Chapter 68: Trapped Birds in the World
Qingzan was stunned for a moment. Although the timing of the incident in Yongning Marquis' Mansion was coincidental, the layout had been laid out long ago. It was nothing more than a case of everyone pushing the wall down when it fell, which brought together the things inside and outside the palace walls. How could the emperor even suspect Chen Shaoling?
She naturally didn't know that the emperor was targeting Chen Shaoling. Therefore, no matter whether there were any clues related to the Marquis' Mansion, the emperor would know as long as Chen Shaoling made any unusual moves.
Qingzan herself was unnecessarily being blamed. Now that her great hatred was about to be avenged, it didn't matter even if it cost her her life... She placed her hands on her belly. She had already made up her mind to hope for and cherish the little life in her belly, so she shouldn't go back on her word.
No matter what, the other person's willingness to help was a favor, and she could not harm him, so she flatly denied it, saying, "Master Chen and I have only met once or twice. How could I have such a talent?"
Looking down from above, the emperor could still only see her thick eyelashes, which seemed to be embedded in her eyelids, outlining two beautiful curves.
He put his hand on the side of her cheek, his thumb stroking back and forth on the corners of her slightly upturned eyes. Although there was no makeup on there, there seemed to be a charming little line, which was very touching.
It is said that women with slightly upturned eyes are the most passionate and cunning.
Just from what he knew, they had met more than once or twice.
The emperor said sternly, "You won't do that even once. You have no manners."
After hearing what he said, Qing Zan didn't intend to take it any further. But how many rules were left between him and her? His words were not intimidating enough.
Qingzan let go of the emperor, leaned back, straightened her neck, and wanted to look the emperor in the eye. However, in this narrow square space, there was no distance between them. The moment they looked at each other, the emperor lowered his head, held her shoulders, and kissed her tight and moist eyelids lightly.
The emperor said, "From today onward, let's look forward."
*
The Yongning Marquis's Mansion was located in Chongdefang, within the inner city. The people living nearby were all royal relatives and nobles, all prominent figures. None of them had ever suffered such a profound humiliation.
The stone lions guarding the gate were smashed to pieces, one even left with only the half attached to the base. The hanging plaque had been splashed with what looked like chicken blood or dog blood, and a large section of the green tiles on the gatehouse roof had been torn off.
The gate was made of solid cypress, so it wasn't so bad that it could be smashed to pieces, but it still knocked off a bunch of planks and strips, which piled up where you stepped when you entered.
It seemed as if the once majestic and noble marquisate had been trampled underfoot.
"It's become like this..." Qingzan left through the side door. Even in the past fifteen years, she had never walked through this door. Now it was open in this mess, making her feel a little at a loss.
Fifteen years had passed, and she was only eighteen this year. Fortunately, fifteen years hadn't trained her into a sufficiently obedient slave, and had instead given her the opportunity to rise up and seek revenge.
The emperor looked at her with his hands behind his back, extremely taciturn.
Accompanying her here today feels like accompanying a newly-wed bride back home, but to her, the Marquis' Mansion is not a good place at all, it is only filled with endless bitterness and hatred.
Therefore, he only spoke out "Be careful" when someone was about to step into the door.
The emperor and his concubine were traveling in casual clothes this time, but that did not prevent a team of plainclothes guards from accompanying them. Immediately, a guard took the sheathed sword and picked up some of the broken stones and wood at the door.
The people in the Marquis's residence hadn't even had time to clean up the place, which showed that they had long been under the Emperor's control. But they still kept it that way until now, because the Emperor wanted her to see it with her own eyes and vent her anger.
Unfortunately, she didn't hate the Jade Hall and the Golden Horse...
He only accompanied her to the main hall of the marquis's mansion used to receive guests and motioned her to go in.
Anyway, he had already warned the people of the Duan family not to say a word that shouldn't be said.
Marquis of Yongning Duan Ruoxu and his wife Zhu were both tied to the big pillar at the entrance, back to back. It was unclear whether they were tied up by debt collectors or by the emperor's men.
Hearing someone coming in, the dejected Duan Ruoxu suddenly looked up. After seeing who it was, his eyes were red with anger: "It's you - evil son, evil son!"
Despite being scolded by his biological father, Qingzan remained calm, as if the person in front of him was just an unrelated person.
