The Mirror of Startling Beauty: Her courtiers are everywhere

Regent Qi Si remained silent for a long time, and the chilling pressure that seemed to freeze the air around him finally receded slowly like a tide.

Instead, there was a near-weary silence.

He raised his eyes, and when his gaze fell on Tang Xixue again, the scrutiny and sharpness in his eyes had mostly subsided.

"Since Princess Jing has been kind to Yao Yao," he said slowly, his voice still deep, but lacking the previous sharpness and instead carrying an undeniable certainty, "she is an honored guest of my Beichuan Yunting, a high-ranking official whom I should treat with the utmost courtesy."

As soon as he finished speaking, the regent, who held immense power and was always revered and worshipped by the world, bowed slightly and solemnly cupped his hands in the direction of Tang Xixue.

The gesture was not exaggerated, and could even be described as restrained, but everyone present understood the weight it carried—it was not just a simple expression of gratitude, but a near-public endorsement and a statement of position.

Then, he turned his head to look at Qi Wang, whose expression was tense and whose eyes were full of resentment, and spoke in a calm but unyielding tone:

"Your Excellency, when you see Princess Jing in the future, you must be respectful and not show the slightest disrespect or rudeness."

"..."

Qi Wang's jawline suddenly tightened, and his jaw clenched slightly.

He loathed Tang Xixue and avoided her like the plague, but now his uncle wanted him to appoint her as a high minister.

His chest heaved violently, and he ultimately swallowed the rebuttal that almost burst out.

She abruptly turned her face away, slightly raising her chin, choosing to confront the situation with silence.

He exuded an aura of rigid, non-violent non-cooperation.

He looked at Regent Qi Si, then at Pei Yanchuan, and felt a surge of absurdity and helplessness.

In his opinion, these two people were simply... seriously ill.

Qi Si paid no attention to his nephew's resistance; all his attention had returned to Pei Yanchuan.

In those deep eyes, there surged an indescribable anxiety and an almost earnest gloom.

"Ying Lin," he took half a step forward, lowering his voice, even adding a hint of barely perceptible bitterness, "please... take me to see Yao Yao."

He met the boy's still wary and distant gaze and spoke again.

"Regarding the Pei family's affairs, I truly... knew nothing. The dispute over the mineral veins back then involved a wide range of people, and I was unable to attend to everything. By the time I received the news... it was too late."

His eyes held a deep pain and weariness that five years had not been able to erase.

Whether you believe it or not...

In order to see that figure he longed for, the regent, who was used to looking down on all living beings, finally put aside the pride that belonged to a king and showed an unusually humble plea in front of the boy he once regarded as a nephew.

The floodgates of memory burst open in the darkness of my heart.

He, Pei Zhao, and Mei Ruohuan were childhood sweethearts who grew up together under the eaves of the academy.

At that time, the green tiles reflected the morning glow, and the red corridors turned under the bright moon. The figures of the three were always bathed in the spring breeze and autumn dew, like a long scroll of ink painting that had not yet dried.

"A-Si—"

The girl's voice carried a touch of moonlight and a hint of autumn water, rippling through the corridor and startling a few magnolia petals from the branches.

Mei Ruohuan stood in the morning light, holding a book, her eyes sparkling with a clarity like newly melted snow.

"Graceful".

As he responded, his fingertips unconsciously caressed the plum blossom hairpin with a crescent moon carved on it hidden in his sleeve.

He was clearly smitten earlier than Pei Zhao, who always smiled as he made his moves at the chessboard and whose words were always eloquent.

Even earlier, the two characters "窈窈" were deeply imprinted on the softest part of my heart, like a seal.

On a carefree afternoon in his youth, he rested his head on the gnarled roots of a plum tree, watching the drifting clouds sweep across the blue sky:

"Yaoyao, will we always be together?"

She raised her head from between the pages of the Book of Songs, her eyelashes fluttering with the golden fragments that had filtered through the leaves:

"Yes, it will. By the time you finish reading 'Six Secret Teachings' and I finish annotating 'The Cloud Recitation,' spring... will have arrived."

A shallow dimple appeared at the corner of her lips. "We can go to Nanfeng Mountain again to see the peach blossoms in full bloom."

"Ah Si, Yao Yao, you're slacking off here again." Pei Zhao, carrying a food box, turned through the moon gate, his sleeves still smelling of ink. "The headmaster just asked about the commentaries on the 'Yu Gong'."

"Brother Pei will definitely help us out," she winked mischievously, the white plum blossom hairpin at her temple trembling slightly, "yesterday's game of chess, the score was the one I secretly passed on to you—"

Youthful days slip through your fingers like sand.

Until that day when snow covered the plum branches, he handed over a wooden hairpin carved in the shape of a plum blossom, his fingertips frosted with a thin layer of frost:

"Yaoyao, the border is in dire need of help... Father said that if I win this battle, he will grant me one wish."

