Alone, Beautifully – Chapter 125
by Little PandaBestowing Upon You the Realm (7)
“A private meeting with a beauty.”
Xu Jiao wanted to explain herself, but when she met Yu Ye’s gaze at that moment, it was unfathomable. The instant their eyes met, Xu Jiao felt as if she was standing on the edge of a cliff looking down, with nothing but an abyss in sight.
Only an empty wind brushed against her skin.
In those eyes, which were the same as the person she remembered fondly and later fell in love with, there was no tenderness, no affection, and none of the emotional feedback she desired.
In this world, she was an emperor who had been propped up, a pawn in the other’s hand, a puppet. If she couldn’t demonstrate her usefulness or wasn’t obedient enough, her life could be taken at any moment.
And the person before her—
Was the chess player.
Was the one who could control her life and death.
Was the female protagonist of this world, Yu Ye.
And also… the person who didn’t remember any of their past, the emotionally reserved Regent.
Xu Jiao felt something gentle in her heart being covered layer by layer, preventing those warm, soft emotions from surfacing. It was as if she truly felt the reality of switching to a new world and severing all past connections.
Even though Yu Ye shared one character with Zheng Zhiyu, they… were ultimately not the same person.
Faced with this Lord Yu, Xu Jiao couldn’t bring out the attitudes she had towards Lilith or Zheng Zhiyu. Thinking of her previous behavior, Xu Jiao lowered her head. Under Yu Ye’s piercing gaze, she calmly lowered her eyes.
It was like a gesture of submission.
Yu Ye’s grip on her face immediately loosened. In that instant, Xu Jiao’s voice said:
“I was too presumptuous and forgot proper etiquette.”
“Please forgive me, Lord Yu. If you’re truly angry, I’ll copy the palace etiquette I’ve recently learned ten times tomorrow. Would that satisfy Lord Yu?”
Hearing her cold tone, Yu Ye felt puzzled.
Clearly, it was Xu Jiao who had been improper, so why did it now sound like she was the one who was displeased? This Crown Prince’s temper seemed a bit too much.
Forcing the other, she no longer heard the soft coquettishness from before. Yu Ye felt a blockage in her chest. She had previously thought this Crown Prince was clever and perceptive, able to see through others’ thoughts, but now she couldn’t help but be annoyed at Xu Jiao’s thick-headedness.
Was it because she had become the Crown Prince and learned the art of ruling, knowing that she was her biggest competitor on the path to power, so she refused to show weakness or be at a disadvantage in front of her?
Yu Ye’s thoughts went in circles.
Her expression also became unpleasant.
Xu Jiao naturally noticed her extremely bad mood. Looking at Yu Ye’s appearance, she immediately understood why the palace people all felt this Regent was mercurial and unpredictable. Even she, who had interacted with female protagonists from different worlds many times and felt she somewhat understood the protagonists in her writings, still couldn’t comprehend why Yu Ye’s face changed so drastically like in a Sichuan opera (川劇變臉 – chuānjù biànliǎn, a dramatic art form featuring rapid face mask changes).
But she was also getting impatient.
She immediately backed up against the inner side of the bed. Through the thin undergarment, the high wooden screen-like solid bed frame at the edge of the bed chilled her, startling her neck hair to stand on end.
However, Xu Jiao’s face showed nothing. She maintained a quiet demeanor, like an actor wearing a perfect mask of obedience. She sat up calmly and said to Yu Ye:
“Perhaps I still have some old bad habits from the palace that need changing. To avoid any misunderstandings with Lord Yu sharing the same bed, I’ll ask the palace servants to escort you back to your residence now.”
No matter how polite and obedient the words sounded, they couldn’t hide the dismissive meaning within.
Hearing this, Yu Ye felt anger rising in her heart. She didn’t know why this little one was so ungrateful and dared to bare her teeth and claws at her like this. She wanted to teach Xu Jiao a lesson, but as her gaze swept over Xu Jiao’s face that hadn’t fully regained its color, the harsh words on the tip of her tongue didn’t come out.
In the end, she just snorted coldly, lifted the blanket, and swept out of the hall.
The warmth at the edge of the bed disappeared again.
Xu Jiao placed the only soft golden round pillow in the center, smoothed out her corner of the blanket, then moved to the middle of the bed and lay down. Even though her body wasn’t as cold anymore and her stomach didn’t hurt, she found herself unable to sleep.
It was as if there was an emptiness beside her pillow.
As this thought flashed through her mind, she couldn’t help but curl her lips. This idea was a bit too amusing.
