Chapter 3: The past was poisoned, and my past life ended in such a mess...
When I woke up again, it was already bright outside.
She didn't know when she was sent back to her own bedroom last night. At this moment, Yan Shu looked at the familiar curtain, slowly raised her arm and placed her palm on her chest. After feeling her still beating heart, she was sure that everything that happened last night was not a dream.
She was truly reborn.
Yan Shu immediately gathered the thin silk quilt and sat up. Her body felt sore and weak, but the person beside her had disappeared.
The situation now is exactly the same as in the previous life.
It was the same in her previous life. After she made love with Xiao Yu, she was sent to her own bedroom.
The palace maid had been waiting nearby for a long time. When she noticed some movement behind the curtain, she immediately called out softly:
"Princess, are you going to get up? I will help you wash and dress."
The speaker was Qingtao, Yan Shu's personal maid who had served her since childhood. She came to Xiao State with Yan Shu and had always been Yan Shu's confidant.
Yan Shu in the tent was about to respond when she heard this, but when she looked down and saw the mottled marks on her body, her ears suddenly felt hot and she felt a little forgiven for a moment.
Although she had slept in the same bed with Xiao Yu for three years in her previous life, when Yan Shu saw these marks on his body, she knew that she had been too indulgent last night, and she still felt a little embarrassed and uncomfortable.
After all, in Yan Shu's eyes, Xiao Yu was a venomous snake that had been lurking for years and was bound to take vengeance on her. Once she fell into the gentle illusion he had woven, there would be no way back.
Although Yan Shu admitted that she was indeed guilty of Xiao Yu, she did not want to die as hastily as she did in her previous life.
Now that she knew Xiao Yu's true purpose, she didn't want to repeat the same mistake in this life. After all, the chance to start over was rare, and she had to secure a glimmer of hope.
Yan Shu lifted the curtain and got off the bed barefoot with Qingtao's help.
After seeing the large red marks on the girl's snow-white skin, Qingtao couldn't help but exclaimed.
"Princess, why are you hurt?"
Qingtao was just a young girl who had not yet fallen in love, so she naturally had no idea what the marks on Yan Shu's body were. When she saw those red marks, she thought that Yan Shu had been subjected to inhuman abuse by Xiao Yu.
When Yan Shu heard Qingtao's scream, two blushes immediately appeared on her fair and rosy cheeks. She stretched out her hand to signal her to be quiet and said, "Don't panic, this is not an injury. It's just, it's just an ordinary thing when serving the emperor in bed..."
Yan Shu's face flushed as she explained. Her skin had always been like this; even the slightest exertion would leave marks.
After hearing her princess' words, Qingtao's face suddenly turned red. She felt ashamed, and she thought to herself, "So this is what the legendary love affair between man and woman is like? But this King Xiao is too cruel. How could he bully the princess like this?"
After confirming again and again that the princess was not in pain, Qingtao finally felt relieved.
Hot water had already been prepared in the bathroom. Yan Shu soaked in the bathtub. The warm water flowed over a large area of her skin, and she felt a lot more comfortable both physically and mentally.
Qingtao gently rubbed Yan Shu's skin while telling her what happened this morning.
"Princess, word has been sent this morning from Changming Palace that you will be the new master's concubine from now on and will continue to reside in Baohua Palace."
Qingtao cried all night yesterday out of worry.
Ever since the princess's poison took effect, rumors of a palace coup had spread, and the entire palace was sealed off, cutting off all communication from inside and outside. For the entire night, the princess's life or death remained uncertain, and Qingtao felt every moment of her torture as if she were being tortured to death.
Fortunately, after a whole night of anxiety, Qingtao finally saw the princess being sent back safely, and she felt relieved.
Now that King Xiao Wei is dead, Xiao Yu, as the crown prince of Xiao, naturally succeeds to the throne smoothly.
The entire court, both civil and military, knew full well that the bloody scene last night was clearly Xiao Yu's deliberate plot to treason and usurp the throne. Yet, in the court, every official remained silent, not a single one daring to raise a single question.
Only the mottled bloodstains in Changming Palace revealed what outrageous coup had taken place last night.
However, King Xiao Wei had been so dissolute and cruel over the years that the people had long since turned against him. His passing was preferable to his continued misery. Secondly, given Xiao Yu's ruthless and decisive methods, even if the public knew the truth, they would never dare to speak out.
