Chapter 3

That day, Huazhi was slapped twenty times and expelled from Feiluan Palace.

I became the Seventh Princess’s newly appointed first-rank maid and accompanied her straight to the flower-viewing banquet.

Because the cold compress had been applied in time, the rash no longer looked so alarming. Carefully covered with powder and rouge, it was barely noticeable.

“Someone doesn’t want me at this banquet. Well, I’m going anyway.”

She looked like a warrior, her spirits high.

I followed with a faint smile.

The comments kept calling her the villainess’s cousin. But I didn’t see her that way. She was simply standing up for herself.

If someone swallowed every insult without defending herself, others would only think her soft and easy to prey upon.

At the banquet, the Seventh Princess joined her cousins.

There I met the Cui sisters, Cui Mingxue and Cui Mingwei.

Cui Mingxue had been the Fifth Prince’s fiancée, but shortly after his punishment, she had broken off the engagement.

[So this is the Fifth Prince’s unforgettable first love? Pretty, sure, but vicious. The minute the male lead gets into trouble, she breaks off the engagement. At least she’s smart enough to hang herself and save her family once he becomes emperor. The Cuis send her little sister into the palace as a consort before his anger finally subsides. If the little sister had behaved and left the heroine alone, she could have lived a long life too. But the whole family is rotten. They turn him against the heroine and frame her, until karma catches up with them and the entire family is executed.]

Cui Mingwei was only eight or nine. In a pretty little dress, she picked two flowers and gave one to her older sister Cui Mingxue and the other to her cousin, the Seventh Princess.

The two older girls looked thunderstruck as they took them.

They hastily stuck the flowers back among the others, then fled the scene with Cui Mingwei in tow.

[Hahahahaha! Those are the Princess Royal’s favorite flowers, aren’t they? You’ve certainly got nerve, kid. Getting yourself killed isn’t enough—you have to take both your sisters with you.]

[This is the future villainess? Why is she so adorable?]

[Think about all the evil things she’ll do later. Still think she’s cute?]

[Thanks. My conscience has officially won out over her looks.]

In the story, after ending her engagement to the Fifth Prince, Cui Mingxue married another young man. They lived in harmony until the Fifth Prince became emperor. To save both her husband’s family and her own, she hanged herself.

Cui Mingwei was sent into the palace when she was only fifteen or sixteen, at the brightest, most beautiful age of her life.

She hated Zhao Jinyi. She hated me.

She found every means she could to humiliate and torment me, and in the end, reaped what she had sown.

The comments said she was born evil.

Yet I truly could not hate her now. Perhaps my conscience had yet to overcome her looks.

The Cui Mingwei before me was simply too endearing.

She had no idea what had happened, but asked no questions and just kept running—faster than either of the older girls.

Only when she saw people ahead did she hastily stop.

I looked up to find the Third Princess walking beside a man.