Chapter 124: Hearthside Night Talk (Part 6): Come With Me

The Young Palace Lord possessed a rare beauty of the highest grade. Even hiding in the shadows under the bed, one could still see her pair of round emerald eyes blinking, her cheeks still baby-fat and rosy-white, so tender that a pinch seemed like it would squeeze out peach juice. Paired with her shoulder-length curly short hair, she looked utterly innocent, lively, and harmless no matter how one saw it.

If not for seeing with her own eyes the floor full of deadly hidden weapons, Nan Yayin truly found it hard to imagine that such a beautiful appearance hid a naturally wicked heart.

Why would someone with the mental capacity of a child who couldn’t even dress herself take pleasure in others’ screams and suffering?

No matter how unbelievable or incomprehensible the reason, she still had to do what she was supposed to do and reported her name to her little master.

Unlike the thousand twists and turns in her mind when she first entered, at that time, the only thought in Fu Li’s head was: listen carefully.

Unlike any sound she had ever heard before, this was an exceptionally captivating one, flowing past her eardrums like a magical power, reconstructing the woman’s face in her mind. It was as if a white veil covering her eyes had been suddenly torn away, and everything became clear.

Fu Li, who only had the cognition of an infant and couldn’t even find the outhouse she had just visited, unexpectedly remembered this woman she met for the first time.

Even though Nan Yayin had distinctive features different from others, Fu Li at that time hadn’t thought to treat her any better. More accurately, she didn’t even have the concept of “thinking” yet and still acted on her whims as usual.

The woman helped her bathe, fed her meals, carried her wandering through the palace, and hummed songs to lull her to sleep. Nan Yayin cared for her meticulously and thoughtfully—even Fu Yuzhu would have to praise her attentiveness—but Fu Li was not satisfied.

She was still that fickle child with a strange temper. After a period of peace, she would inevitably act up to vent the inexplicable resentment in her heart, always making difficult demands.

For example, she made Nan Yayin bathe with her but forbade the woman from putting on clothes afterward, making her stand barefoot on the cold floor until her own hair dried. Or, if she suddenly wanted to play in the snow at midnight, she would shake awake the sleeping woman, huddling by the corridor with a hand warmer herself while making the woman go play in the heavy snow for her to watch. And so on with such antics.

Yet every time, no matter how absurd the demand, Nan Yayin carried it out completely, diligently and without complaint.

As the years passed and her mind matured, Fu Li gradually realized that the woman by her side had a nearly terrifying tolerance, able to endure everything she did to her. Any humiliation meant nothing to her—was this something an ordinary person could do?

Compared to the maids who couldn’t stand the torment after a few days and wanted to flee, Nan Yayin always wore that faint smile. The reality was undeniable; doubting its logic was pointless. Fu Li began to wonder just how far this person’s endurance went.

On the day Fu Yuzhu arranged for the woman to teach her to write, starting with the simplest stroke “一,” Nan Yayin wrote it on the paper first, hoping she could imitate it. Fu Li seized the chance to make trouble: she smashed the inkstone, snapped the brushes, tore the paper, flipped the table, and trashed the entire room, secretly expecting the woman to get angry.

The result, of course, was disappointment. Nan Yayin only checked if her hands were injured from the destruction, then quickly tidied up the mess and replaced everything with new ones. Fu Li escalated, destroying it all again, but got the same reaction. They repeated this from morning until dusk, the only constant being that single stroke on the paper.

The next day, as if nothing had happened, Nan Yayin wrote another horizontal stroke on the paper. Seeing that provoking her multiple times failed to anger her, Fu Li came up with another trick, smugness rising in her chest.

Wasn’t it just practicing writing? She would do it!

She soaked the brush tip full of ink and tossed it aside with a splat on the floor. As Nan Yayin bent to pick it up, Fu Li grabbed her wrist and slammed it on the table, yanking up her sleeve with the other hand to expose a section of slender white forearm.

“I’ll write it now, so watch closely.” Using her small arm as paper and drawing a dagger as the brush, Fu Li carved nearly a hundred or two narrow little “一” stroke wounds into that patch of skin. Blood flowed across the table as the girl smiled and asked, “Nan Yayin, did I write it well?”

Her small arm trembled uncontrollably, Nan Yayin’s face paled like paper. Enduring the intense pain and fighting to stay conscious, she softly hummed in affirmation.

Fu Li said, “That’s not how you praise someone. Don’t brush me off.”

Her vision blackened in waves, beads of sweat on her forehead, Nan Yayin squinted to make out the wounds, finally picking out three that were somewhat standard and praising them emphatically before collapsing headfirst onto the table and fainting.

