The Fourth Prince’s voice echoed through the center of the main hall.
Because the hall was completely silent at this moment, the words he spoke carried immense penetrating power, audible even to guests seated on the third and fourth floors.
The guests stopped appreciating the music and instead pushed open the latticed doors to look out. They saw dozens of guards, all wearing swords at their waists, filing in and rushing towards every floor of the Misty Rain Pavilion.
The guards of the Prince’s Residence were brutal and imperious, charging into every Elegant Chamber like hyenas, stirring up a wave of startled screams among the red silk and soft couches.
Up on the ninth floor, Bai Zheng could no longer sit still. She hurriedly dispatched people to stop them. Unfortunately, the hired fighters of the Misty Rain Pavilion were not numerous enough to contend with the men Xiao Yi had brought.
Knowing this visitor meant ill, Bai Zheng took the Cloud Ladder down to the ground floor, intending to personally step in and take control.
But sitting inside the Cloud Ladder, she unexpectedly noticed that a section of the wooden frame at the entrance was broken. Yet when the three individuals had ridden the ladder down earlier, the mechanism hadn’t been damaged.
Bai Zheng felt puzzled. She raised her head and scanned her surroundings but couldn’t find the three figures anywhere.
Moving her gaze away, she looked at the chaotic center of the main hall. The Fourth Prince, Xiao Yi, was sitting squarely at an Eight Immortals table, sipping tea. Witnessing this scene, fury instantly welled up inside her, and she strode rapidly to Xiao Yi’s presence.
Xiao Yi was sipping his tea, his brows carrying an air of leisure and contentment, as if he truly considered the Misty Rain Pavilion his own princely residence.
Bai Zheng looked at Xiao Yi and took a deep breath, doing her best to keep her emotions calm.
Unfortunately, no matter how much she restrained herself, she was ultimately not a person of excellent temper.
With a flick of her sleeve, she pointed at the girls cowering in fright on the upper floors and coldly demanded: “Fourth Prince, you have barged into the Misty Rain Pavilion without any justification, disrupting the order of the Imperial City! Do you even regard the laws of Great Qi?”
The Fourth Prince sat in his chair, his demeanor quite composed, but he kept part of his attention focused on the movements of everyone in the hall.
When he had entered earlier, he had been searching the crowd for the blind woman the steward had described. However, having searched a large area of the Pavilion, he still hadn’t spotted the person with white silk around her eyes sitting in a wheelchair.
Listening to the clamorous noise around him, the Fourth Prince furrowed his brows and raised his eyes to look at Bai Zheng standing before him.
He stared thoughtfully at Bai Zheng for a long moment. Then, after a while, he smiled slightly and asked, “Miss Bai, if you insist on invoking the laws of Great Qi, then I dare ask: what crime is it to conspire and plot the assassination of a Prince?”
…
The Fourth Prince would never have guessed that the reason he couldn’t find the person he was looking for was because, the very moment he had stepped into the Misty Rain Pavilion, that person had already concealed her presence.
He had to thank his own highly recognizable voice and his manner of entry—speaking first before walking in.
If it hadn’t been for that, if he had entered first and then started posturing, the Fourth Prince might have spotted Xiao Jin in the Cloud Ladder with a single glance.
After all, Xiao Jin was dressed in a snow-white robe, with the eye-catching Chu Shao beside her. It was hard not to attract attention.
At the last moment, because of the Fourth Prince’s sudden appearance, the young servant pulling the ropes was startled and lost focus, accidentally releasing the rope.
The Cloud Ladder happened to rise significantly along this force, perfectly aligning with the third-floor entrance.
It was only thanks to this convergence of factors that Xiao Jin managed, before the Fourth Prince entered the Pavilion, to tug on Chu Shao’s sleeve and whisper: “Go.”
Chu Shao held her folding fan and looked down at Xiao Jin, her smile exceedingly gentle.
Although she didn’t have many reasons to help Xiao Jin, considering they were currently in a relationship of mutual complicity, she let out a light laugh and flicked her opened fan toward the wooden bar at the Cloud Ladder’s edge.
Crack—
Under Su Tan’s utterly shocked gaze, the ivory folding fan traced a beautiful arc, splitting open the tightly shut wooden frame of the entrance like a blade cleaving mountain rock.
Seeing Chu Shao’s action of smashing the door open with a fan, it wasn’t just Su Tan. Even Xiao Jin, sitting in her wheelchair, felt her eyelid twitching uncontrollably.
