Chapter 135: Hello Chang’an
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Chapter 135: Overwhelming Betrayal
March 14, 2023 | Author: Fei10
The sound of the zither often appeared in her dreams.
The princess once did not care for playing the zither, but after arriving in Beidi, in order to present herself as the princess engaged in a diplomatic marriage, she had to hide her true identity and could no longer touch weapons—no sword or blade.
The King of Beidi, the royal family, and even the generals and commoners of the entire land did not treat her kindly simply because she was the lofty eldest princess of Da Sheng. In fact, knowing that she was the twin sister of the late Crown Prince, they redirected their hatred and humiliation from the battlefield onto her.
The way they looked at her was always filled with cold, hateful mockery.
The princess had once said that perhaps this was why Beidi had specifically chosen her for the marriage—to take revenge.
From the beginning to the end, this marriage was driven by a desire for humiliation and revenge.
With the death of the Crown Prince, the hatred was now turned toward his twin sister, who was said to look exactly like him.
The experiences of those three years would have been a nightmare for any ordinary woman, yet for the princess, who once dominated the battlefield and was invincible, it was a pain far greater than the heaviest wounds she had ever received in battle.
But she had already known Beidi's true intentions long before, and had anticipated everything that would happen. So why did she still go? Why did she still agree to marry into Beidi? She should never have gone there.
The princess was not the weak, ill, and helpless person that the ministers believed her to be. Had she chosen to resist, they would not have been able to force her into submission.
Tears welled up in Yu Xue's eyes, mixing with the rainwater. Before her, many past memories surfaced. She seemed to see the princess, injured and silent, sitting with her back to her, gazing at the moon from the window. The once carefree and spirited princess had grown increasingly silent.
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This novel is translated by the Eternal Novel Hits translators. Please read it at https://eternalnovelhits.blogspot.com
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Later, the princess began to play the zither, and the music was full of soldiers longing to die on the battlefield but unable to. The sound of the strings seemed to burn away the desire to return home, leaving only ashes that scattered with the wind.
Only the princess could play such music.
Indeed, it was the princess who had returned...
Yu Xue stumbled through the bamboo forest, running and looking around, torn between fear and hesitation, yet unable to resist the call of the zither, which had appeared countless times in her dreams.
She could not tell if she was still dreaming or if this was real.
She staggered to the wooden house at the end of the bamboo grove.
The zither sound came from within that house.
The bamboo forest was pitch black, with occasional thunder rolling through the sky. Inside the wooden house, there was no light, but the door was wide open.
Yu Xue, covered in mud, took a few more steps forward, her gaze fixing on the inside of the house. Her expression froze in shock.
Inside, a woman in white was playing the zither. Her long hair cascaded down, and she sat gracefully, the pale white of her attire and skin glowing faintly in the darkness.
Her face was covered with a white veil, and apart from that, she wore no other adornments.
The music that seemed to evoke the clash of thousands of soldiers spilled from her fingers.
Yu Xue, drenched in rain, widened her eyes, her mouth opening in shock, but no sound came out.
She stood outside the wooden house, frozen, watching the figure of the woman, barely visible in the dark.
Until the final note of the zither faded away.
The woman playing the zither seemed to lift her eyes and look at her.
"Yu Xue, you've come."
Her voice was calm and tranquil, but in the rain-soaked night, it carried an eerie, ethereal quality.
Yu Xue's face drained of color, trembling as she stepped forward, crossing the threshold of the wooden house, and knelt down.
"...Your Highness! It’s me, it’s me!"
As she looked at the woman kneeling before her in fear and submission, the princess's expression remained unchanged, as calm and composed as ever.
It was clear that the woman was pretending to be Li Shang.
In the past, when she needed to impersonate Ah Xiao, she had deliberately learned how to alter her voice, demeanor, actions, and handwriting. Once she became proficient in these skills, they became second nature.
She was good at mimicking others, and by chance, she was the most familiar person with Li Shang in the world. With practice, she could imitate her tone and mannerisms, and under the cover of this dark and noisy rainy night, she was able to pass for her, at least to some extent.
The remaining gap in her impersonation was partially filled by the unique zither music that only Li Shang could play, and the rest relied on Yu Xue's muddled consciousness and the deepest fear in her heart.
