The next day, Shen Xu was taken back to General Ye's residence by Ye Fan. She remained silent throughout the journey.
Ye Fan's attitude was very bad, and he was completely unlike the kind-hearted brother that Ye Wanqing had described him to be. At the moment, he was angry about her stance and also angry about Xu Wanrong being pushed into the pond.
As soon as he returned home, he made Shen Xu kneel in the ancestral hall. Now he was the head of the general's mansion and had the power to sentence anyone in the general's mansion.
The butler presented him with the family rules, and he asked angrily, "What is the purpose of the Regent of Haoyue Kingdom coming to Yong'an City?"
Shen Xu ignored him, lowered his head and knelt silently on the futon.
"Ye Wanqing, you'd better confess clearly in front of our ancestors. Collaborating with foreign nations is a grave crime of treason! If the reputation of the General's Mansion is ruined by you, you will be held responsible for it."
Shen Xu remained silent, lowered his eyes, and let Ye Fan stand there to threaten and tempt him, without saying a word.
"Stretch out your hand." Ye Fan was irritated by her attitude. He picked up the cane beside him and asked her to stretch out her hand.
Seeing that she was unmoved, he ordered his men to grab her arm, spread out her palm, and hit her palm with a cruel cane. The piercing pain made her instinctively shrink her hand. She bit her lips tightly and said nothing, her body stiff and motionless.
"You were clearly with Sister Xu yesterday. How did she fall into the pond? What were you doing?"
Seeing that she still said nothing, Ye Fan was so angry that he slapped her palm a few more times, and her delicate hand swelled up visibly.
Shen Xu's tears fell uncontrollably, but he still bit his lips tightly and refused to say a word.
Seeing that he couldn't get any answers, Ye Fan angrily picked up Xiao Qingzhu and was about to hit him. Song Lin hurried over and saw Shen Xu's swollen hands. He stopped Ye Fan with a distressed look on his face.
"Ye Fan, stop!" He strode forward and used his arm to block the small green bamboo that Ye Fan was waving.
"Brother Lin, what are you doing!" Seeing that he had accidentally injured Song Lin, Ye Fan quickly threw away the green bamboo in his hand. "Are you okay?"
Song Lin endured the burning pain from the blow and said in shock, "She's your own sister, are you going to beat her to death?"
His Xiuxiu is weak and has no martial arts skills. This blow of the stick will definitely take her life!
But Ye Fan stiffened his neck and said confidently, "My foster father asked me to find out their purpose for coming to the Imperial City. She's collaborating with the enemy and treason, so not taking her to the Heavenly Prison for torture is already a mercy to her. If she continues to be so stubborn and refuses to repent, I'll beat her to death."
"Ye Fan!" Song Lin's eyes were red, and his voice was much higher. "She suffered so much while living away from home, and now she's treated like this by her own brother. How desperate must she be?"
"But her collusion with the Regent of Haoyue Country is already a serious crime..."
Ignoring Ye Fan's aggressiveness, Song Lin simply picked him up, strode out of the ancestral hall, and headed towards Ye Wanqing's boudoir.
Shen Xu didn't move and let him hold her. She hung her hands down, her red and swollen hands burning with pain. She closed her eyes and didn't look at Song Lin. Hatred took root in her heart along with the burning pain and spread wantonly.
In the next few days, Shen Xu lived in the general's mansion. Due to Ye Fan's bad attitude, the servants and maids in the general's mansion were not very friendly to her and often treated her harshly.
But she was like a puppet. Apart from eating and sleeping, she just sat there motionless, staring at the bandaged wound in a daze.
He ignores everyone who comes, says nothing, and doesn't ask anything.
In the past few days, Song Lin came to visit her every day, talked to her, and told her the progress of the search and rescue, but Pei Zhiyuan seemed to have disappeared without a trace.
He said that if the body was not found, it meant that she was still alive, and maybe one day, we would meet again somewhere, just like we met again.
But Shen Xu ignored him, and sat on the swing in the general's mansion with his eyes lowered, his eyes empty and lifeless.
The servants in the general's mansion said that the eldest daughter must be crazy, and they all stayed away from her.
"Brother Lin, why are you so nice to my sister? Have you two known each other for a long time?"
Ye Fan poured Song Lin a cup of tea and asked him with a hint of suspicion. Ever since he brought his sister back home, Song Lin came to see her every day. If he saw servants mistreating her, he would shout at them and repeatedly asked him to punish the servants.
In addition, when he first came to the general's mansion, he asked for Ye Wanqing's portrait, which made it hard not to imagine the relationship between them.
"She is my wife from Haoyue Country." Song Lin took out the dagger from his arms and gently stroked the copper plate inlaid on the handle. "She made this for me personally."
Ye Fan took the dagger from Song Lin's hand and examined it carefully: the retractable spring mechanism, the black flowing pattern on the blade, and the copperplate marriage certificate in regular script embedded in the handle. How could his sister make such a thing!
His expression became more and more confused. He had been doubting it since he met his sister. She gave him a very strange feeling. Even after not seeing her for many years, some of her habits would not change easily.
She was gentle and dignified, had no martial arts skills, didn't eat spicy food, and never called him Brother Ye Fan...
All signs indicate that she is not his sister.
So who is she and why does she look exactly like her sister?
Is this a conspiracy of Haoyue Kingdom?
"But isn't she the Regent Princess of Haoyue Kingdom?"
"I thought she was dead, and something happened to Dongyi at the time, so I never returned to Haoyue Country. And they probably thought I was dead, so they got together."
Song Lin lowered his eyes, feeling sad. Now that things had come to this point, she could obviously talk, but she refused to say a word to him. She was definitely blaming him for forcing Pei Zhiyuan to death.
"She's dead..." Ye Fan pondered the details and murmured softly, "She's dead, and her father personally identified the body. How could a father mistakenly identify his daughter's body?"
"What are you talking about?" Song Lin came back to his senses and looked at him puzzledly.
Ye Fan expressed his guess, "Brother Lin, tell me, that Regent is very cunning, maybe he has found someone who looks like my sister.
He came to Yong'an City to acknowledge his relatives, intending to disrupt the court of Yanyang Kingdom."
Song Lin frowned slightly, "Why do you feel so?"
Ye Fan directly expressed his confusion, "I don't think she is my sister, Ye Wanqing. Although she looks similar, her personality and way of speaking are completely different from my sister.
Before the accident, I talked to her about the past. Although she could answer, her answers were very deliberate, as if she had practiced it in advance.
"Also, my sister died four years ago, and it was my father who personally identified the body. At the time, everyone in Yong'an City knew that the case was handled by Liu Zhang, who was famous for his ability to solve cases like a god."
Song Lin took the dagger from Ye Fan's hand, his amber eyes staring at the embossed pattern of the marriage certificate on the hilt. He saw the blank space next to the name and thought carefully about Ye Fan's words.
Shen Xu's attitude towards him did make him question whether Pei Zhiyuan had really found someone similar and trained her to replace her.
But how could Pei Zhiyuan come up with such a brilliant strategy as the goat plan?
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