Yunchu’s Vengeance - Chapter 204
Chapter 204 - The First Meeting
The group walked into the courtyard.
The servants had already prepared the meal. It was a table filled with delicious dishes, most of which were foods the children loved to eat, along with a small portion prepared specifically for Chu Yi.
After the children were seated, Yun Chu noticed that the man in front of her moved down into his seat with extreme caution.
"Wait a moment."
She spoke up, stopping Chu Yi's movement to sit down.
Standing up, she fetched a soft cushion from the daybed nearby and placed it on Chu Yi's chair. "Your Highness, please sit."
Chu Yi maintained a composed expression. "Thank you."
On the surface, nothing out of the ordinary could be seen, but inside, he felt more or less a bit embarrassed.
At the same time, a quiet, subtle joy bloomed in his heart.
She was paying attention to him.
Because of that, she could tell he was experiencing discomfort.
This realization caused the corners of his lips to curl up slightly, making his entire presence seem as if bathed in a soft, gentle light.
The meal soon came to an end.
The two little ones, their minds full of the cats and dogs, held hands and ran off to feed the small animals.
Inside the dining hall, only Yun Chu and Chu Yi remained.
The servants orderly cleared away the plates and served tea and pastries for the two of them.
Cheng Xu looked at Tingxue, who was standing behind Yun Chu, cleared his throat, and said, "Sister Tingxue, Nanny Zheng has a few matters concerning the young master that she asked me to pass along to you."
Tingxue furrowed her brows, stepped out of the flower hall, and lowered her head, speaking, "Officer Cheng ought to be older than me; I am not worthy of being called Sister Tingxue."
"It's just a form of address, no need to be so particular," Cheng Xu said, scratching his head. "I am the Prince's subordinate, and you are... Miss Yun's close attendant. Our status is equal, so there is no need for Sister Tingxue to refer to yourself as a servant in front of me."
Tingxue thought to herself, how could that be the same?
The Prince's subordinates were ranked officials with official titles, whereas she was a bondservant who had sold herself into servitude; their statuses were worlds apart.
She spoke up, "Officer Cheng, what did Nanny Zheng wish to instruct?"
"Well, actually, nothing in particular..."
Cheng Xu turned his head to look back toward the flower hall.
He simply felt, all of a sudden, that having the two of them standing there was somewhat redundant.
When only the Prince and Miss Yun remained inside, even the scenery seemed to become far more pleasing to the eye.
His family's Prince was truly too slow and indecisive in taking action. If not for him, who knew what year or month the Prince's Estate would finally have a mistress.
He was truly worthy of being the Prince's number-one guard.
Silence settled over the flower hall.
Yun Chu took a sip of tea, lowered her eyelids, and said, "Regarding the matter of the Yun Family Army, I have troubled Your Highness."
"It is no trouble at all," Chu Yi said. "Those in the imperial court stepping down heavily on the Yun family are the former faction of the late Crown Prince—the biological, legitimate son of the current Empress Dowager. The Empress Dowager is stirring up trouble from the shadows, and in order to curb her power, Imperial Father will not allow the Yun family to meet with disaster. You... do not need to worry overmuch."
"Thank you for comforting me, Your Highness." Yun Chu raised her head. "I would like to ask Your Highness: now that the Yun family is in such a predicament—my father's whereabouts unknown, targeted by a thousand pointing fingers at court, his military authority stripped away... why does Your Highness still allow the two children to stay so close to me?"
"It has nothing to do with the Yun family." Reflections of her face showed in Chu Yi's dark, pitch-black eyes. "It is because of you."
Yun Chu's heart gave a sudden, thundering leap.
It felt as if the hardened outer shell of the cold, guarded heart she had built was touched and broken away by something.
"Perhaps you have forgotten the day we first met." Chu Yi's gaze drifted as his eyes grew distant. "Every year, the Yun family would host a spring banquet. When I was eleven years old, I attended the Yun family's banquet. It was not because the Yun family had invited me, but because that morning, I witnessed the darkest, foulest things deep within the palace... I could not wait to escape that cage..."
He had seen with his own eyes the Empress Dowager murder ten palace maidservants to draw the blood from their hearts, feeding it to the only remaining bloodline left behind by the late Crown Prince—the Empress Dowager's only direct grandson, Prince Zhuang, Chu Rui.