Whether it was the cold-blooded Lilith before or the ghostly Zheng Zhiyu, whenever they shared her bed, they always annoyingly made her blanket cold. In cold weather, she not only had to take a hot bath to drive away the chill but also had to turn up the heating. Now it was just missing an ice cube sleeping beside her.
How could she feel reluctant about it?
Xu Jiao thought that her heart might have become a bit softer.
The high wall she had built around her heart over the years, surrounded by layers of iron fences and thorns, unable to let anyone in – now as she looked back, she realized that although those thorns looked prickly, when actually touched, they were like the shell of a ripe durian, intimidating on the outside but the thorns had softened.
Dull.
Not knowing how many heart thieves had been secretly let in behind her back.
Xu Jiao let out a soft sigh, pulled the blanket up to her shoulders, quietly closed her eyes, and hypnotized herself to fall asleep quickly, while once again reminding herself in her heart:
You should let go.
Yu Ye walked out of the Eastern Palace’s inner hall.
The silver moonlight fell on her shoulders, revealing the hidden patterns woven with precious silk threads in her clothes, which were then erased by shadows as she moved.
Her shadow on the long corridor was stretched by the moonlight.
Now, with the cold wind from the courtyard blowing, she had already sorted out the scenes of her interaction with the Crown Prince. She warned herself not to take the momentary vulnerability of this Crown Prince tonight seriously.
The consequences of underestimating women…
The Xu family had already learned their lesson from her; she shouldn’t make the same mistake.
That was a fifteen-year-old Crown Prince, who might inherit the legitimate throne of Da Yan in the future.
That was a fledgling bird with growing wings.
But with a chain she had tied around its ankle, because she couldn’t allow this Crown Prince to escape her control. And in this kind of control, there was really no need to mix in too much emotion.
She only needed an obedient puppet.
Not even a pet.
If raised as a pet, even after killing it after some time, one would still feel heartache for a while.
Yu Ye thought that she had already lost too many important people in her life. When the Xu family was executed back then, not even the dogs in the courtyard were spared. She really didn’t have any more emotions left to feel sad for anyone in the future.
Her heart had been riddled with holes since her youth, like a ship sailing forward with leaks, unable to carry any feelings anymore.
It seemed there was a rift between the Crown Prince and the Regent.
No one knew what this Crown Prince had done to anger the Regent.
The spies in the Eastern Palace soon spread this news throughout the court of Da Yan.
Although no one knew exactly how it happened, just days ago the Regent had personally gone to the Crown Prince’s palace to guard her safety, but overnight, this Regent had changed her mind.
She no longer mentioned the proposal to establish the Crown Prince as emperor in court.
At the same time, she strengthened the guards in the Eastern Palace, but this time, the court officials seemed to sense something from it. In the eyes of the opposition, Yu Ye’s actions seemed more like guarding and restricting Xu Jiao’s freedom rather than protecting her safety.
For a long period of time, there were fewer assassins trying to kill her than before, but of course, that’s a story for another time.
At present, there were undercurrents in the court, with people speculating about Yu Ye’s next move. Would she depose Xu Jiao as the female Crown Prince and establish a new royal member, or use Xu Jiao as a front while actually taking over the power of the court herself?
Because of this, some old officials and sons of influential families who wanted to control the court began to have fluctuating thoughts.
No one cared about Xu Jiao’s feelings, neither investigating her emotional changes in the matter between her and Yu Ye, nor concerning themselves with how her life in the palace would be afterwards, or how it felt to be highly elevated and then dropped… This was the court, a struggle for power. For someone living at the center of the whirlpool, emotions were too small a factor of influence, because there were many more important things than this.
If she was weak, she deserved to be crushed by the wheels of history.
Although Xu Jiao was deep in the palace and had never attended court, she learned about the various movements in the court from the occasional discussions of the servants around her. She heard people say that Yu Ye had grown tired of her, and also noticed that the palace servants began to show some perfunctoriness when serving her.
But she didn’t even raise an eyebrow.
She just quietly turned a page of the book in her hand, smelling a hint of musty ink from the old book that hadn’t seen sunlight for years.
The system asked in her mind: “Are you a bit disappointed and sad? How about I tell you the female protagonist’s current favorability towards you? It’s 1, are you surprised and unexpected?”
Xu Jiao found the answer to today’s lesson, put the book aside, raised her hand to press the corners of the rice paper with a paperweight, then raised her hand to grind ink. Pinching her sleeve, her movements were unhurried, as if she was very patient.
“Not sad, not surprised, not unexpected.”
