Shen Weiwan raised her eyes and met his bottomless gaze. There was no mockery in it, only pure amusement: "Your Highness is too kind. I don't have that much ability to control other people's wrists."
"Oh?" Xiao Yu suddenly took a half step closer. The crisp aroma of ambergris mixed with the hot steam of the candy cakes reached him. He lowered his voice and said, "Then I have to thank Miss Shen for letting me watch such a wonderful show for free."
[The collapse of a scumbag: despair in the mud pit]
Li Xiu curled up in the corner of his bedroom, listening to the waves of laughter and insults outside the wall, feeling like a clown stripped naked and thrown into the street. How could a single typo be considered "homosexuality"? He couldn't understand it, and even more so why Liu had sent him a letter like that at this moment—"Li Xiu, take care of yourself. Ruorou has entered the family temple, don't worry."
"Chen Weiwan! I'm not done with you!" He grabbed the dagger on the table, the blade flashing coldly in the dim light. The housekeeper rushed in to stop him: "Sir! You can't go! The general's mansion is now an iron wall. If you go there, you will die!"
"Get out of the way!" Li Xiu pushed the housekeeper aside and limped out of the room, only to run into a group of naughty children holding wooden signs reading "Qingbai." Trembling with rage, he raised his dagger to scare them, but his foot slipped on the moss and he fell with a plop into the mud pit in the corner of the yard.
"Look! The lame man with the broken sleeve has fallen into the mud pit!" The naughty children clapped their hands and laughed, and some threw stones into the mud pit. "Is the lover from Qingbai Tower waiting for you in there?"
Li Xiu struggled to his feet, his eyes covered in mud, his dagger drenched in the mud. He looked at the mocking faces around him, and suddenly the world spun around him. He could only hear the laughter and curses of "broken sleeves and cripples." His vision went black, and he passed out. His forehead hit the bluestone, leaving a small pool of blood.
The Seventh Prince's Thoughts: Watching the Show and Planning
In the study of the Seventh Prince's Mansion, Xiao Yu listened to the guard's report and couldn't help but slam the jade chess piece in his hand onto the chessboard, breaking up the remaining chess pieces. "This Li Xiu is a wonderful man. He personally handed Shen Weiwan a hammer of final punishment." He played with the chess piece, the black jade gleaming dimly in the candlelight. "What's going on over there, Shen Weiwan?"
"Your Highness," the guard replied with a stifled laugh, "Miss Shen is enjoying the sweets and cakes you sent her. She also had her maid make a wooden sign that reads 'Qingbai Tower VIP', saying she'd send it to the Li Mansion as a door plaque."
Xiao Yu laughed out loud upon hearing this, so loud that the parrots under the eaves started to chirp, "Interesting! Really interesting!" He stood up and walked to the window, looking at the dim lights in the direction of the general's mansion. "Tell the secret guards to keep a close eye on Li Xiu and don't let him die. I'm still waiting to see how Chen Weiwan will 'send him off'."
The protagonist's thoughtfulness: wooden plaques and account books
In the evening, Chuntao returned from the Li residence holding a willow sign that read "For Qingbai Tower Only." She laughed so hard she couldn't straighten her back. "Miss! The doorman at the Li residence turned green when he saw the sign and nearly swallowed it! He even chased me and cursed me out!"
Shen Weiwan watched the dusk deepen outside the window, her fingertips tracing the mother-of-pearl dressing box left by her mother on the dressing table, a cold glint in her eyes. Li Xiu's farce was merely the appetizer; the real main course lay in the inner courtyard of the General's Mansion—Liu and Shen Ruorou were still waiting for her to clean up.
"Chun Tao," she suddenly said, her voice as cold as the lotus breeze after rain, "Go to the front yard and tell the old housekeeper to reorganize the Liu family's household account books for the past three years. Tomorrow at 9:00 PM, I will personally review the accounts in the main hall."
"Yes!" Chuntao responded and left, her skirt creating a gust of wind as it swept across the threshold.
Chen Weiwan walked to the dressing mirror and looked at her fifteen-year-old self. That face, once filled with innocence and foolishness, was now filled with a cold sense of satisfaction. "Liu, Chen Ruorou, I will reclaim everything you owe me, principal and interest. The pain of being beaten in the snow in a past life, I will make you repay a hundredfold in this life."
At this moment, in the Seventh Prince's residence, Xiao Yu picked up a pearl and silver hairpin that Shen Weiwan had accidentally dropped from the table. The oriental pearl on the hairpin shone softly in the candlelight. He recalled her daytime smile as she bit into a candy cake, her eyes etched with a smile. The smile on his lips grew deeper. This woman always managed to pull off an unexpected trick just when he thought he had seen through her. He began to look forward to how she would make Liu Shi's debut at tomorrow's audit meeting.
The rain finally stopped in the capital, and a crescent moon crested the eastern hills. Intermittent cries emanated from the Li residence. It was Li Xiu, awakened, going mad in the mud pit. Shen Weiwan extinguished the candle and lay in bed, listening to the cicadas chirping outside the window, a hint of a sneer on her lips. In this life, she not only had to survive, but also lived like the sharpest knife, slicing all her enemies one by one. Tomorrow's account review was but the first glint of that knife's coldness.
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