From Yu Xue’s reaction, it seemed her plan of "deceiving with a fake" was working.
Since it was working, she could now begin the interrogation.
"Why did you poison the tea?"
In this rainy night, her existence—like a ghost or a dream—asked the question without any need for embellishment or preamble.
Yu Xue, still kneeling and too afraid to raise her head, froze at the question. Her eyes were filled with turmoil.
The princess... she knew. She had come to punish her.
"I'm asking you a question—"
The calm, unchanging voice came again from above, and it felt even more oppressive to Yu Xue, as though her breath was being crushed and her heartbeat had stopped.
"Servant... servant didn’t know it was poison!" As she spoke of the past, her voice trembled and wavered, her words tangled in confusion.
"It was... it was given to me by them. They said the dose was small and wouldn’t be noticeable. After the princess drank it, she would gradually lose strength over the course of half an hour, but it wouldn’t harm her..."
"And then, I would be able to escape with them, save the princess!"
"I did this to help the princess leave Beidi, I never meant to harm her!"
"It was them who deceived me!"
She almost cried, her voice breaking. "I’ve served the princess since childhood, how could I harm her? How could I...?"
"Save me from Beidi?" The calm voice asked, "If you wanted to save me, why poison me?"
"They said the princess has a strong character and would never agree to escape before the battle... They said to save the princess, we had no choice but to poison the tea. After the princess fell unconscious, we would secretly take her away, and then their people would come to rescue us!"
Chang Suining found it absurd and laughable.
"What do you mean, I wouldn't agree to escape before the battle? I'm not the general of this battle, I'm only a hostage. If I had a chance to leave, why would I sit and wait for death?" Her voice carried a faint trace of mockery. "After following me for so many years, do you really think I would be the kind of person blindly seeking death?"
Yu Xue shook her head desperately. "There are many Beidi soldiers outside the princess's tent, they’re always watching you. I was so worried for your safety, I... I was just too anxious!"
She repeated, "I really didn’t know it was poison, the letter only said it was to save you... it was him, he lied to me!"
Chang Suining smiled coldly inside. "The 'they' you're talking about, are they the accompanying officials?"
Since she was sent to Beidi for a marriage alliance, she had naturally been accompanied by Da Sheng officials.
"...It’s the accompanying consul, Eunuch Wu Xi!" Yu Xue said, "The letter and the medicine... he gave them to me secretly!"
"The letter—" Chang Suining looked at her. "Who wrote it?"
"It was..." Yu Xue’s voice trembled with both grief and hatred, and the answer she gave was not what Chang Suining expected. "It was written by Yu Zeng!"
Chang Suining froze for a moment.
"Eunuch Wu Xi has a close relationship with him. That letter was written by Yu Zeng himself, I recognize his handwriting!" Yu Xue cried out. "He deceived me!"
There was a moment of silence as Chang Suining processed this.
When she spoke again, her voice remained calm. "Apart from the letter, were there any other items?"
"The letter also had his private seal! The one you gave him, it was the same one he used to send messages to you before!" Yu Xue exclaimed.
Under her white, wide sleeves, Chang Suining subtly curled her fingers.
Ah Zeng was cautious by nature, and that private seal shouldn’t have ended up in anyone else’s hands...
"Is the letter still with you?" she asked.
Yu Xue shook her head. "I dared not keep it. After reading it, I burned it, but I saw clearly that it was definitely his handwriting..."
"After you returned to the capital, did you see him again?" Chang Suining asked. "Did you confront him directly about this matter?"
This was crucial—more so than the letter.
Yu Xue shook her head again. "The day the princess had her accident... I escaped, but I never met the people he said would come to rescue me. At the critical moment, it was the people you arranged who saved me..."
When Yu Xue reached this point, tears flowed down her face. "At that moment, I knew he had deceived me... that medicine was not meant to save the princess, but to kill her!"
"There were people who didn’t want the princess to return alive to Da Sheng!"
"As for what happened afterward... some details I can no longer remember... I was afraid of being silenced, afraid that this secret would never see the light of day, so I never dared to leave the Princess's residence!"
Chang Suining asked, "So, you never saw him again?"
Yu Xue replied, "I did, I saw him once. He came with the holy emperor to see me. He was working for the newly crowned holy emperor! she was the princess's mother... In front of the holy emperor, he didn’t dare to show any sign of unusual behavior! I didn’t dare speak to him alone."
