that Miss Ruan was probably pregnant."
Lan Rong, fearing he might doubt her further, said, "The child belongs to His Highness."
Ning Xian felt his heart trembling at an unfamiliar speed, and his fingertips couldn't help but rub the jade ring on his finger with difficulty.
The tears that Ruan Yang had just shed remained on the ground, which, dragged by the girl's skirt, had gathered into bitter water stains.
But so what?
Women who have been with Lu Wenjin, women who are related to the Ruan family, are not worthy of him taking the initiative to apologize.
Ning Xian refused to back down and snorted, "For the sake of the child, she won't hold a grudge against me for long. She can just come back and apologize."
"She has nothing. Without her husband, where can she go alone?"
Lan Rong hadn't expected Ning Xian to be so serious this time, showing no mercy towards Ruan Yang. She turned and sighed at Ning Xian's retreating figure, "Your Highness, never wait until you've completely lost something to regret it; by then, it will be too late..."
Ning Xian swallowed hard, pulled open his robe, and said coldly, "I will not regret it."
...
The rain didn't stop until midnight. When Ruan Yang came out of the temple, he had nothing with him. He didn't have any of the gold and silver jewelry he had planned to bring, nor even a change of clothes or an oil-paper umbrella.
Throughout all of this, the only thing that accompanied her was this Pisces jade pendant.
She walked down the mountain in the dark, and when she saw the village with its myriad lights in the distance, she was exhausted, hungry and tired. Ruan Yang shivered and thought it would be better to settle down for the time being and make further plans.
She brazenly knocked on the doors of the villagers' homes.
After a while, an old woman with a full head of white hair came out. When she saw that it was a young girl who was soaking wet, she relaxed her guard and agreed to let Ruan Yang stay at her house for a few days.
She took a hot shower and changed into old but very clean coarse clothes.
The thatched hut was not leak-proof, and rainwater kept flowing into the house through the cracks in the roof, which extinguished the old kerosene lamp on the table with a "whoosh".
Seeing that the old woman had difficulty moving around, Ruan Yang took the initiative to help her find the wick and relight it.
The old woman then noticed through the lamplight that Ruan Yang's eyes were swollen like walnuts: "Girl, what happened to you? Where are your parents?"
When she tried to recall the past, Ruan Yang felt as if someone had split her head open with an axe, the pain forcing her to stop thinking.
She covered her head, her mind flashing back to images of her kind being dismembered and brutally murdered, even to the woman in red with black hair and a huge bloody hole in her back, who was holding onto her leg.
Ning Xian must be hiding something from her.
"What's wrong?"
Ruan Yang snapped out of her daze, her clothes soaked with cold sweat. She avoided the topic from before, her voice still trembling slightly: "Mother-in-law, I'd like to trouble you these next few days."
After speaking, she took off the jade bracelet that Ning Xian had given her from her wrist and explained her meaning. Seeing the old woman's troubled look, Ruan Yang understood, after all, no family would be willing to accept a woman who was about to have an abortion.
The old woman sighed, "It's not that I'm unwilling, but abortion is harmful to my health, and if things go wrong, it could result in the death of both mother and child."
Ruan Yang forced a smile after hearing this. Indeed, if she were to bleed to death here, it would only harm others.
I'll deal with it when I have time.
She said, "It's my fault. I trusted the wrong person, which led to an innocent child taking the blame for me."
These past few days, the old woman has taken good care of Ruan Yang, and she seems to have forgotten about Ning Xian.
Half a month passed, and there was still no movement from the other side.
Ning Xian couldn't hold back any longer.
He tore the Xuan paper under his command into pieces, crumpled it into balls, and threw them at the head of the culprit, Wang Zhong, one by one.
Wang Chong, enduring the pain in his back, was on the verge of tears. He had been kneeling before Ning Xian for more than ten days. He picked up the sketch of the cradle, looked at the baby clothes that Ning Xian had only cut in half, and sighed, "Your Highness, why don't I go and find Miss Ruan and talk to her face to face?"
"She can't see it if you do that."
Seeing that Ning Xian hadn't smiled in a long time, he muttered under his breath, "If we don't find her soon, she might really run off with General Lu and then become unhappy."
Ning Xian raised her eyes and stared intently at Wang Zhong, who was so frightened that he dared not breathe.
He felt a sense of crisis and said angrily, "If she dares to run off with someone else, I'll break her legs."
"Go, summon the spies sent to monitor Ruan Yang. I want to personally go and bring that woman back."
...
Last night there was a heavy rain, and this morning the air was filled with the fragrance of grass and soil. Ruan Yang didn't want to stay at the old woman's house for nothing, so as she had done in the past few days, she carried a bamboo basket on her back and prepared to go up the mountain to pick some mushrooms to sell at the market.
After the rain, mushrooms, bamboo shoots and other fungi sprouted up quickly on the mountain, and a few people were already working hard in the mountains, their backs bent.
Seeing that most of the mushrooms along the way had been picked by others, Ruan Yang decided to venture deeper into the area.
Before she knew it, it was noon. The blazing sun made her feel a little dizzy. Ruan Yang rubbed her aching back and prepared to drink some water and rest for a while.
