“Good girl. On behalf of my son, I apologize to you, Miss Yi.” Rong Yi helped Yi Qianying up and helped her brush aside the stray hairs by her temple.

Yun Ruoyao clearly didn’t understand Yi Qianying’s thought process. The crown princess would be the future empress! Was Yi Qianying crazy, to give up a chance at such power and prestige?!

On the other hand, Yun Ruoyan examined her cousin thoughtfully.

“Your sister’s not a simple girl to deal with,” Li Mo whispered into Yun Ruoyan’s ears. “But with me around, you won’t have anything to fear.”

Thus concluded the triannual flower-viewing party.

Rather than returning to the Yi family, Yi Qianying followed Yun Ruoyao and Yun Ruoyan back to the Yuns. When Yun Lan found out about what had happened, although he thought it somewhat damaging to the Yuns’ reputation, he was satisfied that the crown prince had at least taken responsibility for the affair.

Her grandmother, the Yun matriarch, contemplated the news quietly. She stared at Yi Qianying with a complicated expression while mulling the information over, as if trying to discern what she thought of the matter. After quite a while, she finally closed her old, lined eyes. Madam An was the happiest, and she handed Yi Qianying a pair of cat’s-eye earrings as a gift.

“Mother, the empress originally handed Yi Qianying the position of crown princess, but she actually refused it! I can’t believe she was willing to settle for the role of one of his concubines,” Yun Ruoyao recounted to her mother in her residence.

The crown prince could have two concubines, but only one crown princess. The crown princess would even be able to ascend to the throne. How could Yi Qianying have given up such a valuable position?

“This is what makes Qianying so clever,” Madam An commented, as she pruned the newly grown peonies. “This child knows her place in society. The position of crown princess is certainly valuable, so valuable that she’s undeserving of it. If she had accepted the empress’ offer, I promise you, she wouldn’t have lived to see another year.”

Hearing her mother’s words, Yun Ruoyao felt cold sweat drench her back. If she had been found under similar circumstances, she would have accepted the empress’ offer without a second thought. What would have happened to her then?

Madam An clearly knew what Yun Ruoyao was thinking, because she smiled and continued, “Silly girl, you don’t have to worry about any of this. Even though she’s the sole wife-born daughter, Yun Ruoyan can hardly find a groom. Among the Yun daughters, you’ll have the grandest marriage and the largest dowry, and you certainly have the status to be the crown princess.”

Yun Ruoyao thought back to the crown prince’s behavior yesterday. “No, oh no.” She shook her head immediately. “Having Qianying there is quite enough.”

Madam An looked toward her crimson-red peonies and smiled in satisfaction. “Qianying should consider herself lucky to be the crown prince’s concubine, given her birth.”

Yun Ruoyao then told her mother about the Slaughtering King and Yun Ruoyan. While Madam An was initially shocked, she then began to laugh. It was fitting that as eccentric a personality as the Slaughtering King would pick someone like Yun Ruoyan.

“But wouldn’t that be a problem for us, Mother?”

“The Slaughtering King might be well-known throughout the entire continent, but he doesn’t have a good reputation. There are no wars on the horizon, and his martial skills don’t mean anything in times of peace. Removing a girl as vexing as Yun Ruoyan from this household won’t hurt us.”

The vexing Yun Ruoyan was feeling quite vexed herself. The Slaughtering King, whom she’d rarely encountered in the past, now began to show up with increasing frequency in her rooms. Furthermore, just like Li Qianhan, he didn’t like going through the main entrance.

Unlike Li Qianhan, however, Yun Ruoyan couldn’t even feel Li Mo’s presence at all. He snuck in and out almost as if he were a ghost, and even Qiuqiu had no recourse against him.

One night, Yun Ruoyan was just about to wash the birthmark off her face when her back window opened, and Li Mo entered her rooms like a gust of wind. It shocked Yun Ruoyan so much that she almost spilled her basin of water.

Li Mo handed a white jade bottle to Yun Ruoyan, supposedly containing “a miraculous salve for improving her appearance”, and refused to leave until she applied it on her skin.

With no other recourse, Yun Ruoyan could only do so. On Li Mo’s request, she applied the sweet-smelling salve evenly over her face, then closed her eyes for about fifteen minutes. When she next opened them, Li Mo had vanished.

Another afternoon, while she was meditating, she suddenly felt someone’s eyes on her. When she opened her eyes, she was so shocked that her heart almost burst out of her ribs.

Li Mo’s ink-dark eyes were right in front of hers, and their noses were almost touching. She reached out to push him away, but Li Mo dragged her into his embrace instead. She was about to scream when Li Mo kissed her passionately.

