"You admit you're a member of the Gu family?" Princess Jinghe asked in surprise.
Gu Jiangli smiled faintly, looked at the Gu family guards who were also in shock, and said:
"What's wrong with admitting this? He came to me because I'm a family person, right? What else could it be?"
“I was separated from my family when I was young. Now the Gu family has remembered me, so they sent a guard to the Xie family to verify my identity. Is there a problem?”
"Why does everything become so complicated and troublesome when it comes to the princess?"
Gu Youwei immediately followed up on Gu Jiangli's words:
"Yes, that's right. She is the young lady from the Gu family who went missing twelve years ago. Our master sent me to the Gu family to investigate because he wanted to confirm her identity."
The ministers seemed to have discovered some earth-shattering secret.
The way he looked at Gu Jiangli had changed.
Jinghe chuckled and said:
"Since you admit that you are a family man, he also says that he is a family man."
"Then do you admit that you really met him today and really delivered a letter to him?"
Gu Jiangli replied frankly, "I'm just sending a letter to my father, whom I haven't seen in a long time. It's not a big deal, is it?"
Princess Jinghe's smugness was even more evident.
"Of course not, but there is something that Father and the ministers probably do not know."
"When Gu Youwei was captured today, his clothes were torn during the struggle."
"I discovered by chance that there was a palm-sized pattern on his back, like a tattoo."
"This is really strange."
"People of the Northern Qi Dynasty viewed tattoos as dross, so why would they put such things on their bodies?"
After he finished speaking, the atmosphere in the hall became tense.
It is well known that people from the Northern Qi Dynasty never had tattoos.
Only the people of the Southern Kingdom have ever used tattoos as a symbol of identity.
“Jinghe…this matter is of utmost importance. Now that the Southern Lin Kingdom has surrendered, it wouldn’t be surprising if people from the Southern Lin Kingdom appeared in the capital…”
"But he is a member of the Gu family, a family with hundreds of years of history. They would not use someone from the Southern Kingdom as a servant."
The emperor spoke, seemingly trying to console Princess Jinghe and quell her suspicions.
"Father, whether your daughter is lying or not can be determined by examination. It's not difficult for a grown man to let others see his back, is it?"
Princess Jinghe's face turned ferocious as soon as she finished speaking.
The soldier next to her immediately understood what she meant, grabbed Gu Youwei's clothes, and ripped them off forcefully.
With a tearing sound, Gu Youwei's back was immediately revealed to everyone.
Gu Youwei tried desperately to lie down on the platform so that his back wouldn't be exposed to everyone, but he was powerless to struggle against the two soldiers.
The surrounding ministers craned their necks, eager to witness the scene.
"Ah! It really is!" an elderly minister exclaimed.
Following the direction of his finger, Gu Jiangli also looked over.
In the middle of the back, at the very center of the two shoulder blades, there is a dark blue pattern.
It looks like a dragon and a snake at the same time.
This was the first time Gu Jiangli had seen the tattoo design up close.
But before she could even take a good look, a pair of large hands blocked her way.
Looking up, she met Xie Shiyan's slightly gloomy eyes.
"What are you looking at? What's so interesting?" Xie Shiyan reminded him in a low voice, "It's ugly, it'll only offend your eyes."
Gu Jiangli shrugged dejectedly.
"I'm seeing this for the first time, so am I a little curious?"
"Fine, then I won't look. You take a look, is it a dragon or a snake?"
Xie Shiyan rolled his eyes very clearly. "What does this have to do with me? I don't want to see it."
Gu Jiangli wanted to say a few more words of advice, but Princess Jinghe's words pulled her back.
"Father, this man has a tattoo on his back, which confirms that he is indeed from the Southern Kingdom."
"Under the whole world, only the people of the Southern Kingdom have this custom."
"Babies who have reached their first birthday will have a pattern tattooed on a part of their body that represents their identity and the protection of the gods."
"Without exception, every child of the Southern lineage..."
Xie Shiyan listened for a while, then lowered his head and whispered to Gu Jiangli, "Aren't you going to perform? Aren't you ready yet?"
Gu Jiangli cleared his throat, almost forgetting that he was supposed to be acting.
"Ready? Thanks for the reminder." After saying this softly, she pulled Xie Shiyan's forearm to her feet, pointed at Gu Youwei, and said in a trembling voice:
His face was filled with astonishment and fear, as if he had witnessed some unbelievable secret he had never seen before.
"My God, how could this be? How could you be from the Southern Kingdom?"
"My Gu family has a tradition that has lasted for hundreds of years. In order to ensure the purity of the bloodline, almost all marriages are within the clan. Even the servants in the family are all from the same lineage."
"You... there's absolutely no way you could be from the Southern Kingdom!"
Gu Youwei hadn't recovered from the shock of his identity being exposed, and seeing Gu Jiangli's bewildering behavior, he had no idea what to say.
"Miss... what... do you mean?"
Princess Jinghe smiled dismissively: "Gu Jiangli's meaning is very simple."
"The Gu family values bloodlines, but your identity is questionable."
"Either you're not a member of the Gu family at all, or the entire Gu family has a problem!"
At this point, Jinghe suddenly paused and circled around Gu Jiangli.
"Gu Jiangli's testimony matches yours, so there should be no problem that Gu Youwei is a member of the Gu family."
"Then the one with the problem should be Gu Jia."
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