Chapter 3

Chapter 3

At first, Cui Tao didn’t even dare to speak.

I prodded her with a few jokes. Once she’d eaten her fill, I finally coaxed the words out of her.

She said, “I heard that on the day the Princess was born, the Ziwei Star moved in reverse into the Pojun position, and Yao Guang, the seventh star of the Big Dipper, fell three feet to the earth.”

I nodded. “That happened.”

The year I was born, someone gave me the fate of a “Solitary Man.”

It was just that my mother, the Empress, was still alive then. No one dared to say much.

What Cui Tao said next was even more outrageous-

“I heard that when the Princess did the first birthday grab, you picked up a White Jade Gui and a Mysterious Iron Sword. Blood patterns surfaced on the gui by themselves, and a dragon’s roar rang out from the sword sheath and shattered twelve palace lanterns in the hall.”

Me: “…”

I did grab the White Jade Gui and the Mysterious Iron Sword, but the rest was pure bullshit.

She went on. “And when the Princess was seven and followed the Great General to the training grounds to watch martial drills, you shot one arrow straight through three layers of armor. When the arrowhead sank into the bullseye, it split into a ‘Tyrant’ pattern.”

…If you couldn’t outshoot me, just say that! What ‘Tyrant’ pattern?!

“There’s something even more ridiculous,” she said.

I said, “I don’t believe it. How could it possibly get more ridiculous?”

She got all fired up and swore there was. Supposedly, the Grand Diviner’s reading of my fate had been secretly written down by the Grand Historian-

[Before the age of thirty, she will ascend to the Throne. On the day she takes the throne, blood will run like a river, and the spirit tablets of all her close kin will be burned to ash in the Imperial Ancestral Temple.]

Cui Tao scared herself just saying it.

Judging by her face, she wanted nothing more than to smash her own mouth.

I laughed so hard. “Now that’s ridiculous.”

She giggled along, dumbly. “R-right? I mean, Your Highness is clearly so kind…”

Kind enough that she even thought I was too soft.

I changed my tone. “But at least half of what you said is true.”

Cui Tao’s pupils practically quaked.

I smiled. “Eat. I’ll tell you slowly.”

The fate-reading and the first birthday grab were both real.

When I was young, I really was different. I ran around yelling that I was going to be Emperor someday.

So…

Back then, Mother was given death, leaving the three of us siblings behind.

My Imperial Brother, the Crown Prince, was deposed-but he acknowledged the Noble Consort as his mother and saved himself.

My Imperial Sister was going to be sent off for a political marriage. Not only was she pardoned, she was even further enfeoffed.

Only I was also given death.

They said-

“The little princess is violent by nature, her desires too deep. She absolutely cannot be left alive.”

I still remember it.

A palace maid pressed a cloth soaked in medicine over my face, while a eunuch at the side read out the imperial edict.

“Zhen cannot bear it… but this girl… absolutely cannot be left alive.”

Absolutely cannot be left alive? Like hell!

Was I-Shisan, a thirteen-year-old princess-really that terrifying?!

Turns out, yes.

They were scared out of their wits.

It was my Imperial Sister who barged in with a blade, threw me on her back, and carried me out of the palace.

Later, when I woke outside the city, the one in front of me was my Imperial Brother.

He said, “From now on, neither Imperial Sister nor I will care what happens to you. If you can live, then live. If you can’t, then die.”

Then he turned and left.

He was already on the carriage when he suddenly lifted the curtain and said to me, “If you’re lucky enough to survive and hear the good news of your Imperial Brother’s ascension, don’t you dare come trying to claim kinship. I’d pass the throne to a dog before I’d pass it to you.”

I wanted to chase after him.

Too bad two legs can’t outrun carriage wheels. I didn’t catch up.