This piano sound often appears in her dreams!
Your Highness didn't like to play the zither before, but after arriving in Beidi, because he had to present himself as a princess married to a foreign country, he had to keep the secret, so he could no longer touch swords.
The Northern Di Khan and the Northern Di royal family, as well as the generals and common people of the entire Northern Di, did not really treat Her Highness well just because She was the high and mighty Princess of Dasheng. In fact, because they knew that Her Highness Princess Chongyue and the "former Crown Prince" were twin siblings, they transferred all the hatred and humiliation they had suffered on the battlefield in the past to Her Highness Princess...
The look they gave His Highness was always filled with hatred, coldness, and mockery.
His Highness once said that perhaps this was the reason why Beidi specifically asked her to marry him.
This marriage was carried out with the intention of revenge and humiliation from the beginning to the end.
The former prince is dead, so the revenge will be taken to his twin sister who is said to be exactly like him.
The experiences of those three years would have been as tormenting as a nightmare to an ordinary woman, let alone His Highness who was once omnipotent and indestructible on the battlefield. For His Highness, such experiences must have been hundreds, thousands, and even millions of times more painful than the most serious injuries he had ever received on the battlefield...
But Your Highness clearly knew Beidi’s intentions and had anticipated all of this... Why did Your Highness still dare to go? Why did Your Highness still want to go? Your Highness shouldn’t have married Beidi at all!
Your Highness is not the sickly and incapable princess in the eyes of those court officials. If Your Highness wants to resist, they cannot force You at all!
Tears rolled out of Yuxie's eyes, mixed with rain, and many old scenes reappeared in front of her eyes. She seemed to see His Highness covered in wounds, sitting in front of the window with his back to her, gazing at the moon without saying a word. The Prince, who used to be free and easy-going, became more and more silent.
Later, His Highness began to play the zither. The sound of the zither was the soldiers' desire to die on the battlefield but unable to do so, and the plucked strings were the desire to return to their homeland, which was gradually burned to ashes and extinguished in the wind...
Only Your Highness can play this piano music!
As expected, His Highness has returned...
Yuxie staggered and ran around in the bamboo forest. She was afraid and wanted to retreat, but she could not refuse the guidance of the piano music that had appeared in her dreams countless times.
She couldn't even tell whether she was in a dream or somewhere else.
She stumbled to a wooden house at the end of the bamboo forest.
The sound of the piano came from this wooden house...
The bamboo forest was pitch black, with occasional rumbling thunder. There was no light in the wooden house, but the door was wide open.
Yu Xie, covered in mud, took a few more steps forward, fixed his sight inside the wooden house, and his expression suddenly became shocked.
There was a woman in white playing the piano in the room, sitting with her hair loose. The woman's white clothes and exceptionally fair skin seemed to cast a layer of faint light around her in the darkness.
Her face was covered with a white veil, and apart from that she was naked.
The sound of the piano, which seemed like the fighting of thousands of troops, flowed out from his fingertips.
Yuxie in the rain widened her eyes and opened her mouth, but could not utter a complete sound for a long time.
For a moment, she just stood outside the wooden house in a daze, looking at the woman's figure vaguely appearing in the darkness.
Until the song ended, the sound of the piano disappeared.
The woman playing the piano seemed to raise her eyes and look at her——
"Yuxie, you're here."
The sound was gentle and quiet, yet in this rainy night it sounded eerily ethereal.
There was no trace of blood on Yuxie's face anymore. She trembled as she stepped forward, crossed the threshold of the wooden house, and knelt down.
"…Your Highness! It's the maidservant, it's the maidservant who is here!"
Looking at the former maid who was kneeling on the ground, fearful and humble, Chang Suining's face remained expressionless.
Obviously, she was "pretending" to be Li Shang.
In the past, because she needed to pretend to be Ah Xiao, she had specially learned how to change her voice, expression, behavior, and handwriting. After she became familiar with these techniques, they became her own skills.
She was good at imitating others, and she just happened to be the person who knew Li Shang best in the world. She "learned" the other person's tone and movements, and then used the dark, noisy, rainy night as a cover. At first glance, they should be about 50% similar.
The remaining four or five points were half due to the sound of the zither that only Li Shang in the past could play, and half due to Yu Xie's confused mind and the deepest fear in his heart.
Judging from Yuxie's reaction at this moment, her plan of "passing the fake off as real" should be successful.
Since everything went smoothly, we can start asking questions.
