Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I was sent to the Beiliang Military Camp outside Jinling City.

To Tuoba Lu, this was indeed where I belonged.

Compared to three years ago, when the Northern Liang Army had fought over me, they were surprisingly quiet this time.

They watched me from a distance, but no one laid a finger on me.

I was tossed into a room covered in straw, crowded together with other women from Southern Tang.

The only difference was that I alone was fitted with a mouth gag and had my hands and feet bound, making even suicide an impossibility.

When night fell, the girls were all dragged out.

The sounds of struggling, beating, and weeping drifted in from all directions.

When dawn broke, they were sent back, covered in bruises and scars.

“Who are you? Why don’t you have to serve them?” one of the women asked me.

I didn’t know why either.

Perhaps my current half-dead appearance turned their stomachs, or perhaps they still feared Tuoba Lu.

Maybe once they realized Tuoba Lu truly intended to leave me here to fend for myself, they would swarm over me again.

Just like my eldest sister-even though she was a corpse, because she had been the Emperor’s woman, they didn’t let her go even after death.

Sure enough, after a night of revelry in the camp, someone broke in.

By then, the other women in the room had long been taken away, and I was drifting in and out of consciousness due to my hunger strike.

The man came in the middle of the night, reeking of alcohol.

The night was so dark that he blended into the shadows; I couldn’t see his face.

I had thought my life was so cheap that I wouldn’t fear being violated-that I could just treat it as being bitten by a dog.

But when he tore open my clothes and his cold lips pressed against my neck, I was still afraid.

I couldn’t go to see Chenglu like this.

But how could I make him stop?

“I’m pregnant… It’s your Emperor’s child… You’ll hurt me and the baby,” I stammered, my words muffled and indistinct because of the gag.

I didn’t know if it would work. The people of Northern Liang didn’t seem to care about offspring born to lowly women, even if that offspring carried royal blood.

Take Tuoba Lu, for example; his mother had been a mere palace maid.

Consequently, he hadn’t received the treatment a prince deserved after he was born. He and his mother had struggled to survive in the palace until he was sent to the army at the age of ten.

He fought just like any ordinary soldier, receiving no special treatment. In fact, because he was an unfavored prince, he was even deliberately targeted by others.

His mother once told me that he had bled himself dry for Northern Liang just to earn a single glance from his imperial father.

The man showed no intention of stopping. His palm even moved to rest on my lower abdomen, as if checking to see if I was truly pregnant.

He was wearing gloves made of cowhide-coarse and cold, like a snake.

Perhaps I was too thin, or perhaps I wasn’t pregnant at all, for my belly remained as flat as ever.

Thinking I had lied to him, I felt as if my neck was going to be bitten through by him.

I began to cry-a desperate weeping, the kind born from falling into a darkness from which there is no escape.

My tears flowed down my cheeks and onto the man’s face.

He stopped. Though his breath remained heavy against my neck, he did not go any further.

I didn’t dare move, trembling as I prayed for him to leave quickly.

After an unknown amount of time, he finally let go of me and slowly walked out.

Only after his footsteps had faded into the distance did I dare to take small, shallow breaths.

Due to the emotional turmoil, a dull ache throbbed in my lower abdomen.

In the latter half of the night, I began to run a fever. I saw my father and mother, and then I saw Chenglu.

They stood on the other side of a river, smiling warmly at me.

I ran toward them, weeping, only a hair’s breadth away from touching them.

But someone behind me was clutching my hand tightly; he held on with such force that no matter how I struggled, I couldn’t break free.

In the end, I was dragged back into this world of pain.

I continued my hunger strike, but they began to force-feed me.

Tuoba Lu sent no one. Perhaps the man from that night hadn’t said anything.

Or perhaps Tuoba Lu had heard, but simply didn’t care.

Only, occasionally, that man would return.

He would stand in the darkness, never coming close, as if he were only there to watch me.

I would pretend to be asleep, not daring to open my eyes until long after he had gone.