"Yes." The young servant quickly responded, and turned to leave.
But Le Yuanhou suddenly stopped him: "Wait."
"What are your commands, my Lord Marquis?"
"Go later. It’s already late into the night. We don’t want to disturb her." As Le Yuanhou spoke, his voice choked with the rawest of emotions.
Lady Sun waved at the young servant: "Wait until dawn to invite her. You may step down now."
"Yes, I’ll leave right away."
Le Yuanhou covered his face with a hand, appearing haggard and older. His heart was a tumult of emotions. Lady Wu’s death had been an aching wound in his heart for which he had always felt remorse over these years. It was because of this that he doted so heavily on the sole daughter she left behind. Even his son and daughter by Lady Sun did not receive the same degree of devotion as her.
He had always tried to make up for his regret about Lady Wu by showering her child with affection, hoping that it would let Lady Wu rest in peace.
But who could have thought, that this child was a fake!
Suddenly, a little maid came running in, her face flustered with panic: "Lord Marquis, Lord Marquis, Eldest Miss in the courtyard..."
Lady Sun scolded: "Stop panicking! And stop spouting nonsense about certain malevolent spirits!"
But the little maid instantly shook her head: "No, no, it’s not that. The Eldest Miss was found in her courtyard. The Eldest Miss isn’t dead. She’s safe, right now she’s unconscious, sleeping in a bush behind the house."
Le Yuanhou was stunned: "What about the blood on the door?" 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞
"Someone has looked at it closely. It seems to resemble chicken blood."
Lady Sun couldn’t help voicing her suspicion: "Lord Marquis, everything that happened today feels like someone deliberately set it up like a farce."
Le Yuanhou coldly responded: "Who staged the farce is one thing, but the fact and truth are another! Go! Bring the Eldest Miss to me!"
The little maid promptly replied: "Yes."
Before the words even left her mouth, Li Junyao was already crawling and tumbling into the room, crying out, "Dad, you mustn’t believe others’ baseless claims. I’m not the daughter of the Wang family, but your daughter! Dad, won’t you resist their provocation? You can’t refuse to believe me!"
After regaining consciousness, Li Junyao watched Master Wang being led away and realized that everything was exposed.
Le Yuanhou clenched his fists as his gaze landed on the "daughter" he had raised for sixteen years, his eyes bloodshot: "Since you claim you are my daughter, why didn’t you have what your mother left for you?"
Li Junyao turned pale, she knew he would ask about it.
Despite all their scheming, the Wangs neglected one thing. The original Lady bestowed an item to her child as a token. When the then-infant Junyao was sent by Master Wang back to the capital along with the corpse of Lady Le, he asked if anything had been lost. Master Wang, fearful in his heart, insisted there was nothing, or maybe it had got lost on the road. Le Yuanhou could do nothing but accept it. However, Junyao knew that Le Yuanhou had never let go of the hope to find that object over all these years.
That object, she didn’t even know what it was.
Le Yuanhou pointed at her with a pained expression: "For sixteen years, I valued and cherished you like you were the center of my universe, never allowing you to bear the slightest grievance. In our family, which brother or sister who’d made a mistake was not made to kneel in the ancestral hall for at least seven days as punishment? Yet, no matter how many mistakes you made, I’ve never punished you for more than three days. Every good thing was always given to you first. Your grandma, even though she adores her legitimate grandchild, never treated him as well as you.
I was grateful to the Wang family for saving my child, and for over a decade I’ve pulled strings to promote and protect them, even secretly helping them out when they offended His Majesty. Yet little did I know, all along, I was the one being played! You Wang family people are true masters of deception! You murdered my own child, yet you shamelessly enjoyed everything that Le Yuanhou Mansion has given you for all these years?! Can you really bear the torment of your conscience?!"
Li Junyao gave a cold, cruel smile through her tears: "You say you were nice to me, but no matter how nice you are, you never trusted me. Otherwise, why have you been secretly investigating the whereabouts of that object over these years? It’s clear that you’ve never trusted me!"
Le Yuanhou was so enraged that he threw a punch at her: "You ungrateful wretch!"
He never had the heart to hit her in all those years, but today was the first time, he was hurting too deeply.
"The entire capital city knows the splendor of the Young Lady of Le Yuanhou Mansion. Now that things have come to this point, you’re saying I have mistreated you?! The only thing that Lady Wu left behind, why wouldn’t I look for it? You naturally wouldn’t understand the heartache since she isn’t your real mother. No wonder you pulled out the peonies all over the yard and replaced them with peach blossoms. I should have realized then. If you truly cared about your deceased mother, you would never have done such a thing!"
Le Yuanhou was so angry that he began to cough heavily again, Lady Sun immediately attended him to calm his breathing: "My Lord, you must take care of your health."
Le Yuanhou glared at her coldly: "For treating Le Yuanhou Mansion as fools, the Wang family won’t get away with it easily either. Whatever Le Yuanhou Mansion has lost, will surely be taken back one by one!"
The Wang family?
Li Junyao’s face paled. He said ’the Wang family’. Was he really disowning her?
Regardless of the mistakes she made before, she was always arrogant and fearless because she was certain her father doted on her. She assumed she had nothing to fear even if the sky fell down on her. Yet who could have thought that there would be a day when he would address her as ’Wang family’.
Li Junyao all of a sudden became scared and promptly starting to beg frantically: "Dad, Dad you can’t disown me. Even if I’m not your flesh and blood, I was raised by you. Dad, you’ve always treated me with so much kindness, how could you bear to...?"
Le Yuanhou spoke through gritted teeth: "Clearly, you knew everything but you comfortably held onto this position all these years. Today I’m aware, you may be young but your heart is far too vicious. What’s regrettable is, it took me sixteen years to see through you!"
He immediately shouted in anger: "Guards! Take her away! I don’t want to see her ever again!"
"Dad, you can’t treat me like this, Dad! They are all lying to you. I am the daughter who you’ve raised for sixteen years. Why can’t you want me? Dad!"
The house of Le Yuanhou was brightly lit all night. Not a soul was able to rest.
Ji Xinhe too, spent the entire night awake, pondering while clutching a handkerchief.
Her identity has changed, what about her future? If Hou Mansion is likened to a golden cage, has this locked her within it? She had barely made it this far, and the last thing she wanted was restrictions. Moreover, what about her big brother and Xiao Bei if truthfully, she’s the legitimate daughter of Hou Mansion?
As soon as it was dawn, Fuquan knocked hastily on her door: "Miss, people from Le Yuanhou Mansion have arrived, and they would like to invite you over."
Ji Xinhe frowned slightly, what couldn’t be avoided was coming, after all.
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