"Why poison the tea?"
On this rainy night, she was like a human, a ghost, or a wandering soul in a dream. There was no need for any preparation or embellishment when asking questions.
Yuxie, who was kneeling on the ground and dared not raise his head, froze when he heard this, and his eyes were filled with intense emotion.
Your Highness... Your Highness really knew about it, and he really came to ask her for punishment! "I'm asking you a question--"
The voice that was so smooth without any ups and downs sounded again from above, and the oppressive feeling in Yuxie's ears was even more severe, making it impossible for her to breathe, as if her heart had stopped beating.
"I...I didn't know it was poison!" When she talked about the past, her voice was trembling and her words were a little confusing.
"That's right, that's what they gave me. They said the dosage is mild and hard to detect. Your Highness will only gradually lose strength within half an hour after taking it. It will not hurt Your Highness at all..."
"Then I can work with them to rescue His Highness!"
"I came here to save Your Highness from Beidi. I have no intention of harming Your Highness!"
"They deceived me!"
She almost cried and said, "I have followed Your Highness since I was young, how could I harm Your Highness, how could I..."
"Save me from Beidi?" the calm voice asked, "If you want to save me, why do you need to drug me?"
"They said that His Highness is of a strong character and would not agree to escape secretly before the battle... If we want to save His Highness, we can only put drugs in His Highness' tea first, and then take Him away secretly after He falls unconscious... Then the people they arranged will come to pick Him up!"
Chang Suining found it ridiculous.
"Why wouldn't I agree to escape before the battle? I'm not the commander in chief of this battle, I'm just a hostage. If I have a chance to leave, why would I just sit there and wait to die?" There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice: "You've followed me for so many years, do you think I'm such a brainless person who blindly wants to die?"
Yu Xie kept shaking her head: "There are many Beidi soldiers outside your highness's tent. They are staring at your highness all the time. I am really worried about your safety. It's me... it's me who is so anxious that I am confused!"
She said again: "I really didn't know it was poison, and the letter only said it was for saving His Highness... He lied to me!"
Chang Suining laughed coldly in his heart and asked, "Are the "they" you are talking about the accompanying officials?"
When she married into the Northern Di clan, she was naturally accompanied by officials from the Dasheng clan.
"...It was the eunuch Wu Xi who accompanied the consul!" Yu Xie said, "The letter and the medicine... were all given to me secretly by him!"
"Letter——" Chang Suining looked at her: "Who wrote it?"
"Yes..." Yu Xie's tone was filled with tears and hatred, and the answer she gave was beyond Chang Suining's expectations -
“It’s Yu Zeng!”
Chang Suining's expression was slightly sluggish.
"The eunuch Wu Xi, the consul, has always been friends with him. The letter was written by Yu Zeng himself. I recognize his handwriting!" Yu Xie cried, "He deceived me!"
Chang Suining was silent for a moment.
When he spoke again, his voice was still calm: "Besides the handwritten letter, are there any other keepsakes?"
"There's also his private seal on the letter! It's the one that Your Highness gave him. He used to use that private seal to pass messages to Your Highness!"
Under the wide snow-white sleeves, Chang Suining clenched her fingers slightly.
Ah Zeng acted cautiously, so the private seal would not fall into the hands of others...
"Is the letter still there?" she asked.
Yu Xie shook her head: "I didn't dare to keep it, so I burned it after reading it, but I could see clearly that it was written by him without a doubt..."
"Have you ever seen him again since you returned to Beijing?" Chang Suining asked again, "Have you ever confirmed this with him in person?"
This is very important, more important than that letter.
Yu Xie shook her head again: "On the day when His Highness got into trouble... I escaped, but afterwards I didn't wait for the person he mentioned in the letter to pick me up. It was actually the person His Highness arranged who saved me at the critical moment..."
When she said this, tears welled up in her eyes: "At that time I knew he had deceived me... The medicine was definitely not meant to save His Highness, but to kill Him!"
"Someone doesn't want His Highness to return to Dasheng alive!"
"What happened afterwards... I can't remember some of it clearly... I was afraid of being silenced and that this secret would never see the light of day again, so I never dared to leave the Princess's mansion!"
Chang Suining: "So you never saw him again—"
Yu Xie said, "I have seen him. I have seen him once. He came to see me with the Saint. He was working for the newly enthroned Saint! That was your Highness's mother... In front of the Saint, he did not dare to show any strangeness! I did not dare to speak to him alone!"
