Chapter 43: A light little butterfly, you hold that sword as your wife...
Even so, rewards and favors continued to pour into her palace.
Jiang Ziyi's position became higher and higher, but she still had no confidants, and the only way she could win people's hearts was to spend more money.
When the emperor was having a meal, he praised her beautifully drawn eyebrows. On the way back to the palace, she admired everyone she met, with a smile so bright that even the brilliant glazed tiles under the blue sky were eclipsed.
Passing by the Imperial Garden, a young woman in light-colored palace dress was leaning quietly on a swing. The emperor, who had just coaxed her to eat more snacks, broke off a bunch of branches and approached her cautiously.
The emperor is as reckless as a young boy in love.
Jiang Ziyi felt a chill in his heart.
On the surface, she monopolizes the emperor's favor and is extremely jealous. She even has to suppress the queen in words. However, she knows that the person she loves is not loyal to him at all. She can only hope that she is special.
It turns out that the emperor was not unfaithful, it's just that she was not special enough.
Jiang Ziyi was so flustered that she wanted to fight back. She had seen a lot of vicious means in the deep palace, but she was not scheming enough. She was only raised as a beautiful object since she was a child. She had done many things to harm others, but was caught in the wrong and was kicked when she was down.
Despite the frequent wars in the northwest, the emperor still indulged her. However, after the lights went out, if Jiang Ziyi raised her head slightly, she could see the disgust in his eyes.
The nights were getting longer and longer, Jiang Ziyi sat on the bedside with her knees hugged, the moonlight filtered through the window paper, dimly reflecting on her face, her starry eyes were moving, leaving no time to look at the pearls beside her ears,
Gu Zhi looked up at the moon from across the wall from her.
At the most beautiful moment, she was contemplating the most complete destruction.
Jiang Ziyi's face turned blue from vomiting. She took the dull black hair from the palace maid and combed it carefully behind her ears.
"Am I stupid?" She had been asking the same question over and over again since she asked the imperial physician to prescribe a fake pregnancy medicine.
She felt someone was looking at her again, and she staggered to the window, using her sharp armor to tear the hemp paper off the window frame.
The cold wind rushed in, clearing her mind: "...I am just stupid."
"But do I deserve to be so stupid?" The beautiful young concubine, as if she had seen through something, stared straight at the sea-tiled ceiling above her head and the eternal sky covering it.
The dried lotus leaves lie low in the cold water.
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With tears in her eyes, Li Aomei grabbed Gu Weizhen's long sleeve and rubbed it hard.
"It's okay, Auntie. This world is the most cruel. It will be much better later on." Huahua, who knew the ending in advance, comforted her.
“This girl’s editing skills are amazing. Although Zi Yi and Gu Zhi’s characters are obviously not in the same drama, she created a feeling that the two are in the same time and space by capturing similar scenes and compositions. The metaphorical montage at the end of the film leaves appropriate blank space while indicating that the ending is destined to be tragic…” Director Yu clapped his hands in praise.
"My acting skills in this Qing palace drama are really average. The emotional progression after I saw the heroine in the Imperial Garden was handled too roughly. My eyes should have been disappointed first and then slowly turned vicious. In those frames, it looked like I wanted to stab someone..." Jiang Ziyi shook his head repeatedly.
"...You two cold-blooded guys who speak so much professional jargon, could you please get out of here and let us finish reading it first?" Du Xiaofang blew her nose angrily.
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The deposed concubine was hanged in the cold palace with a three-foot-long white silk cloth. On the other side, the emperor was still chatting with his sweetheart in the pavilion by candlelight at night.
The Great God of Destiny flipped through Jiang Ziyi's fate book, and the pair of eyes that were as bright as stars but easily extinguished flashed through his mind again.
Can a woman who is used as a tool to check and balance the previous dynasty and is only favored but not loved really have a different ending alone in the deep palace?
Gu Zhi couldn't figure it out, so he had to wait until the next life.
The breeze blew through the bamboo forest. The woman in blue performed her martial arts skills and hovered steadily on the green bamboo branches with her toes, drawing cheers from everyone.
"Don't lose heart. If you study for a few more years, you will be able to master this trick!" Jiang Ziyi knocked on the head of his third junior brother with the handle of his fan. "But he's definitely not as good as me!" She blinked cunningly.
