With her mind made up, Lizhu wiped her tears, sat down, and served Emperor Mingzhao a cup of tea.
She did not, as in her previous life, argue again with Emperor Mingzhao over elixirs and alchemy. She only asked the attendants in the hall some questions such as, “How has Father’s appetite been lately,” and “Has he been sleeping well at night.”
It had been a long time since Emperor Mingzhao had seen such a gentle expression on his daughter’s face, and he was deeply moved.
Seizing the moment, Lizhu finally revealed her true intention.
“…You wish to go to your fief for a trip to relax?”
Emperor Mingzhao pondered for a while, and there seemed to be hesitation in his expression.
“The Qinghe region is fairly stable, but you have never traveled far. The journey is long; even with an escort of guards, I still don’t—”
“Elder Brother Yuhui returned to Wanjun because his cousin passed away, didn’t he?”
She remembered that Tan Xun’s cousin had died of illness, and Tan Xun had gone home for the funeral. He would not return to Luoyang until it was time for his wedding with Lizhu.
Yes, in this sixteenth year of her life, Lizhu had not yet married Tan Xun.
The little princess tugged at Emperor Mingzhao’s sleeve, her bright eyes blinking as she said:
“To go to Qinghe, one must pass through Wanjun first. If Father is truly worried, why not have the Tan family send someone to meet me there? Elder Brother Yuhui could accompany me on the journey then you could be at ease, couldn’t you?”
Emperor Mingzhao thought he had misheard her.
“Lin’er, are you serious? Letting Tan Yuhui accompany you—you are willing?”
“The marriage has already been agreed to. What would I be unwilling about?” Lizhu replied in return.
Emperor Mingzhao studied Lizhu closely for a long while. Confirming that there was no sign of reluctance on her face, he finally patted the back of her hand.
“Agreeing to it is one thing. I only fear that although you accepted the marriage…”
By the end, the pressure on Lizhu’s hand grew heavier, and his tone carried a trace of melancholy.
Lizhu understood the unspoken words.
When she was twelve or thirteen, Empress Tan often summoned her nephew into the palace.
On the surface, it was to accompany Shen Fu in his studies, but at that time Shen Fu was only four or five years old—being a study companion was merely an excuse. The real purpose was to let Lizhu and Tan Xun have more opportunities to meet.
To the young Lizhu, Tan Xun was undoubtedly a dependable older brother.
Shen Fu had been domineering and unruly since childhood, holding strong hostility toward Lizhu.
At four, he smeared ink on Lizhu’s favorite skirt.
At five, Shen Fu smashed the bracelet once worn by the late empress.
At six, he even used a slingshot to knock Lizhu into the lotus pond, nearly costing her half her life.
Emperor Mingzhao could punish Shen Fu, but he could not guard Lizhu every hour of the day.
It was Tan Xun who mediated between them, and only someone of his status could make Shen Fu restrain himself.
Lizhu had been grateful to him since childhood.
Therefore, when she later heard that Tan Xun intended to marry the princess, Lizhu, still naïve and confused, did not feel much resistance.
Let it be him.
He had good looks, good learning, never quarreled or raised his voice at her—there was nothing wrong with him.
He was the Empress Tan’s nephew, Prince Shen Fu’s cousin. Choosing him would strengthen the alliance between the Tan clan and her father, and the court would be more stable. Everyone would be pleased.
Even if Emperor Mingzhao saw that she was not enthusiastic about this marriage and questioned her repeatedly, Lizhu still told him:
She had been willing to choose Tan Xun as her consort prince.
However, this time, seeing Emperor Mingzhao before her hesitating, Lizhu suddenly asked,
“…If I truly despised Tan Xun and refused to choose him as my consort prince, would it trouble Father?”
From the Boshan incense burner rose faint spirals of agarwood smoke, and the hall fell silent for a moment.
“It would,” Emperor Mingzhao said frankly.
“When the court moved its capital from Yandu to Luoyang, the local noble clans of Luoyang resisted greatly. For Nanyong to take root here, the Tan clan rendered great service. Tan Yuhui is the legitimate eldest son of the clan, and he wishes to obtain the honor of marrying a princess. Both in reason and in sentiment, I ought not refuse.”
