A scream suddenly came from inside the room. Mu Xueshi’s vision was already blurred, yet he could still see Madam lying on the ground, moaning in agony.
“You speak too much, and with such pain too. It seems I should help you.”
The Third Prince crouched down, looking with an appreciative expression at Madam as she writhed in pain on the ground. The knife in his hand flashed, and he leisurely drew a long cut across Madam’s belly.
“Ah!!” Madam’s face twisted to the extreme as she screamed loudly.
“I said I would help deliver your child, Aunt. Do you want to see what your child looks like? I will take him out for you.”
Mu Xueshi’s entire body could no longer move. His mind was filled only with the Third Prince’s ghost-like face. Why? Why had that face, once so kind and familiar, now become so strange, so terrifying to him?
Another heart-rending scream rang out. Mu Xueshi saw that in the Third Prince’s hand was a lump of flesh that neither cried nor made a sound.
“This is your child. Look.” Smiling, the Third Prince threw that lump of flesh in front of Madam.
Madam’s consciousness had already become unclear, but she could still see that before her was a lump of flesh almost like a monster. Its features were blurred beyond recognition; she could not tell where the nose was, where the eyes were… All she could see was a field of fresh red, smeared all over its body…
“Ah!!—” Madam wailed and spat out several mouthfuls of blood.
“You dare die? It will not be that easy.”
The Third Prince suddenly stepped on Madam’s neck, then poured scalding tea over her face. After she opened her eyes, he used that small curved knife to stab the lump of flesh until it was a bloody mess from head to toe.
Mu Xueshi had already lost the courage to go inside. His mind was completely blank, and he collapsed to the ground with a dazed expression.
Hearing a sound outside, the Third Prince asked coldly, “Who is there?”
No one answered. The tears on Mu Xueshi’s face flowed down beyond his control.
The Third Prince threw the knife together with the lump of flesh onto the ground. Without even glancing at the person on the floor, he walked straight outside.
Seeing the person sitting beneath the window, the Third Prince suddenly froze. But after seeing Mu Xueshi’s current state, he immediately understood everything, and his gaze could not help turning cold.
“I said that anyone who came within half a step of this place would have to die.”
Mu Xueshi lifted his head and looked at the Third Prince, despair mixed with fear in his eyes, as if he were looking at an entirely different person.
The Third Prince was deeply stabbed by the look hidden behind Mu Xueshi’s hat veil. He drew the sword in his hand and pointed it at Mu Xueshi’s neck.
“If you pretend you saw nothing and continue to return with me, I will spare your life.”
“Kill me.” Mu Xueshi’s tears poured down like a spring.
The Third Prince thrust his sword fiercely toward Mu Xueshi, using it to flick open his hat veil and reveal that heartbroken face.
“Xueshi…” The Third Prince’s hand suddenly trembled.
Hearing this affectionate form of address, Mu Xueshi suddenly felt the greatest irony.
“Kill me. If you do not kill me, I will leave you forever.”
The Third Prince felt as if his frozen heart, which had only just melted a little, had been cruelly torn apart again.
“Grand Tutor Mu was your own father? You killed your own father? How many things have you hidden from me?” Mu Xueshi suddenly burst into tears and stood up straight.
Hearing Mu Xueshi’s words, the Third Prince suddenly smiled bleakly and said lightly, as though nothing mattered, “If I told you that those hundreds and thousands of dried corpses in my mother’s tomb were all tortured to death by me like this, would you believe it?”
Mu Xueshi suddenly lost control and rushed toward the Third Prince. The Third Prince instinctively withdrew the sword in his hand. Mu Xueshi grabbed the lapels of the Third Prince’s robe and cried out loudly, “You are an evildoer who kills without blinking! You are the murderer. How could you be the murderer?!”
The Third Prince gripped Mu Xueshi’s neck with one hand and laughed coldly several times.
“If I said that I am not the murderer, would you believe me?”
With a deathly pale face, Mu Xueshi squeezed four words from his throat. “You are not human.”
Hearing these words from Mu Xueshi, the pain slicing through the Third Prince’s heart nearly drove him out of control enough to strangle Mu Xueshi to death.
“If I said I could kill you without blinking, would you believe that?”
“Would I dare not believe it?”
The Third Prince’s hand slipped from Mu Xueshi’s neck as if it had lost all strength.
Mu Xueshi, you truly do not understand me…
“Kill me. I said before, if you do not kill me, I will still leave you forever. I do not want to live beside someone like this.”
“Go.”
Mu Xueshi had already thought all hope in his heart was dead, yet his tears still flowed uncontrollably.
“Leave quickly,” the Third Prince said quietly.
“Mu Linxi! Only today do I finally understand why your surname is Mu! You are not human. You killed your own father, and you treated a pregnant woman like this!…” Mu Xueshi slapped the Third Prince hard across the face, then turned and walked outside.
All the servants in the courtyard were frightened senseless. Eunuch Shangde still retained a bit of awareness, and when he saw Mu Xueshi walking out in tears, he quickly chased after him.
“Don’t follow me!” Mu Xueshi roared loudly.
“Let him go,” the Third Prince said with abnormal calm.