Just then, she caught a glimpse of a snow-white sleeve in the distance.
"Senior Sister, you are not here to arrest me on the orders of our master, are you?" Jiang Ziyi quietly went around behind the man, drew his sword and was about to launch a sneak attack.
The mysterious swordsman in a white robe dodged her playful attack by moving sideways.
His eyes are as deep as an ancient well.
"Hey, you are not my senior sister," Jiang Ziyi said with his hands behind his back, "Sorry, I am a disciple of Kunlun Sect, and I am going down the mountain to have fun... no, to gain experience."
“…Anyway, I’m sorry to bother you, senior. I’ll leave now!” She touched the ground with her sword and flew into the air again, her clothes fluttering like a light little butterfly.
A girl of sixteen or seventeen, with a straightforward and fearless face, seems to have a bright future ahead of her.
Gu Zhi sighed, but still couldn't help but meddle in other people's business.
"You are flying incorrectly," the swordsman in white said sternly, "You should cherish your sword. How can you leave it on the ground like a crutch?"
"Isn't this for the purpose of gaining leverage?" Jiang Ziyi flew over and then flew back, "I don't use it often. I just want to show off occasionally." She defended anxiously.
"Showing off? That's even more wrong," Gu Zhi continued to lecture her, "You are also a swordsman. Using a sword is your specialty. How can you just show off?"
"What if we are surrounded by enemies one day? Will you fly around in a circle like this and then bump into someone's sword to claim compensation?" At this point, his tone became even more severe.
"Okay, okay, I'm wrong!" Jiang Ziyi covered her ears with both hands, "Hey, wait a minute, how do you know I want to be a swordsman?" She took a step back vigilantly.
"I..." Gu Zhi was so concerned that he was confused. He couldn't find a good reason for a moment.
"Are you the kind of sword fanatic who sleeps with a sword in his arms every day and treats the sword as his wife, so you think the world is full of swordsmen?" Jiang Ziyi showed a look of disgust.
Gu Zhi: ...right, that’s me.
"Ahem, I see that you have great aptitude. I have a sword manual that I want to teach you," Gu Zhi quickly adapted to his new personality, "How about we practice sword skills here in the future?"
"You can already tell that I have an excellent physique, hehe." Jiang Ziyi shook his arms proudly.
"But my master told me not to accept any secret books handed over by strangers, because they are all scammers." The Kunlun sect's anti-fraud work is carried out very effectively.
Gu Zhi was silent for a while, then drew his sword from its sheath. The sword light cut through the sky, startling a flock of birds.
The bamboo leaves that were shattered into pieces fell all over Jiang Ziyi's face like flowers scattered by fairies.
"That's amazing!" Jiang Ziyi wiped off the debris on his face and said sincerely, "Can you really teach me such an amazing sword technique?"
"Well, anyway, I take the sword as my wife, and I don't have any offspring to pass it on." Gu Zhi said with a stiff face.
From then on, Jiang Ziyi would come to Gu Zhi to learn sword every now and then.
This swordsman came and went without a trace, and the two of them didn't even leave any contact information.
But as long as Jiang Ziyi came to the open space in the bamboo forest, in less than an incense stick of time, he would appear behind her without anyone noticing.
As the second senior sister in the sect, Jiang Ziyi is actually not taken very seriously by the sect.
When the senior sister stewed pork elbow, she always got the smallest piece;
In the sect competition, she clearly won first place, but everyone's attention was on a certain "outsider" who had just emerged;
The master would call his junior fellow disciple alone to ask about his homework, and twirling his graying beard to praise him as a teachable boy. However, Jiang Ziyi practiced high-level swordsmanship in the yard for a whole night, but only got a reply of "not bad".
"I never thought that one day, it would be my turn to be punished." Jiang Ziyi, holding a bamboo leaf in his mouth, said heartlessly to the white-clothed swordsman who was polishing his sword under the moon.
Jiang Ziyi felt that she already had enough: parents who loved her, sisters and brothers who were close to her, her swordsmanship that was gradually improving... and two masters who had different personalities but were both terribly powerful.
...If her sword-crazy master, whom she had just become her apprentice, could nag her less, everything would be perfect.
