Chapter 47
Night is dead.
Like an inverted, enormous, boundless black iron pot, it tightly sealed away all the sounds, all the light, and all the vitality of the capital city.
Cui Yunshu sat right under this pot.
She felt that she was about to die too.
The bright yellow silk embroidered with dragons and phoenixes, cold and heavy, still lay spread out on the table in the main hall. It resembled a golden serpent, its tongue flicking, coiled there, exuding a cloying, saccharine, and nauseating fragrance belonging to imperial power.
An arranged marriage.
Zhou Ye, the eldest grandson of the Duke of England.
These few words were all that remained in her mind.
Like several drunken, hideous ghosts, they danced a comical yet terrifying dance over and over again in her empty, cold skull.
She didn't cry.
She didn't feel any anger either.
She just felt cold.
A kind of cold that seeps out from the very marrow, freezing one's soul into a block of ice—absolute, devoid of any emotion.
Her mother had already been helped back to the backyard, where she fainted on the spot. The imperial physician was administering acupuncture, and the maids' cries, though several courtyards away, buzzed into her ears like mosquitoes.
My father was still kneeling on the ground, like a clay sculpture whose soul had been ripped out. His once straight spine had completely collapsed.
Second Brother Cui Yuanjue stood under the eaves, slamming his fist into a pillar, his hand a bloody mess. His eyes, which always gleamed with shrewdness and sharpness, now held only a helpless, humiliating, crimson light.
They're all finished.
And she, Cui Yunshu, is the root of all this, and also its end.
I'm too lazy to think about it.
Three years of struggle.
Three years of scheming.
Three years of walking on thin ice, exhausting all efforts.
She thought she could rewrite her fate. She thought she could build a ship big enough to take all the people she loved and escape this damned, predetermined destiny.
How ridiculous!
She was like a fly trapped in a glass bottle, buzzing and frantically trying to break free, a thousand times, ten thousand times. She thought she was seeing the sky, seeing freedom, but in reality, it was just the bottle wall.
And the person who raised her and watched her cause trouble finally lost his patience.
He extended a finger, but didn't crush her.
He simply and gently tightened the bottle cap.
"Fourth Miss..." the butler's voice sounded behind her, trembling with tears, "It's late, go back to your room and rest..."
Taking a break?
Cui Yunshu wanted to laugh.
She was now like a condemned prisoner sentenced to slow slicing. The date, the place, even the knife to be used for the execution had been decided.
You want her to go back to her cell and rest properly?
She slowly stood up.
The bones made a creaking sound as if they were about to break free from the strain.
She walked out of the main hall and into the cold, inky night.
no.
We can't just accept it like that.
If she just accepts this, then what has she accomplished in the past three years? A joke?
Her mind was like a machine running at full speed, going through all the possibilities, all the connections, and all the resources.
Pleading with the Crown Prince? It's useless. This is the Emperor's decree. Would the Crown Prince dare openly defy his father for the sake of a younger brother or sister-in-law who isn't even married yet?
Making trouble for the Duke of England's mansion? Suppressing them through commercial means? That would be even more useless. It would only confirm the Cui family's reputation for being "arrogant and domineering," giving the emperor a more legitimate reason to "discipline" her.
There is no road.
All the roads were blocked.
unless……
Unless, a rock big enough, hard enough, and unreasonable enough falls from the sky and smashes this damned, precise, and flawless game of chess to pieces.
Cui Yunshu stopped in her tracks.
A face appeared in her mind.
A handsome face, always tinged with a hint of recklessness and fervor, that had given her countless headaches.
Tang Pu.
Her last, and most dangerous, and most uncontrollable card.
Should I use him?
Should we drag him into this doomed quagmire as well?
Cui Yunshu's heart felt as if it had been gripped tightly by an icy hand. The pain was so intense that she almost curled up in agony.
But then, a faint, hallucinatory burning itch came from that cold, festering scar on her left cheek.
She remembered that afternoon at Dali Temple.
She remembered those resentful, gloating eyes.
She remembered Wei Shuyu's smug face inside that carriage.
On what grounds?
Why should you high and mighty people be able to decide my life and death, my honor and disgrace, with just a word or a decree?
Why should I kneel on the ground like a lamb to the slaughter, waiting to be killed?
No.
I won't.
Even if I have to die, I will drag everyone down with me, and together we will splatter blood on this game of chess!
A cold, destructive, and beast-like ferocity suddenly surged up from the deepest part of her heart.
She gave the command to the ghostly figure in the darkness behind her in a voice devoid of emotion, as cold as shattering ice.
"Go and visit Prince An. In the south of the city, at the abandoned kiln. Tell him that 'Daye' has encountered a mishap."
...
When Tang Pu arrived, it was like a tornado carrying sand and the stench of blood.