Mu Xueshi turned and continued walking outside. Just as he was about to reach the gate, he suddenly heard a clear clang, and something fell at his feet.
Mu Xueshi lowered his head and saw his silver coin.
The Third Prince had thrown it over. He had thrown it to him of his own accord… At this moment, Mu Xueshi suddenly felt that everything he had here had been ruthlessly thrown to the ground along with that silver coin.
“Your Highness…”
“Return to the palace.”
As soon as the words fell, the Third Prince leapt onto a horse and rode away.
All along the way, the sound of wind swept past his ears. Alone, the Third Prince rode his horse through forests, small lakes, grassland, and wilderness… The road carried him farther and farther from the imperial palace, yet the Third Prince was completely unaware.
Passing a wine shop, the Third Prince took several jars of wine and placed them on the horse’s back, then continued riding deeper into the forest.
In the end, the Third Prince’s horse stopped before a thatched cottage, and he slowly walked inside.
The sky had already darkened. One corner of the Third Prince’s long robe shimmered faintly beneath the last rays of the setting sun, and then disappeared into endless darkness.
The Third Prince lifted a jar of wine, poured it into a bowl with a broken corner, and drank it down in large mouthfuls.
The burning taste filled his mouth. The trace of a smile remaining at the corners of the Third Prince’s lips seemed increasingly bleak. He stared closely at his reflection in the wine bowl, at the face reflected there still stained with traces of blood.
“Mother, your child has already avenged you completely. Those people who harmed you back then, one by one, all of them were tortured to death by me.”
The Third Prince poured another bowl of wine and placed it across from himself. After draining the wine in his own bowl in one gulp, he drank that bowl as well. He had imagined the arrival of this day countless times, imagined how spirited, carefree, and exhilarated he would be when it came. Yet when this day truly arrived, he felt an inexplicable bleakness.
Where was the joy in life?
The Third Prince tried hard to recall the scenes each time he had exhausted every method to torture someone to death. That had not been a kind of happiness, but a subversion of pain. Every time he watched someone die before him, the scene of his mother’s departure would appear again. Again and again, he had struggled between torment and release. In the end, he had finally obtained the result he wanted, only to discover that aside from feeling a breath of relief, he felt nothing else.
One wine jar after another was smashed. The Third Prince’s vision also grew more and more blurred. A helplessness he had never felt before swept over his entire body. He wanted someone to tell him where he should go next…
“If someone does not understand me, why bother asking me to stay…”
The Third Prince murmured this, and Mu Xueshi’s face kept appearing before his eyes: lively, mischievous, adorable, warm… No matter which one it was, it made a suffocating pain rise in the Third Prince’s chest.
“Xueshi…”
The Third Prince drank down the last jar of wine, and finally leaned sideways against a bamboo bed less than one meter wide, gently closing his eyes.
“Noble Consort Yu, we have searched all the inns and restaurants, but we did not find His Highness the Third Prince. Should we return first? The rain is so heavy now.”
“If you want to go back, go back yourselves. I will search here.”
After saying this, Yu’er cracked his riding crop and rode toward the depths of the forest.
The rain fell harder and harder. The thatched cottage where the Third Prince was began to leak. At first, the water only dripped down drop by drop, but later, streams of water came pouring down.
The Third Prince slowly opened his eyes. The roof was already so broken it was beyond repair, and in some places, holes could be vaguely seen. His clothes were completely soaked, and his palms were full of water, icy cold to the bone.
“Noble Consort Yu, this subordinate discovered a person inside that thatched cottage, but I could not see the face clearly…”
“All of you wait here. I will go in and take a look.”
Yu’er dismounted, pushed aside the guard holding an umbrella for him, and walked straight toward the thatched cottage.
The Third Prince still lay motionless in the same place. Suddenly, a burst of hurried footsteps disturbed his mind.
Yu’er only glanced at the person on the bed before recognizing him as the Third Prince. His heart stirred with excitement, and he quickly walked over.
“Your Highness, Your Highness…” Yu’er gently patted the Third Prince’s face. Seeing him like this now, he suddenly could not help shedding tears.
The Third Prince slowly opened his eyes and carefully examined the person before him. Suddenly, he said in a gentle voice, “Xueshi, you’re soaked.”
After saying this, the Third Prince, with a smile that was not quite a smile, helped Yu’er smooth out his drenched hair, then pinched his face and rebuked him, “Why didn’t you find somewhere to shelter from the rain?”
“Because I could not find you, so I had no heart to shelter from the rain.”
Yu’er smiled along with him, but his heart was filled with endless bitterness. A Third Prince like this, he feared he would only see once in this lifetime.
Yu’er helped the Third Prince sit up and allowed him to lean against his body. In a soft voice, he asked, “Shall we go back?”
“Back where?”
“Back to the imperial palace.”
“No.”
The Third Prince smiled faintly, a few traces of indulgence in his deep gaze. “We do not need to go back there. Did you not like traveling through mountains and rivers? From now on, wherever you want to go, I will take you there.”
Two lines of tears slid down Yu’er’s cheeks, and he answered softly, “All right…”
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