According to the ancestral system of the Xiao Kingdom, all concubines in the harem who had no children were required to be buried alive with the deceased monarch. King Xiao Wei had a hidden illness and no children, so he had no choice but to appoint Xiao Yu, the child of his younger brother, Prince Ning, as the crown prince.
Now, all the childless concubines in his harem have become the designated candidates for burial with him.
Yan Shu was just a beautiful woman in King Xiao Wei's harem who had no favor and no children. According to the rules, she was supposed to be buried alive with King Xiao Wei after his death.
But after the pleasure with Xiao Yu last night, Yan Shu went from being the concubine of the previous king who was about to die to being the favorite concubine of the new king. In this way, she luckily escaped this disaster.
In her previous life, when Yan Shu learned about this, she felt that God was truly blessing her. After all, with King Xiao Wei's death, she would no longer have to endure the torture of the poison and force herself to sleep with him, suppressing her nausea.
Xiao Yu was young and handsome, a thousand times more powerful than King Xiao Wei. Becoming Xiao Yu's wife was naturally a far better option than before. So Yan Shu simply considered it a blessing in disguise and didn't dwell on it.
Now that I think about it, Xiao Yu's step-by-step calculations in his previous life were indeed meticulous. He had trapped Yan Shu in a net from the very beginning, and there was no way she could escape with her scheming.
Qingtao naturally didn't know about her past life. At this moment, she was only happy that her princess had won the favor of the new King Xiao.
After all, the princess was in her prime, and with stunning beauty, marrying the lustful and licentious King Xiao Wei was a waste of talent. Only a man as virtuous as the new King Xiao could be worthy of his princess.
Yan Shu looked at the silly and cheerful Qingtao and a helpless smile flashed across her eyes. In her previous life, she was just like Qingtao at this moment, naive and stupid.
She thought that she was so beautiful that she could make Xiao Yu fall in love with her, but she didn't know that she had fallen into that man's trap from the very beginning. Only after she fell deeper and deeper into it did she realize that it was just a revenge scam from beginning to end.
After drinking the poisoned wine, Yan Shu was naturally unwilling to accept that her previous life ended in such a mess.
After bathing, Yan Shu changed into a green skirt and sat in front of a lacquered wooden folding mirror-frame dressing table while Qingtao did her makeup.
"The princess is so beautiful, she will surely be favored by the king in the future." Qingtao said with a smile.
Looking at the pretty face in the bronze mirror, Yan Shu frowned slightly and fell into deep thought.
The reason why Xiao Yu hated her so much in his previous life was mainly because of something that happened six years ago, which Yan Shu didn't want to recall.
That past event had caused Yan Shu to become seriously ill, so much so that in order to escape the guilt in her heart, her body's self-preservation instinct made her involuntarily downplay that past.
But Yan Shu, who had died once, knew that she could no longer escape. If she did not want to end up like in her previous life, she had to face the source of Xiao Yu's hatred to resolve the knot of the past.
Her ill-fated relationship with Xiao Yu can be traced back to when Yan Shu was ten years old.
In the past, the seven kingdoms of the world were in a three-way stalemate, each one a match for the other. To forge a peaceful alliance, the nations implemented the system of hostages. This system involved sending royal descendants to other nations as hostages, swearing an oath of trust and solidifying the alliance.
Xiao Yu was the hostage sent by the Xiao State at that time, but at that time he was not called Xiao Yu but Xiao Xun.
The fourteen-year-old boy was thin, handsome, and looked aloof, but he always had a cold air that kept people at a distance.
Ten-year-old Yan Shu had a secret crush on this young man after accidentally seeing him from afar. After all, the young girl was in her prime, her heart full of love, so it was easy for her to develop a soft affection for this handsome man.
However, the status of a hostage in another country is quite embarrassing. Although on the surface, a hostage is a prince of a country, in reality, he is just a hostage of another country. And as a hostage, he is definitely inferior to others.
Therefore, no matter how handsome Xiao Xun was, the noble girls of Yan State would often not take the initiative to approach him, and the powerful people from aristocratic families were even more contemptuous of Xiao Xun's identity.