"If you want to do your work well, you must first sharpen your tools." Gu Zhi threw Jiang Ziyi's sword into her arms and asked with a frown, "Where did you get so much dirt in your scabbard?"
"This is my medal for bravery!" Jiang Ziyi straightened her back.
When the junior fellow was demonstrating the unique skills taught by the master to everyone, a caravan happened to pass by the sect gate. The tired horses were startled by the whistling sound of swords, and the vehicles drove uncontrollably towards the cliff.
Jiang Ziyi stopped them all with his sword, but was kicked by the horses' hooves and covered in dust.
The eldest sister and the third brother laughed at her for a long time, but Jiang Ziyi felt it was well worth it.
"You." Gu Zhi sighed helplessly.
Who could have imagined that this sincere, passionate and heroic chivalrous woman in front of him would become a terrifying evil spirit in the world of martial arts in just two years. The turning point began with a massive "demon-eliminating" campaign.
The Tianji Pavilion uncovered the secret correspondence between the members of the Demon Cult and learned that the Demon Cult leader had planted many spies among the righteous martial arts world.
As the head of Tianji Pavilion, senior monks of Shaolin Temple and elders of Emei Sect died of poisoning one after another, people became panic-stricken and each sect was actively trying to eliminate the traitors.
Under Gu Zhi's instructions, Jiang Ziyi had not come down the mountain to find him for a long time, and never revealed the sword skills he had learned.
But this could not prevent the disaster from happening.
Jiang Ziyi's family are all martial artists. A large number of letters, artifacts and even used snake venom related to the Demon Cult were found in the escort agency run by her father.
The head of Tianji Pavilion and the elders of Emei Sect both died from snake venom.
In the midst of the crowd's outrage, the father was stabbed to death before he could even argue. The elder brother tried to stop them but failed, and was stabbed in the abdomen, and soon bled to death.
My mother was imprisoned in the Tianji Pavilion, and her life or death is still unknown.
Jiang Ziyi, who was under house arrest in the sect, knew that his family had become suspects and was actively looking for connections between several murders.
One day, the senior sister knocked on her door.
"Senior Sister, you finally came to see me!" Jiang Ziyi wanted to pull her sleeve happily, but was worried that it might be inappropriate, so he had to put his hand down.
"I suspect that the death of the Pavilion Master of Tianji Pavilion was not caused by the Demon Cult," Jiang Ziyi hurriedly shared his findings with her, "First of all, the time doesn't match. The Demon Cult leader planted the spy only a month ago, and Zhao Mingrui died in the secret passage of Tianji Pavilion. Only senior people know about it..."
"Your mother committed suicide in the Tianji Pavilion prison out of fear of punishment. The truth has been investigated clearly." The eldest sister's voice was gentle, but it sounded like a thunder in her ears.
"You have been staying in the sect for the past three months. Master said that you can be ruled out as a suspect. However, my junior brother's father was killed because of your family. I'm afraid he won't forgive you easily."
At this point, Jiang Ziyi just found it ridiculous.
She fought her way out of the sect with a sword, her body covered in the blood of her fellow sect members. She didn't want to hurt innocent people, but everyone stood in her way.
"Why don't you look at yourself now?" The junior brother pointed his sword at her righteously. "I wanted to let you off the hook for our past friendship, but you are so stubborn that you insist on going along with the evil ways!"
Jiang Ziyi pushed aside the blood-stained hair on his forehead, revealing his dark eyes: "First you asked me to wait, but after waiting for three months, you only got your family exterminated... I just want to go to Tianji Pavilion to seek justice, but a bunch of rabble who can't tell right from wrong think that I look horrible and unrecognizable!"
"It's time for you, a gifted child of destiny, to meet a real rival for your arrogant swordsmanship." She pressed her left hand on the wound that pierced her shoulder for a moment, then struggled to draw her sword, her moves still fierce.
"Who should show leniency to whom now?" Jiang Ziyi's clean sword tip was about to pierce her junior brother's throat. She held her breath for a moment, and the tragic deaths of her family flashed before her eyes. She rolled her teeth hard on the cracked part of her lower lip.
"To go along with the evil ways... doesn't sound too bad." She laughed at herself, and exerted force with her sword-holding hand -
"That's not how I taught you to use a sword." A clear male voice sounded from behind her.
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