Yun Ruoyan began to struggle in earnest, but the more she did so, the more ferociously Li Mo kissed her. In the end, she almost cried. When she blinked, the tears beaded up and rolled down her face, and the pervert actually caught one with a finger and gave it a taste. He even seemed to enjoy it, as if her tears were a sort of delicacy.

Afterwards, with that magnetic voice of his, he added, “Yan’er, you really taste good. If not for my self-restraint, I’d have eaten you up long ago.”

Yun Ruoyan was certain that Li Mo was an unbelievable pervert. The crystallized wisdom from her many dealings with him was that, as long as she ignored and was unresponsive to his advances, then she would be safe.

Whenever Li Mo appeared, Yun Ruoyan would stop whatever she was doing, lie in bed, and pretend to be dead.

At that point, Li Mo would only look at her silently before sighing, “Yan’er, it’s no fun when you don’t resist.”

After she had done that a few times, the Slaughtering King finally stopped showing up for a few days in a row.

Two days later, after Yun Ruoyan made sure that her back window was firmly sealed, she finally relaxed and washed her face cleanly. Her fake birthmark had long since hardened, and Yun Ruoyan had to peel the gunk off her face.

“Oh, this is so comfortable.” Yun Ruoyan dunked her entire head into the bathtub before letting out a satisfied moan.

In order to deal with Li Mo’s sudden appearances, Yun Ruoyan had kept the fake birthmark on her face, unable to wash it off lest Li Mo show up at that exact moment. In the hot summer heat, half her face was trapped in what essentially amounted to an airtight mask.

It was a terribly uncomfortable feeling, and it was quite fortuitous that the ointments that Lin Zainan had given her weren’t harmful to the skin. Otherwise, she would surely have developed sweat rashes all over the left half of her face.

Yun Ruoyan lay in the bathtub as she glanced at the salves that Li Mo continued to bring her. It was a brown substance, sticky and somewhat gel-like in consistency. She rubbed it in her palms, waited for them to become frothy, and then applied the gel to her face.

If nothing else, applying it on her face gave her a very satisfying feeling, so much so that she wouldn’t be able to have a good night’s sleep without having done so.

It was late at night, and after Yun Ruoyan finished her nightly cultivation routine, she quickly fell asleep.

A long fingernail slowly picked at the latch to her back window, and the tightly closed latch easily popped off after some deft manipulation. Li Mo pushed the window open and jumped into her room.

Yun Ruoyan turned in her sleep, her mouth forming the barest hint of a smile. The midsummer night’s moonlight was like a bright, white veil in front of her bed.

A black shadow slowly trod on this veil.

Li Mo glanced at Yun Ruoyan. In her sleep, with the birthmark removed from her face, she shone more brilliantly than even the most vibrant phoenix orchid.

“Xun Mo,” Qiuqiu’s mirthful voice was transmitted directly to his head through the bracelet. “You’ve fallen in love with my mistress.”

“How can you be sure?” A smile still hung by Li Mo’s lips.

“From how you gaze at my mistress. This was how the Beast King looked at his consort in the past.”

“Is that so?” Li Mo raised his eyebrows.

“That’s why I’m confident you like her,” Qiuqiu chirped happily. “I’d been worried that you would suddenly change your mind and want to kill my mistress, but now you’ll even protect her!”

Li Mo extended a hand, wanting to touch Yun Ruoyan’s face. Before he did so, however, he stopped and said, “Qiuqiu, do you remember Hua’er?”

“Hua’er?” Li Mo’s sudden question left Qiuqiu momentarily at a loss. “Oh, the magical beast that the empress gifted you? The spotted leopard cub?”

“I liked it very much, back then. It was always so obedient, so charming. Its fur was as soft as silk, and I loved to touch it as I fell asleep.” Li Mo seemed as though he was reminiscing about a pleasant memory. “But, while I was escaping from the beastkin slaughter, I ate it.” Li Mo’s tone turned harsh, grating, like spring reverting to harsh winter. “I ate its meat, drank its blood, and stitched its skin into a comfortable pair of boots.”

He grinned at Yun Ruoyan’s bracelet. “I’ve liked many things, Qiuqiu, and I’ve destroyed many things I liked. Don’t try to predict my actions, and don’t you dare reveal my identity to your mistress. Otherwise, in order to protect myself, I might destroy yet another prized possession of mine.”

A long and pregnant silence followed.

“I understand,” Qiuqiu finally said.

Li Mo nodded, satisfied. Yun Ruoyan looked even better than before, and he knew that his medicinal salve was working.

Although he didn’t know how Yun Ruoyan had managed to cure her poison, he had discovered that the skin underneath her birthmark, which had scarred over, still contained faint traces of the poison. This wouldn’t hurt her in the short term, but there would be long-lasting effects if the poison weren’t purged completely.

The lethality of the poison deepened Li Mo’s curiosity. Where had such a devastating poison come from, and who had poisoned Lin Yuemei?