Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Damn it. Xiao Lan, that old toad, actually turned out to be a prophet.
In the Fifth Year of Taiyuan, at the start of summer, Princess Anping died.
She was poisoned.
As for me, Little Frog, I was stepped to death! Through a bizarre twist of fate, I went from being a toad to a human, becoming her from that moment on.
The root of it all began in the spring of that year.
After surviving a long, bitter winter, Aunt Qiu finally passed away.
Her aged corpse lay on the bed, shriveled into a small heap.
I stayed by Anping’s side from dawn until dusk.
In the desolate Fenghuan Palace, there was only her helpless crying. Her sobbing, which lasted from day to midnight, gave the place a ghostly, eerie air.
Aunt Qiu’s body lay there for several days. As the weather grew warmer, the faint scent of decay began to linger.
When dawn broke again, Anping finally stepped out of the room, her eyes red and swollen.
At fifteen years old, Princess Anping began to dig a hole in the empty patch of the vegetable garden with her bare hands.
She dug until her fingernails broke and her hands were caked in filth, finally managing to create a small pit barely deep enough to bury Aunt Qiu.
Anping piled up a small burial mound.
She wanted to pay her respects to Aunt Qiu by burning some incense and spirit money before the grave.
But she had nothing.
So, Anping went into the house and brought out a gold hairpin.
That Lotus Gold Hairpin was the only memento her Imperial Consort Mother had left her.
She took the hairpin, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and went to the corridor outside Fenghuan Palace to find a guard stationed at the Western Palace.
The guard’s name was Sun Hanzhou, and he was nineteen years old.
It wasn’t the first time Young Guard Sun and Anping had met.
A year ago, when Anping was returning from the Storage Depot with a basket on her back, she had accidentally tripped while passing through the corridor. Young Guard Sun, who was on duty, saw her and walked over to help her pick up the charcoal scattered on the ground.
Like the eunuchs at the Storage Depot, he initially assumed Anping was merely a laboring maid from the Cold Palace.
Anping, who was accustomed to keeping her head low, had inadvertently looked up and softly whispered her thanks while he helped her gather the wood.
Young Guard Sun’s eyes met hers. He froze for a moment, and the tips of his ears quietly turned red.
Anping resembled her mother; as she grew older, her features became increasingly elegant and refined.
After that, she and Young Guard Sun crossed paths several more times.
Whenever Anping went to the Storage Depot to fetch firewood and passed through the corridor, she would sometimes run into Young Guard Sun on duty. She would habitually lower her head and walk past him in silence.
Yet, without her knowing when it started, Young Guard Sun began to watch her frequently, his gaze following her as she walked further and further away.
No one knew why his body always tensed and his breath hitched whenever he saw Anping, or what made him so nervous.
He was shy and a man of few words, so Anping remained unaware of his feelings.
She only knew that he was kind-hearted and had once helped her pick up charcoal from the ground.
When she needed help, he was the one who naturally came to mind.