Chapter 72
Chapter 72: Brown-Sugar Mochi, a Blade Tempered in Poison
On the carriage ride back, the air sat heavy. Lingering fear and fresh fury braided into a silence thick as storm cloud.
Qiu Ru Ying’s tearful, grateful look at parting weighed on the hearts of the Lin family’s three sisters—and on Xiao Man’s, too.
By the time they returned to the General’s Manor, dusk had nearly settled.
The three sisters exchanged a single glance. Seeing the same gravity in one another’s eyes, they turned their steps toward the main courtyard where their parents lived.
Xiao Man, meanwhile, bolted straight for Auspicious Cloud Residence.
She shoved open the gate and swept inside like a gust.
In the study, Lin Qing Xuan sat by the window with a scripture scroll in hand and a cup of clear tea beside it—serene, otherworldly, as if the world had never learned how to touch him.
“Eldest Young Master, you’re awfully relaxed!”
Lin Qing Xuan looked up. The moment he saw her, something eased in his eyes, and a faint smile surfaced.
“You’re back.”
His voice was clear, gentle—steady enough to calm a heartbeat.
“If I hadn’t come back,” Xiao Man snapped, “that Miss Qiu’s life would’ve been wrecked by your face!”
She marched up to his desk, and her gaze snagged on a plate of delicate osmanthus cakes. After an afternoon of running, she was starving.
“I’m dying here!”
She grabbed one and shoved it into her mouth without ceremony.
The cake was dry. She swallowed too fast and immediately choked.
“Cough—cough, cough!”
Her face flushed as she pounded her own chest.
Lin Qing Xuan moved in one smooth motion. He set down the scroll, raised the teacup to her lips, and placed his other hand against her back, patting with a gentle rhythm.
“Slowly,” he said, helpless fondness threading his tone. “No one’s taking it from you.”
Warm tea slid down her throat and finally forced the bite loose.
Xiao Man coughed until tears welled. She gulped another mouthful and finally felt alive again.
Then she lifted her head—and met Lin Qing Xuan’s face up close, concern plain in his eyes.
The fire in her chest flared again.
She shoved his hand away and jabbed a finger at him. “This is all your fault!”
“Mm.” Lin Qing Xuan accepted it without resistance. “My fault.”
“Your face almost got Qiu Ru Ying killed today.”
He nodded with grave sincerity. “It’s guilty.”
That calm, effortless agreement left Xiao Man feeling like she’d punched a pillow. Her anger skidded.
Fine. No more circling.
She laid it out, straight and fast: how Third Princess Xuan Ji had used winter green peonies as bait, lured everyone to a villa under the guise of a flower-viewing, and tried to destroy Qiu Ru Ying’s chastity with drugged incense and hired men.
She told him how they broke in. How they pulled Qiu Ru Ying back from the brink. Every detail, spilled in one breath.
She was vivid, sharp-tongued, hands flying whenever anger surged.
“That Third Princess—ptoo! She wears a gold-branch-and-jade-leaf title, but her heart’s been dyed black. More vicious than a mangy dog in the mass grave!”
Lin Qing Xuan listened in silence. The earlier smile vanished.
When Xiao Man reached the part about Qiu Ru Ying collapsing from the drug, nearly defiled, Lin Qing Xuan’s brows drew tight. The warmth around him drained into something cold and dangerous.
After she finished, he spoke at last, voice like ice.
“Disgusting. All the scriptures she’s listened to—straight into a dog’s belly.”
Xiao Man finally found someone who felt the same. She nodded hard, then narrowed her eyes, a crooked grin tugging at her mouth.
“Oh? Eldest Young Master, you really think she went to listen to your scripture talks?”
She mimicked a noble lady’s dainty voice, sweet enough to make her own skin crawl. “The drunk doesn’t care about the wine—she cares about the one pouring it!”
Lin Qing Xuan lifted a brow. The cold menace in him vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by something thoughtful—keen.
“Lesson received,” he said.
Then he leaned closer, lowering his voice until it turned rich and dangerous. “Only… do you care about the one pouring?”
“Cough—cough!”
Xiao Man nearly choked again, more from the shamelessness than anything else. Coming from him—so calm, so composed—it landed like a soft strike to the heart. Embarrassing. Annoying. Impossible to ignore.