Under Fu Li’s years of torment, Nan Yayin often fell ill. Her constitution wasn’t particularly strong to begin with, and now she collapsed every few days, yet somehow never had a major incident—she had grown accustomed to it and didn’t mind much. But this time was exceptionally severe.

She had just come out of the snow a few days ago and caught a chill, and today she had lost so much blood. She burned with fever all night, her body scorching hot, teetering on the edge of death several times.

As Fu Li kept vigil by her bedside, gazing at that bloodless face, she suddenly lost the desire to test the limits of that so-called tolerance.

Perhaps it had no limits at all—endless.

After that, Fu Li tried to suppress those sourceless negative emotions in her heart, even attempting to clear her mind and start learning simple things, striving to grow a bit more independently.

Her first time dressing herself, first time eating alone, first time finishing a book, first time realizing about losing baby teeth and growing up, first time accepting the Kill Snake Bone Whip, first time hunting or taming massive demon beasts, and so on. She never fully developed into a normal, let alone exceptional, child. Nearly all her “firsts,” important or trivial moments in this process, had Nan Yayin by her side.

Thus, later on, Fu Li was willing to call her “Mister” to show respect. For a slave like Nan Yayin, this was an immense honor.

However, she hadn’t even gotten used to the title before all those harmonious scenes were shattered in the most ridiculous way.

Nan Yayin turned out to be a spy planted by Fu Gang in the main Fu family household.

And this wasn’t uncovered through investigation—it was Fu Chi, that brat, who spilled it himself while drunk at a banquet.

At the time, after a few rounds of drinks, they exchanged their usual verbal jabs. Normally, they would move on quickly and argue endlessly into the next topic. But Fu Chi suddenly sneered, slammed his cup down, and blurted out several secrets about Fu Li.

Starting to develop intelligence at age five inevitably meant she would have many of the quirks infants do. Those little things were embarrassing and humiliating, and a long time had passed since then. For Fu Chi to suddenly dredge them up and mock her publicly now was piercingly harsh and vicious.

As the Young Palace Lord, Fu Li had extremely strong self-esteem. She couldn’t bear for others to know such things, let alone use them as gossip. That time, she nearly beat Fu Chi to death and simultaneously found the culprit who leaked the information: Nan Yayin.

Fu Li had calculated everything but never suspected her. Enraged nearly to madness, she dragged Nan Yayin—her hands still dripping blood from beating Fu Chi—into the Water Dungeon and personally interrogated her for three days before learning the whole story.

It turned out that many years ago, Fu Chi’s family discovered that Fu Yuzhu had brought her own daughter into the palace. Fearing the palace lord position might fall to Fu Li in the future, they sought ways to spy on palace affairs. They used Nan Yayin’s mother as leverage to force this suitable and capable woman to infiltrate the Radiant Palace and gather intelligence.

Nan Yayin’s background hadn’t changed, so the information Fu Yuzhu investigated was accurate, leading to this outcome.

The Water Dungeon was dim and damp. The woman lay on the ground covered in whip marks, blood pooling everywhere, barely breathing. Fu Li’s forehead throbbed as she gripped the whip tightly, panting heavily, her worldview overturned.

She had thought those intimate moments belonging only to the two of them—those late-night whispers, those shares about growth—were precious memories not to be defiled. But they had long been turned into jokes spread to her mortal enemy’s ears. And that so-called high tolerance was just a show for her mother and money, not for her at all.

She hadn’t expected her first taste of betrayal’s pain to also come from Nan Yayin.

Imagining how Fu Chi and Nan Yayin must have privately discussed and mockingly dissected those matters about her, Fu Li’s chest nearly exploded with rage. The intense negative emotions, dormant for many peaceful years, surged back, screaming to tear the woman apart alive. But in the end, despite the crescent marks she dug into her palm, she couldn’t bring herself to kill her.

Death could be spared, but living punishment was inevitable. Fu Li seized Nan Yayin’s mother as a new leverage, forcing her to stay by her side, and tormented her in ways dozens of times crueler, in endless varieties, while keeping her alive on a thread. That led to the scene they had witnessed at the beginning.

Flames blazed in the hearth, the meat on the grill pan charring at the edges, gradually turning deep black and emitting a pungent smell.

Fu Li still gripped the woman’s wrist tightly, staring into her eyes as she finished her last words. The slightly lifted sleeve revealed several tiny “一” stroke scars. Under Fu Li’s intense gaze, Nan Yayin crumbled utterly, trembling as if in great sorrow, lowering her head with reddened eyes—but she held back after all.

“So, even now,” Fu Li turned to the two opposite her, “do you still think I was wrong?”