Qingzan pulled out a hairpin and held it as if it were a dagger. Duan Ruoxu was frightened by this action and dared not say a word.
Qing Zan approached and said, "I've always had a question. Mother moved to Shaoyinfang and changed her name and surname, which clearly indicated she wanted to sever ties with you. How did you find her?"
She had memorized every word on the case file given to her by the emperor.
When my mother came to Beijing, she named herself Shuyun in order to avoid being tracked by her mother's family. But suddenly she stopped using the name Shuyun and even changed her surname to Cheng when renting a house. It was obvious that the person she was hiding from was someone who knew her name was Shuyun.
Such a simple question, but the Marquis of Yongning seemed stumped. Zhu, who was tied to the pillar, suddenly laughed like crazy: "I found her. Your father wouldn't be able to do that!"
Qing Zan went around to the back of the pillar and saw that Zhu's hair was disheveled and her makeup was smudged, but her clothes were neater than those of the Marquis of Yongning.
After Zhu finished laughing, she continued, "After your mother discovered your father already had a wife, she disliked him and hid away for three whole years! She was a person who knew how to stop herself, but unfortunately... As for the rest of the story, if you want to know, I can only tell you in private."
At Zhu's request, she had her hands tied behind her back and thrown into the room where she used to live, followed by Qingzan.
Zhu fell to the ground and was unable to move, so she told Qingzan: "Go to the fourth drawer at the bottom right of the dressing table and see if my jade hairpin is still there."
Qingzan took two steps inside and didn't need to go forward to look. Every drawer of the dressing table was open and the things inside had been washed out.
Qingzan turned around and said calmly, "He's gone."
Zhu gnashed her teeth and said, "Those damn debt collectors must have taken it away...!"
She took a breath, her voice calmer. "If your mother had been able to hide forever, she might have been spared. Unfortunately, one day you fell ill, and your mother went to the pharmacy to get a doctor for you, but she didn't have enough money. So she went to a pawnshop and wanted to pawn a jade hairpin. It's a coincidence that your father failed the imperial examination and didn't have enough money. I also pawned my jewelry there, and I had a jade hairpin on my head at that time. I asked the shopkeeper to take a look. It was made of the worst Xiuyan jade, but the carving was unique, so the shopkeeper remembered it."
"This hairpin was carved by your father himself. He carved two identical designs! He gave them to two people as tokens of their love!"
"The shopkeeper thought my gun was stolen, so he sent someone to the Zhu family to look for me."
Zhu became frantic again, stabbing at someone's heart with vicious words: "If you weren't sick, your mother wouldn't have to die!"
Qingzan knelt down in front of her and said, "That's fake. I remember the day you came, I was fine and not sick at all."
As soon as Zhu looked up, she was met with a pair of cold eyes. She was suddenly reminded of the person who looked down upon all living things with disdain, and she was startled. Then she insisted, "Believe it or not, His Majesty has warned us not to tell you about this, so I must speak to you alone."
Qingzan touched her neck with the golden hairpin in her hand, and Zhu felt a chill run down her spine.
Qing Zan asked, "What did he threaten you with?"
Zhu seemed to be afraid, and after thinking for a while, she said, "The lives of the three clans."
Qing Zan: "Since you are threatening the lives of three clans, how could you tell me this? You killed my loved ones, aren't you afraid that I will tell His Majesty later and exterminate all nine of your clans?"
"..." Zhu was speechless, knowing she couldn't deceive her. She had indeed said that on purpose, deliberately trying to make things difficult for him, but the only thing she had said was the cause. She had indeed found the person because Shuyun had pawned the hairpin, but Shuyun had been saving someone else.
The emperor asked them to hide this and the fact that Suo Yun was willing to die in order to save his daughter's life.
Zhu said stubbornly, "If you don't believe me, forget it. How ridiculous! Your name is Qingzan, which shows that even though your mother knew she fell in love with a married man, she never really forgot him. If not, why would I kill her so completely?"
Seeing Qing Zan's indifference, Zhu felt disheartened for a moment. Suddenly, she realized that the woman before her was no longer the obedient servant, but the emperor's wife, a highly respected imperial concubine. She regretted not lowering herself to ask her for help...
