Chapter 15 Unethical Acts
Her outer garment was taken off, but since Lan Wu was lying on the couch, it wasn't convenient for her, so Chu Mingheng simply tore it off completely, leaving her with an inner garment and underpants.
He casually pulled over a brocade quilt to cover her body.
The handkerchief was wrung out and placed next to the basin of water.
Chu Mingheng wiped her face and then wiped her neck.
At this moment, Lanwu behaved herself and knew not to move around.
Chu Mingheng turned around to get another wrung-out handkerchief, and when he turned back, he saw that Lan Wu had already opened her eyes in a daze and was struggling to look at the top of her head.
After watching for a while, she noticed the chill coming in from under the covers, but she didn't try to avoid it. Instead, she turned her gaze to Chu Mingheng.
"Your Majesty..." A weak voice came, like the mournful cry of a frail lamb, which made Chu Mingheng look at her.
Lan Wu blinked, her fingers weakly reaching out to grab Chu Mingheng's clothes, her whole body slightly bent, wishing she could bury herself in his arms.
At the same time, she uttered a low, aggrieved, and indignant accusation: "Your Majesty, they bullied me, they took advantage of your absence... to bully me like that—I'm in so much pain, how could you abandon me? If you abandon me, I'll die..."
Her accusation came so suddenly that Chu Mingheng didn't react for a moment.
With a cold and stern face, he lowered his head, peeled Lan Wu off, pinched her soft cheek, and said, "Who taught you to talk about death and life like that?"
Lan Wu's cheek was pinched, and her head slumped back down, her fingers still clutching a bit of Chu Mingheng's clothes. She mumbled incoherently, "Cold... Hug me... Your Majesty... It hurts..."
He can't even speak a single sentence coherently.
Chu Mingheng threw away the other handkerchief in his hand, and touched the temperature of her cheek with the back of his hand. It was still very hot. If she hadn't been under the influence of the medicine, one might have thought she was delirious from the fever.
In the quiet hall, the person who was asleep with her eyes closed did not notice anything unusual, but that cold and scrutinizing gaze kept lingering on Lan Wu's face.
He was disturbed by nightmares, always with the graceful figure of a woman beside him, sitting or lying down, behaving in an unusually unruly manner. Yet, in his dreams, he never tried to dissuade her, seemingly indulging her laughter and merriment. Upon waking, he felt empty inside, so he searched through all the portraits of the concubines in the harem, but could not find a single one he knew.
Until that day, on the Emperor's birthday, the moment he saw Lan Wu, he knew she was the woman of his dreams.
Lan Wu's behavior was also particularly strange.
At first, she avoided him like the plague, clearly out of fear of him, but unlike others who feared his imposing and cold-blooded nature, she later seemed to know his preferences exceptionally well, and her methods of seducing him were remarkably natural, not at all honest.
Chu Mingheng shifted his gaze to Lan Wu's lips, which were bitten raw. He had also noticed pinch marks on her legs in a quick glance.
They're ruthless enough to hurt themselves.
Luo Yun stood at the palace gate with the medicine bowl in her hand and said, "Your Majesty, the medicine has arrived."
After waiting for a while, a sound came from inside the hall.
The palace servants on both sides gently opened the palace doors, and Luo Yun walked in.
Upon entering the inner hall, one can smell the pleasant fragrance of medicinal ointment.
"Your Majesty, this is the young lady's medicine."
Chu Mingheng wiped his hands and instructed Luo Yun, "Take good care of her, and report back to me when she wakes up."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
After saying this, Luo Yun watched Chu Mingheng walk out of the main hall.
After leaving Taichen Palace, Chu Mingheng went to the Imperial Study.
He did not enter the main hall, but waited in the side hall.
Soon the person arrived.
Chen Kang'an stepped forward and reported, "Your Majesty, as you instructed, I sent men to search those three areas carefully, and sure enough, we found the person."
Chu Mingheng looked down, not surprised at all, and simply said, "Bring him up."
As the guards escorted the two men to the hall, their knees buckled and they knelt down.
Both men, dressed as guards, knelt on the ground, their foreheads pressed to the earth, and stammered, "...Greetings, Your Majesty..."
There are only two roads leading from the Imperial Garden to the Music Hall, and both roads are guarded. When the guards went to search carefully, one of them had already discovered something and was about to escape when he was caught red-handed. The other looked flustered and was so frightened that he almost fainted when he was caught.
“Your Majesty, these two men are guards responsible for guarding the Imperial Garden. Today there is a flower viewing banquet in the Imperial Garden, and they should have been guarding near Xu Garden, but they neglected their duties and appeared in another place. Moreover, it seems that they were waiting for someone. When I arrived with my men, they looked flustered and obviously intended to do something improper.”
Illegal acts.
Chu Mingheng was not unaware of what kind of wicked thing it was.
"Who ordered you?" His voice was unusually low in the side hall, seemingly devoid of emotion, yet like a cold blade approaching, spreading an invisible sense of oppression.
The two guards didn't even dare to look at each other. One of them, his voice trembling, spoke: "Your Majesty, no one... instructed me... I had an affair with Miss Lanwu—"
Before he could finish speaking, Chu Mingheng's face darkened. Chen Kang'an, who was always good at reading people's expressions, knew what kind of frightening words the bastard was about to say, so he kicked him in the chest: "How dare you! How dare you casually mention Miss Lan Wu!"
Although Chen Kang'an was a eunuch, he kicked with considerable force, knocking the guard on the ground to the side.
After kicking, the guard shut his mouth, looking rather apprehensive as if he had just realized what had happened.
Chu Mingheng didn't know whether to praise the other party's courage or call him stupid.
"Drag him away."
"Yes, Your Majesty." The guards waiting nearby forcibly pulled the person who had spoken earlier away, leaving only the other person who had been captured in the hall.
He was clearly more clear-headed, but he didn't say who specifically instructed him to attack Lan Wu. Instead, he said, "It's my turn to be on duty today. I should have been near Xu Garden, but someone suddenly came to tell me that they saw someone acting suspiciously in the Wisteria Corridor and asked me to go and investigate."
"I rushed over and searched the wisteria corridor thoroughly but found no one. Then, I was discovered and arrested."
Fearing the emperor wouldn't believe him, the guard quickly kowtowed loudly, saying hastily, "Everything I've said is true! I beg Your Majesty's forgiveness! Your Majesty's forgiveness!"
Chu Mingheng glanced casually down, and without him saying a word, Chen Kang'an already understood his meaning.
"If you went to investigate the suspicious person, why did you look flustered when you were captured?"
"I abandoned my post without permission, hence the panic," the man quickly explained, without mentioning anything about Lan Wu.
Chen Kang'an looked silently at the emperor, and when he met the emperor's ruthless and dark eyes, he understood what was going on. He lowered his head slightly, then turned to look at the two guards standing in front of him and made a gesture.
The people on the ground were knocked unconscious and taken away, and the hall returned to silence.
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