System: “Huh?”
Xu Jiao’s gaze moved slightly, like a small water droplet falling inadvertently on the water surface, quickly disappearing without a trace. She calmly replied to the system in her mind:
“This is a good thing.”
“If Yu Ye controls the court and becomes the emperor herself, her career line will be considered successful. As long as she doesn’t die afterwards, the ending of this book will definitely be a happy ending. And I came here for a free trip, learned a lot of useful knowledge about being an emperor to take back. This might be the easiest world for me to complete a task.”
“I should be happy about it.”
Things seemed to unfold as Xu Jiao had anticipated.
While the entire Da Yan court was in turmoil due to Yu Ye’s attitude towards the Crown Prince, Da Yan suddenly welcomed diplomatic envoys from Qi and Chu. This was because at this moment, the Liang Kingdom in the northwest was deeply mired in a war with three prairie tribes from beyond the frontier. The King of Liang had been hit by an arrow on the battlefield, and although the extent of his injury was unknown, this was the moment when Liang’s rear was wide open and domestic defenses were insufficient.
The Qi Kingdom, as a middle country bordering all four countries, had already lost its former title as the capital of culture. The civil officials in the court were divided into four or five factions, engaging in daily verbal battles. The King of Qi, however, was a peacemaker, struggling to mediate between the various factions. Because of the emphasis on civil matters over military affairs, they were a target that anyone could beat, relying on clinging to the powerful surrounding countries to continue existing. So now they were following behind Chu, cheering and hoping to pick up some benefits.
But Chu itself, due to the emperor’s incompetence and debauchery in recent years, had fallen behind in military preparations and was unable to face the strong Liang army alone. After all, Liang was located in a harsh and cold land, and its soldiers were all fearless of death. In terms of combat ability of individual soldiers, they could absolutely dominate the other four countries.
They were just taking advantage of Liang’s weakness to take Liang’s life.
After all, the area where Liang bordered Qi was a strategic stronghold of the Central Plains. Who wouldn’t be tempted?
Chu had always had good relations with Da Yan, after all, the two countries were similar in some ways. The Chu royal family was known for producing playboys, and the beauties in the harem could be said to come from all corners of the world. All the past emperors were quite outrageous, and it was said that the current one had already played with all the beauties in the palace when he was still the crown prince, following his father.
As for Da Yan…
They specialized in producing lunatics and perverts.
If the rulers of the two sides sat down to chat, they might be able to talk about some common topics between psychopaths.
Getting off track here.
This time, when Yu Ye staged a palace coup, Chu sent an envoy to see her, wanting to discuss the situation in Da Yan and whether they could maintain their friendship with Chu. It’s unknown what Yu Ye discussed with the envoy.
A few days later, news spread from Da Yan—
Yu Ye personally led troops to war, serving as the commander-in-chief of the armies of Qi, Chu, and Yan, marching against the Liang Kingdom.
Three months later.
The allied forces of the three countries heavily defeated Liang, taking the five counties of Xiluo, a strategic stronghold in the Central Plains.
At the same time, Liang sent their newly established seventeen-year-old crown prince to Da Yan as a hostage.
On the night Yu Ye returned victorious with her troops.
Da Yan Palace held a grand celebration banquet, with an endless flow of food and drink. Envoys from various countries came to offer congratulations. The Da Yan royal family sent in eighty-eight men of outstanding appearance and various attractive features, presenting them to the Regent and Great General Yu Ye, who had protected the country.
Xu Jiao sat at the banquet, watching Yu Ye maintain a poker face as she ordered her attendants to accept this grand gift, while also exchanging pleasantries and thanking the Chu envoy.
The palace was filled with song and dance until late into the night.
Midway through, Xu Jiao stood up to leave, suddenly feeling the urge to appreciate the moon. However, on her way to the Imperial Garden, a palace servant accidentally bumped into a young man in moon-white clothes.
The people around her promptly informed her that this was the Crown Prince of Liang, Nie Yunyue.
The man was courteous in his behavior. Seeing her imperial attire, he immediately apologized.
Xu Jiao’s gaze swept over him, realizing that this legendary male protagonist who lived in the main text was indeed quite handsome, with sword-like eyebrows and star-like eyes, as bright and clear as a sunny day.
She smiled, about to wave her hand to dismiss this misunderstanding—
Suddenly, she heard a voice from the side: “There’s a grand banquet in the palace today. Why isn’t the Crown Prince congratulating this minister on the victory, but instead running here for a private meeting with a beauty?”
I like that protagonist is still learning how to not love yet love the female lead!