The mad princess forces love upon him, and the aloof imperial advisor trembles every night.

The hall was deathly silent.

Only Chu Xuanjing's suppressed groans sounded like the mournful cry of a dying beast.

The Empress gripped the armrests of the throne tightly, breaking two of her fingernails and drawing blood, but she was completely unaware.

As she looked at the "ironclad evidence" on the ground and at every subtle change in the Chu Emperor's expression, a chill crept into her heart.

wrong.

Everything... has gone too smoothly.

It was as smooth as if a giant hand had been guiding it, a pre-written script where every element was perfectly aligned and every character was in the right place at the right time.

Chu Xuanjing's self-inflicted injury ruse, the opportune moment when the poison took effect, the blood-written letter presented, identifying his birth mother...

Even Minister Li's breakdown and rebuttal were expected and became footnotes to confirm the authenticity of the "ironclad evidence"!

Who exactly is the person behind this?

"Your Majesty—!" Minister Li cried out, tears streaming down his face, and kowtowed to the ground.

"Your Majesty, please have mercy! My daughter must have been coerced!"

"How could a mere palace woman, powerless and defenseless, possibly betray her country and collude with the enemy?!"

"This must be a trap set by someone to wipe out my entire Li family, Your Majesty!!"

"A woman from the inner palace?" Emperor Chu sneered. "Could a woman from the inner palace raise such a 'filial son'—who would even betray his own mother to save his own life?"

His gaze fell on Chu Xuanjing as if he were looking at a pile of rotting flesh: "Issue my decree."

The chief eunuch listened attentively, and offered him pen and ink.

"The Third Prince, Chu Xuanjing, upheld justice by exposing his own family's wrongdoing. However, for a son to accuse his own mother is unfilial and contrary to human ethics."

"He may be spared the death penalty, but he cannot escape punishment—he will be severely punished with fifty strokes of the cane and confined to the Third Prince's residence, where he is not to leave without an imperial edict."

Fifty strokes of the cane... For someone who has just been poisoned and whose shoulder bone has been shattered, how is that any different from the death penalty?

"As for the Li family..." Emperor Chu paused, a faint trace of weariness in his voice, "Give them white silk. Their bodies are not to be placed in the imperial mausoleum; throw them into a mass grave."

"His Majesty--!!!"

Minister Li let out a mournful wail and fainted.

---

————Jingsi Garden————

Consort Li—now she should be called Lady Li—sat quietly in front of her dressing table, doing her makeup in front of the mirror.

The woman in the bronze mirror was in her thirties, still beautiful, but the fine lines around her eyes could no longer be concealed.

She drew her eyebrows, applied lipstick, and put on her favorite peach blossom rouge. Then she opened the bottom of her makeup box and took out a gilded and kingfisher feather hairpin.

That was bought for her with his first salary when Chu Xuanjing was fifteen years old.

She put on the hair ornament, looked at herself in the mirror from left to right, and smiled gently.

"Your Majesty..." The personal maid knelt beside her, tears streaming down her face, "Please don't be like this... The Third Prince will definitely save you..."

"He won't," Li's voice was calm.

"My Jing'er, I know him best. When it comes to life and death, he will choose the path that is most beneficial to him."

She got up, walked to the window, and looked at the withered crabapple tree in the yard.

"I planted this crabapple tree myself the year Jing'er was born. It bloomed beautifully that year, and His Majesty even praised me for my skillful hands."

She reached out and touched the cracked bark of the tree. "But then Jing'er got sick, and I took care of her day and night. I forgot to water it, and it died."

"Like some things, once they're dead, they're dead; you can't bring them back to life."

The courtyard gate was pushed open.

A eunuch entered carrying a tray, the white silk neatly folded, with a pot of wine and a cup on it.

Li turned around, looking at the blinding white light, her smile growing even gentler.

"Thank you for your trouble, Eunuch." She walked over and took the tray herself. "Allow me... allow me to do my final grooming."

The eunuch retreated outside the door.

Li picked up the wine pot and poured herself a cup.

The wine's clear, bright color reflected off her exquisitely made-up face.

She didn't drink it.

Instead, she went to the dressing table, took out a small porcelain bottle from a hidden compartment in the drawer, poured the powder inside into the wine pot, and gently shook it.

Then she summoned a palace maid: "Go and bring me my moon-white dress embroidered with begonias—the one Jing'er likes the most."

The palace maid left in tears.

Looking in the bronze mirror, Li slowly removed her hairpins and ornaments, loosened her hair, and finally even wiped away her rouge.

The person in the mirror was bare-faced, with gentle features, and vaguely resembled the person when she first entered the palace twenty years ago.

She changed into that moon-white dress, and restyled her hair into a simple bun, securing it with just a plain silver hairpin.

Then he picked up his glass and drank it all in one gulp.

The poison took effect very quickly.

A sharp pain exploded from her internal organs. She curled up on the ground, blood gushing from the corner of her mouth, staining her moon-white dress red.

Before her vision blurred, she saw the hairpin on the dressing table, shimmering gently in the morning light.

"Jing'er..."

She reached out her hand, wanting to touch it, but ultimately her hand fell limply to her side.

In her final moment, she remembered an afternoon many years ago when little Chu Xuanjing lay on her lap, saying in his childish voice:

"Mother, when I grow up, I will build you the biggest palace and plant it with crabapple blossoms."

The sun was shining brightly then, and the crabapple blossoms were in full bloom.

It's a pity, we won't be able to wait that long.

——————Star-Picking Tower—————

It's been three days.

Chu Qingyue did not eat, drink, sleep, or rest for three days...

She simply leaned against the soft couch by the window, watching the star charts shift during the day and gazing at the lonely moon hanging in the sky at night.

Her face grew paler day by day, and her lips became lighter in color.

His eyes grew brighter day by day, so bright they were almost blinding, so bright they seemed to drive one mad.

On the fourth day, Si Chen appeared silently behind her, looking at her fragile appearance as if she could break at any moment, her breathing almost imperceptibly disordered.

For the first time in four hundred years, he felt an almost powerless exhaustion.

It wasn't the exhaustion from depleted spiritual energy, but rather... the exhaustion of being helpless and at a loss when facing a complete madman.

A madman who has hatred and destruction etched into his very bones, yet is also incredibly intelligent and ruthless.

She... was like a burning inferno.

The more you try to extinguish her, the more fiercely she rebounds.

When she was imprisoned, she resisted by starving herself to death.

When he forced her to listen to the sutras, she used the most filthy words to blaspheme his faith.

Even when her food and drink were cut off, she endured the pain until she vomited blood, but she refused to yield in the slightest.

Although he couldn't understand the ancient secret language she whispered to the kingfisher that day, he could sense an overwhelming killing intent in it.

During the eight years she grew up by his side, she was a well-behaved, obedient, and innocent little girl.

She would tug at his sleeve, tilt her rosy little face up, and softly call out, "Fairy Brother!"

He would count stars on the observatory until the little girl, who had fallen asleep in his arms, drifted off to sleep...

Only seven years.

How could seven years have transformed that bright and carefree girl into this rebellious, world-ending monster who seems to want to burn the heavens and earth to ashes?

"Si Chen, look at the moonlight tonight, doesn't it look especially good on me?"

Chu Qingyue's mocking voice pulled him back to reality.

She tilted her head, her eyes as innocent as the little girl who used to tug at his sleeve and count the stars, yet the words she uttered were laced with venom:

"They say a beauty is amplified under the moonlight... Does the Imperial Advisor think I am beautiful in my current state, half-dead?"