"One time?"
Shen Changyin, who had been sitting upright in her chair, slowly stood and walked toward Xie Yu.
She closed in far too closely. Xie Yu's instincts flared, and she refused to back away.
The distance between their cheeks shrank to barely two fingers wide.
Their eyes locked. Neither was willing to look away first.
"Your Highness, look at my face."
Shen Changyin spoke each word slowly.
"Think carefully."
"What exactly did you do that night?"
Xie Yu instinctively let out a scoffing breath, ready to declare she remembered nothing—
But halfway through, she froze.
She stared at the tender skin beneath Shen Changyin's eyes… and noticed it was faintly red.
"You cried? Rubbed your eyes? Just because we kissed once?" she asked.
A chill radiated from Shen Changyin.
"Shen does not have the habit of crying."
"Then…"
Xie Yu's eyes widened.
The rest of her words died in her throat.
Images flickered in her mind one frame at a time.
She still didn't know what had happened earlier that night.
But she remembered Shen Changyin pushing her away—and then she had leaned forward instead, grabbed both of Shen Changyin's wrists, pinned them above her head, pressed her down on the carpet—
And started kissing.
The memories were fragmented, disjointed.
The sensations and breaths were jumbled together.
Just as she recalled what kissing an earlobe felt like, the memory of kissing the skin beneath the eyes slammed into her.
Earlobe, ear tip, forehead, under the eyes, even the side of the neck—All the same pale, almost translucent soft skin, yet each area had felt completely different.
A kaleidoscope blossoming in her mind.
Her brain was a battlefield, weapons firing in all directions, flashes of light bursting without pause.
But the memory of sucking Shen Changyin's lips, licking along Shen Changyin's teeth—That was the final nuclear weapon.
It blew the entire battlefield to pieces.
The world fell silent again.
A serene, almost enlightened calm washed over Xie Yu's face.
"I… pinned you down and kissed you?"
She wasn't even stuttering anymore. Just dazed.
She slowly raised a hand and covered her own mouth.
As if hiding the murder weapon.
Seeing this, Shen Changyin's eyes flickered.
"That's all you remembered?"
Xie Yu kept her hand over her lips, her voice muffled.
"Besides giving in to my animal instincts and pinning you down to kiss you… did I do anything else?"
"No." Shen Changyin answered.
Then she asked,
"So who kissed whom first? Whose fault was it?"
Xie Yu lowered her head.
Her foot scuffed the ground.
Her voice grew softer and softer.
"I kissed you first… so it's my fault."
Satisfied, Shen Changyin returned to her grand master chair.
She relaxed her posture, leaning back with a slight smile.
"Now Your Highness may punish me as you intended."
Xie Yu glanced at her, fully aware she was being toyed with.
She also knew it really was her fault.
And she absolutely could not look directly at that normally cool, composed face—the same face that had been flushed pink that night.
If she looked again, she would collapse.
Her face grew hotter and hotter, enough to fry an egg into a soft yolk.
Emotions churned violently inside her.
She shut her eyes, spun around, and speed-walked toward the exit, desperate to escape this socially fatal crime scene.
Halfway there, she stopped, turned back.
"I'm sorry."
She walked again.
At the tent entrance, she lifted the flap, turned back once more, and bowed.
Then she walked out, lowered the flap, and gave Old Jin—who happened to be passing by—a very adult, very fake smile of emotional stability.
Then she mounted her horse.
And galloped away at the fastest speed a four-legged animal could manage—
Inside the tent, Shen Changyin propped her head with one hand, watching Xie Yu's entire sequence of actions with leisurely amusement.
Only when Xie Yu had truly left, leaving the tent flap swaying gently, did she finally fail to suppress her laughter.
Her whole body trembled with how hard she laughed.
She tried to gather the documents on the table, but even the papers shook in her hands.
Before today, she had indeed been avoiding Xie Yu.
Because she needed time to think.
To understand why she had kissed that face.
The redness beneath her eyes had come from absent-mindedly rubbing the area while thinking.
It was absurd to talk about feelings between them.
But precisely because she didn't like Xie Yu, that kiss was even more dangerous.
Even if the incense burner in that mirror room contained trace amounts of aphrodisiac, less than half a stick of incense had passed before the kiss—the drug should not have been strong enough to affect her mind.