King Yanwen had seven daughters, and Yan Shu was the seventh. Although she was a princess, her mother, Huiji, was of low birth and lacked favor. Therefore, Yan Shu was not valued in the prestigious Yan Palace. In the Yan royal family, which was full of sisters, she was just a dispensable existence.
The queen's daughter, Yan Ruxue, was given the title Qionghua. She was born into a noble family. Although she was spoiled and domineering, she was the most beloved of King Yanwen's seven daughters.
Normally, other noble girls also tried their best to please Princess Qionghua, who was of noble birth and extremely favored.
Because her mother was the queen, Yan Ruxue always looked down on the sisters born to other concubines. However, Yan Shu was born very beautiful and surpassed her in appearance, so she became a thorn in Yan Ruxue's side.
Therefore, whenever the two of them were together, Yan Shu would often be severely targeted by Yan Ruxue.
Seeing how Yan Ruxue disliked Yan Shu, those noble ladies from aristocratic families dared not make friends with Yan Shu, for fear that if they offended Princess Qionghua, they would be targeted in the future.
As a result, the ten-year-old Yan Shu had no playmates.
Fortunately, the place where she and her mother Huiji lived was in a remote area, so as long as she didn't meet Yan Ruxue on weekdays, Yan Shu could enjoy herself alone.
Although the residence was located in a remote area, it was close to a green lake. It was sparsely populated but full of birdsong and fragrance of flowers. When Yan Shu was young, she would often go there alone to pick flowers and catch butterflies for fun.
Until that day, Yan Shu was chasing butterflies alone, when she suddenly saw a young man in plain clothes leaning against a weeping willow tree by the Cui Lake.
Looking at the handsome face covered with mottled light and shadow, little Yan Shu's heart began to beat inexplicably. She recognized that this was the hostage from the Xiao Kingdom who had attracted the hearts of many female relatives when he first entered the Yan Palace.
Looking at his jade-like sleeping face, the little girl couldn't help but secretly put the peach blossoms she had just picked into his hair.
But before she put on the flower in her hand, the dozing boy suddenly opened his eyes. His dark pupils were full of vigilance, and he asked her in a cold voice what she was doing.
Little Yan Shu was startled and the peach blossom in her hand fell down in fright. Then her face turned red and she stammered guiltily, "I, I..."
Seeing the boy's increasingly impatient expression, Yan Shu twisted her slender fingers on the hem of her skirt for a long time, and finally blinked her moist eyes and replied timidly: "I think you look very good wearing this flower..."
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As the most favored little princess of the Wei Dynasty, Zhaohua has always been arrogant and domineering.
Whenever he went out, everyone in the Wei Palace would flatter him.
Even his future son-in-law was the third place winner carefully selected from the newly-appointed Jinshi scholars by Emperor Yuan of Wei.
In Zhaohua's eyes, everything in this world should go according to her wishes.
One day, she saw a palace maid having an affair with a guard, and the young girl, who was just beginning to fall in love, suddenly felt strange ripples.
But Zhaohua was not interested in the greasy-haired and powdered male lovers sent by her aunt. Instead, she turned around and glanced at the ten shadow guards sent by her father to protect her.
The shadow guards all stood tall and straight, like silent statues.
Zhao Hua's gaze moved between them for a moment, and finally stopped on the figure with icy eyes in the corner.
She stretched out her slender legs, and said in her usual arrogant tone: "Okay, you will serve me."
…
The country was destroyed, and he and his brother suffered all kinds of hardships before they sneaked into the enemy country to serve as shadow guards.
After going through layers of selection and being given to Wei Laogou as his beloved daughter to be his shadow guard, Xie Jiao felt that he finally had the chance to avenge his brother.
So he was determined to take revenge and took every step carefully.
But ever since he became Princess Zhaohua's shadow guard, Xie Jiao noticed all sorts of strange feelings in his body whenever it was his brother's turn to be on duty that night.
He and Xie Chi have a natural empathy, so no clues will escape his eyes.
After discovering that his always cold and solemn brother Xie Chi had secretly hidden the handkerchief of Wei Gou's daughter, Xie Jiao felt as if the sky had fallen, and immediately wanted to settle all the new and old grudges with the Wei family.
So, relying on the same appearance, he pretended to be the elder brother and took over the job for a few days.
Only then did Xie Jiao realize that his good brother actually did this kind of work at night.
Spoiled and pretentious princess x aloof older brother/yandere younger brother (male c)
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