She rubbed her body against the ground again, as if trying to turn around and face the people. As if she had completely changed her face, she humbly softened her attitude. "Your Highness, for the Duan family's support of you for over a decade, for my openness to you, and for your grandmother's genuine protection of you, we are now suffering retribution... Please speak a few kind words to His Majesty and ask us not to commit further sins of killing because of what happened in the past."
Qing Zanliang laughed and stabbed the golden hairpin in his hand into the person's forehead.
They are not worthy of mentioning her mother at all.
So dirty.
*
Returning to the carriage, she sat down, her toes sinking into the deep indigo-colored velvet carpet, so soft it felt like she couldn't even step on anything. Qing Zan leaned against someone's shoulder, and in her mind, the image of Zhu's crazed face and the Empress's began to overlap. In some ways, the mother and daughter were identical, yet their faces were surprisingly clearer than her mother's.
The hairpin had been thrown away. In the end, she drew a bloody red cross on the forehead of Marquis Yongning and Zhu, but did not take their lives.
She had used too much force just now, and with her hands hanging limply, she asked sullenly, "Your Majesty, how are you going to deal with the Duan family?"
Xiao Fang didn't ask what she had done. He just thought for a moment and said, "Let them keep their titles, tell others that they are going to the temple to practice meditation and repent, but in fact they are doing hard labor and drudgery. They have to live as servants for the rest of their lives. How do you think?"
He retained this glorious title, out of respect for the golden medal of pardon bestowed by the late emperor, to prevent outsiders from accusing the royal family of being mean and ungrateful. However, it had nothing to do with the Yongning Marquis's family. They would only suffer worse than the common people. They had enslaved her for fifteen years, and he would naturally make them taste every bit of the hardship and suffering she had endured, making their lives worse than death.
"Okay." Qingzan responded, listening to the sounds of the street market outside. It was so lively that it seemed like another world, full of the vibrant worldly atmosphere and fireworks.
Seeing that she was not happy with her revenge, the emperor worried that she was not satisfied, so he said lightly: "If you feel that your hatred is not satisfied enough, you can also die of a sudden illness."
He had given in step by step in the past just to let her let go of the past. Even if she wanted to eat his flesh and drink his blood now, his only concern was whether she would feel nauseous after eating it and whether he should cook it for her.
Qing Zan didn't want the Duan family to die, so she shook her head and said, "It would be too easy for them to die like this. Wouldn't that be too easy for them?"
The emperor looked at him inquiringly: "Then why are you still not happy?"
Qingzan didn't know either. She wasn't worried about the name. Even if she only had such a vague memory left, her mother's love for her would occupy all of it. Even if her mother named her Gousheng, she wouldn't be offended by the name's origins just because of a few words of instigation.
As for the fact that she was hunted down and killed because her mother named her Qingzan... During the fifteen years in the Marquis's mansion, she saw countless servants being beaten and killed, and she showed no mercy to those who had no grudges against her. It is really hard to believe that the wife of the Marquis of Yongning said this.
Qingzan felt that she was terrifyingly calm, and her heart was also terrifyingly cold, as if a piece of her was missing. She said slowly, "It's just a pity that no matter what the living pay, the dead will never come back."
She took out a handkerchief to wipe her hands, but it wouldn't come clean. The emperor took it and wiped them for her himself. His movements were slow and elegant, his veined fingers unhurried, as if he wasn't wiping away a horrific stain of blood, but merely a speck of dust that had accidentally covered a precious treasure.
"I heard from the palace servants that you still have a poor appetite. There's a Tianxia Diyi Lou nearby. They have different dishes in different seasons, from all over the world. I used to come here often with my friends."
Before Qingzan could react to his meaning, the emperor threw away his handkerchief and ordered the car to stop.
Xu Delu got off the carriage behind and raised the felt curtain in front of the carriage. Unsure of the emperor's will, he carefully asked, "Master?"
Xiao Fang raised his hand and asked someone to wait first.
He had never been one to comfort others, and had always only ever been able to receive kind words from others. But now, as he held that delicate hand, its skin slender and bones delicate, the sunlight streaming in, it was like holding a hand of radiant light, a feeling of both cherishment and love.
He turned to look at the owner of his hand: "The world is so vast, gains and losses are so insignificant. I haven't even trapped you yet, but you've trapped yourself first?"
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