Chapter 93 Holding a sharp knife high, he personally disemboweled himself.
"What am I saying?" He chuckled softly, suppressing the sharp pain in his chest, and slowly walked down the steps.
"Why did you kill me that day?" The emperor's dark eyes stared at her, his unstoppable force like a mountain collapsing, as he walked towards her.
It was as if a hunter had torn away the calm facade and finally revealed its long-suppressed fangs.
One step, then another.
The dragon-patterned black boots stepped onto the steps leading to the main hall.
He climbed the steps, his tall figure growing ever taller, each step shortening the distance between him and her.
"Are you just furious because I found you?" Those dark eyes never left her from beginning to end, becoming clearer and colder as she walked through the courtyard.
He was getting closer and closer to her.
It brings a suffocating feeling, like being crushed by a mountain.
"No, Yunxi." He shook his head, the pain from the wound tightening in waves.
It felt like being pierced by a thousand arrows.
The more pain I felt, the angrier I became; the angrier I became, the clearer I became.
When he stepped onto the last step and stood on the platform at the same height as her, the warm autumn sun was completely blocked by his broad shoulders, enveloping Yunxi entirely in the cold shadow he created.
"You're only willing to risk killing me to protect those who helped you escape."
Yunxi's breath hitched, her blood rushed back to his head, and she was speechless for a moment.
"As long as I die, as long as I die, those people can live well." Xiao Shenjing sneered, but a hint of madness lurked in his eyes as he forced himself to say, as if in self-torture, "So, you'd rather risk your own life to protect them!"
In Yunxi's eyes, he, the emperor, might not even be as good as the mute servant who took care of her in Fan Zishi's household.
"Am I wrong?" He was much taller than her, looking down at her from above, his dark eyes filled with a powerful aggression.
Like a trapped beast, he was trying his best to suppress his anger.
"You're the emperor, so you can make up whatever you want." Yunxi had calmed down and sneered, "You're just trying to use someone else to threaten me into submission again, just like before. You coerce people into submission by threatening their weakness. Your despicable tricks are truly disgusting!"
"So you deliberately kept the Provincial Governor behind and deliberately said in public that Yuanxiao is my son." Xiao Shenjing was not swayed in the slightest by her insults. "Yunxi, you dare not answer me only because I have hit the nail on the head."
"Do what you want, don't pretend here."
Yunxi turned and left.
Because he's right.
That was indeed her thought.
In order to get Xiao Shenjing to let her go completely, Fan Zishi sent over the body of a recently deceased female prisoner, and only a fire could cover it up.
When a person dies, it's like a lamp going out; Xiao Shenjing will never remember her again.
But man proposes, God disposes. Who knew that even after she fled to the frontier, she would still be discovered?
Last time she could claim that her escape was her own doing, but this time she has left too many clues to cover it up.
If Xiao Shenjing investigates further, he will definitely find out about Fan Zishi, and then implicate Lu Xiuran as well.
The crime of deceiving the emperor is considered equivalent to treason, a serious crime that punishes nine generations of one's family.
She couldn't just ignore it.
Therefore, only if Xiao Shenjing dies will these things be buried forever.
Yuanxiao will also become the crown prince.
It's just a pity that she couldn't take Xiao Shenjing's life.
"I have indeed wanted to kill them countless times." Yunxi's skirt had just swept over the high threshold when the emperor's wrath finally came from behind her. "How dare they fool me! How dare they switch things under my nose! How dare they smuggle my woman out of the palace! These three crimes are all heinous and unforgivable. Executing their entire family would be too lenient for them!"
Yunxi's heart skipped a beat, and she could no longer take a step.
"I want to use the strength of five horses to tear their bodies apart, to watch their bones break and flesh fly everywhere!" The words were almost forced out through gritted teeth, each syllable carrying a bloodthirsty, visceral stench.
How much guilt and pain did he feel in the three years since he lost her?
He numbs himself with pills day and night, knowing full well that it will damage his body, but what can he do?
He dreamt every night of her pleading for help from a sea of fire, saying she was in so much pain!
He spent his days and nights in despair and regret.
However, in the end, it was all just a scheme.
His madness was obvious to all his so-called ministers.
They treated him, a dignified monarch, as a joke.
Such humiliation
"No, no, no!" His chest heaved violently, tearing at his wounds and sending waves of excruciating pain through him. But such pain was nothing compared to the agony of his heart being torn apart inch by inch.
"I will turn them into human pigs." At this moment, the emperor's eyes revealed an undisguised, almost insane, destructive desire. "Gou out their eyes, cut out their tongues, deafen them, and sever their limbs. Place them in urns and 'carefully' feed them with golden soup and jade food! I will make them wish they were dead! I will make them consciously experience this excruciating pain day and night!"
His voice, as cold as the deepest hell, was slow and clear, carrying a cruelty that chilled to the bone: "Unless they are reduced to ashes, until they suffer the most unbearable pain and humiliation in the world, it is not enough to quell my rage!"
"I want them to remember for generations what will happen to those who dare to touch me, those who dare to defy the imperial authority and offend the emperor."
Yunxi's body stiffened, and she slowly closed her eyes.
It was her fault back then.
At that moment, all she wanted was to escape the palace. If she stayed any longer, she would suffocate and die. She really wanted to live.
Once she was outside and regained her senses, she finally realized the enormity of her mistake, but it was too late.
So over the years, she has told herself countless times that as long as Xiao Shenjing finds her.
The only solution is to kill him.