After her rebirth, in the early days of building her army, she attended banquets to win over local gentry.
She drank heavily then, yet never once lost rationality.
Even when the aftermath left her with a splitting headache, she never made a wrong decision during the banquet.
But now—
She had made a wrong decision with Xie Yu.
This was a loss of control.
And she needed to identify and eliminate the source of that loss.
Yet her phantom took it far more lightly.
"You lied to her again, which proves you really do hate her."
The phantom sat on the long table, legs dangling in the air.
"Now I get it. You kissed her only to seize her by force and take revenge."
Shen Changyin finished organizing the documents, finally steadied her emotions, and looked at the illusion of herself.
"I still don't know what you actually are. Are you the ghost of my past life, or just an obsession in my heart?"
"I often think… If you truly are my past life, then if stupidity is a crime, dying without an intact corpse would've been a deserved punishment."
Shen Changyin's expression cooled.
"There is no kind of revenge in this world that looks like that."
"If I truly wanted to take revenge on her, I would use her, squeeze dry every last bit of her value until she had nothing left. Then I'd torment her, abandon her, and take her life."
"To leave someone ruined, penniless, broken in body, and dead without a whole corpse—that is revenge."
—
Two sticks of incense later.
Zhu Ting lifted the tent flap. She was very proper about it, didn't enter immediately, and first asked, "General Shen, you asked for me?"
"Come in." Shen Changyin pointed at the documents on the table, stacked three fingers high, the ones she had just finished sorting.
"Send these to Princess Jin. Tell her she must read and correct every page within three days and send them back to me."
Zhu Ting was the young soldier who had originally guarded Xie Yu in the palace. Though she dutifully took the documents into her arms, she still voiced her worry.
"Third Highness seems very resistant to this kind of work. If she refuses to do them, what should I do?"
"She'll do them." Shen Changyin gave a slight laugh. "Go deliver them."
—
Xie Yu would do them, indeed.
She stared at the thick stack before her, her mouth forming an O-shape, ready to rebel—but then persuaded herself.
This is Shen Changyin's revenge. I understand.
She gritted her teeth.
"Put them down. I'll send them to the camp once I finish."
From that day on, she was the one avoiding Shen Changyin.
Shen Changyin had resumed attending court, but Xie Yu did everything she could to "fall ill" and find excuses not to go.
Sometimes when Shen Changyin returned to the residence to fetch something, Xie Yu would immediately leap up from wherever she was and hide in the closest latrine.
When she thought she had only kissed Shen Changyin once, she still had the courage to face her.
Now she absolutely did not.
Besides the overwhelming shame, she avoided Shen Changyin for another reason—she feared that if she ran into her again, she'd be given even more work.
Although in these four or five days without seeing each other, Shen Changyin had already sent her additional documents…
But if they met in person and Shen Changyin decided to hand everything to her—what then? Xie Yu had seen her work until deep into the night. For Xie Yu, that kind of life was worse than death.
So, until the tenth day of Flower Month—the grand day of Lighting the Flower Dragon—the two had still not met.
That afternoon, Xie Yu bent over her desk and worked furiously. She finally finished signing the very last document and sent it off to Shen Changyin.
Then, refreshed and glowing with freedom, she stretched and prepared to take little Wan out to play.
Lighting the Flower Dragon was the most important day of the Flower Month. All festivities gathered on this day: fireworks, the Flower Goddess Parade, floating lanterns, opera performances, and the main event—Lighting the Flower Dragon.
Little Wan had been talking about it for days. Xie Yu naturally pretended it wasn't her who wanted to go—no, she was simply taking the child out.
By dusk, the two left the residence.
Learning from the past (the time she went out and was scammed buying decorative flower dots), they dressed up before leaving this time.
Today Xie Yu wore red. The outer robe was gauze, the inner layer thin cotton. Not a heavy, intense red—just bright and weightless.
She tied up her hair—little Wan had told her there would be many competitive street games tonight. Aside from riddles, there were contests of physical skill.
Having been enslaved by paperwork for days, Xie Yu swore she would turn the night around and shine.
She even felt a little wicked—during Flower Month, weren't the streets full of young lovers? Many wanted to show off their skills to impress their partners.
She would defeat them all.
If she couldn't have a good time, then no one else would either.