"This one is quite plump, let's pick it and make soup."
In the deep mountains and forests, a voice suddenly rang out. Ruan Yang thought it was a ghost, so she turned around abruptly and saw that Ning Xian had silently followed her all the way here.
Ruan Yang stood frozen in place, angrily about to run away.
Seeing that she was walking unsteadily, Ning Xian strode over and pulled her into his arms.
The girl's waist was so slender it could be encircled with one hand; she had become thinner again.
His tone was full of reproach: "You're about to become a mother, how can you still be so careless?"
What if my son falls and gets hurt?
Ning Xian had never imagined that he would become a father one day, but now that it had happened, he was ready to be a father and had done a lot of research.
The midwife who delivered the baby and the wet nurse who would take care of the child were both found.
He didn't want to argue with that arrogant woman, lest he hurt his child.
Upon hearing this, Ruan Yang turned her face away in disappointment. The one who could make him go through all this trouble to come here was not her, but something whose gender was unknown.
Ning Xian subconsciously took Ruan Yang's hand: "Where are you going again?"
Ruan Yang clung to the tree trunk with one hand, while Ning Xian roughly pulled her other hand. She struggled and tried her best to hide behind the tree trunk.
Ning Xian was losing her patience: "Come back with me, do you hear me!?"
"I don't want to."
Ning Xian gripped her shoulders, trying to control her: "Why? I only met that Jinlian by chance, I haven't even exchanged more than a few words with her! Why would you rather believe someone else than believe me?"
Seeing that Ruan Yang was like a dead person, with no expression at all, he lowered his body and kissed the girl's neck passionately, until Ruan Yang couldn't breathe.
"Slap—" Another slap, and this time Ning Xian had red marks on both sides of her face.
"you……"
She hit him again... She hit him again without any mercy!
Ning Xian covered his face, his eyes reddening, his voice choked with emotion. He gritted his teeth and said fiercely, "You...you just wait..."
Ruan Yang ignored her and coldly said, "I don't care what your relationship with Jinlian is, but I just want to know what our relationship is. A mistress? A concubine? Then what is this child? An illegitimate child without a title, or a bastard?"
The girl's voice was firm and resolute: "If you truly have even a shred of affection for me, then send Jinlian away, and then, with proper betrothal and marriage, marry me into your family."
This slap was undoubtedly adding fuel to the fire. Ning Xian, a nobleman of imperial lineage, had been second only to the emperor since childhood. He had never been insulted by a woman before.
Ning Xian glanced at Ruan Yang's stomach and said sharply, "It's true that I value it, but you're trying to use it to climb the social ladder?"
Ruan Yang felt a tightness in her chest upon hearing this. It turned out that in Ning Xian's eyes, she was no different from any other woman who tried to climb the social ladder.
Ning Xian saw her pupils tremble slightly, and a thin mist quickly welled up in her eyes. His heart ached and itched at the same time. He did not back down: "Think it over carefully. How many children can I have? It is a favor to let a village woman like you give birth to my bloodline. In the future, you will be rich and powerful because of your son. What's wrong with that?"
He sneered, "Besides me, who else do you think would want a woman who has been pregnant with another man's child?"
Hearing this humiliation, Ruan Yang forcefully wiped away the tears that were about to well up, threw the basket on the ground at Ning Xian's face, and then ran away without saying a word.
After running for an unknown amount of time, Ruan Yang tripped over a pebble and fell to the ground, finally having the opportunity to kneel down and gasp for breath.
When Ruan Yang looked up, she saw clouds and mist swirling around her, with rolling mountains and a bottomless cliff below. As for why she had chosen a dead end by sheer coincidence, that was the man behind her.
Ning Xian walked up to Ruan Yang unhurriedly, looking like she was watching a good show: "Alright, I'm tired, I don't want to play with you anymore."
"I'll give you two choices: either jump now and die with your unborn child, or come back with me and be my canary."
Ruan Yang was at a loss, not knowing what to do, when suddenly the pebbles tumbled down, and she slipped dramatically, falling backward uncontrollably.
"No, no... Ruan Yang!"
Ning Xian's heart tightened suddenly, and his pupils dilated. In a flash, disregarding the danger ahead, he immediately leaped toward the pale purple figure.
However, the emptiness in her arms overshadowed the stinging pain from the stones cutting her palms. All Ning Xian held in her hand was the remnant of silk from the girl's clothes, fluttering forlornly in the wind.
The pale purple hue plummeted rapidly towards the mountainside, beyond saving, until it was gradually swallowed by the smoke and soon disappeared from sight.
Ning Xian's mind went blank, her ears were ringing, and her palms, which were bracing themselves on the ground, kept digging into the rough gravel.
He realized that his kitten was really gone, and it seemed it would never come back...
A note from the author:
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The map is changing! [Sprinkling flowers]
Daughter: [Sprinkling flowers][Sprinkling flowers][Sprinkling flowers] (We're about to be liberated!)
Overlord Dog: [Crying][Crying][Crying] (How did it actually jump...?)
Author's comment: Waaaaah, Nutrition Month, waaaaah! [crying] (sobbing)
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