She was tying a ribbon with a blessing written in cinnabar to the highest branch of the old plum tree.

Pei Zhaojing stood three steps away, the bronze hand warmer he held emitting white steam, and fine snow had already covered his bamboo-like shoulders.

"May A Si's sword lead him to a smooth path."

"May Brother Pei's chess pieces echo wherever they are placed."

Pei Zhao asked gently, "And what about Yao Yao herself?"

She looked back at the two people standing side by side in the snow, her eyes reflecting the pure white of the world:

"I pray...that every year may be like this morning."

He always believed that spring breezes are trustworthy and that there would be plenty of time in the future.

But fate is most adept at taking unexpected turns—when she returned from her mission to Beichen, she found herself stepping onto the brocade carpet of a foreign prime minister's residence.

The day the good news reached the northern frontier, the clear sky seemed to crack inch by inch in his eyes.

He sat alone in his military tent, watching the long night devour the setting sun, until his heart was ripped out into a desolate snowfield.

He was the one who first encountered the plum blossoms, yet someone else broke off a branch.

From then on, the cold moon over the border became armor, and the blood, fire, and smoke of war served as tombs.

His illustrious military achievements built a towering platform, yet could not bury the festering wound in his heart.

Until one day, a secret report arrived by fast horse: she had divorced and returned to her country.

The stagnant lake of my heart suddenly burst its banks.

He galloped eight hundred miles day and night, shattering the moonlight of twelve mountain passes, and finally burst through the vermilion gates of Wangxue City at dusk—only to be met with a city full of red silk, and lanterns under the eaves of the Pei Mansion as red as blood.

Only when the suona pierced his eardrums did he taste the rusty, metallic taste in his throat.

Pei Zhao, who had shielded him from punishment and solved his chess problems since childhood, and who jokingly said "Yaoyao is a treasure," was wearing a bright red auspicious robe and handing a scale tied with a love knot to the beaded curtain hanging from her phoenix crown.

On the night the red candle burned out his reason, he led his iron cavalry to break down the door.

The long sword knocked the nuptial cup away, and the scarlet wine soaked through the brocade quilt adorned with mandarin ducks.

Pei Zhao was bound under the plum tree in the courtyard, his clothes covered in dust, yet he still stood tall and straight.

"Qi Si, don't hurt her."

He swept his bride, whose wedding dress was ablaze with color, into his arms, his laughter shrill as he stepped over the mess on the ground.

"Scholar Pei, I would like to borrow your wife for a moment."

Inside the red curtains of the Regent's Palace, his hands trembled as he reached to unbutton her clothes.

"My dear Yao... without you, I would die..."

You said...we would always be together...

"Yaoyao, you lied to me..."

"Yaoyao, let's... go to utter ruin together!"

The next morning, Pei Zhao stood alone at the gate of the Regent's Palace.

"Your Highness Regent, I have come to fetch the Lady."

At the moment of parting, they severed ties by cutting their robes, and in the sound of the brocade tearing, they heard the rumbling of their own hearts collapsing.

When the devastating news of the Pei clan's downfall arrived, he was at the border conducting an important negotiation with the Xingze Empire.

Immediately, he disregarded everything else and began a frenzied, day-and-night trek of three thousand miles.

However, all that awaited him was the charred ruins of the Pei residence and the lingering smell of blood and acrid odor in the air.

He frantically searched through the ruins, his fingers raw and bloodied, but he couldn't find a trace of her.

For five long years after that, he used every available resource he had, turning Beichuan upside down, but he still couldn't find the whereabouts of the mother and son.

They vanished without a trace, as if they had evaporated into thin air.

If it weren't for the persistent pain from the silken thread curse in his heart, a testament to her continued life, he would likely have already collapsed in endless searching and despair.

Tonight, seeing Qi Wang's undisguised protection of Pei Yanchuan, and the wariness and hostility in the boy's eyes, Qi Si sneered inwardly and suddenly realized what was going on.

Suddenly, I glimpsed the most ironic stroke of fate.

It turns out that the five years of searching for each other after being separated by death, and the five years of heart-wrenching regret, were nothing but a ridiculous game of chess.

No wonder he, the regent of Kitagawa, with his immense power and intelligence network, searched for someone for five years without success.

It turns out the biggest traitor was right beside me.

His good nephew, in order to protect his close friend, has secretly tripped him up countless times and laid countless traps for him.

Pei Yanchuan, probably because of that massacre, believed that Qi Si was the culprit who killed him out of love turned to hatred.

So even when he was displaced and destitute, he never thought of asking his enemy for help.

Candle tears piled up into coral-colored hills, while the wind and snow outside the palace intensified.

Qi Si gazed at Pei Yanchuan's slender figure, his Adam's apple bobbing, and finally spoke in a hoarse voice:

"Ying Lin, take me to see her."

These words, weathered by five years of trials, fell to the ground with a sound as light as a sigh.

"I beg you... even if it's just me."