But then Emperor Mingzhao looked at his daughter, whose face bore seven parts resemblance to his late empress and sighed.
“Yet the greatest happiness in this world is for one to spend a lifetime beside the person they love. Your father no longer has that chance, how could I bear to take away your happiness? That is why I keep asking again and again, whether you truly are willing. If you truly are not, then your father will find another way.”
As a child to a parent, it would be false to say such words did not move her.
If only her father were not Emperor Mingzhao, not a sovereign whose every action determined the rise and fall of a nation.
Thinking back to the ruin of her country and family in her past life, when she could only perish together with the enemy, Lizhu’s heart filled with grief and anger.
“If you truly could think of another way, you would’ve refused long ago and let me choose my own consort!”
Emperor Mingzhao propped his temple with a finger and said indifferently, “Well, that…”
“If you truly wish for me to live well, then you should devote yourself to governance, enrich the nation and strengthen the people. Otherwise, when the country ceases to be a country, what home is there to protect? Even if I had someone I love, could we still be happy wandering homeless together?”
“All day you only know to worship your gods and cultivate your Way. If one day Beiyue’s iron cavalry crosses the Shrine of the Divine Maiden, will you scatter beans to summon soldiers, or invite the gods to lead your troops?”
“Your Highness, the Princess.”
Suddenly, one of the palace attendants in Yutang Hall fell to his knees with a thud and said,
“It was so hard for you to speak calmly with His Majesty for once, how did it turn into a quarrel again? If Your Highness is angry, vent it on us servants instead. His Majesty only just recovered from a cold these past few days, please, Your Highness, have mercy.”
Emperor Mingzhao could not bear to scold Lizhu harshly.
He only sighed lightly and patted the hand of the attendant Luo Feng, signaling for him to rise, as though acknowledging his loyalty.
Seeing this, Lizhu grew furious and abruptly stood up.
So she was the villain now!
These eunuchs and servants—ordinarily servile and obsequious, flattering to the extreme, eager to be their masters’ dogs or cats—Lizhu could kick them and they would still dare not protest, perhaps even lick the soles of her shoes.
But people who abase themselves to such a degree will always seek to make up for it in other ways.
Emperor Mingzhao’s pursuit of immortality and alchemy involved countless vested interests.
In her past life, when she stopped him from refining pills with human blood, it wasn’t long before a Daoist priest, using some fabricated omen of the heavens, memorialized the Emperor, claiming that the Princess of Qinghe should go to another palace to avoid misfortune for a year.
And Empress Tan immediately assured Emperor Mingzhao repeatedly that she would personally see to the princess’s well-being.
Thus Lizhu was confined to another palace for a year, unable even to send out a single letter.
The reason was simple: the official of the Imperial Clan Bureau who oversaw the princess’s household was a protégé of the Tan clan of Wanjun.
By comparison, though Lizhu bore the title of princess, her mother Mi Jiang—the late Empress—had once been but a common washerwoman.
Lizhu had no maternal clan she could rely on, only the waning favor of a sovereign whose imperial power was slipping away.
Even with this second chance at life, the cards in her hand had not changed.
A fall into the pit makes one wiser.
Since this was not yet the moment of utter desperation, Lizhu swallowed back the words that had risen to her lips and sat down again in resentment.
“…Since I cannot attend to Father every day, I must depend on Attendant Luo’s careful service. How would I dare to punish him? Please, rise quickly.”
“The princess flatters this servant too much.”
Luo Feng rose to his feet.
He was the head of the eunuchs in the palace, appearing to be in his early forties. His brows were sparse and light, his long phoenix eyes sweeping past his temples; if not for the sharpness in his voice, he could almost have passed for a refined scholar.
With a genial smile, he said,
“Ever since Her Highness reached her hairpin ceremony, the princess’s marriage has been His Majesty’s foremost concern. Today, this servant dares to ask a question—consider it helping His Majesty settle one worry. In the princess’s heart, does the legitimate eldest son of the Tan clan count as a suitable match?”