Was this something the gentle female lead could do? That fan-throwing skill—could Chu Shao have been body-snatched by someone from the Tang Sect?
The way Chu Shao swung her fan was pretentious to the extreme, stunning both Xiao Jin and Su Tan. But the most pretentious part wasn’t demolishing the Cloud Ladder with a single fan; it was that Chu Shao herself showed no ripples of emotion, her heart utterly unruffled.
Taking advantage of their stunned state, Chu Shao grasped the wheelchair handles. The gentle smile remained on her lips, but her actions were not quite so gentle.
Those hands were very beautiful, her nails neatly trimmed. Even the posture of grabbing the wheelchair handles and suddenly pushing forward was elegant.
That one push let Xiao Jin directly experience what a spiritual hearse drifting felt like.
It had to be said, Chu Shao’s emergency response was indeed excellent. Fast enough that not only did the Fourth Prince fail to see, even Xiao Jin herself didn’t react in time.
Initially, Xiao Jin’s idea had been wonderful. She had thought Chu Shao would gently push the wheelchair and gracefully guide her out of everyone’s sight.
She had even mentally planned which side room they would enter, and then, relying on Chu Shao’s cheat-like martial arts, they would jump out the window and flee the scene.
But reality was cruel.
In actuality, Chu Shao smiled, raised her hand, and gave her a shove, sending her hurtling straight down the long corridor.
Xiao Jin, in the ancient world, was unexpectedly experiencing the sensation of riding a roller coaster. And as a disabled person, not only was she uncared for, but she also had a god-tier teammate kicking her while she was down.
The ancient world was truly not worth it.
Such thoughts swirled in Xiao Jin’s mind. She had no time to say anything.
She could only watch helplessly as the wall grew infinitely larger before her eyes, accepting the reality that she was about to have an intimate encounter with it.
Then, the wheelchair came to an abrupt halt just two inches from the wall.
Xiao Jin fell silent.
She tore off the silk covering her eyes and looked back. She saw that striking teardrop mole at the corner of Chu Shao’s eye and the smile lifting the corner of her lips.
Having experienced the thrill of over-speeding, Xiao Jin snapped back to her senses and realized that the push Chu Shao had delivered likely never even considered the consequence of crashing into a wall.
So Chu Shao’s madness was very real—she had absolutely no intention of being human.
Xiao Jin looked at Chu Shao, knowing full well that in a strict sense, human standards couldn’t be used to measure her. Still, she asked coldly: “Princess Consort, is it fun to toy with this Prince?”
“Your Highness, that is not the case.” Chu Shao gazed into Xiao Jin’s eyes, her expression very tender.
She crouched down, gently raising her hand to brush aside the strands of hair clinging to Xiao Jin’s lips, and answered honestly: “This humble wife does not find toying with you fun. Because what never tires this humble wife has always been, and only been, you yourself.”
“…”
What kind of outrageous line was that? Did all yanderes talk like this?
Xiao Jin stared expressionlessly at Chu Shao. From beyond the corridor came the sounds of guards searching and rummaging.
Yet Chu Shao’s face remained extremely calm. She even seemed quite interested as she tucked the black hair behind Xiao Jin’s ear. The smile on her lips was deep, and her words were nearly drowned out by the footsteps outside.
“Your Highness, in truth, this humble wife does not wish to toy with you. It is simply that you often bring this humble wife joy, so this humble wife…”
Before Chu Shao could finish, Xiao Jin clamped a hand over her mouth.
The clamor was coming from the floor below, meaning the searchers were almost at the third floor. So she decisively cut off Chu Shao’s words and whispered to her: “So we should leave this place first.”
Having read so many web novels, Xiao Jin was all too familiar with the rule that villains die from talking too much.
If they waited until Chu Shao finished expressing her thoughts, the Fourth Prince’s guards would probably have already surrounded them and taken them away as suspicious individuals.
Moreover, Xiao Jin still wasn’t sure what the Fourth Prince’s entire operation was meant to accomplish. After all, doing such a thing would only make his already foolish second-male-lead persona even more foolish.
However, if the Fourth Prince’s search of the Misty Rain Pavilion was because he had uncovered some secret intelligence, then his actions were very intriguing indeed.
Xiao Jin had an intuition. Although the Fourth Prince seemed to be acting out of sheer boredom, he might actually be deliberately looking for her.