Qin He said nothing, clipping the charred meat from the grill pan and turning down the flame. Shang Shan hugged her knees in silence for a moment before shaking her head. “But she’s been with you so long and never harmed you.”

Fu Li snorted. “Someone with impure motives—should I be grateful just because she didn’t act? She didn’t harm me only because the timing wasn’t right or she thought she couldn’t fool me. If she really wanted to, I wouldn’t be alive today.”

Hearing this, Nan Yayin struggled faintly, as if wanting to argue. But Fu Li, in her anger, wanted to hear nothing and pressed down harder.

The pain in her wrist drilled to the bone—probably fracturing again.

Catching sight of Nan Yayin’s worsening complexion from the corner of her eye, Shang Shan grabbed all the raw and cooked meat with her bare hands and shoved it into her mouth, patting her belly as she said to the woman, “Could you get me some more meat?”

Fu Li released her hand. “Barbecue, barbecue—what’s the point if you eat it like that?”

Shang Shan cried out, “I’m hungry! I haven’t eaten in so long.”

Fu Li asked suspiciously, “How long?”

Shang Shan said, “A full half day.”

Nan Yayin clutched her injured wrist, bowed to them, and limped out into the wind and snow to fetch fresh meat. Shang Shan watched that receding figure until it vanished completely, then turned back and suddenly said, “Even if you think her crimes are unforgivable now, she still didn’t miss any of those important moments in your life.”

Fu Li was slightly stunned. “What?”

As soon as she asked, enlightenment struck her like a splash of cold water. She had brought Nan Yayin to various occasions under the pretext of convenient punishment, but it also let her continue witnessing her life: the first time grilling meat for a favored immortal, the first time slaying evil with friends, the first time swearing brotherhood—all with Nan Yayin present.

Was this subconscious? Did she want her to see those things?

No… it couldn’t be…

“I’m still a bit curious—where were you before age five?”

Fu Li came back to herself. “I don’t know. I have no memories from before.”

Her mother had brought her home, but Fu Yuzhu never told her where she lived before five, nor the source of the resentment rooted in her heart. Even if she deliberately asked, she got no answers. She was curious about her own origins too, but had no way to investigate.

Shang Shan scratched her head. “That’s so weird. First time hearing something like that.”

Even if memories started late, there shouldn’t be a complete blank slate like amnesia—unless someone deliberately erased them?

Just thinking about it gave her a headache. Shang Shan stopped racking her brains and asked instead, “So what did Fu Chi say that made you so mad?”

It was just Fu Chi’s drunken ramblings that shattered the beautiful facade—what could have such destructive power? Fu Li had only mentioned it in passing earlier without details, but Shang Shan had a hunch there were some interesting points, so she asked.

Who knew Fu Li’s face would instantly flush red as she yelled, “Knowing that situation is enough! Why ask so much!”

Shang Shan said, “I’m just curious. Why were you so angry?”

Mu Qian Tan thought to herself: What a stupid dragon. What else could it be? Anyone could guess it easily—a child without the ability to care for herself doing something both embarrassing and humiliating was very likely bed-wetting or the like.

If it were true, it wouldn’t have been a big deal for a five- or six-year-old little girl, but Fu Li had too much pride. On top of that, the one who said it was the most hated Whitehead Madman, which was why she lost it like that. She also couldn’t tolerate even a grain of sand in her eyes. For the person who had been by her side since childhood to have such a background, it was normal for her to get angry.

The two were on the verge of arguing again when Qin He quickly made a stopping gesture. She waited for them to quiet down before softly saying, “It’s my turn.”

Fu Li recalled what she had said not long ago and immediately felt a bit guilty. She took a sip of wine.

Qin He placed her hands overlapping in front of her body and fell silent for a moment before slowly revealing her secret. “I went down the mountain full of confidence but couldn’t uncover even the slightest clue related to my sister. I came back empty-handed yet pretended like nothing had happened—deceiving myself, letting down my master who trusted me unconditionally, and letting down my sister.”

The firelight reflected in her eyes, which now glistened with traces of tears. “Without my sister, I would have died who knows how many times by now. She always protected me, but I can’t even identify the real murderer who killed her. How am I supposed to avenge her?”

She carefully reached up and removed the silver bell hanging above her ear, placing it in her palm. Two wet streaks appeared on Qin He’s cheeks as teardrops fell onto the tiny silver bell one after another. She whispered, “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

She clenched her fist around the silver bell. For a moment, no one in the corridor spoke.

A long time passed before someone let out a soft sigh.

Mu Qian Tan pushed herself up using her knees and pulled her cloak tighter around her. “Qin He, come with me.”