After his words fell, the hall fell silent for a moment before Lizhu’s reply was heard.
“The whole world says that Tan Xun is as fine as jade and orchid, a young prodigy, and the dream of countless girls in Luoyang’s boudoirs. Father may rest assured, I am very much willing.”
Lizhu clenched her back teeth and forced out a smile.
Emperor Mingzhao was overjoyed. He smiled as he walked toward a white orchid blooming by the window.
“That’s good, that’s good. Truly, I have always felt that in all of Nanyong, only this noble scion nurtured in a great and illustrious house could be a worthy match for my Lin’er.”
Following the emperor’s gaze, a white orchid with twelve petals stood lush with green leaves, its fragrance elegant and lingering—just like a graceful and refined gentleman.
Lizhu, however, said nothing.
At the thought of her last meeting with Tan Xun before her death, an uneasiness stirred within her chest.
In truth, after their divorce in her previous life, Lizhu soon came to terms with it.
Tan Xun might have had a thousand virtues, but he would always be the Tan clan’s legitimate eldest son—he would never share one heart with her.
To marry the princess had been the Tan clan’s assignment to him; that he did not love her was only natural.
For the sake of their childhood bond, Lizhu did not cling. Since he loved another, then separation was fitting.
What Lizhu could not understand was why Tan Xun harbored such hostility toward Pei Yinzhi.
After she married Pei Yinzhi, there was once a time he mentioned Tan Xun with a faint smile and said:
—Though his affections were not steadfast, the courage to admit it before the princess is at least forthright. And if he had not taken the initiative to let go, how could I have had the chance to marry Her Highness?
Pei Yinzhi had never once spoken ill of him behind his back.
Yet Tan Xun blamed even their divorce on Pei Yinzhi.
So much for being an orchid of noble grace.
Despicable!
- •—–٠✤٠—–•·
Stepping out of Weiyang Palace, Lizhu descended the long stone steps. The lady-in-waiting Xuan Ying, who had been waiting below for some time, quickly came forward.
“Your Highness and His Majesty… didn’t quarrel again today, did you?”
Lizhu shook her head and said, “Don’t worry, Xuan Ying. I didn’t bring up elixirs or alchemy today. I only told Father I wished to go to Qinghe Commandery to relax, and he agreed.”
After saying so, she recounted the entire conversation inside Weiyang Palace.
When Xuan Ying heard her retelling, she was slightly surprised, but soon let out a relieved smile.
“…That’s how it should be, my good princess. Those high-ranking ministers holding offices of a thousand or a hundred shi all fear losing their official seals. None of them dare to speak frankly before His Majesty. Why should Your Highness rush to the front for them?”
“You can’t put it like that.”
Lizhu lifted the hem of her dark-green skirt and walked down the steps.
“If the ministers say the wrong thing, they’ll be beheaded. Father won’t behead me, so it’s only right that I be the one to speak… But don’t worry, Xuan Ying. I truly didn’t say a word this time, truly.”
Hearing the little princess speak so, Xuan Ying felt both comforted and distressed.
Of course she knew Lizhu’s admonitions were correct.
Because the founding empress had once set a precedent for intervening in state affairs, the Yong dynasty had produced quite a few empresses and princesses who wielded great power.
But Lizhu was not one of them.
She had no powerful maternal clan to rely on, no legitimate brothers to stand behind her.
Even the Son of Heaven himself had to depend on the noble families to maintain his footing in Luoyang—so how could a princess, whose mother had died early, hope to protect herself if she lost the emperor’s affection?
Supporting Lizhu, Xuan Ying led her toward the waiting palanquin, and asked again:
“Why does Your Highness suddenly wish to go to Qinghe? You’ve never left Luoyang, so perhaps you don’t know—these past few years, the outside world has grown less and less peaceful.”
“It’s precisely because it’s not peaceful that I must seek the way to peace.”
Lizhu’s eyes, black and white in contrast, were full of earnestness.
Xuan Ying looked at her in confusion for a moment, then couldn’t help but shake her head with a soft laugh.
