Lin Yue never spoke of any of this. She simply remained outside the palace wall, waiting for the Third Prince. Though still very young, the Third Prince was remarkably sensible and often brought her food and daily necessities. He even clumsily built her a tiny thatched hut barely half a person’s height, named it Linhan Palace, and promised that one day he would build a residence inside the imperial palace that belonged solely to her.
Lin Yue’s body was crippled and covered in wounds. Whenever the skies cleared after rain, a foul odor would rise from her injuries. She always kept her distance from the Third Prince, tossing him grasshoppers she had woven from straw. The Third Prince would pick them up, run to her side, lean against her legs, and sing nursery rhymes.
Whenever this happened, one or two trails of tears would slip from Lin Yue’s darkened eye sockets. She never told him who she was or spoke of what had happened to her. She merely reminded him again and again to obey his mother consort. In secret, Lin Yue would also call the Third Prince by his childhood name—Xi’er.
Mu Xueshi, Mu Linxi—when the snow fades, dawn approaches. Those were the names Grand Tutor Mu and Lin Yue had agreed upon before the Third Prince and Mu Xueshi were born.
During that period, the Third Prince searched everywhere for medicinal herbs to treat Lin Yue’s injuries. Later, afraid that someone might discover what he was doing, he began planting all manner of strange flowers and herbs inside Muyan Residence. He said he would cultivate a plant whose fragrance could cure illness and pain from a hundred li away. That way, even when he was forbidden to leave the courtyard, he could still heal his mother’s wounds.
At the time, Consort Mu was constantly occupied with affairs inside the palace and rarely paid attention to the Third Prince. By the time she discovered his secretive movements, she realized that something had gone terribly wrong. Lin Yue was still alive, and the mystery surrounding the Third Prince’s birth would inevitably become a hidden danger in the future.
The Third Prince remembered clearly how he had watched those soldiers cut down his mother with a single stroke, and how they had taken her body to Consort Mu’s punishment chamber for examination.
Young, arrogant, and vicious, Consort Mu did more than kill Lin Yue. She had her bones carved apart and boiled into broth, which was then distributed to unsuspecting servants. At the time, a popular belief among the common people held that anyone whose bones were cut apart after death would have their soul scattered, never to enter the cycle of reincarnation again.
The first time the Third Prince laughed openly in Consort Mu’s presence was when he watched those servants savor the broth and kneel to thank her for the reward. Consort Mu never forgot his expression. The eyes of a child only a few years old had held such viciousness that even she was horrified.
From that moment onward, Consort Mu treated the Third Prince as though he were her own son, completely unlike her attitude toward him before. She believed that a child’s heart could not retain such memories, especially since the Third Prince had not yet turned four. So long as she showered him with care and affection afterward, she was certain he would forget those unpleasant events.
Yet when the Third Prince was five, he tracked down every subordinate who had crippled Lin Yue in the wilderness. He brought them back to that same wasteland and had mad dogs and wild beasts tear at them for three days and three nights before allowing them to die.
At seven, he built Linhan Palace and brought there the servants who had once spied upon his secret meetings with his mother and reported them. The spies had filth packed into their eye sockets. Within days, the infection spread until their entire bodies began to rot. Before they had even died, they were abandoned on the back mountain to be eaten away by insects. As for those who had carried the reports, their teeth were pulled out one by one, and they were forced to swallow animal excrement continuously until they finally died from violent retching.
At eleven, after moving into Qinyi Courtyard, the Third Prince gathered every servant who had consumed the bone broth. He first ordered them to swallow medicinal pills, then had them bound together along a row of iron frames while fires burned continuously beneath them. Starting from their toes and fingers, small holes were cut open with sharp knives, and the bones inside were pulled out while they were still alive. Because of the pills, those servants retained one final breath until the very last bone had been removed.
The true culprits who had persecuted Lin Yue—Mu Wan’er, Consort Mu, Grand Tutor Mu, and Mu Xueshi—were all placed upon the Third Prince’s list of people to be tormented slowly. Grand Tutor Mu’s death had been a blessing from Heaven, but whoever had killed him would certainly not be allowed to continue living happily. Consort Mu had now suffered enough, and in consideration of all the years he had called her Mother Consort, the Third Prince had permitted her to depart this world. Mu Wan’er and Mu Xueshi, however, still waited beneath disasters that had yet to arrive, entirely unaware of what awaited them.