Time was pressing. Xiao Jin had no leisure to ponder the finer details. The immediate priority was to solve the problem at hand.
Because of the original owner’s legs, she couldn’t get far by wheeling herself. So she still had to rely on Chu Shao to avoid a social death.
Xiao Jin thought this, and she acted accordingly.
After raising her hand and covering Chu Shao’s lips, she noticed the other was stunned for a moment, but her eyes seemed relatively normal. So she began to seriously negotiate with Chu Shao: “I don’t want to die a social death.”
If it were just wearing this white peony women’s attire, Xiao Jin could still quickly change clothes and counter the Fourth Prince with a show of force.
But adding the clamping voice the System had cursed her with, everything inevitably became suffocating.
She absolutely could not afford to lose face like this.
What’s more, Bai Zheng had just met her. At this moment, apart from making a quick escape, Xiao Jin seemed to have no better option.
However, after voicing “I don’t want to die a social death,” Xiao Jin realized a very serious problem.
Chu Shao didn’t know what “social death” meant.
Facing this chasm across dimensions, Xiao Jin could only give up on hints. She pointed to the innermost side room and bluntly instructed Chu Shao: “Give the wheelchair to Su Tan. Carry me inside.”
Su Tan had just managed to catch up, only to hear such a sentence.
This proposal was far too bizarre, leaving even her stunned: “Why give the wheelchair to me?”
“The wheelchair is too big. It’s hard to hide.”
Xiao Jin didn’t even glance at Su Tan. Partly because time was limited, and partly because she was about to use this tool-character second female lead and felt a little guilty.
There was no time for lengthy explanations. She could only summarize succinctly for Su Tan: “And if the Fourth Prince caught wind of some rumor and came to the Misty Rain Pavilion looking for someone, Doctor Su sitting in it would be perfect.”
The footsteps outside the chamber grew more urgent. Mixed with the curses of the guests and the shrieks of the girls, Su Tan almost thought she had misheard Xiao Jin’s words.
Otherwise, why could she understand the individual words Xiao Jin spoke, but once they were strung together, she couldn’t grasp what the other party meant.
Su Tan was utterly baffled, her eyes full of confusion.
Just as she was about to ask Xiao Jin how she planned to walk without the wheelchair, she saw Xiao Jin suddenly release her hand from Chu Shao’s mouth.
In the next moment, Xiao Jin extended her hand to Chu Shao and said coolly: “Take me inside.”
Her tone was very even. However, because the System was playing tricks, even though she deliberately lowered her voice, the sound was still saturated with a cloying, affected quality.
Perhaps from hearing this voice too much, Su Tan was now suffering serious hallucinations. At this moment, she couldn’t help but feel… Xiao Jin’s voice carried a hint of inexplicable coquettishness.
Even though applying this word to Xiao Jin’s ice-cold face was utterly incongruous,
this proud and arrogant tone, set against the white peonies blooming on the snow-white robe, created a strange sense of beauty.
The only one who could understand Su Tan right now was probably Chu Shao.
Just moments ago, when Xiao Jin had pressed her fingers against her lips, the touch had clearly been cool. But listening to Xiao Jin’s slightly hoarse voice and her deliberately suppressed tone, the sensation on her lips felt like a scorching burn.
From fingertip to finger pad, Chu Shao felt that the very reason Xiao Jin existed was to draw fire upon herself, and then burn to ashes within the flames.
Perilously using the temperature of her skin to draw close, reaching out her fingers to press upon her trembling lips.
Her expression was devoid of artifice, so pure it was almost unlike a seduction.
Chu Shao stood up, looking down at Xiao Jin extending her hand toward her from the wheelchair. She felt such a captivating enticement made it truly difficult to choose.
Savouring the sensation of those fingers brushing against her lips, she knew she never made choices, because choices were not always completely honest.
So Chu Shao tossed the difficult question back to Xiao Jin, asking with a smile: “Then, how should this humble wife take you inside?”
The guards’ footsteps grew more urgent, resounding like boots stepping on ice about to shatter.
The coldness on Xiao Jin’s face remained as steady as ever.
No shattering ice. No flames scorching the skin. She merely glanced at her legs resting on the wheelchair and said calmly to Chu Shao: “However you like.”
“Carry me on your back, hold me in your arms. As long as I get inside, it doesn’t matter.”