“Your Highness’s words puzzle me. The court’s officials and nobles are all powerless, how could Your Highness find the way to peace?”
“What the officials and nobles cannot do, someone else can.”
In her previous life, after Pei Yinzhi’s death, Lizhu, sleepless and alone, would often think—
If only the court had offered him less resistance.
If only Nanyong had been united, instead of exhausting itself with internal strife.
Then perhaps Pei Yinzhi would not have died so young, and Nanyong might not have fallen to Beiyue. Perhaps everything would have been different.
…She wondered what Pei Yinzhi was doing at this very moment.
At twenty years old, he should be at the age of study and official examination.
Her thoughts wandered, and Lizhu suddenly recalled the scars on Pei Yinzhi’s body.
Aside from the fresh wounds left by battles with the Beiyue army and the Wuhuan tribes, his back bore many old scars—interwoven and crossing one another.
The shallow ones had only grazed the skin; the deep ones seemed to have once severed tendons, later crudely stitched back together, making the muscular terrain of his back—already like undulating mountains—appear even more rugged and fierce.
Pei Yinzhi had a physique wholly unlike that of a civil official.
“When I was young and studying under masters, the mountains were high and the roads remote—it was inevitable to encounter some vicious bandits.”
Whenever Lizhu brushed her fingers over those scars, he would always catch her hand and kiss her fingertips, the light in his dark eyes deep as ink.
“Would the princess despise me?”
At that time, Lizhu had shaken her head.
The sons of noble and powerful families, once they came of age, would have their households prepare several carriages filled with wealth and goods, and send dozens or even hundreds of guards to escort them—an imposing procession bound for the academies of the most renowned scholars in the land.
Yet after entering officialdom, these men only knew how to form factions and seek private gain, placing their clans’ interests above the lives of the people and the survival of the state.
Meanwhile, men like Pei Yinzhi—true pillars of the nation—had to risk death nine times over just to gain an education.
Her heart ached for him.
At that moment, her palanquin happened to pass by the Lantai Stone Chamber.
Lizhu’s eyes lit up.
She ordered the bearers to stop and called to the guards stationed outside the Lantai Stone Chamber: “Is the Grand Preceptor here today?”
The guard answered respectfully that he was.
Lizhu’s face broke into a bright smile.
Stepping down from the palanquin, she turned to Xuan Ying and said, “Before I go to Qinghe, I must ask the Grand Preceptor for something. Wait here for me, I’ll be right back.”
The young lady-in-waiting thought for a moment, then asked tentatively, “Is it… for the person Your Highness mentioned just now?”
“Mhm!”
Under the sunlight, Lizhu gazed at the plaque above Lantai, her eyes shining.
At present, the authority to annotate and interpret the classics lay in the hands of great scholars.
Anyone wishing to pass the inspection and recommendation examinations and enter officialdom had to apprentice under one of the hereditary scholarly families who had studied a particular classic for generations.
Of course, in her previous life, even without studying under any renowned master, Pei Yinzhi had still risen to the rank of a top minister.
Lizhu did not know how he had managed it.
But she remembered that, in her past life, his political enemies had often attacked his learning—calling him shallow in knowledge, less learned than a child, unworthy of his high office.
In the princess’s study, whenever Lizhu practiced calligraphy or painting, Pei Yinzhi would more than once praise her:
—“As the writing reflects the person, it turns out Your Highness’s hand is truly one of a kind.”
—“Would Your Highness really teach me by hand?”
—“That’s wonderful! With such a distinguished teacher as Your Highness, my brushwork will surely cut deep into the wood and pierce through the paper.”
Although, in the end, it seemed that what went “three-tenths deep into the wood” was not his brush strength, and what pierced through was not the paper…
Still, Lizhu had often thought—he was so clever.
If only he had not been born into poverty, if only he had a letter of recommendation, he would have been a true scholar, brimming with learning.
He was not inferior to anyone, and he would never have had to endure so much slander and contempt.
Thinking of this, Lizhu quickened her pace, her spirit burning with resolve.
__
Author’s note:
Everyone’s probably noticed by now — that’s right, the male lead is, without a doubt, a pretending bastard.