Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Later, I entered the palace and became the study companion for Fifth Princess Chu Ning.
On my first day in the palace, I went to pay my respects to Chu Ning and found her enjoying the sight of someone being flogged.
She was very beautiful, with a delicate little face and eyes like dark grapes. Her nose was elegant, her lips like cherry blossoms, and her skin was as white as snow. She looked like a young girl from a painting, except she was terribly thin, and her cheeks bore the pallor of illness.
She seemed sensitive to the cold, wearing an extra layer of clothing compared to everyone else.
She watched the beating with a face full of excitement, her eyes sparkling with a thrill.
The noble lady being publicly punished was both shamed and infuriated. She fainted from anger, only to be beaten awake by the wooden planks. Abandoning the last of her dignity, she wailed and begged for mercy.
Chu Ning’s expression remained unchanged. A smug smile appeared on her small face, thick with mockery.
Once the punishment ended, the noble lady was carried out of the palace and sent back home.
Chu Ning’s crimson lips spat out a single word: “Boring.” Then she turned her gaze toward me, and the light in her eyes bloomed instantly.
“Another plaything has arrived. What is your name?”
“This official’s daughter is Lin Zhi,” I said, bowing low.
“The daughter of Chancellor Lin?” She used her hand to tilt my chin up, scrutinizing my face before saying with disdain, “You aren’t much to look at.”
“I am merely the Lin family’s adopted daughter. I only stayed with them for half a year; I was sent here specifically to be the Princess’s punching bag. If Your Highness truly wishes to punish me, you would only be doing what they want, because they do not care about me at all. If Your Highness does not believe me, I can prove it to you.”
I pushed up my sleeves, revealing crisscrossing rows of old scars.
I let my sleeves fall and slowly began to unfasten my clothes.
I undid layer after layer until I was down to my inner chemise.
Chu Ning grabbed my hand and barked, “Have you no shame? No decency? Who starts stripping the moment they meet someone?”
“Your Highness,” I looked at her earnestly, “my sense of shame was discarded long ago when I was starving to death.”
Later, Song Duhe helped me pick up my dignity piece by piece, mending it and turning it into armor for my heart.
When I knelt at the gates of the Chancellor’s Mansion to beg for help, I didn’t feel I had lost my dignity.
My only thought was that I had to save him.
When I was taking off my clothes just now, I didn’t feel I was losing my dignity either.
My thought was that as long as I could gain a foothold in the palace, I would eventually reclaim every bit of the dignity I had lost.
In the face of survival, dignity truly means nothing.
Once I understood that, I became composed.
Chu Ning froze in a daze.
Later, after spending more time with Chu Ning, I learned that she had also gone hungry. She had wandered about piteously begging for food and mercy.
Though she eventually wore brocade and fine silks, she remained a child starved of love on the inside.
It wasn’t her fault she grew up this way.
She wanted revenge, but she didn’t know the right way to go about it.
She had no education, no father to guide her, and no mother to teach her.
During the years she should have been learning etiquette, righteousness, and integrity, she first learned how to bite, claw, and fight to survive-growing wild and untamed.
No one had loved or educated her properly.
She was like a bramble growing recklessly, pricking everyone around her. She seemed grand, but her situation was precarious; sooner or later, someone would uproot her.
Now that I was here, I would teach her how to love, how to hate, and how to seek revenge.
I would raise her just as Song Duhe had once raised me.
I would protect her and make her my benefactor-the one who would help me strike down my enemies and avenge Song Duhe.
I would make her a towering tree, standing atop the mountain peak, looking down upon all creation.
Chu Ning remained silent for a moment before saying coolly, “Give her a few jars of ointment to treat those scars. My palace does not harbor ugly things.”
Several jars of scar-removing ointment were placed in my hands. The palace maid pointedly told me that this was top-quality salve, a tribute from a foreign land that Emperor Zhengde had bestowed upon Chu Ning, and she had given it to me.
“The Princess is sharp-tongued but soft-hearted. You will realize that in time, Miss.”
She was indeed soft-hearted.
Looking at the jars of ointment, I felt a sense of relief, but my thoughts inevitably drifted back to Song Duhe.