Chapter 71
Chapter 71: The Mad Princess’s Lethal Obsession
The young ladies climbed back into the carriage after leaving the clinic, each of them turning the day over in her mind, searching for the knot at the heart of it.
Everyone in the capital’s circles of noble ladies knew it: Third Princess Xuan Ji coveted cousin Lin Qing Xuan’s beauty. It was hardly a secret.
Her Princess Manor kept male favorites of every kind—seductive, delicate, strong, soft… as if she were collecting them like trinkets.
Only one “type” was missing.
Lin Qing Xuan.
Cold and abstinent, like an immortal fallen into the mortal realm.
That Buddhist scion—born with holiness clinging to his bones—was a bright moon hung high in the sky, a sacred snowpeak no one could defile.
And the more Xuan Ji couldn’t have him, the more it clawed at her.
More than once at lavish banquets, with a hall full of powerful nobles watching, she would tap her cup with lacquered fingers, eyes hazy with drink, and shout words bold enough to freeze the room.
“What bullshit Buddhist scion? Sooner or later I’ll make him strip off his monk robes, kneel at my feet, and beg me—crying—for mercy!”
Now Qiu Ru Ying wasn’t only slipping in and out of the Heir Apparent’s Manor; she was carrying a translated scripture copy Lin Qing Xuan had transcribed with his own hand.
To Xuan Ji’s twisted mind, it was the same as standing in public and announcing, We’re about to discuss marriage.
If she couldn’t have him, no other woman would be allowed to touch him.
Lin Yu Wan grasped it first: Xuan Ji meant to ruin Qiu Ru Ying.
“Crazy bitch,” Lin Yu Jiao spat, anger sharp enough to sting her tongue. “That lunatic—what’s wrong with her head?”
The more she thought about it, the guiltier she became. She grabbed Qiu Ru Ying’s hand, eyes reddening as panic rose like bile.
“Ru Ying, I’m sorry. It’s all my fault! If I hadn’t insisted on matching you with cousin, if I hadn’t run my mouth and shown off that scripture, that madwoman wouldn’t have fixated on you… This is pure bad luck. It’s all on me!”
Her voice trembled, on the verge of breaking.
But Qiu Ru Ying, oddly, settled into calm.
She patted Lin Yu Jiao’s hand gently and shook her head. “It isn’t.”
Her voice was soft, carrying a strange steadiness. “Even if today hadn’t happened, she would’ve found another excuse. A mad dog doesn’t need a reason to bite.”
Then she turned to Lin Yu Wan and Xiao Man and bowed with solemn gratitude.
“Thank you—for today. If not for you, I…”
She didn’t finish. None of them needed her to.
Xiao Man sighed in silence. That Buddhist scion’s face really was a troublemaker’s beacon. Beauty had always been a thin shield—whether it belonged to a woman or a man.
They didn’t dare linger. They escorted Qiu Ru Ying home at a furious pace.
Only after they watched her step across the high threshold of Qiu Manor did their suspended hearts drop a fraction.
The moment Qiu Ru Ying entered, she dismissed the servants and told her parents everything, from beginning to end.
The reception hall fell into a dead, suffocating silence.
Assistant Minister Qiu listened, and the refined calm of his face vanished. His features turned iron-blue. The teacup in his hand creaked faintly as his fingers whitened.
Bang!
He slammed it onto the table so hard the hot tea splashed.
“Outrageous. Outrageous!”
He shook with fury. “A royal princess—this vicious? In broad daylight she dared plot to ruin my daughter’s chastity!”
It wasn’t fear driving him. It was rage: the humiliation of a minister and the towering fury of a father.
“The Third Princess is poisonous by nature,” he forced out, grinding the words between his teeth. “Her hands are ruthless. And she’s always been favored before His Majesty.”
He dragged himself back into cold reasoning, no matter how his blood boiled.
“We have no hard evidence. Even if we take this before the throne, she’ll talk her way free. In the end, it’s your reputation, Ru Ying, that will be muddied even further.”
His gaze hardened. “This cannot end here.”
Madam Qiu had already gone pale with terror. Tears fell in strings as she wrapped her arms around her daughter.
“My child… what do we do? She won’t let you go…”
Then, as if grabbing the last rope above a flood, she snapped her head up.
“Go to Jiang Du. Yes—Jiang Du!” Her voice rose, frantic. “Ru Ying, leave at dawn tomorrow. Go to your grandmother’s home in Jiang Du and hide for a while. Quickly!”
That night, Qiu Manor stayed lit as bright as day.
Maids and old maidservants moved fast, but kept their footsteps soft, packing box after box: deeds, jewel caskets, clothes for every season, everyday medicines. Everything was loaded in silence, the air inside the estate tight with fear.
Before dawn fully broke, with only a pale wash of light spreading in the east, an unremarkable blue-cloth carriage slipped out the back gate. Thick fabric wrapped its axles to hush the wheels. It avoided prying eyes and rolled toward Jiang Du, vanishing into the dust.
The next morning.
Behind Third Princess Xuan Ji’s private residence, in a filthy alley, several guards carried something out.
It was wrapped in a rotten, moldy straw mat—more tied up than covered.
The wet mat couldn’t contain it. Dark, sticky blood mixed with mud seeped through the gaps, drip by drip, drawing a nauseating trail across the dirt.
They heaved the body onto a handcart, rough as if throwing away a bag of stinking garbage.
“Another one,” a guard muttered, wiping stray blood from his cheek with his sleeve, his tone numb with habit. “Last month that singer thought he’d caught her eye. What happened? Tongue ripped out, tossed to the mass grave to feed dogs. These outsiders never learn.”
Another guard curled his lip, contempt plain on his face. “If you want to cling to dragons and phoenixes, you’d better see whether they eat people. You think a princess’s bed is that easy to climb into?”
The cart creaked over the muddy road—creak, creak—leaving broken lines of blood in its tracks.
These male favorites were rootless duckweed. They died, and no one asked.
To Third Princess Xuan Ji, their lives were worth less than roadside ants.
Up in a tall pavilion, Xuan Ji was calmly pruning a pot of precious ink chrysanthemums.
She heard the noise below and didn’t even lift her eyelids. Only when the cart turned the corner and disappeared did she snip—
snick—
cutting off the fullest bloom.
She brought it to her nose and inhaled lightly. A slow, cruel smile curved her lips, mocking as winter.
A maidservant approached in silence, knelt, and reported, “Highness, the Qiu family’s miss… left the city overnight. She’s headed for Jiang Du.”
Xuan Ji tossed the flower to the ground and, with the tip of her gold-embroidered shoe, ground it to pulp.
It was almost funny.
A frightened rabbit, running for its burrow. Let it run. Was she going to waste effort chasing it?
Her gaze sharpened, like a hawk fixing on prey. It pierced layers of rooftops and locked on the direction of the Heir Apparent’s Manor.
That was where her true target lived.
That cold, aloof moon.
Xuan Ji’s eyes turned hot—greedy, hungry, and mad with certainty.