Anyway, she's already lived a few more years, it's time for her to pay her debts, she'd have no regrets even if it meant giving her life.
But now.
Xiao Shenjing is not dead; she has once again put them in an extremely dangerous situation.
Yunxi turned around, filled with immense pain and regret.
Xiao Shenjing was still furious, his sickly, sinister eyes staring straight at her.
But I saw a pair of red almond-shaped eyes, with tears welling up in them.
She looked so pained, yet she still forced herself not to appear too disheveled.
This was the first time Xiao Shenjing had seen Yunxi in such a state.
It was as if the unyielding spine was being smashed inch by inch, and the sharp teeth were being pulled out one by one.
His heart clenched painfully.
"Xiao Shenjing," she choked, even calling his name sounded like it was being squeezed out from between her teeth.
For the first time, Yunxi felt utterly powerless and felt she deserved to die.
The light in her eyes had faded, and she felt utterly exhausted.
If she hadn't lived in this world, she wouldn't have implicated anyone else.
In the end, she couldn't do anything, and she couldn't protect anyone.
She really deserves to die.
"Xiao Shenjing, just kill me. You can kill me however you want: skin me alive, tear me apart, turn me into a human pig."
Xiao Shenjing's pupils trembled violently.
I felt as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over my head, and a chill ran straight to my heart.
Yunxi didn't want to cry, but the moment the first tear rolled down her cheek, she seemed to completely break down. She took a few steps towards him and grabbed his arm violently, screaming, "Kill me! Kill me!"
Hearing her plea for death, Xiao Shenjing clenched his fists tightly, so hard that his knuckles turned white, and so hard that his chest ached so much that he could hardly breathe.
What surged in his chest was not the joy of victory, but a more unfamiliar and scorching hatred.
He hates it!
I hate that she was willing to endure the cruel tortures of being skinned alive, dismembered, and torn apart by five horses for the sake of others, and even so humbly begged for death!
Hate yourself
He should have slaughtered all those ministers who dared to defy the emperor's authority and covet his women! He should have used the cruelest punishments to proclaim to the world the consequences of offending the emperor—that is the way of an emperor!
However, another, colder and more unsettling thought coiled around his heart like a venomous snake: what would happen to Yunxi if he really did that?
She would become a true walking corpse, incapable of even harboring hatred. She would vanish completely from the world he could reach, leaving behind a cold, eternally unawakenable shell.
The panic brought on by this thought was more unbearable for him than the loss of his imperial dignity!
"Do you know?" He grabbed her wrist uncontrollably, staring intently at her. His throat bobbed as if he had swallowed a mouthful of scalding lava, his voice hoarse with difficulty. "If I wanted to kill them, they would have died a thousand times over."
Yunxi looked up at him with her tear-streaked face and empty eyes, as if she could no longer understand what he was saying.
It was as if they were afraid they had misheard.
Xiao Shenjing's jawline was taut as if cut by a knife, his teeth clenched, and with a do-or-die attitude, he forcefully cupped her tear-streaked face.
"Even knowing you're lying to me now." His gaze fell on her tear-streaked face, and deep in his eyes was a turbulent struggle and an almost self-destructive pain.
He slowly raised his hand, his calloused fingertips gently wiping away the hot tear stains on her cheek.
"I know perfectly well that your tears are for them, and that your show of weakness is just a way to deceive me," the emperor's voice was even lower and hoarse than before, carrying a bone-piercing self-confidence and a chilling clarity. "But I willingly fall for it."
Those people's lives were entirely in his hands.
It wasn't that he couldn't kill, but that he didn't want to.
Because of her.
He closed his eyes in embarrassment, and when he opened them again, for the first time, he raised a sharp knife and personally dissected himself to show her. "Yunxi, I hope you live well. I fear you've gone too far, I fear something might happen to you, and I won't be able to help you from here."
Yunxi clenched her hands and slowly blinked.
A deep, complex emotion flashed briefly in her eyes, only to be instantly concealed.
"I only want to spend my whole life with you." He forced her to raise her head, his movements not gentle, but with a forceful, inescapable control that left her no choice but to meet his eyes.
Yunxi was momentarily stunned by those eyes that were churning with complex emotions.
This time, Yunxi gently wiped away the tears that had just fallen from her eyes.
The suffocating coldness and violence seemed to have been slightly melted away by this small gesture.
“I know you love freedom,” he said with exceptional clarity, with a sense of finally accepting reality. “Like an eagle in the sky, like the wind in the mountains, like the fire in the wilderness, I know that.”
"Give me some time. I need to make this country stable enough, and also let our Lantern Festival..." When he mentioned the child, his cold and hard eyebrows softened for a moment, and his voice became warmer. "Let him grow up a bit more. Let him truly shoulder the heavy responsibility of this vast country, so that I can let go with peace of mind."
His voice was soft, no longer the usual authoritative or cold command; every word seemed to be drawn from the softest part of his chest.
"After I pass the throne to him, I can accompany you to the ends of the earth, to the corners of the sea, to any place you want to go."
He leaned forward slightly, trying to find a response, a glimmer of light, in her crimson eyes that softened his heart. "Jiangnan's misty rain, the northern desert's yellow sand, the Eastern Sea's Penglai, the Western Regions' snowy mountains—as long as you point in a direction, I will go with you."
At this moment, he no longer spoke in the tone of an emperor, but like an ordinary man seeking love and reconciliation.
"So, let's stop arguing, okay?"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
