A fool she could let off the hook, but a talent? Only one thought echoed in her mind: "This man must not be spared!"
Though it was somewhat cold-blooded, she had to bury anyone who could threaten her mission six feet under—this was a matter of stance, not of right or wrong.
[Master, there is one more thing you might wish to know.]
"What is it?"
[Master, do you know how Shen Jian died?]
"Didn't he fall in battle in the eleventh year of Yuan Kang?"
[Yes and no. There is also a melodramatic love story behind it. Would you like to hear it, Master?]
"Is it about Zhuang Xiu and Shen Jian?"
[Er... something like that!] After all, in this cheesy romance flick, Zhuang Xiu plays a significant role.
Shen Jian's scalp tingled at once, and a bad premonition arose in his heart. He even forgot to worry about his own death in the eleventh year of Yuan Kang.
If even the Divine Artifact called it a melodramatic love story, it had to be something that defied common sense—or even ethics!
Right then, Shen Jian was panicking. He signaled the crowd with his eyes to follow him outside, trying to stop them from feasting on his scandal.
If it had been anything else, no one would have refused the nephew of the Emperor, the eldest son of the Grand Princess.
But... gossip? Especially a melodramatic love story endorsed by the Divine Artifact? Absolutely irresistible!
So everyone, including the eldest among them, Bao Qianjun and Feng Tang, suddenly seemed to go blind. They bustled about in Yue Fuguang's courtyard, finding odd jobs to do, deliberately ignoring Shen Jian.
Yue Fuguang had been settled by Cuizhu and the others under the eaves to drink tea and listen to the rain. Since the inner chamber had been unoccupied for a long time, they needed to give it a thorough cleaning.
[Master, in the ninth year of Yuan Kang, Shen Jian was ordered to guard the border. It was then that he met the great love of his life!]
"The great love of his life? If I recall correctly, Shen Jian was already married and had one son and two daughters.
A married man, a father of several children, and you call that the great love of his life?
Was this 'love' after his fame or his fortune?
And Shen Jian fell for her—was it for her face or her face? If it was lust at first sight, just say so. Don't insult the word 'love'!"
Shen Jian covered his face, flushed red by Yue Fuguang's blunt and biting words. He felt that the melodramatic story hadn't even begun, yet his face was already burning with shame.
[Er... Master, is it possible she was after his life? But you're not wrong about Shen Jian being after her looks. Twenty-eight-year-old Shen Jian paired with Zhuang Yuyan, who wasn't even eighteen yet—that's an old ox chewing on tender grass.]
Hearing "twenty-eight with eighteen" called an old ox chewing tender grass, several men in the room who kept young concubines felt an inexplicable arrow pierce their knees.
By now, Shen Jian was no longer the only one blushing. As for the man himself, he had already retreated to a corner, resigned to his fate.
"Indeed, 'great loves' are always tailor-made ambushes designed to suit your tastes."
[Shen Jian's great love began in the tenth year of Yuan Kang, during a festival at a border town's lantern fair, where they had a 'coincidental' encounter. Master, let me describe the scene:
That night, Shen Jian came out of a tavern with his comrades, already half-drunk. He refused their offer to escort him home, saying he wanted to walk alone.
With blurred vision, he wandered away from the bustling street and the laughing crowd, heading into a quiet alley.
The lanterns there were sparse, with only a few plain silk lamps hanging under the eaves, casting a faint, soft yellow light on the ground.
The noise of the lantern festival was cut off behind him, like the receding tide, leaving only distant echoes in his ears.
Drunk and parched, he searched for water in the alley.
Then he saw it—deep in the alley, a tilted lantern hung, its light dim, just enough to illuminate that small patch of space.
She stood at the edge of the halo, her head slightly lowered, as if looking at something.
In the distance behind her, fireworks burst and crackled, showering down to the ground.
Her profile was traced in soft lines by the dim lamplight, and scattered shadows from the lantern fell on her shoulder.
Shen Jian was stunned. He was a well-traveled man who had seen many beauties, but he had never seen a woman like this before.
There, where the lanterns faded, she seemed to sense something. Slowly, she lifted her head, her gaze crossing the thin veil of night and landing on him.
At that moment, the distant songs, the nearby lanterns, the fireworks across the sky—all became irrelevant background.
Their meeting on that beautiful night felt destined, like some kind of fate—that must have been what Shen Jian thought.]
The others were captivated by the system's description of the scene, while Shen Jian, the one involved, buried his head in his arms, finding nothing beautiful about it at all.
If it weren't for the fact that the cracks in the ground were all filled with rain, he would have dug one and buried himself in it.
But Yue Fuguang felt the scene perfectly matched the line from Master Xin's poem: "I searched for her a thousand times in the crowd, and suddenly turned my head, to find her where the lantern lights were dim."
"What you call fate and destiny is nothing more than someone else's deliberate design and intentional approach."
Shen Jian didn’t know what kind of beauty could have blinded his eyes. What he most wanted to understand now was how this mysterious woman had managed to take his life.
"Master, Zhuang Yuyan is an assassin from the North Li Tianxing Tower and also a daughter of a branch family of the Zhuang clan. Her mother died early in her childhood, and within a month of her passing, her father elevated his beloved concubine to the position of legitimate wife.
With a stepmother, a stepfather was surely not far behind.
The Zhuang family was a prominent household, yet Zhuang Yuyan’s father seemed unable to properly raise a daughter. At just seven years old, Zhuang Yuyan had the title of a young miss but the fate of a servant.
In her own home, she lived worse than the favored maidservants."
Yue Fuguang: I know this script well!
This was exactly her starting point!
"Later, her stepmother and biological father personally sent her to Tianxing Tower. At the time, Zhuang Yuyan believed she would learn a means to survive.
Unfortunately, when she grew older, she realized that the means of survival were far different from what she had initially imagined.
Killing people for money—how could that not be considered a craft?"
"So, Shen Jian is Zhuang Yuyan's target? Why would Tianxing Tower go through so much trouble to take Shen Jian’s life?
Wouldn’t a straightforward assassination or poison work just as well? Why use the beauty trap? Doesn’t that seem a bit slow to yield results?"
"Master, Zhuang Yuyan’s father is actually the half-brother of Shen Jian’s mother, the Grand Princess—that is, an illegitimate son of Emperor Mingxi’s father. Can you believe it?
Zhuang Yuyan’s branch is a distant offshoot of the Zhuang clan. The family line was continued through a woman taking a husband into her home. In fact, Zhuang Yuyan’s grandmother was an only daughter. She once accompanied her father on a trip to Dayan. When the father and daughter returned, they brought along not only a young man but also a baby boy.
Officially, they claimed she had taken a live-in husband. In reality, that so-called 'live-in husband' was just a cover. And that supposed 'grandfather'—his slave contract was firmly held in the grandmother’s hands."
To think that the nominal grandfather was actually bought—Yue Fuguang couldn’t help but marvel at how resourceful that father and daughter, Zhuang Xiu and his kin, truly were.