Chapter 28 Chapter 28 The man who appeared late at night
"Don't play dumb with me. You were able to help Yin Jinglong obtain the statue of the Snow Mountain Goddess, and he brought it all the way back to Shangjing from the Snow Mountain. Who would believe you if you said you didn't know how to activate the statue?"
Hanyu couldn't help laughing. Yin Jinglong brought her back not for the statue, but because she was Ajiang's person. Moreover, she took advantage of his trick and came to Shangjing with him in order to find Ajiang's whereabouts.
"What are you laughing at? It was you who wanted to make a deal with me. If you can help me find the secret to unlocking the statue, I can spare your life."
"Okay, I'll try. Where is the statue?"
Hanyu propped herself up and got out of bed, but due to blood loss, her legs went weak unconsciously the moment she stood up, and her vision suddenly went dark, and she almost lost her balance.
Princess Chaoyang teased her, "You're in such a sick state right now, you can't even walk. Let's talk about this in a few days!"
In order to help her recover quickly, Princess Chaoyang sent Hanyu all kinds of supplements every day. Even Prince Consort Sun, who slept with her day and night, did not receive such preferential treatment.
As her body gradually recovered, Han Yu's first concern was not how to answer her secret about the statue, but how to escape from the heavily guarded princess's mansion.
But she was locked up in a dark room all day long, and even when she went to the toilet, she had to send three or five maids to follow her. She had no chance to find the way to the princess's mansion.
Just when she thought she would eventually die silently and tragically in this mansion, she spotted a familiar figure in the princess's house.
One day, when she was about to go out of the house to use the restroom, she accidentally saw a familiar man standing under the eaves not far away. The man was dressed just like the guards in the princess's mansion, but the strange thing was that he just stood there and stared at her silently, and she didn't know how long he stared at her.
"What are you looking at, young lady? Why don't you leave?" the maid urged from behind.
"Oh, nothing."
Hanyu racked her brains to think about where she had seen that familiar evil face. Because the distance was too far, she could not see the man's specific appearance. She just felt that the figure and facial features were somewhat familiar, as if she had seen him somewhere. Moreover, the man was staring at her intently. Could it be that he knew her too?
When she came back from the toilet, she pretended to look casually under the eaves, but the man was no longer there.
She wondered, could it be that she saw it wrong?
A woman's intuition always shows up at certain critical moments. Hanyu didn't dare to sleep too deeply that night, because she always felt that the man she met during the day might wait for an opportunity to find her in the dead of night.
As expected, at midnight, a man suddenly appeared outside the window.
Hanyu quietly got up from the bed, tiptoed to the window, and tried to poke a hole in the window paper to see who the man was.
The man suddenly pushed open the window and came in, scaring Hanyu so much that she almost screamed. The man quickly covered her mouth and made a "hush" sound.
Hanyu stared at the man's face in shock. Half of his face was covered with a black cloth. Although she could only see the man's eyes in the darkness, she always felt that he looked familiar.
She took away the man's hand covering her mouth, quickly took off the hairpin on her head and pressed it against the man's neck: "Who are you?"
The man took advantage of her unpreparedness and snatched the hairpin from Hanyu's hand in a few quick moves.
He took out a tinder from his waist and lit the candle in front of the window. As he turned around, he took off the black cloth covering his face and walked up to Hanyu: "Miss Min, have you forgotten me so quickly?"
"It's you!"
Hanyu finally recognized that this familiar man was none other than Li Yu, the deputy general who had followed Yin Jinglong before.
She thought she had found a life-saving straw, but the next second she recalled that Xin Da had told her that Li Yu was a rebel general of the palace, and he was wearing the guard uniform of the princess's palace during the day. It seemed that he was undoubtedly Princess Chaoyang's man.
"Humph! It was you who murdered my clansmen who guarded the mausoleum. How could I possibly forget this deep hatred? Now that I'm in such a predicament, you're not here to silence me in the night, are you?"
"Miss, do you really think I'm still the princess's?"
"What do you mean? I already know you've betrayed the palace, so don't try to make excuses!"
Li Yu asked her, "Then how do you think, with the prince's ruthless nature, he would let me go? Why would he send a traitor back to the princess?"
Hanyu also found this matter a little difficult to explain, but after thinking about it carefully, Yin Jinglong has always been a moody and cunning person. Maybe he didn't kill Li Yu because he remembered the master-servant friendship they had for many years?
But Li Yu told her that the reason why Yin Jinglong let him return to the princess's mansion was that he wanted to use him as a counter-espionage tactic. The princess thought that he was a spy who was discovered after being sent to the palace by her, but in fact, he was a spy who betrayed the original owner and was lurking around the original owner again.
"You mean, you are Yin Jinglong's man now?"