Her face went hot. She looked anywhere but into his eyes.
“Y-you—stop talking nonsense! We’re discussing something serious. Don’t interrupt!”
Desperate to regain control, she pointed at the remaining cakes, scowling like they had personally offended her.
“And these are too dry! Next time—next time I’ll make you brown-sugar mochi. Soft, chewy, sweet. A hundred times better than this.”
Lin Qing Xuan’s smile deepened, then his gaze steadied and turned serious again.
“I know you did a great deed today,” he said. “You risked yourself to save someone.”
His tone tightened. “But it was too dangerous—for you and for Wanwan. In the future, think before you act.”
Xiao Man huffed, unwilling to back down. “When it’s that urgent, if I stop to think three times, Miss Qiu would’ve been finished.”
Elsewhere, in the General’s Manor main courtyard, the atmosphere could have frozen water.
General Lin De Shang sat in the main seat, face dark with rage. A crack split the pear-wood table beside him—a mark left by his own palm when fury struck.
Madam Liu clutched her handkerchief, eyes red, still shaken.
The three sisters stood below, solemn and tight-lipped.
The eldest had already reported the day’s danger—plain facts, no embellishment—yet every word had hammered into their parents’ hearts.
“Outrageous!” Lin De Shang roared. “A royal princess, acting this filthy? Shameless! She treats lives like grass and law like air—and she dares call herself imperial blood?”
His voice shook dust from the beams.
“She dares bully a minister’s daughter so brazenly—does the capital have any law left at all?”
Madam Liu’s voice trembled. “Heavens… for an unmarried miss, her reputation is her life. What the Third Princess did is no different from murder. It’s worse than murder.”
Lin De Shang paced, fury burning hotter with each step.
“No. This cannot be allowed to pass.”
He stopped, eyes blazing. “Tomorrow morning I go to court. I will impeach her. I want to ask His Majesty if this is how he teaches his daughter!”
“Father—no!” Lin Yu Wan and Lin Yu Jiao cried at once.
Madam Liu hurried forward, alarmed. “Master, please—don’t act on impulse. Calm down first!”
“How can I?” Lin De Shang snapped. “Today it was the Qiu family’s miss. Who can promise tomorrow it won’t be our Wanwan, Jiao Jiao, and Ning Ning? Do I have to wait until tragedy happens in my own house before I speak?”
“Father, we don’t mean that,” Lin Yu Wan said, stepping forward, eyes steady and sharp. “But the Third Princess is above us. If you charge in without preparation—without physical proof, with only our word—how will you force her to confess? We won’t convict her. We’ll be accused of slandering the imperial clan.”
Lin Yu Jiao added quickly, “Everyone in that villa is her confidant. We can’t find witnesses.”
Reason cooled Lin De Shang’s rage by inches. He exhaled hard, then slumped back into his chair and punched his own thigh, frustration bitter in his chest.
“Then we just watch that poisonous woman roam free and keep harming people?”
A cold light flickered in Lin Yu Wan’s eyes, too sharp for her age.
“Father. Mother. Rest assured,” she said, each word firm as iron. “To deal with a venomous snake, either you don’t move at all… or you strike once, deadly. You break its vital point and leave it no chance to rise again.”
Night deepened.
Auspicious Cloud Residence’s study still glowed with lamplight.
Xiao Man had already gone to rest. The air seemed to hold traces of her—bright, warm, alive—and the sweet promise of brown-sugar mochi.
Lin Qing Xuan, however, wore no smile.
He stood by the window, moonlight laying a frost-bright sheen across his profile.
A royal princess’s depravity had crossed every line.
He returned to his desk and spread out fresh paper. He dipped his brush in ink.
The tip hovered—
then fell.
Not into scripture. Not into mountains and water.
A name.
Third Princess Xuan Ji.
Impeach her?
No.
Too easy. Too kind.
The chill in Lin Qing Xuan’s eyes ran deeper than night.
He didn’t want her scolded for a few lines, confined for a few days.
He wanted her—and the tangled forces behind her—ripped out by the roots, crushed into dust.
For that, he needed evidence.
He needed a flawless plan. A moment sharp enough to drag every sin into the sunlight.
The brush in his hand was no longer a tool of compassion.
It became a blade—waiting to drink blood.