Chapter 29: A Seduction and a Provocation
Her breakdown wasn’t actually because she’d failed to kill Lu Yanzhi, but because she was trapped in this world, with no idea how to escape.
Even if she had killed Lu Yanzhi, she wasn’t sure if that would have let her leave.
Despair? She had been despairing from the day she arrived in this world, trapped in the original owner’s body.
But she couldn’t—she couldn’t let herself be defeated like this.
She was Xiao Li, not some Princess Xuanyang. Desperate situations had failed to crush her time and time again in the past; she would never admit defeat in this godforsaken place!
With the last of her strength, she bit down hard on her own tongue. A sharp pain bloomed, and blood welled up.
She swallowed her own blood, feeling that raging tide of emotion recede. Finally, everything returned to calm.
She could be a madwoman—one who would stop at nothing to achieve her goals—but she refused to be forced into becoming a completely irrational one.
To be defeated so pointlessly in this godforsaken place—she couldn’t accept it.
Suddenly, the window was pushed open, and a figure slipped in without a sound.
Xiao Li slowly turned her head. After seeing who it was, she lowered her guard.
The heavy scent of alcohol was pungent. A toppled wine jug beside her was still dripping.
A hand with well-defined knuckles picked up the wine jug and set it aside. The person crouched down, leaning in. "Is the Princess heartbroken and full of regret?"
Coming back from a trip to see Lu Yanzhi and immediately starting to binge drink—it was hard not to draw that conclusion.
Xiao Li quirked her lips. "Mr. Lou, you’re certainly well-informed."
As she spoke, blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, flowing down her cheek to her neck.
Lou Yan’s brow twitched. He took out a handkerchief and gently wiped the blood away.
’This man’s attitude is rather interesting.’
Her weak hand rose, moving slowly toward his face. She watched his expression intently. When her hand finally rested on his cheek, he only frowned slightly, not rejecting her.
"Warm. Seeing you with that cold face all the time, I thought you’d be ice-cold."
Lou Yan replied, "Only the dead are cold."
The pad of Xiao Li’s finger brushed across his cheek as she said, her voice laced with hidden meaning, "I like dead men. A pity I was so close to getting one."
As Xiao Li’s hand moved toward his eyes, Lou Yan raised his own, caught her wrist, and lowered it.
"What is it you really want?"
He was backlit, so Xiao Li couldn’t see his expression clearly, but she could feel his scrutinizing gaze, so sharp it seemed to want to see right through her.
"What do I want?" Xiao Li asked herself. Her gaze passed through him to the dreary gray sky outside—or perhaps, not the sky, but another world beyond it.
"The question should be, what *can* I do? I don’t even know what I’m capable of myself. So, I might as well kill a few people for fun."
She suddenly laughed. Blood gushed from her mouth again, but she paid it no mind, her smile growing wider—maniacal and strange.
She said, "Oh, Lou Yan, don’t look at me. If you find yourself drawn to me, you’ll be finished."
As she spoke, she grabbed his hand, interlocking their fingers. She looked up at him, her eyes filled with a wild, brilliant smile. Amidst the madness was a fatal, seductive charm.
She smiled. "Why so quiet, Lord Chief Incense? Don’t tell me you’ve actually fallen for me. Ready to become my devoted servant?"
It was a seduction, and a provocation.
Lou Yan stared at her, his eyes dark. Just as her smile became its most unrestrained, he suddenly bent his head and leaned in.
Her laughter stopped abruptly. Xiao Li swung a backhanded slap at him.
Her hand, already weak, was caught easily. His large palm slid down to her palm, interlocking their fingers just as he had with her other hand.
Lou Yan had only stolen a peck, right on the corner of her lips, and came away with a mouthful of blood.
A dark haze swirled in his long, sinister eyes, now stained with an even deeper, more dangerous darkness.
He lightly licked the blood from the corner of his lips as if savoring a delicacy, like a bloodthirsty demon.
"The Princess should not have provoked this servant."
Xiao Li stared at him for a moment, then suddenly yanked his hand toward her and bit down. Hard.
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Mu Bai and Ling Yi were eunuchs who had risen through the ranks with Lou Yan. While they wouldn’t claim to understand their boss completely, they knew him about eighty percent of the way. But today, their boss was acting in a way they truly couldn’t comprehend.
Mu Bai said, "The boss is injured."
The smell of blood couldn’t fool those who dealt with it often. Besides, even with his sleeve covering his wrist, they could still see a trace of a white handkerchief, with blood seeping through it.
Ling Yi mused, "Who injured the boss?"
Mu Bai shook his head. "Can’t think of anyone."
It wasn’t that no one could hurt Lou Yan. No matter how skilled he was in martial arts, he wasn’t yet unrivaled in the world. But those who were more skilled than him wouldn’t act so lightly. If they were to attack Lou Yan, it was unlikely they would only injure his wrist a little.
The two exchanged a look. ’Something’s fishy!’
Of course, even though they sensed it, they weren’t stupid enough to go and ask. They had no desire to experience their boss’s methods firsthand.
Mu Bai suddenly remembered something. "Did you tell the boss about that news?"
Ling Yi was confused. "What news?"
Mu Bai shot him a glare and hurried to catch up. "Boss, we found a secret passage. It opens into the backyard of a tailor shop on Golden Bell Street. We questioned the shop assistant. One of them said he saw a woman enter through the back door that day and then disappear. Although the woman’s face was covered, the assistant is a tailor who measures people for clothes. He said as long as he sees her figure again, he’ll definitely be able to recognize her."
Lou Yan’s steps faltered. After a long moment, he glanced back at him. "Don’t tell anyone about this. Get rid of that assistant."
Mu Bai instantly understood the gravity of the situation. ’The boss is trying to cover for the culprit!’ But he wouldn’t question the order; he would simply obey.
"I’ll go at once."
Was the assistant’s life innocent? No. The moment he opened his mouth and got involved in a conspiracy of the powerful, he should have known the fate that awaited him.
The case made no progress. The Lu family was anxious, and the Emperor was anxious too. One side wanted revenge, the other wanted to save face. But with the culprit having vanished into thin air and so few clues, it would have been a miracle if they found anything.
The people from the Ministry of Justice suspected it was an inside job; otherwise, it would have been impossible to so smoothly evade all the guards in the Princess Mansion. Aside from a few people close to Xiao Li, nearly everyone in the Princess Mansion had been interrogated, but they all knew nothing.
Finally, at his wit’s end, that Meng Zheng actually turned his sights on Xiao Li herself, running to her to ask if she had any clues.
Xiao Li just gave him a look that spoke volumes. However, their commotion did remind her that she had some unfinished business.
Asking the Emperor for private guards.
Assassins had come to her Princess Mansion time and again, and those guards were useless. She needed to increase her manpower.
The Princess Mansion originally had one hundred guards. Now, she wanted to increase that number to two hundred, and she wanted to pick elites, not just a bunch of useless grunts.
The Emperor thought about this request, decided it wasn’t a big deal, and agreed on the spot.
Xiao Li took the written order to go select her new guards, but she had only just stepped out when she ran into Chen Pingting, who was preparing to leave the palace.
They ran right into each other. It was too late to back away.
’What rotten luck!’