Li Yu nodded and replied, "Whether you believe it or not, I am indeed under the orders of the prince and am lurking beside Princess Chaoyang. If you wish to escape from the princess, you must inform the prince through me. Only the prince can save you."
"You! I don't want him to save me! No, he probably wouldn't be willing to come forward to save me. After all, the princess is his aunt. How could he, the regent, turn against Princess Chaoyang for me?"
Hanyu turned her face away, feeling extremely reluctant to ask Yin Jinglong's men for help. After all, she had just managed to escape from the palace with great difficulty.
"Why not?"
Li Yu detailed what Yin Jinglong had said on the snowy mountain: "It wasn't the prince who ordered the massacre of the clan, it was the princess. I worked for the princess because she kidnapped my wife and daughter and threatened me with my family's lives to force me to slaughter the entire clan guarding the mausoleum and bring back the statue for her. But I didn't expect that he and the princess had a crush on each other over the massacre of the clan. The prince forbade anyone to touch your clan members. He went to the snowy mountain with only one purpose, and that was to bring back the statue."
Only then did Hanyu realize that Princess Chaoyang was the culprit of the war in front of the temple. However, in her previous life, it was Yin Jinglong who ordered the massacre of the tribesmen. She saw him with her own eyes holding a long sword and chopping off the heads of the tribesmen. Could it be that everything that happened in the previous life was fake?
She shook her head in denial: "I don't believe it. Even if it was the princess who gave the order this time, it's undeniable that Yin Jinglong once wanted to massacre my people."
"Miss Min, whether you believe it or not, this is the truth. You and the prince have experienced life and death together on the snowy mountains. I think you should know better than I do how the prince treats you and your people."
Hanyu recalled the experience they had together under the Snow Mountain Temple, and she actually still had some good feelings towards him. She patted the spider-shaped mark on her chest and told herself not to be affected by the heart-eating poison.
She questioned Li Yu: "So you sneaked into my room late at night just to tell me this and alleviate my hatred for him?"
"Of course not. I'm here to help you. In a few days, Princess Chaoyang will definitely come again to take your blood to nourish the statue. Do you want to be imprisoned in her mansion for the rest of your life and be her endless blood bank?"
What was the connection between her blood and the statue? Hanyu was born in the Goddess Temple and raised in the snowy mountains. As a member of the tomb-guarding clan, she had never heard that her own blood could nourish the statue, nor had her own blood ever been offered to the goddess. This must have been a rumor that the Central Plains people, as outsiders, had heard from somewhere.
But Li Yu said that he saw with his own eyes Princess Chaoyang injecting her blood into the fragments of the statue, but the fragments of the statue did not change at all. The princess thought that it was because the amount of blood was not enough, so she would definitely come to take her blood again.
"I don't understand why they need my blood? Is it because I'm from the tomb-guarding clan that worships the goddess?"
"Not only that, but also because you, like some of your people, are not persecuted by the power of the goddess. This way, your blood will not be affected by the statue."
Hanyu looked at him doubtfully. This man had betrayed his master, whom he had followed for over a decade, so easily. And she was just a stranger. Why should he help her? Thinking about it this way, she wondered how much of what he said was true.
As soon as Li Yu finished speaking, footsteps were heard outside the house. It sounded like patrolling guards. He quickly blew out the candle and signaled Hanyu not to make a sound.
After the guards left, Li Yu covered his face with the veil again and prepared to leave through the window.
Han Yu stopped at the window and said, "Wait, aren't you here to rescue me? I beg you to take me out of the Princess's Mansion. It would be even better if you could take me out of Shangjing City."
"Miss, you are too naive. How could I, Li Yu, escape the sight of the princess's secret guards? If I had this ability, I would have rescued my wife and daughter from the princess long ago. At present, the only one who can save you is the prince. Since you once saved the prince in the snowy mountains, I will find a way to inform the prince of your news. As for whether he is willing to come to rescue you, it depends on how much you mean to him."
Hanyu had never imagined that at this point, her life would be in the hands of her former enemy. She had offended him so many times in the palace, and now she had to rely on him to save her?
She felt that with Yin Jinglong's personality, unless Hanyu was still useful to him, he would never come to save her even if she died a hundred or a thousand times.
After that night, Li Yu never appeared in front of Hanyu again. She guessed that maybe he was afraid of being discovered by the princess, so he did that?
A few days later, the princess brought people to cut Hanyu's wrists and let her bleed.
Han Yu quickly interrupted, "Didn't the princess ask me last time if I knew the secret to unlocking the statue? I recall that the elders of my clan seemed to have mentioned the statue. Could you personally take me to see the fragments of the statue? Perhaps we can find some clues?"
Prince Consort Sun, who was standing behind the princess, came over and said to her, "Your Highness, please be careful. This woman is very cunning and scheming. Don't be fooled by her. In my opinion, it would be better for us to take her blood first and then take her to see the statue."
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