"It was him who deceived me, it was him!" Yu Xie repeated with a firm and even stubborn tone: "He betrayed Your Highness!"
"It's best if it's him." Chang Suining looked at her. "You and he have both been following me since childhood. Only he was the first to betray his master. You will feel a little more at ease when facing your own betrayal, right?"
That's why she kept repeating that Yu Zeng had deceived her.
Yu Xie looked up in panic: "No, it's not like that, Your Highness..."
"Why not?" Chang Suining lowered his eyes and looked at her, "Then are the words in the letter that claim to rescue me from Beidi foolproof? Are you really unaware of it?"
"You took the initiative to 'drug me unconscious' so that you could save me from Beidi. What made you come up with such a stupid idea?"
"On the contrary, you have determined that I cannot leave Beidi alive, and you think that if you stay with me, you will die."
Chang Suining said: "So, you are gambling on this luck. If you lose, you will die anyway. If you win, you may really get a glimmer of hope for survival—"
Yuxie kept shaking her head and crying in denial.
However, the voice continued: "In other words, even if you thought about the possibility that the medicine was poison, you would still do it - after all, if I died, at least the Beidi soldiers guarding me would withdraw. Without those impenetrable guards, you would have a better chance of escaping in the chaos. It's better than just waiting to die beside me. This account is worth it no matter how you calculate it, right?"
"Your Highness...I don't think so. I don't!" Yuxie knocked her head heavily on the ground while crying, her body rising and falling with her crying.
A breeze carrying raindrops blew into the house, seeming to make the voice above even fainter: "There is nothing wrong with you trying to survive, but betrayal is betrayal, so why bother deceiving yourself?"
When Yuxie heard the words "self-deception", her whole body turned cold in an instant, as if her blood was frozen.
The bone-chilling coldness made her uncontrollably recall her many struggles at that time, and those thoughts that she refused to acknowledge or face.
The white figure slowly stood up from behind the piano, seemingly with no intention of saying anything more.
Yuxie supported herself and straightened her upper body, looking up in a daze.
In the dim light, with tears blurring her eyes, she could not see the true face of the veiled woman. Looking up from that spot, all she could see was her white clothes and black hair.
But even so, she could be absolutely certain that it was her prince.
She reached out her hand and grabbed a corner of the white dress, as if she was grabbing her own bloody knot in her heart, and it hurt so much that she couldn't stop crying.
"Your Highness, it was my fault..." She raised her head and finally said, "I regret it every day."
But she didn't dare admit that she was wrong, didn't dare admit that she regretted it, because admitting these would be tantamount to admitting betrayal.
If it was just an ordinary betrayal, I would have done it. I had made up my mind back then, so there was nothing I couldn't face. But, but...
Tears of regret welled up in Yuxie's eyes.
However, after His Highness finished drinking the tea that day, he sent her away.
Later, she heard that His Highness had killed the Northern Di commander and committed suicide.
His Highness is dead... He died in that way! She was at a loss, her mind still stuck in her previous plan, so she took advantage of the chaos to escape, with the pursuers approaching. When she was on the verge of despair, she actually waited for the person arranged by His Highness...
His Highness tried his best to arrange everything for her, and he was ready to die alone!
At that moment, she was saved.
But at the same time, she could no longer receive any redemption.
She was even in a trance... What had she done? What had she done to His Highness! His Highness's suicide, His Highness's rescue, such a dignified death, taking care of the greatness of the country and the universe but pitying her, a mere plant, made her betrayal no longer an ordinary betrayal.
It was a betrayal so monstrous that she herself could not forgive or even face it.
She had committed a heinous crime, a crime that would keep her in self-judgment every day.
She couldn't bear this knowledge, so she went crazy, which was an escape from her own self-collapse.
So, the only thing in her mind was - he lied to me.
But at this moment, the fragments that had collapsed for a long time seemed to be temporarily pieced back together bit by bit. She faced it all head-on, and she had never been so clear-headed.
She clutched the edge of the white dress tightly, tears streaming down her face as she spoke in a low, choking voice, "Your Highness, I know I was wrong. Can you forgive me?"
The woman in white lowered her eyes to look at her. Her hazy eyes and eyebrows seemed to be even younger than the prince in her memory, but that was her prince.
She was waiting for His Highness's answer.
Good night everyone.
(When I write about the old story of Beidi, my mind can’t stop thinking about it. Today is the day to shed tears for the silent A Shang_(:з」∠)_
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