After stepping out the gates of Princess Jin's residence, little Wan eagerly asked around and ran back.
"Third Highness! The Flower Goddess Parade is already on West Street, we can't catch this one. But in two sticks of incense, they'll perform in front of the Jingzhao Prefecture! Let's hurry!"
"Let's go." Xie Yu happily agreed.
They hired a carriage and headed near the prefecture. There was still time before the performance started, so they wandered around the nearby stalls first.
Little Wan held the last batch of candied hawthorn of the season. Seeing all the hand-in-hand couples on the street, she hesitated, then asked.
"Third Highness, why don't you go out with Master Shen?"
"Grown-ups' troubles. Children don't need to ask." Xie Yu finished her own hawthorn skewer.
She thought despairingly that no matter how pathetic she was, she could not allow a child to become her emotional counselor.
They walked past three stalls in silence.
Xie Yu could no longer hold it in. She admitted she really was a talkative person who couldn't keep anything to herself.
"You know," she said, "I kissed her last time."
Little Wan cupped her cheeks like a blooming flower, smiling brightly.
"I know!"
"Little Wan——" Xie Yu made a hand gesture. "Tonight, you are my toxic solo-fan, not a CP fan, got it?"
Little Wan had no idea what a "CP fan" was, but she was used to the Third Highness saying strange things and nodded obediently.
She cleared her throat. Though her voice was childish, she pretended to be elderly, imitating the fortune-tellers by the road.
"Then what troubles of fate does this donor wish to consult today?"
"Master, I have a problem," Xie Yu said. "I'm engaged to someone I'm not even familiar with, someone I've argued with, someone who is very likely my enemy."
"It's an imperial betrothal, so it doesn't mean anything. But a few days ago, I kissed her."
At this point Xie Yu's gaze drifted upward unconsciously.
"Now we're engaged, we live together, we chose wedding clothes from the Inner Court, and we've kissed." She pointed to the couples strolling arm in arm.
"If we go out together too, wouldn't that basically mean we're actually dating?"
"So we must avoid suspicion…and avoid danger."
Master Little Wan: "What's wrong with being in love?"
Xie Yu said, "Wow, I'm reporting you for wanting to date early."
Then, "Love is dangerous. Do you know how many couples end up wanting to stab each other?"
Master Little Wan: "But before you two were even in love, you were already trying to stab each other."
Xie Yu: "Do you know how many lovers end up willing to die for each other?"
Master Little Wan: "Is that… bad?"
Xie Yu nodded slowly and seriously.
"It's not wanting the other person to die—it's wanting yourself to die for them. If that's not dangerous, what is?"
"Single people don't have these problems."
Master Little Wan narrowed her eyes.
"Third Highness… have you ever dated anyone? It feels like you're just describing plotlines from romance books."
Xie Yu, exposed: "You say that like you've dated someone?"
Master Little Wan nodded proudly.
"At ten years old, Little Cui gave me a feather-candy, and I gave her a red-string bracelet. We've been together since."
Xie Yu, wicked:
"I'm warning you, I really will report you to the palace matrons for early romance."
—Never mind that "early romance" didn't really exist in ancient times.
Talking as they walked, they soon reached the main street across from the Jingzhao Prefecture.
The flower float was arriving—a grand boat-shaped structure, every inch covered in real blossoms. Petals of all colors quivered in the breeze.
On it stood twelve Flower Goddesses, ethereal and exquisitely dressed. They waved gently at the crowd, graceful like fairies descending.
In the center was a music troupe. A sudden, sharp pluck of the pipa signaled the start of the show.
Xie Yu and little Wan cheered with the crowd, even catching several candies thrown by the goddesses.
"Eleven candies. Five for you, six for me," Xie Yu said.
Little Wan protested, "Why do you get one more?"
"Because you little shorty didn't catch any. I caught all of them."
While placing the candies in little Wan's hand, Xie Yu added,
"You should be thankful your General Shen isn't with us tonight. Otherwise you wouldn't even get five."
"That woman would hoard all eleven."
Just as she finished dividing the candies and looked up, the float passed—revealing the gate of the Jingzhao Prefecture.
And there, in a deep purple official robe, Shen Changyin walked out with several subordinates, raising her eyes—
—and looking directly at them.
—
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