"It was him who deceived me, it was him!" Yu Xue repeated, her voice resolute, even stubborn. "He betrayed the princess!"
"It’s best it’s him," Chang Suining said, looking at her. "You and he have followed me since childhood, yet he was the first to betray me. Faced with this betrayal, you perhaps find a little peace in accepting it, don’t you?"
That's why she kept repeating that it was Yu Zeng who had deceived her.
Yu Xue raised her head in panic. "No, no, that’s not how it is, Princess..."
"How is it not?" Chang Suining’s gaze was unyielding as she looked down at her. "You didn’t notice that the excuse in the letter about saving me from Beidi was flawless? Were you really so unaware?"
"Why did you think it would be so simple to 'drug' me and save me from Beidi? What made you think such a foolish idea would work?"
"On the contrary, you believed I would never leave Beidi alive, that by staying with me, you were only waiting for death."
Chang Suining continued, "So, you gambled on this slim chance. If you lost, you would die anyway. But if you won, perhaps you could find a way out."
Yu Xue shook her head, tears streaming as she denied it.
But the voice continued, "Or perhaps, even if you suspected the medicine was poison, you would still have gone along with it—after all, if I died, at least those Beidi soldiers guarding me would leave. Without the ironclad guard, you’d have a better chance to escape amid the chaos, rather than simply staying by my side waiting for death. No matter how you calculate it, this gamble wasn’t a loss, was it?"
"Princess... I didn’t think that way, I didn’t!" Yu Xue cried, her head striking the ground as her body trembled with each sob.
A breeze, carrying raindrops, blew into the room, softening the voice above. "There’s nothing wrong in wanting to survive, but betrayal is still betrayal. Why deceive yourself?"
The words “deceiving yourself” struck Yu Xue like a cold wave, freezing her to the core, as if her blood had turned to ice.
The coldness reminded her of the struggles she had experienced, the thoughts she had refused to acknowledge.
The white figure behind the zither slowly stood up, seemingly unwilling to say anything more.
Yu Xue supported herself to sit upright, staring dazedly upward.
In the dim light, and with her vision blurred by tears, she couldn’t make out the true face of the woman before her, the one wearing a veil. All she could see were the white clothes and black hair.
But despite this, she was absolutely certain: that was her princess.
She reached out, grasping the edge of the white robe as if holding onto her own bleeding heart. The pain was so sharp, she couldn’t stop the tears from flowing.
"Princess, I was wrong..." she lifted her head and finally said, "I regret it every day."
But she couldn’t admit her mistake, couldn’t admit her regret. To do so would be to admit betrayal.
If it were just an ordinary betrayal, she might have faced it directly, after all, she had already made the decision back then. But...
Tears of regret welled up in her eyes.
But on that day, after the princess drank that tea, she had been dismissed.
Then, she heard the news: the princess killed Beidi’s general and took her own life.
The princess died... in such a way!
Yu Xue was at a loss. Her mind still clung to the plan she had concocted, so she took advantage of the chaos to escape. With pursuers closing in, just when despair had almost taken over, she found herself saved by those the princess had arranged.
The princess had done everything for her, had long since prepared to face death alone.
In that moment, she was saved.
But at the same time, she knew there would be no redemption for her.
She was left dazed... What had she done?
What had she done to the princess like that?
The princess’s death, her own sacrifice, her noble choice to die for the country yet show mercy to Yu Xue—it all made her betrayal more than a mere betrayal.
It was something she could never forgive herself for, something she couldn’t face.
She had committed an unforgivable sin, one that would haunt her every day in self-judgment.
She couldn’t bear this realization, so she went mad, trying to escape from it.
That’s why, in her mind, the only thing she could repeat was: "He deceived me."
But now, at this moment, the shattered pieces of her mind were slowly being put together again, and she was facing everything with clarity like never before.
She clutched the white robe tightly, tears flowing down her face. Her voice was hoarse with sobs, "Princess, I know I was wrong, can you forgive me?"
The white-robed woman looked down at her, her eyes clouded and youthful, a little younger than the princess Yu Xue remembered. But this was still her princess.
Yu Xue waited for the princess's answer.
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