He kicked open the dilapidated, musty-smelling gate of the brickyard, his whole being resembling an enraged lion about to devour its prey.
The murderous aura emanating from him was ten times stronger than when he returned from the North.
That wasn't murderous intent.
It's... anger.
It was the kind of pure, overwhelming rage capable of burning the heavens and earth to ashes.
He rushed to Cui Yunshu in a few steps, his eyes, which always shone like stars, were now blood red.
"I know everything."
His voice was very low, but it sounded like he was sharpening a knife in his throat.
Cui Yunshu sat there, on the only broken stool. She didn't look at him, but at the pile of cold, long-extinguished ashes on the ground.
She began her performance.
The most difficult and vicious play she ever performed in her life.
“Yuanzhi,” her voice was very soft and light, like a wisp of smoke that could be blown away by the wind at any moment, “you have come.”
"How dare he!" Tang Pu ignored her form of address and slammed his fist on the earthen wall beside him, causing plaster to crumble and fall. "How dare he treat you like this! What is he trying to do? He's going to kill you! No... he's going to kill us!"
“Yes.” Cui Yunshu seized on the loophole in his words and followed up, “He’s clipping the wings of ‘Daye’. He’s afraid. He’s afraid of us, afraid of the alliance between the Prince of An’s Mansion and the Cui family, afraid of our soon-to-be-formed…fleet.”
She successfully packaged this vicious revenge against her personally as a political conspiracy against their "common cause."
She looked at Tang Pu, and for the first time, her dark eyes filled with moisture, like a gloomy sky about to rain.
“Yuanzhi, I…I have no other choice.” She lowered her head, her voice perfectly conveying helplessness and vulnerability. “The Duke of Ying’s mansion is incredibly powerful. I…I need time. Could you…help me cause them some trouble, any kind of trouble…as long as it can postpone the wedding…”
She thought he would agree.
She thought he would, as before, act impulsively and come up with some simple, crude, and foolish plans, such as "sending someone to break the British grandson's legs" or "faking evidence of his treason."
However.
She was wrong.
That's incredibly wrong, ridiculously so.
"procrastination?"
Tang Pu suddenly turned his head, his blood-red eyes staring intently at her.
That look wasn't the one she was familiar with, the kind of look that belonged to an "ally," one that carried a hint of worship and fanaticism.
It was a gaze she had never seen before—deeper, more intense, more… aggressive and possessive, belonging to a man.
Why delay?
His voice was terribly hoarse, like that of a wounded wild beast driven to the brink of despair.
"The only way to deal with an open conspiracy is to use an even louder, tougher, and more unreasonable one to... shatter it completely!"
Cui Yunshu's heart skipped a beat.
She looked at him, at the incomprehensible, frantic, resolute expression on his face, and a sense of foreboding, even stronger than when she received the imperial decree, instantly gripped her heart.
"Yuanzhi, you..."
"I will go and request His Majesty's permission!"
Tang Pu uttered those earth-shattering words, each one deliberate and distinct, words that would utterly condemn Cui Yunshu to the deepest abyss.
"Please, he will marry you to me!"
Cui Yunshu's mind went blank with a buzz.
She stared at him blankly, as if looking at a complete madman.
She wanted to stop him; she wanted to tell him, "Are you insane? You're adding fuel to the fire! You're forcing the emperor to kill us right now!"
But she couldn't utter a single word.
Because Tang Pu had already walked up to her.
He reached out and grabbed her shoulder in an almost violent manner.
He was very strong, so strong that he almost crushed her bones.
He lowered his head, his blood-red eyes, burning with flames, fixed intently on her.
For the first time, he tore off that ridiculous mask called "allies".
With a voice that had been suppressed for far too long, bursting forth at this moment, filled with the most fervent, direct, and domineering possessiveness of a young general, he hissed and roared at her:
"I don't care about grand or small undertakings! I don't care about being an emperor or anything like that!"
"All I know is that you, Cui Yunshu, are my chief strategist! You are one of Tang Pu's people!!"
"No one can take you away from me!!"
Before he could finish speaking...
He abruptly released his grip, turned around, and strode off into the boundless, cold darkness outside the kiln.
"Where are you going?!" Cui Yunshu finally found her voice and screamed.
Tang Pu did not turn around.
Only a resolute voice, filled with thunderous fury, came from the wind.
"The Imperial Palace!"
"Go and beat the drum to appeal!"
"Go tell the whole world! You, Cui Yunshu, can only be my woman!!"
His figure quickly disappeared into the night.
Only Cui Yunshu was left, slumped on the cold, dilapidated bench.
She looked at the dark doorway that Tang Pu had kicked open, and at the night outside, which was more silent than death itself.
Slowly, very slowly, she raised her hand and covered her face.
It's over.
She thought.
Now...
They completely messed things up.
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