Even the heart-blood of ten palace maidservants failed to cure Chu Rui's illness. The Empress Dowager ordered her people to continue searching for young women with matching astrological charts to serve as medicine guides.
Unable to accept such a horrifying scene, he immediately reported it to Imperial Father.
Yet Imperial Father remained completely unmoved, even commanding Chief Eunuch Gao to assist in finding suitable young women to send to the Empress Dowager's palace.
Those flower-like young women, so young they could still be called girls, were struck down without warning by a single blade, turning into wronged ghosts.
He did not know just how many women had died before the Empress Dowager's only grandson, Prince Zhuang, managed to survive to his present age of twenties...
When he was eleven, he had been unable to accept such things.
Now, at twenty-five, as he recalled it, his heart remained completely untroubled by waves.
"That day, I fled from the palace and met your father. Your father then brought me along to the Yun family to attend the spring banquet," Chu Yi spoke slowly. "I was resting with my eyes closed in a quiet, secluded courtyard in the Yun residence when suddenly, a girl wearing a goose-yellow dress appeared in front of me. In her arms, she held a filthy dog."
Yun Chu's memory was instantly awakened.
She smiled and said, "That dog was one I scooped out from a mud pit. I wanted to keep it by my side, but my mother firmly refused, chasing me everywhere with a rattan cane. If she hadn't been afraid of startling the guests in the front yard, I certainly wouldn't have escaped a beating that day."
Back then, she must have been only six or seven years old, jumping around and scaling roofs every day, driving her mother to smoke with anger every single day.
It wasn't that her mother wouldn't let her keep a dog, but that particular dog was clearly gravely ill—filthy aside, it was blind in one eye, had lost much of its fur, and was covered in sores. Her mother was worried she would catch a bad disease, which was why she strongly opposed her keeping it.
She was young at the time and paid no mind to any of that, holding the dog tightly without letting go while hiding all over the courtyard. It seemed she really had bumped into someone.
However, she didn't remember it very clearly.
That scene, however, had been deeply carved into Chu Yi's mind.
The moment Yun Chu appeared before him, he had thought to himself: how could there be a girl in this world who looked so much like a little sprite?
When Madam Yun held the rattan cane to beat her, she fiercely shielded the dog in her arms.
He had thought to himself: she is truly so pure and kind.
Some people could ruthlessly murder dozens or hundreds of innocent, flower-like palace maidservants.
Yet someone else was willing to endure a beating just to protect a dog that was clearly on the verge of death.
And yet, he lacked the power to step forward and stop the Empress Dowager's evil deeds back then, nor did he have the ability to argue right from wrong with Imperial Father.
It was also from that moment onward that he made a decision.
He wanted to become someone who could protect all the common people—someone who could protect every ordinary person struggling bitterly at the very bottom just to survive.
He chose to follow General Yun.
However, after he had been on the battlefield for a mere five years, the Empress grew suspicious. To balance the power, Imperial Father forbade him from going to the borders ever again.
He could only take his eight thousand elite troops and wipe out the fierce bandits across Great Jin.
Chu Yi pulled his thoughts back and asked, "I wonder, did Madam Yun eventually allow you to keep that dog?"
The smile on Yun Chu's face faded, and she let out a sigh. "My mother had a sharp tongue but a soft heart. Seeing my persistence, she naturally allowed me to keep it. It's just that... that dog was terminally ill and couldn't be cured. It stayed with the Yun family for less than a month before it passed away..."
Chu Yi pressed his lips together softly.
The dog was fortunate to have met Yun Chu, but unfortunate that it met her a bit too late. Had it been a little earlier, perhaps its illness could have been cured.
Yun Chu raised her head to look at the man before her.
At this moment, she felt a surge of emotional sentiment. Would the Prince of Pingxi, whose very name made people turn pale with fear, also lament the fate of a mere dog?
It seemed he possessed a heart of compassion, even for a dog.
A person who cared even about a dog could not possibly be someone heinous beyond redemption, nor could he be as despicable and shameless as Qin Mingheng had claimed.
She pressed her lips together softly and spoke in a slow, gentle voice, "Your Highness... could you tell me about the heir and the young princess... about their biological mother?"